[Music] yeah you what thank you hello all this is the last of our panel series uh in our code times last but not least these panel series were organized jointly by house of marquis association for monitoring equal rights and netherlands housing committee and uh this panel is a part of the series shrinking democratic spaces in international solidarity today we have uh very valuable distinguished guests with us again alessandro orofino from brazil director of nozzas and yashar adonai the director
of center for spatial justice uh and uh today uh i'd like to begin with a comparison because the our panel series uh always had a comparative angle uh internationally uh how are things similar in our respective countries uh what kind of similar problems we're dealing with so i'd like to start by asking guests about the current issues that they're facing and they're addressing regarding participation in urban spaces both in brazil and turkey and how has the recent history in the last years have e
volved what are the problems that your contemporary problems you're dealing with both at the times of covet of course but also before problems uh how problems evolved over the last years before pandemi pandemic crisis hits so first let's begin with alessandra how are things in brazil recently now and recently sorry i was muted well first of all it's a real pleasure to be here with my turkish friends thank you for the invitation thank you for being so welcoming brazil is a mess but you know so is
the world so i don't think this is news to anyone um it's been it's been a tough year for brazil i think it's been a tough year for everyone but here we have a bit of a perfect storm you know in addition to the to the public health crisis we have an economic crisis that is very very deep and we have a political crisis that has been unfolding really for the past uh at least for the past five years um but has become much more acute uh since the election of current president xi bo sonata in 2018 u
m it's been it's been difficult i think for activists in brazil to get a better sense of how they should operate in the circumstances we have a government that is very authoritarian um although you know in comparison to other countries it might not seem as bad but we had been we have been in a sort of steady path towards more solid democratic institutions uh since the late 80s with the end of our military dictatorship and this past two years definitely feel like um like a turn from that path whi
ch of course saddens us very much um and i would add that in addition to all of that we also have of course uh the fact that brazil is at the forefront of the climate crisis and the amazon is burning down and a lot of activists that are working in that region are under threat um so it's been particularly acute for them too because even though the world's attention is no longer there um because of what's happened this year and so many other um you know pieces of news that were at the forefront of
the international conversation uh the amazon is very much still a problem in in our minds and the fact that we're not being able to to keep it standing um in the middle of this crisis that's the short answer if you want the long answer we can get into that too i'll come to the long answer already comparative perspectives have arisen how about you yeshua how are things in turkey let's hear from you regarding urban spaces and activism i think brazil and turkey in a way follow quite similar paths
i was following brazil especially sao paulo and large cities and their urban activism civic movements that kind of spark in the cities by demanding justice in urban services or access to housing in early 2010s especially around 2013 2014 and we had quite a few exchanges between istanbul and sao paulo which really fascinated me to see how similar on the one hand the kind of urban history trajectories uh in the past 50 60 years but the way in which democracy also uh is kind of in a in a bumpy road
and the very active young city focused civic activism that was culminating in these cities and it was quite a hopeful exchange to see especially momenta pasa libre in sao paulo and how kind of it take all all all the city and the the other cities around brazil and in turkey at a time that we were lots of different groups were claiming reclaiming their public parks and city spaces and willing to be part of the decision-making processes regarding their not only their cities but their lives so in
a way that that was a very hopeful and also very kind of similar uh experiences that that that we have been observing and again enough not on the very bright side that we see this uh the um pressure on our cities and also our in the case of brazil it is the amazon in our case it is very precious natural [Music] all our environment as well has been under attack and in the past five six seven years increasingly so in a way we find ourselves in a very deeply uh kind of rooted ecological crisis as w
ell as an urban crisis and crisis of the democracy so and now the public health crisis hitting hard turkey as well being one of two worse countries in terms of stats and in terms of people getting sick but also losing their jobs so again i see these similarities and and i guess that is the link between our democratic claims and how they kind of link to our claims for more just cities and claim for right to the city they're all connected and how has the spaces been shrinking in your respective co
untries what kind of problems you're facing as far as shrinking of the spaces regarding rights and freedoms are concerned how are how is your activism affected what are the barriers that you're facing alessandra yeah well brazil has a bit of a a strange situation i think because bolsonaro is one of these strong men that likes to project an image of weakness not strength it's very paradoxical in many ways right he is this military man who was elected after years of essentially uh saying that braz
