IT’S AN UP HILL BATTLE! (But one worth fighting)

How can a person who believes in democracy and liberty and also follows the teachings of the libertarian educationalist Paulo Freire do anything for a community when he or she is not only fighting against the service providers, who have the full backing of the state behind them, but also against the very residents who are themselves blind to the fact that they actively participate in their own subjugation by these same service providers, service providers who have over many years put structures into place to perpetuate the agendas of the dominant culture that exists within the City of Liverpool and the region of Merseyside?

There has always been a group of residents known as the same old faces (about 25-30 people) in my community, these people exist in all the communities in Liverpool and right across the whole region of Merseyside. Most (about 20) of these same old faces are cronies who have hidden agendas and to forward these agendas they will work with the oppressor service providers even when they know that the service providers, be they in what ever guise i.e. regen administrators, council officers, treacherous councillors and RSL’s are deliberately segregating and putting oppressive structures into place that only serve to keep the wider community totally in the dark as to what these service providers are up to. These service providers never deviate from their intended purpose, which is to serve the intentions and dictates of the dominant culture that exists at local government level i.e. millionaire property developers, construction companies and the rest of the oligarch who make money out of decimating communities.

THE COMMUNITY LEADERS:

The principal threat to the dominant cultures hegemonic agenda is the resident who possesses leadership and organisational skills. As I have mentioned in other postings, the regeneration administrators go to great lengths to identify these residents who have the above-motioned skills (organisers, as well as having the respect of their neighbours, can also rally them). From the onset of a regeneration programme or project, great effort is put into winning over these mostly moderate leaders. The service providers furnish them with all the means necessary to enable them to project themselves into positions of power within the community. Many of them, especially the ones who gain or have been elected into positions on regeneration boards through what can only be described as sham community elections, (elections which were designed and put together by the oppressor service providers) are advised by the service providers to be trained to acquire the necessary skills to be effective as a board member. Of course this training only serves to indoctrinate the resident board members into the same frame of mind as the service providers who are oppressing the community. So, in effect, these community members become no different in the way they perceive things than the oppressor regeneration administrators.

Concerning the above issue Paulo Freire said: The same divisive effect occurs in connection with the so-called “leadership training courses,” which are (although carried out without any such intention by many of their organisers) in the last analysis alienating. These courses are based on the naïve assumption that one can promote the community by training its leaders, as if it were the parts that promote the whole and not the whole, which, in being promoted, promotes the parts. Those members of the communities who show sufficient leadership capacities to be chosen for these courses necessarily reflect and express the aspirations of the individuals of their community: They are in harmony with the way of living and thinking about reality which characterises their comrades, even though they reveal special abilities which give them the status of “leaders.” As soon as they complete the course and return to the community with resources they did not formally posses, they either use these resources to control the submerged and dominated consciousness of their comrades, or they become strangers in their own communities and their former leadership position is thus threatened. In order not to lose their leadership status, they will probably continue manipulating the community, but in a more efficient manner.

When cultural action, as a totalised and totalising process, approaches an entire community and not merely its leaders, the opposite process occurs. Either the former leaders grow along with everyone else, or they are replaced by new leaders who emerge as a result of the new social consciousness of the community.

The oppressors do not favour promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by preserving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in a total reality. And without this critical intervention, it is always difficult to achieve the unity of the oppressed as a class. (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1970).

In conclusion, the person who reads this posting will probably say, “What can be done to alter this present predicament”? There is quite a lot that can be done to empower a community and give that same community the ability to map its own destiny without any interference from the service providers who are in reality not supposed to oppress the community but simply to provide the services that the community wants. Until the community understands and come to terms with the fact that the service providers actively strive to stultify open democratic procedures by preventing the unification of the wider community, unification that is imperative to empowering and emancipating the community, there is not much that can be done to alter the present predicament. Such is the level of oppression that exists within Liverpool’s many poor working class communities the libertarian activist can only try to make the community aware of what is happening to them through the distribution of literature that contains within its centre a libertarian ideology.

The concluding chapter in Freire’s passage above illustrates what would be the likely scenario if democratic structures were put into place to allow the whole community to become active participants in their own destiny and as Freire rightly states this bringing the whole community together as one entity is something the oppressor does not favour.