More Backtrack as Trip Winds Down

I got an email today from my dad, an avid sailor, with a report on the sail­ing races here in Rio for the Pan Amer­i­can games.

…some­how our start­ing line was placed in the mid­dle of a liq­uid garbage dump. There were plas­tic gro­cery bags semi sub­merged all over the place. There were palm frons. There were leaves. There was a win­dow frame with a screen still installed in it. I’m going to assume the rest of the house must have sunk. This is mildly off-putting, but one of the Hobie-16 sailors reported see­ing what was either a dead dog or a dead pig float­ing some­where near the port lay­line. (source)

As amus­ing and pos­si­bly accu­rate as the descrip­tion is, the tone reflect much of the for­eign com­men­tary that has arro­gantly billed Rio as a remote, under­de­vel­oped place. The hight of this hap­pened sev­eral weeks ago when an employee of the United States Olympic Com­mit­tee wrote, “Wel­come to the Congo!” on a board in their offices. More on that here. It was blown up in the press and that employee was fired, right­fully I would say. The sub­se­quent offense, as described by a friend to me, was that some Brazil­ian tele­vi­sion pro­grams took the tack of mock­ing the Congo in response to the event. Lovely.

The week­end I was a lit­tle stuck due to a bank­ing prob­lem. I can’t get cash out until noon today. As this lim­ited my options and I didn’t want to get myself into trou­ble with­out friends around, I spent most of the time bomb­ing around with a group of punk rock les­bians I have been so fab­u­lously lucky to win the good graces of. They main­tain a col­lec­tive blog called Aba­caxi Com Tofu. Hot. So, five queer ladies and two dogs in a two door VW. It was good times and I will miss them dearly come my depar­ture Thurs­day. That said, I am dying to see my own peps in NYC. Every time I go away, all I can talk about is house shows and bike gangs and cof­fee shops, oh my!

One of my class­mates, Leon, put up his pho­tographs of the stu­dents on hick flickr account. We’re all so cute.

Okay, more bor­ing stuff, at least for­mat wise. Notes from class that I typed up last night.

June 18, 2007 PM
Course Sched­ule and Logis­tics

Impromptu talk by Paulo, our trans­la­tor, who is work­ing on race in higher education.

Hig­e­niza­tion of Black Pop­u­la­tion
1930’s -> focus shifted from sugar cane in North East to cof­fee in south.
Black Front -> mobi­liza­tion to resist “whiten­ing,” dis­man­tled by government

Not much of a con­cept of race -> result of gov­ern­ment attempts to sub­vert issue.
5 cat­e­gories -> white, black, brown, yel­low, indigenous

Bahia’s Uni­ver­sity imposed racial quota. So many upper-class whites sued that they had to add a class ceil­ing on to the quota.

(wish I had taken more notes. Paulo knows his stuff.)

Peter Lucas says: “This is about eval­u­at­ing your tool kit and what you need to ba a pro­fes­sional human rights and media pro­fes­sional.”
(this is impor­tant. I did get a good sense of the answer for this from the class. Will return to it)

June 19, 2007 AM
Kabum! http://www.kabum.org.br/ (the first in a long series of amaz­ing flash web pages. The Brazil­ians got this web design thing down, even if most of them can’t actu­ally access it)

Rodrigo Bel­chior, rodflauta@hotmail.com
Rua Rodriguez Alves, 847, Santo Cristo (near ship yard and bus sta­tion = easy access and cheep real estate)

Teaches graph­ics tech­nol­ogy to kids from favela com­mu­ni­ties
– com­put­ing, design, video, and pho­tog­ra­phy
Also three more mod­ules:
– Palavra = read­ing, writ­ing, music
– Tem­at­ica = human rights, cit­i­zen­ship, com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues
– the­ater arts = light­ing, props, cos­tume design

Pro­gram runs for a year and a half, mar­keted through schools and other orga­ni­za­tions, accepts 80 stu­dents for each program.

Space cho­sen because 95% of the buses in the city pass by here -> that way you can be acces­si­ble to kids from all areas.

Pro­pa­ganda Video -> pre­sented by renowned artist because Kabum! Was started by renowned artist Gringo Can­gia (?)
First clip is from first set of grad­u­ates in June 2000, many are cur­rently in the indus­try, some even work­ing internationally.

Orga­ni­za­tion was started in Rio, now has branches in Sal­vador and Recife

What hap­pens when the kids fin­ish the pro­gram?
The work nucleus and pro­duc­tion nucleus -> relate class work to the mar­ket place and jobs out­side of projects at Kabum.

Music video pro­duced by stu­dent says that the pro­gram taught him to be a citizen

Most of the projects fea­tured in the pre­sen­ta­tion are auto-biographical and self-reflective, look­ing at how the cre­ator of the work has changed for the bet­ter as a result of doing the work.