il should go back to a military dictatorship or at least um being very apologetic for the uh military dictatorship and and saying that he admired the torturers and the military generals that had held the country in its grip for 30 plus years and then he was democratically elected but that's his platform that's his main identity and he remains faithful to that identity but he hasn't actually moved towards um an official closure of civic space he hasn't taken any official steps or at least nothing
of note i would say to keep activists and civil society actors from operating what he has done is done that unofficially through his example and through speech so when when he went from the first round of the elections to the runoffs his uh opening speech to his followers said literally in these words my goal is to put an end to all kinds of activism in brazil um and he said he would send his political opponents uh to death and he said that he would get rid of all of the reds in brazil which is
his way of sort of essentially calling everyone who's not his supporter um and he says that repeatedly and he continues to do so just last week um he went to an event with military police that were graduating from military police school and he incentivized them to attack journalists and the press and side of the press and brazil was all liars and they were manipulating public opinion um and very openly urges his followers to be violent aggressive towards um either the press or activists or civi
l societies in general um and again he hasn't done anything official to preclude these actors from working but by turning a blind eye to the violence that is already there um he makes it a lot harder of course for the swap rate brazil is already activists are routinely murdered threatened um and we we have um we have local powers particularly in cities that are very strong and that includes of course paramilitary groups that operate in within city walls um and that keep entire territories in und
er there their scrutiny under their domain um the state congresswoman who was uh sorry a municipal count counselor who was murdered in in 2000 and um 2018 maria le franco was murdered by a paramilitary group um from all the evidence that that we have so far and the the person who literally shot her was bosonato's neighbor they lived in the same compound um there there's nothing there yet that links the murder to bolsonaro directly but a lot of very strange things happen uh surrounding this inves
tigation and again the president doesn't need to do anything official as long as the paramilitary groups for instance know that they have um that they have freedom to operate in these ways and ways that are ideologically driven um he doesn't need to take any official steps so i would say that his brand of authoritarianism is a kind of authoritarianism of chaos it's it's about decentralizing uh in many ways um his violent uh propositions which again is very different from what we typically see in
the case of strong men where you have a tendency of centralization of a lot of command and control very official policies should shut down the sense in this case it's unofficial it doesn't make it any less harmful or dangerous even um so we've had after marielle's death i think her death is really a turning point in many ways after heard that we had his election and then we had an increase of very steep increase in the number of threats received by civil society leaders journalists and others u
h to the point where many of them had to leave the country um but it's one of these situations where because this is not officially the state's doing um it's hard to characterize this as political persecution but it is and we know that it is um and he doesn't make any attempts to hide this but he has a weekly live stream of his followers where he routinely says the name and address and other personal information of activists uh or journalists that are opposed to him and of course then his follow
ers sort of listen to that call uh it's a lot of dog whistling right and they go after um after the the voices of dissent um even us at nasa's just a couple weeks ago we were accused in this case it wasn't even something that we did do but um accused of being behind it pays some of the far-right uh political pundits in brazil that have been inciting violence against all kinds of minority groups it wasn't us actually but it was a group that we admire and that we support but because there was this
piece of fake news saying that it was us my name my address my personal information was all over twitter and of course that generates repercussions in a person's life like you can't really let that information just lie there and not do anything about it i had to move and thank my kid and so that kind of i think movement sucks up a lot of energy and it ends up shutting down a lot of the a lot of the descent that exists in the country well these are quite serious this is a quite serious situation
i mean the uh actually this way of violence regenerating itself i i think this is one of the biggest problems with these strong men then eventually the that perpetration of violence leads to uh violence directed against women directed against activists and it's a big cycle going on especially in urban spaces already there is violence in many cities and then afterwards this uh perpetrates itself and of course this decentralization of power in a way that some groups some clandestine groups and fi
gures uh perpetrating this violence is really an important point are quite familiar living daily the situation in turkey but let's hear from you uh what are the particular uh things that you're facing in your activism uh sphere uh that are hindrances to you how are the spaces shrinking in your case well i mean literally i look at the spaces right like i mean we are centered for spatial justice so for us space is not just an uh you know the abstract concept but it is physical spaces and it is may
be the most obvious sign of the shrinking democracy when you look at the city spaces the public spaces that once we were freely demonstrated once we were freely gathered that we can't anymore so that is i think the one the most clear sign that now any kind of public gathering and demonstration is really banned i mean it is it is not possible to follow uh your rights so i think that is the the one of the major issues in turkey that the public space lost it is political character we can't really e
