I grew
up in a small town in New Jersey during the 1960s housing development boom.
Bulldozers ripped apart the woods and hills and quickly, over one summer,
a treeless housing development appeared. Many animals also vanished. Surrounding
properties ended up with flooded basements. This was my first ecology lesson--seeing
the collapse of an eco-system as a result of people making decisions and
taking action without considering the ecological impact.
My grandmother on my mom's side came through Ellis Island at the turn of the century, at a time when Europe was facing brutal poverty--poverty that we cannot imagine. My mom, one of eleven children, told me stories of discrimination between various ethnic groups (of white European decent). My father was also an emigrant--a survivor of the holocaust and of both Russian and German work camps. He was finally liberated by the allied army in Holland and came to the United States in 1950. My family legacy deeply affected me as a child and as an adult. I've been to Ellis Island and to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and have come to believe that it is fear and complicity that leads to the horror of war and movements like McCarthyism. When people don't ask questions, and allow their fears to be manipulated for political ends, and go along with a scapegoat rationale, a power system can become entrenched. Once that happens, it is too late to ask questions. UN statistics tell us that women are more than fifty percent of the world's population. Women do two-thirds of the world's work, receive only ten percent of the wages, and own less than one percent of the property. Although women have the least resources and capital, public policies assume they are on a level playing field in the market economy. Not so! We know that women feel devalued by society when they are capital-poor. Many of us work very hard just to make ends meet. Since women share so many issues related to these inequities, coalitions of our various organizations are crucial. The National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW) is a value-based organization in which low-income urban and rural women are encouraged and empowered to participate and/or lead in community building and peer learning exchanges. Through networks of individuals, women's community-based organizations and their partners (businesses, foundations and other partner groups), NCNW works toward goals of self-empowerment, nurturing of communities, honoring diversity, economic self-determination, preservation of neighborhoods, governmental accountability, coalition building and support of the environment. These goals are supported by values of mutual respect and spiritual openness, combined with the belief in each woman's strength and capacity to define and creatively solve problems. Part of our goal is to help women recognize their skills, and how to apply them in their communities to get what they need in a manner that is not alienating or degrading to themselves or others. DELEGATES TO HABITAT II As national delegates from Common Ground USA, Judith Vidaver and I attended the United Nations Habitat II Conference on Human Settlements. We were among the 15,000 individuals from 165 countries who attended this historic 1996 conference in Istanbul, Turkey. What was Habitat II about? Why is it important? Habitat II was the culmination of the previous conferences of this decade--the women's conference in Beijing, the Earth Summit Conference in Rio, the Children's Summit in New York City, the Social Conference in Copenhagen, and the Population Conference in Cairo. Since governments of the world are realizing that today's problems are too overwhelming for them to solve alone, "civil society" was invited to participate on a limited basis. This was a first civil society includes non-governmental organizations (NGOs)--the business community, community-based organizations and non-profits. Displaced peoples with no nation status, like the Tibetans, also participated in this forum. Exchanges in the form of daily briefings occurred between the high-level UN conference and the NGO forum, which were taking place concurrently. Judith and I networked with various other NGO coalitions on rural issues, environmental protection, land economics and gender equality. GROOTS International, the Women's Environmental Developmental Organization (co-founded by the late Bella Abzug), the NCNW, and the UN Huairou Commission were the key organizations who formed "The Super Coalition of Women, Homes and Communities." This coalition worked on ensuring that the language from the Beijing Platform for Action was included in the Habitat Agenda. Issues of gender equality and equity were at stake. In partnership with the Huairou Commission, the Super Coalition accomplished the inclusion of 125 references to women and gender in the Habitat Agenda and succeeded in fighting back the repressive language of reactionary governments. THE HABITAT AGENDA
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
THE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY
Mary Rose Kaczorowski is the co-founder of Mendocino Neighborhood Women and coordinator for the NCNW Land Issues Task Force. |
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