Strug­gle is for cit­i­zen­ship -> learn­ing how to be and to become a bet­ter citizen.

Change of theme in videos -> trib­ute to an alum’s cousin who died in a mas­sacre in a favela, ani­mated graph­ics, “sta­tis­tics have faces”, chacina -> manslaughter

Rodrigo’s back­ground -> started doing media in com­mu­nity project (com­mu­nity was well known because Michael Jack­son shot a video there, so there was an influx of fund­ing due to media atten­tion) His for­mal train­ing is in music.
He hopes that one day we don’t need to rely on NGOs, but that the gov­ern­ment will do the work.

Funded by Oi and Tele­mar (telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies), cov­ers the main bulk of the pro­gram costs. Stu­dents receive a stipend to cover travel costs.

Work here is crit­i­cized by pub­lic school sys­tem because it is seen as suck­ing the kids out of for­mal edu­ca­tion into an alter­na­tive sys­tem. Kabum! works to fight ani­mosi­ties from school sys­tem. Proof of atten­dance at reg­u­lar school is required for atten­dance at pro­gram. Kids do tend to put more energy into Kabum work than reg­u­lar school because they see how func­tional and ful­fill­ing Kabum is and want more of their reg­u­lar school, but can’t get it.

When accept­ing stu­dents, Kabum doesn’t con­sider grades because in the Brazil­ian sys­tem it is ille­gal to fail a child, so the marks are not accurate.

The space was a large ware­house, remade with the­ater spaces and tech labs. Well main­tained and well equipped. Stu­dents seemed ener­getic and focused.

June 19, 2007 PM
Viva Favela, Pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tive (part of Viva Rio, http://vivario.org.br. Oper­ates in 15 fave­las)
Wal­ter Mesquiza, Photo Edi­tor, Rodriguez Mora, Photographer

Photo col­lec­tive works to sup­ply web con­tent for news page by and about live for favela com­mu­ni­ties. (this is the project that Peter Lucas got the grant from the Open Soci­ety Insti­tute for.)

Pre­sen­ta­tion slide-show -> my obser­va­tions: lots of engage­ment w/ cam­era, atten­tion to and zoom­ing in on details, fam­ily snap shot sen­si­bil­ity mixed with self-awareness that extends beyond fam­ily view. Con­sis­tent theme of exu­ber­ance and play. Basic pho­to­graphic lan­guage + snap shot, organic style

Focus on view of inside going out, “com­mu­nity photos”

X9 -> com­mu­nity was con­cerned ini­tially that the pho­tog­ra­phers were mem­bers of this spy com­po­nent of the police force
Com­mu­nity learned that they had the mis­sion of show­ing both the joy and suf­fer­ing in the com­mu­nity: mis­sion of art

Strength of influ­ence in the VivaFave­las:
Exam­ple: news of Alemão, the com­mu­nity where police occu­pa­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can games is fierce and deadly, main stream media is try­ing to dis­tort the thoughts of the peo­ple, VivaFavela is tak­ing a straight for­ward rout

Within the hills, the vio­lence is imported, not native to the community

Ini­tially the reporters had to seek out sto­ries, now the com­mu­nity seeks the reporters out, call­ing them when some­thing is hap­pen­ing. Now, peo­ple are less ashamed of say­ing where they live.

The drug traf­fick­ers don’t inter­fere with the reporters.

Sees exces­sive police force now as strat­egy so that fave­la­dos can’t come down to Zona Sul for the Pan Amer­i­can Games.

Cov­er­age of vio­lence in favela only focuses on effect on mid­dle class, no on impact on fave­la­dos. Result is that all fave­la­dos are seen as per­pe­tra­tors and mid­dle class seen as victims.

Attempt to suf­fo­cate the naco­traf­i­cantes results in police shut­ting down basic ser­vices like water, tele­phone, schools being shut down.

Fave­las on their own can’t sup­port drug traf­fick­ing because they can’t afford them. Fave­las closer to wealthy neigh­bor­hoods, such as those in Zona Sul, are more vio­lent because there is more of a mar­ket for mid­dle and upper class buyers.

As reporter -> pre­fer to stir com­mu­nity to denounce and help them amplify their voice than make the denun­ci­a­tions them­selves as the press.

The class at Viva Rio.

June 20th, AM — Play tour group: Cor­co­v­ado

Recently voted one of the New 7 Won­ders of the World… I voted for it, but really just because I am in Rio and it seemed like the appro­pri­ate things to do. I think there were bet­ter options. The mar­ket­ing cam­paign was intense. All the buses had huge ads remind­ing you to Vote for Cristo. I don’t think I actu­ally man­aged to take a pic­ture of the statue while I was up there.