xpress our ideas they express our difference express our opposition and be part of the democratic debates with different views so that is one i think that we have to underline and the second again maybe it might be similar in other contexts like brazil yeah the democratic sphere which is very much requires an independent media okay we have our social media with its own ban and pressure on it but the democratic space that required his own media is controlled in turkey exclusively by these same ac
tors that are attacking our cities you know the construction and extraction sectors those companies that are in a way with their various project mining sector construction sector they are the same capital behind the major media now i mean okay this media doesn't maybe it's not really uh matters so much it as it used to be but i think it's still important because uh they are part of this democratic shrinking democratic space and maybe lastly that i can emphasize the the requirement for local demo
cracy as a kind of actual space now the municipalities in a way the elected municipalities are where the citizens can directly engage with the political actors and we can maybe find this participation fair more directly in that city level government and we also observe increasing pressure from the central level of government on the city level governments and that is i think the another sign of shrinking democratic space the elected mayors are finding it's quite difficult to use their own kind of
mandate their own budgets their own governance mechanisms and finding a lot of obstacles while they are trying to deliver services but also create these participatory spaces at local level plus there are a lot of municipalities in turkey that are not even allowed to rule you know the elected mayors that are not in place right they have been all replaced by the appointed governors so that is also very clear sign of shrinking democratic space in my view and now that yeshua has mentioned the local
governments alexander do you find local governments municipalities your partners in some cases at least or are they also part of the big political pictures that turn out to be obstacles to your work well it really depends right but i i generally i find that local governments are a lot easier to work with in times of political polarization mostly because urban issues at least in the way that the federal pact works here in brazil urban issues tend to be less polarizing it's about the local hospit
al the local schools the local parks access to the city public transportation those are very very important issues that really affect people's lives on a daily basis but they tend to be less prone to the big polarizing political debates which at least in brazil tend to fall under the lines of what we call customs which i hate because that's not the right word but um usually the polarizing issues around women's rights access to legal contraception access to legal abortion or they're about lgbtqi
rights and that's also a big debate um none of those issues are as present well they're present in the urban sphere of course but the decisions are not taken at this at the city level um so they tend to be national conversations that happen at the congress level um and they engage a lot of these political forces and they are highly polarizing and the evangelical forces uh get sort of in the mix and the catholic forces get in the mix and of course you have all the opposition as well that is in th
ere whereas um at the urban level i think there's a lot more common ground to be found everyone can agree that a hospital should work properly that you need better buses better subway systems better public transportation so people can have access to their city everyone can agree that uh public education at the primary level which is in brazil is in falls under the responsibilities of the municipalities should improve and it's a lot easier to find ways forward so in these times of political polar
ization i actually find it refreshing to work at the city level because all of a sudden you build a lot of bridges um and and once you build those bridges then it's actually possible to work on the national issues too but you start off from a place of trust and of commitment of working together and sharing the same space literally um as you were saying um and and then you sort of engage in these conversations that a lot touch here and that tend to um to ignite a lot of passion from people right
um so and then in terms of the actual uh you know government city government it really depends on the city we just had municipal elections in brazil just a couple months ago so we're going to have a brand new situation starting in january when the new mayors and new city councilors um pick uh pick their offices and i think that's going to change a little bit of the conversation but in general i think we see a lot more dissent at the state level in the city level than we see at the national level
at this time and hopefully that if we leverage that well and if we work together well we can build also new leadership that in two years time can be the leadership that will face off bolsonaro and his followers when it's time for re-election um and i think they will come from the cities they will come from the states um they will be the ones who have the knowledge and the experience and the political experience and the experience of working in partnership of civil society to really um to really
put on any sort of viable opposition and hopefully a viable opposition candidacy in two years uh yeshua how about turkey do you have positive stories to share about municipal governments that you're collaborating with local politicians yes i mean especially since the last local elections and with the new local governments in the major cities in turkey we see more openness towards dialogue and and even going further than dialogue and working together on certain policy areas and some of these att
