May 26
Today we met with 2 different activist groups. The first group was Caritas- a very well established group that works with immigrants seeking asylum. Although this organization is through the Catholic Church, they do not force religion upon any of the people they are helping but focus on helping them with any physical needs.
The second group we met with was Retake. I was initially excited about this group when I heard the synopsis, but as the lady was talking I realize I didn’t quite agree with how they were carrying out their purpose (cleaning up the streets). I think what is important to remember is the concept of “responsible engagement”. What rubbed me the wrong way with retake is how a foreigner in Italy made it seem that the locals were idiots because of how they are living. She also was taking away people’s voices by removing street art without seeing if that’s what the locals want. I think when being involved in international activism, it is important to remember that the way things are done in your home country isn’t always right for every country.
Seeing these groups through the lenses of the 4 different politics was a great way to apply what we’ve been learning in class. Here are some examples of the politics from these 2 groups we met with:
- Symbolic Politics: The logos from these groups represent them and help them be recognizable
- Leverage politics: although I don’t exactly agree with this concept, Retake claimed to have more influence in the community because they were Americans
- Accountability politics; For Caritas, their catholic doctrine and background holds them accountable to their cause
- Information Politics: both groups talking to us and having statistics about what they are doing displayed information politics
One of my favorite parts of today was a conversation we had in class about world issues. We had a bracket between 16 world issues we thought were important and then debated what we thought was the “greater issue”. Although the goal wasn’t to find the greatest issue, hearing everyone’s justifications for their issue was a great conversation. We decided that access to clean water was what we think is one of the greatest issues faced in the world.
At night, we made pasta from scratch- which was so cool! It was delicious and made me feel like a true chef! Can’t wait to come home and try to make it again!!