 

 

 

 

 

June 20, 2007 PM
Comu­nidade Segura, project of VivaRio, Mayra Juca, Coor­di­na­tor
http://www.comunidadesegura.org/

Web por­tal of infor­ma­tion on issues of human secu­rity and news that relates to there efforts

Goals:
– be an inter­na­tional ref­er­ence on Human Secu­rity in Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean
– iden­tify solu­tions, not just notify prob­lems
– be source of use­ful infor­ma­tion on good prac­tices, inno­v­a­tive method­olo­gies, and suc­cess­ful pub­lic poli­cies
– put together diverse mate­ri­als for police, pol­icy mak­ers, media mak­ers, and citizens

Back­ground:
– sur­vey to poten­tial users of the web­site in order to iden­tify demand
– con­sult researchers on best method for pub­lish­ing the vir­tual library
– use open source inter­face (dru­pal)
– migrate con­tent from http://coav.org.br and www.desarme.org

The­matic Con­tent Areas:
– secu­rity sec­tor reform, youth and armed vio­lence, arms control

Cross Cut­ting Themes:
– gen­der and vio­lence, drug pol­icy, con­flict resolution

Fun­ders
– Euro­pean Union, The Open Soci­ety Insti­tute, Sec­re­taria Espe­cial de Dire­itos Humanos

Serves as bridge between pol­icy mak­ers and citizens

Team is all women, very high energy and focused, always eager for volunteers.

That evening we watched some films at Ateliê da Imagem.

June 21, 2007 AM
Case Study: Dis­ar­ma­ment Cam­paign and Media
Mauri­cio Lissovsky -> Fed­eral Uni­ver­sity of Rio

Media, Pub­lic Opin­ion, and Pop­u­lar Vote
2005 ref­er­en­dum on ban­ning sale of firearms

First ref­er­en­dum ever in Brazil
“Should the sale of firearms and ammu­ni­tion be pro­hib­ited?”
64% voted no, but 2 months before the ref­er­en­dum, 80% said they would vote yes.

How did things change so fast?

Free TV access -> 10 min­utes for each side

Brazil has seen a steep increase in fire arms death rate
From 7.2 per 100,000 in 1982 to 21.2 per 100,000
(rate for black men in fave­las = 230/100,000)

Aims of Civil Soci­ety NGOs
– reduce desire for and access to firearms
– improve con­trol of exist­ing stocks of con­fis­cated weapons
– research on vic­tims and firearms
– advo­cate and lobby for dis­ar­ma­ment statue

Ammu­ni­tion pro­duc­tion is very high in Brazil -> includ­ing expor­ta­tion
Bill passes around above aims but lost pro­hi­bi­tion of guns sales in Brazil.
(very good laws, best in the world, just never enforced!)

Most guns are ini­tially bought legally and then enter the ille­gal mar­ket -> it is a myth that guns are man­u­fac­tured for ille­gal dis­tri­b­u­tion or smug­gled in from abroad.

Once the law was passed, there were a few tasks:
– cam­paign for deliv­er­ing firearms (459,855 collected)

(Peter inter­jects with com­ments on New York recall, early 1990’s, Christ­mas time, turn in a gun and get a $100 gift cer­tifi­cate to FAO Schwartz toy store…)

Per­cep­tions of inse­cu­rity in Brazil
– post-traumatic model –
Can we explain the behav­ior of vot­ers based on their direct expo­sure to vio­lence?
Mauricio’s con­clu­sion: Indi­vid­u­als more exposed to vio­lence are more likely to trust guns, while com­mu­ni­ties exposed to vio­lence are less likely to trust guns.

Media cov­er­age is more directly related to fear than crime, ie. Reportage is not cor­re­spond­ing to actual crime.

Reportage in early 1980s was focused on human rela­tion drama (hus­band kills wife kind of stuff)-> Now more likely to report on crime where the reader is a “vir­tual” or poten­tial vic­tim (busi­ness man abducted and mur­dered by criminals)

To think of our­selves as vir­tual vic­tims is part of our con­tem­po­rary experience

NRA was thor­oughly involved in the ref­er­en­dum in Brazil, test­ing grounds for their media tactics.

NGOs made non-political cam­paign -> type of arro­gance, talk to vot­ers like they are at a basic level.
Biggest mis­take was not fram­ing posi­tion as one of change. Most effec­tive cam­paign strate­gies focus on main­tain­ing what we have or ini­ti­at­ing change. The NGO argu­ment did nei­ther.
Also mis­take of a ped­a­gog­i­cal approach, NGO ten­dency to think that inform­ing peo­ple will result in ‘right’ polit­i­cal action. Argu­ment needs to be framed polit­i­cally for a polit­i­cal change.

Screened videos of com­mer­cials from each side.
NGOs changed their tune sev­eral time in the lead up to the ref­er­en­dum -> first celebri­ties talk­ing, then risk to life,
The Right main­tained the same tune through­out -> need to pro­tect your­self and main­tain your rights (own­ing a gun as a right)