empts maybe are not mature enough or just not truly participatory processes but definitely that we are observing a kind of renaissance of participation at the city level government that we've been invited to numerous public meetings numerous departments of municipalities are trying to make connections with civil society actors and we are not the only one i'm not the only one is an urbanist that are receiving these invitations and i'm i genuinely believe that um these are sincere attempts uh and
i'm not idealizing the situation yes there are still a lot has to be done but there is a space for participation for civil society at the level of city governments and that has to be invested from activists and academics and civil society actors that spaces carries a lot of potential and a lot of threats as well one major threat that i see since there's this kind of extreme appetite to work with civil society from the municipal level there's also a and since the central level is quite blocked li
ke there's a this dichotomy there is this tendency to co-opt the overall urban social movements or urban opposition or civil society in general so how to keep your independences as civil society actors but also engaged in meaningful dialogue and cooperation is a very uh real challenge that i think turkish civil society actors are facing at the moment and we can't really disregard this window for window of opportunity at the moment now let's talk a bit about the projects current projects you are
involved with or other things that you have in your mind that excite you for the future because as the ashar was talking about municipalities i sensed the dash of hope that was sometimes absent in our other plans you're obviously engaged in interesting projects so let's share a bit with our audience of course um well nasa's now is of nasa essentially operates as a network of activists um all over the country all over brazil and we have different programs and projects that this network works on a
nd actively engages in one of them of course is our sort of flagship program which is for urban activists and we train them select them help them create mobilizations in their cities that have direct public policy impact and since last year we've ramped up their efforts in the amazon region now when people think about the amazon region they usually think of the forest but the amazon actually has some really big cities inside of the forest in the region and um and a lot of the political decisions
that matter to that region are taken at the city level or at least by citizens that are urban dwellers they are the large majority of the amazon population and they are the ones who vote on the governors that have a lot of power actually on how the amazon is or is not preserved so we started to work with activists in in cities like manaus belang santang and it's been a really interesting ride for us to see how many similarities there are between urban activism in the remote regions of the amazo
n and in the south or south uh east of brazil where we have a more have been operating for many many years um and it's also given me a lot of hope because i can see very clearly that there are young urban activists in the amazon that see the importance of that ecosystem they want to make sure that their region remains prosperous and viable in the long run but at the same time they're not um they're not simply conservationists they have they crave a sense of purpose and future and a plan for the
region that includes them and that includes them having a viable viable opportunities in the future for economic growth for personal growth and that's something i think that that gives at least gives me a lot of hope because if we can equate those same things if we can keep that ecosystem in place but at the same time give local populations a path towards a more prosperous future i think will have solved a really big problem not just for brazil but for the world so that's one of the projects tha
t excites me the most um and then secondly we've been working a lot of women in brazil for the past few years and we have a project specifically that is geared towards survivors of gender-based violence sexual violence and we provide survivors with pro bono services both legal advice and therapy mental health services in general and that project has grown tremendously during the pandemic because the numbers around gender-based violence have also grown obviously and um and we're now getting about
a request per hour for support and our volunteers are showing up in a huge way we have over 5000 volunteers in 800 cities all over brazil brazil is a whole world really it's a continent so it's a really big country um there's about there's around 5000 municipalities in brazil we are now present in about a fifth of those with local service provision for women who really need it at the time that they need it most and that wouldn't be possible without the engagement the active engagement of women
volunteers all over the country in spite of these very disheartening times they have shown up and they're supporting each other and that also gives me a lot of hope i think there is a lot of hope to be had in solidarity um and the fact that our citizens are still able to form solidarity networks even as they're losing their jobs even there as there's huge economic pressure upon them even as the future looks uncertain that gives me a lot of reason to be helpful and optimistic the fact that we're
still able to organize and help each other um even under pressure and in a way particularly under pressure has been has been inspiring to me this year yes how about you inspire us please well okay uh inspiration well we've been uh in a way uh maybe a bit similar that we're not only focusing on the cities we have two major actually three major programs running at the moment in our center one is the program for urban policy so we try to kind of with the dialogue with the municipalities and other c
