Brazilian City Belo Horizonte ends hunger, Porto Alegre pioneers participatory budgeting

[the_future_modernes]

via jhameia


Why oh WHY wasn't this frontpage headline news?

The City that Ended Hunger

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

Oh! Thats why!!!

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, BeloHorizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.MORE

I just. I cannot BEGIN to describe how refreshed and enthusiatic about humanity this story has made me feel!! participatory democracy!!!! Solving world hunger!! There is a difference between theory in books and actually SEEING that it has been done and CONTINUES TO BE DONE. Oh jhameia THANK YOU for linking this article.


And what is participatory democracy?

2005 BRAZIL People's Assembly Builds Participatory Democracy

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31, 2005 (IPS) - People's assemblies should be held all around Brazil, in every social context, in order to strengthen democracy and organise coordinated action, the 8,000 participants representing a broad diversity of social movements concluded in a meeting in the Brazilian capital.

People's assemblies are a means by which the diverse struggles, demands and world-views that inspire people at the grassroots - especially those who have been excluded by society - can be articulated, organised and united, Luiz Bassegio, one of the coordinators of "Popular Assembly, Mutirao for a New Brazil", explained to IPS. ("Mutirao" means working together as a group).

The Oct. 25-28 meeting in Brasilia, organised by more than 40 church groups and other organisations representing peasant farmers, indigenous people, unemployed workers and other marginalised sectors, published an open letter to the Brazilian people and a document, "Our Next Steps", with an agenda and calendar of "common struggles".

The letter, headed by a quotation from Karl Marx -"The liberation of the oppressed must be the work of the oppressed themselves" - states that all Brazilians should mobilise and participate in the people's assemblies in order to combat inequality, oppression and "the subordination of the common good to special interests."MORE

2002Porto Alegre's Budget Of, By, And For the People

How would you like to distribute 200 million dollars to your fellow citizens? That’s the amount of money the city of Porto Alegre spends in an average year for construction and services—money not committed to fixed expenses like debt service and pensions.

Fifty thousand residents of Porto Alegre—poor and middle class, women and men, leftist and centrist—now take part in the participatory budgeting process for this city of a million and a half people, and the numbers involved have grown each year since its start in 1989. Then, only 75 percent of homes had running water.


Today 99 percent have treated water and 85 percent have piped sewage. In seven years, housing assistance jumped from 1,700 families to 29,000. In 12 years, the number of public schools increased from 29 to 86, and literacy has reached 98 percent. Each year the bulk of new street-paving projects has gone to the poorer, outlying districts. In addition to these achievements, corruption, which before was the rule, has virtually disappeared.

Democracy is thriving as citizens gain competence in talking with the mayor, specialists in agencies, and fellow citizens of different means.

The participatory budgeting cycle starts in January of each year with dozens of assemblies across the city designed to ensure the system operates with maximum participation and friendly interaction. One study shows that poor people, less well-educated people, and black people are not inhibited in attending and speaking up, even though racial discrimination is strong in Brazil.

One experienced participant described the dynamic as follows: “The most important thing is that more and more people come. Those who come for the first time are welcome. We let them make demands during technical meetings—they can speak their mind and their anxieties. We have patience for it because we were like that once. And if a person has an issue, we set up a meeting for him, and create a commission to accompany him. You have the responsibility of not abandoning him. That is the most important thing.”

Power and learning

Each February there is instruction from city specialists in technical and system aspects of city budgeting.

Regular folks learn fast because what they are learning empowers them to change conditions that limit or extend their lives. This is perhaps an extension of the teachings of Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educator who enabled peasants to quickly learn to read by making use of materials about power, landlords, and politics, and by a learning process of liberation as well as deliberation.MORE

OMG people!! LOOK AT THIS!!! This is like, my dream of what citizenship could be like!! Why isn't this is my media? In my scifi? In my fantasy??? In my news??? Why isn't this in my LIFE?????

I just...I cannot EXPLAIN how I feel, to see that this is possible and exists!!!! Its a not pipedream!!! WHEEEE!!!!!!!!!