The A Spot

We’re fond of saying that advocacy is an everyday practice — it’s about being being able to persuade others that one course of action is superior to another.  This can include everything from where to go for dinner to how best to address global warming.

In Guandong Province, China, it often means the difference between clean or dirty industrial production.  Guangdong, an area about the size of Texas, is home to 100 million people — and more manufacturing jobs than the entire United States.  Often called the “Factory to the World,” this province has maintained double digit economic growth for more than a decade.  As the Government of China now recognizes, however, this growth has engendered a host of new challenges:  skyrocketing energy needs, inefficient production processes, and staggering amounts of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.  As a consequence, China has proactively set some of the most ambitious energy efficiency and GHG reduction targets of any country in the world.

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If it’s Teresa’s tendency to geek out over cool new tools, it’s probably mine to get lost down the rabbit hole of overthinking theories and abstract ideas. Today’s post is a prime example, but a blog is a blog, and since this is what I’ve been thinking about with respect to advocacy this past week, I’m putting those thoughts down as best I can.

Karl Maria von Clausewitz famously opined that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Put a different way, we might say that war — or violence — is advocacy taken to its illogical extreme. Our definition of advocacy up in the sidebar over there is “developing a passion for something and doing everything you can to make it happen.” It’s that “everything” that I’m picking at today. The Hutus of Rwanda were passionate that Tutsis should no longer exist, and they were truly willing to do everything to see that happen. Osama bin Laden and the followers of al Qaeda were passionate about striking a blow against the liberal, secular democracy that the United States represents; they were willing to everything, or anything, to do that. President Bush was passionate about removing Saddam Hussein from power for his (purported) role in supporting al Qaeda, and perhaps also passionate about bringing stable democracy to the Middle East. Whatever your opinion of the war in Iraq, few would question the President’s willingness to use any means available to accomplish his goals.

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As many of us know, one of the challenges advocates often face abroad (if not in the U.S. as well!) is a lack of receptiveness among government bureaucrats to the participation of citizens in public administration.    In Ukraine, as one example, government has not historically been of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Cabinet Ministries whose ostensible purpose is to provide social services have no experience with treating citizens as clients – on the contrary, citizens are often nothing more than problems, flies in the ointment.  Government bodies and processes are not designed to be transparent, but obscure and invisible to outsiders, discouraging or preventing interference. 

Getting government to take citizens seriously requires a significant change in mindset, as well as a whole host of skills and tools unfamiliar to career officials.  Despite the challenges, over the last couple of days in Kyiv I’ve seen some real and exciting opportunities for change.

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April 4th, as you all know, marked the 40th anniversary of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination. Taylor Branch’s April 6th NYT editorial “The Last Wish of Martin Luther King” offers up some interesting insights and lessons we can learn from one of the greatest advocates of the 20th Century. There’s little I can add.

Teresa’s Making Do With What You’ve Got entry raised an interesting question, one that’s been nagging me for a long time: how do advocacy proponents and advocacy trainers approach the issue of who is benefitting from their work, and what those beneficiaries are advocating for?

I used to work at an umbrella organization that assisted NGOs interested in gaining access to events and committee meetings at the United Nations. My group was issue neutral — we supported the right of all NGOs, regardless of mission or orientation, to have access to the proceedings of the UN and have their say on issues before decision-making bodies. One of our member organizations happened to be the National Rifle Association, a group whose mission I happen to disagree with. But it was my job, as much as it was in my power to do so, to make sure that they had access to key delegations and committees at the United Nations — the better to persuade UN representatives that the right to own guns was important and should be safeguarded at the international level.

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