ivic actors that we try to make the urban policies more socially just and in the last year are kind of interactions with local authorities has increased tremendously and we've been part of some very concrete processes and that is kind of hopeful to see that that level of cooperation can be established so that was something that we have been advocating for quite some time and now that it is time to kind of feels like it is time to collect its fruits so that is one positive side and especially in
terms of looking at the city from the perspective of different citizens since we have different uh expectations need interest with different power relations different power dynamics namely you know the there's a different um we have to look our policies from the perspective of children from the perspective of disabled from the perspective of gender er from the perspective of aging so we have been for many years has been kind of looking at urban policies by uh from and with the needs of different
urban groups and it's time to kind of continue to working on that but at the same time we've been very active on the countryside as well on the environmental justice front we have a program name environmental justice program and we've been working for the last three years on holistic basin studies so really taking a whole river basin and taking it from one end to another and making direct contact with the local population local activists producers and also mapping and highlighting the mega proj
ects that are in a way uh having a detrimental impact on these areas so that program has matured as well and now we are going to launch in a very as a very soon a basin online database uh a website that will uh kind of tell stories of each basin in a different ways hopefully inspiring other local activists from these areas most of them are kind of sidelined maybe not the most visible part but going through tremendous environmental challenges so it will kind of help them to voice their struggle a
s well and so environmental justice program is the other program that we've been uh working for the past few years and our academy program is a kind of non-formal non-hierarchical academy that aimed to produce and disseminate knowledge that acquired for urban and rural justice so and at that academy program now we have completed our third year of independent uh supporting independent research activist research project and we will continue doing that and our academy we are working on longer activ
ist trainings as well through our academy and as a kind of cross-cutting work that we've been working with creatives to produce different content to kind of attract broader publics on these issues and that is also continuing so yes it was a difficult time last year pandemic time you know we kind of retreat to our private domain and in a way maybe for a few weeks couple of months we tried to settle into this new situation but then i guess we adapted and continued to fight for urban and rural just
ice in turkey and in the region in my own work on research when i do face to face interviews with people i noticed that during the time of the pandemic but also beyond that technology has become a primary need so having mobile phone access to mobile phones computers all sorts of technological gadgets is not a luxury for uh the urban populations of today but the basic primary need uh what do you think about that how is technology related to your work in activism how do you assess the role of the
digitalization in your work and civic participation should i go first again i'm feeling very i'm feeling under pressure here okay i can do it if you want suggestions you like okay of course this time just to change all right let me go first then i mean you know technology is i agree it's extremely important for our kind of work as well i mean for activism in general it is important but now that the concept of space has had to change especially in the last year a digital world digital space now h
as a different meaning for those of us that are actually working on the physical spaces and and we are clearly observing a very a kind of big digital gap in our work as well you know not we are not all uh part of the digital world equally we are expecting children to get their education online in areas where the internet connection is not good or if though those households doesn't even have internet connection or a computer no or we are expecting the social world to go through the the the digita
l platforms where a very clear there's a very clear age dimension of uh digital literacy and then we expect everyone to be part of their civic life while they can't really access to digital technologies and especially in our work the smart city has been the kind of the key word that the big companies and governments in a way promoting to have using technologies to have more efficient use of resources but in a way work mostly for surveillance of the citizens and also enhancing this digital gap an
d kind of not creating a very just environment technological environment for all the urban citizens so i think that is also another aspect that is directly related to our work that how the smart city discourse is actually excluding certain citizens and also and creating new barriers but also putting pressure on the citizens collecting very precious private data from the citizens so these are all very very important topics that we have to keep in mind of course in our work we try to be both digit
al and also physical in our content development we try to be digital and physical and in a way we even uh try hybrid platforms where the book can turn into a digital platform you know we we have adapting these qr codes and different methods into our productions as well but i always as someone you know seeking spatial justice i look at the just this aspect of the digital technologies as well and we have to be very careful uh on that site well um i think there are similarities and but in general i
think technology has done for us that's been really crucial is lowering the barriers to entry right to civic engagement to participation to activism so things that used to take a long time are now just easier and faster and that doesn't just change the amount of activism that you're able to muster or generate it also changes the quality and the kinds of people that see themselves as activists if you can take action in a few seconds or a few minutes or half an hour that enables you to be activel
y engaging in political life even if you are someone who has a difficult job and a long commute and a family so people who have traditionally been capped out of civic engagement who don't follow the sort of typical profile of having a lot of time and a lot of privilege are now able to to engage in a different way and and we see that every day here in brazil how technology has essentially uh changed the landscape for the better in that sense but it also of course has its pitfalls and i think part
icularly when it comes to the rapid spread of information and misinformation and that's been something that has come hand-in-hand with the way the technology technological platforms and in particular social media courses people's briefs on pretty much everything um and that is a a very easy fruitful content context for um for misinformation to spread and and he has real political consequences so it's been it's been mixed it's been a mixed bag as with most things that change the world so so rapid
ly so profoundly um but i i i'm still a believer in the power of technology as a tool for inclusion and i think that in a way even the spread of misinformation is a side effect of that inclusion of course when you have traditionally political systems that are very exclusive that keep a lot of people out of public conversation of participation once they start engaging more they won't have the practice of democracy they won't have the practice of access to information of good quality information a
nd they are more vulnerable to misinformation and to sort of authoritarian dreams it doesn't mean that we should go back it means that there is a responsibility now to create a public space that is both inclusive and um and and of a excellent quality of information um so that everyone can have the tools and the knowledge that they need to be active citizens so i think that shying away from that would be a mistake i think that however we we can be naive about the power of the technology of the te
chnology platforms and the powerful companies behind them to shape public conversation and we absolutely need to demand that they use that power with a lot more responsibility than they have so far um because the consequences the unintended i would like to believe consequences of their actions are felt every day by all of us so i think it's high time that we have a public conversation at the international level which is even harder about the role that these companies play in the poor state of ou
r democracies right now um and when i say that it's particularly hard because it has to be an international conversation it's because these companies only respond to the jurisdiction of their own countries they sell them uh really follow any rules of the countries that they are operating in in in a way that would be responsible so it's it's a challenge it's a challenge for us who are operating as activists at the margins in a way of power um but it's i think it's a challenge that we need to acce
pt and that we have and if we tackle it well um i think the consequences can be very positive uh by the way let me remind the audience that you can be sending turning in your questions as we will pass slowly to the uh question and answer session and going more interactive but i would like to dwell a bit more on this technology issue though what are the particular visions that you're envisaging for the future of the uh act for the future of activism uh for participation how to use technology and
also uh for example uh european union has focused over digitalization as one of the prime targets of the policy making its proposal making procedures as well as the green economy the the green conversion for the uh to combat the effects of the climate crisis uh these are of course the big challenges that we all have before us but sometimes it's just lip service so uh when when i say lip service i i mean for the governments and the top uh circles of power let's say but how about the grass roots h
ow to engage the grass roots more in and propel them more into activism using technology what are the things that you're using in your daily or what are the tools that you're using in your daily work and also what are the visions you have for the future yashar first good right uh i mean yes definitely technology i mean it's a we need technology to effectively uh do our work in terms of urban activism or whatever work that we are doing but i think we need to um be clear in demanding our basic rig
hts so the the way in which the new opportunities technology or digitalization brought to us is not independent from the political context that we are all in and also the the lack of democracy has a direct impact on the use of technology or the the lack of respect for basic human rights has a direct impact on the way in which we use technology so in a way these has to we can't replace uh one with the other we need to demand to kind of enlarge these spaces in parallel ways because what i see yes
citizens can take actively part in the public debate through the new means of communication yes there's a lot of new technologies to be part of the planning processes in our cities as well but the governments learn faster than citizens and they learn then they use the technology more actively they have more resources being allocated to control these processes as well so even places like hong kong where there's an amazing vibrant social movement using technology to it is at most level they also f
ace uh the threats of shrinking of that digital space so the world that is more fair democratic the world that is more kind of green uh the technology can help that but only in terms like only in relation to really seeking a more democratic world so like i don't see one can replace the other so that's my major issue here especially what we observed in turkey since 2013 you know the role of technology and how it changed and how the new means of control and doing new means of kind of manipulating
the whole digital sphere has been experienced that's without forgetting the physical space without forgetting the without engaging in the physical space the public spaces the technology won't be enough alone please give us the more positive side now and hopeful answer and i also want to ask you alexander specifically the how you're using technology uh digital activism in in your work in gnosus so yeah we are very much driven by digital activism almost everything that we do has a digital version
of it but i couldn't agree more that the engagement in physical spaces is irreplaceable um and i think if anything this pandemic has shown us how much we crave physical contact and in personal contact so it's it's a good reminder of the power of real physical uh interaction as i said we use technology to lower the barriers to entries so when we want to pressure government when we want to morganize usually the first step is done digitally but the second step typically is not right i'm gonna give
you an example which i think tells a lot about that the project that i just mentioned where we match women who have been uh have survived gender-based violence with therapists and lawyers that provide them pro bono services the match happens online the woman asks for support through a website or whatsapp and we have a little robot that matches them with the person nearest them that has the ability to work with them and help them and they each receive an email or a whatsapp message and then they
get in touch so all of that happens because of technology and it happens very quickly if the woman asks for help at 3am she will get a name at 3am we wouldn't be able to do that without digital without the power of technology however the actual work the actual work of supporting that woman or seeing her of holding her hand of working with her as she moves through a very convoluted justice system often in custody battles or tries to break out of a cycle of violence that work happens offline it ha
ppens in physical spaces of course now with the pandemic we've had a bit of a hyenas in in the offline work and everything is happening through zoom but it's not the same and and it really doesn't replace that kind of face-to-face conversation that is so i think that in balance and using digital tools but at the same time making sure that real conversations happen in real places we can really uh find sort of the secret sauce right of of activism in the digital age which i don't think is limited
to digital action by any means i think really digital should be seen as a jumping-off point but not the not the finishing line of our of our efforts and and that's how typically we think of digital right we don't really reinvent the wheel we have our own tech platform but mostly we use what's available in the world we use a lot of whatsapp we use a lot of mass mailing we use a lot of other um programs and and platforms that are already there because we really strongly believe that people need to
um need to be able to act to be active politically without having to have the latest cell phone or the best internet connection so we're not we don't develop any apps or anything that people need to download um that makes their life harder and and makes the whole work more exclusive we try to leverage what they already have and typically in brazil they have whatsapp some of them have email and they have facebook and that's kind of it um so but whatsapp really is huge uh and it's our main driver
view of new people coming in and getting in touch with the work and being able to be updated on the work um and and that's how we that's how we think about it um at least now i think that the challenge is that the the efforts again of the platforms of the companies goes in the opposite direction their entire effort in the attention economy right is to drive you away from offline and to sort of imprison you in a life that is lived exclusively through digital and that's something that i think has
very bad political consequences because political violence and polarization thrive a lot better in purely digital spaces when you meet someone face to face when you get to know them when you hug them when you touch them when you sort of see them and and and you can see them either eye it's easier to to find common ground it's easier to find ways forward and it's a lot harder to just peel away for it so i think that in in our efforts to strengthen public space and real space offline space lies i
n many ways the future of our democracies too and perhaps our uh specific cultures both in brazil and turkey needs human interactions based on human interaction although we are globalized in a common culture at the same time there's this specific aspect that human interaction is a core component of our cultures and that's a challenge in the pandemic times of course actually one of uh one of uh uh our audience uh one member of our audience had a question specifically related to what alessandra wa
s talking about so i wanted to follow up on that although you answered it uh partly at least alessandra because the any picnic she was asking if you can talk specifically about your project on sexual violence uh it's a huge network she says uh and i wonder the tools they're using to match people and uh she was wondering about the tools uh they are using to match people and provide these services you already mentioned that in technological uh aspect of it but please feel free to talk further abou
t gender related violence violence directed against women against the lgbti community also regarding this project but about about how you're addressing these issues in your active in general so then yeshua i'll ask the same question to you because it's a very important topic sure so um gender-based violence is a huge issue in brazil it's definitely one of the biggest issues we have and and women's rights have been at the core as i mentioned before of political polarization a lot of these convers
ations that oppose the country into two camps have to do with women's rights in particular sexual and reproductive rights access to contraception and access to abortion um but not only violence itself is a huge issue and and domestic violence has risen steeply during the pandemic so that's something that we sought to address at the onset of the outbreak um the project that i mentioned uses a mixture of watts app email search to get the information that need help and then we develop database um s
o essentially we have volunteers who sign up to be volunteers to make themselves available to women who need them and then we have women who sign up to ask for help and our system matches them based on availability of the volunteer and proximity physical proximity to the woman who needs help um so that's the main piece of technology that we have to develop we also have an online training system for the volunteers so we only pay con volunteers who are lawyers and certified lawyers and certified p
sychologists who check their official registration numbers we make sure that they have the knowledge that they need to to be available to these women but we also give them an online training on specifically on gender-based violence because not all lawyers and not all psychologists have the knowledge of that specific issue and the many ramifications he has for the public health system and for the legal system so that's something that we also use technology for it's a lot easier to train people at
a mass scale when you have technology working in your favor um but i don't think by any means that this project alone would be sufficient to really solve the issue another thing that we do do is that now that we have this very vibrant community of volunteers we leverage their collective power to pressure decision makers for policy that is geared towards both violence prevention and mitigation right so um ensuring that women the less women are are subjected to violence and that the ones who are
have access to uh to the services that they need to recover and heal which is not currently the case um but we believe it could be um and that i think is the role of the states like there's no way we can replace that but meanwhile we're doing what we can to keep women afloat so they can also be sort of the active spokespeople for their own movements right and that's something that is quite crucial to us hopefully i touched upon some of the themes you definitely did and yeshua uh how does gender
by uh based violence come up in your work in your activism uh activities uh well we have been this year especially on one of our major team is housing i mean we have been working for right to adequate housing at different levels at the neighborhood level at uh urban level rural level have been working on that subject and especially this year under the pandemic conditions that housing become one of the central teams for the kind of work that we do try to understand the challenges try to understan
d also to access to livable housing but also all the social problems that are steaming from housing conditions so that is one [Music] one way we can say that the gender-based violence is connected directly uh domestic violence and especially under the pandemic situations where people had to be spend more time indoor and in this kind of cramped spaces and that is one major issue that we have to consider um at the moment uh one of our major flagship project called beyond istanbul it is a istanbul
base publication series which is accessible publication we also use technology to make it accessible for the disabled and but also print it and there's an online version our latest issue will be on spatial justice and gender and we are looking at various aspects of these issues you know looking from the gender perspective of the special justice issues in istanbul and in turkey overall [Music] yeah and of course there's uh when you when we go to the for our environmental justice program go to the
field director make contacts with various rural communities as well that there's a very strong gender dimension there is related to various aspects but also development project induced migration to aging to various other topics that are directly linked to the not maybe necessarily gender gender-based violence but there is a very strong gender dimension okay we also had a question about the uh funding side yes unfortunately we have that part of reality in life that we have to generate funding uh
so one one uh one of our audience was curious how you generate funding well in our case we have a mix we have a lot of donations from foundations and philanthropies that support our work um and we have two other income streams we have a lot of crowdfunding this year it was quite quite a lot not just for us we do a lot of crowdfunding for others too and we re-grant the funds but that of course supports the network of activists that we work with and helps them thrive um this year i would say that
we raised in current dollar terms over half a million dollars in crowdfunding so it's been it's been a good year in terms of crowdfunding for us uh in spite again of the crisis and of the fact that it wasn't the easiest easiest of years for brazilians um and then we have the technology platform that we developed which we use um is available to other organizations and partners in the field who pay a fee to use that that isn't necessarily that isn't a significant income stream by any means but it
does help us mitigate some of the costs of technology development which is particularly expensive so we share those costs with other organizations here in brazil and latin america that want to use the same tech infrastructure so those are our three main sources of funding for now we are mainly receiving grants donations from foundations similar to your case we had experienced crowdfunding in the past and not to that level but a few of our projects that support directly by crowdfunding but major
ity of our funding comes from [Music] institutional support from various international and local foundations uh i hope you generate a lot of funding in 2021 that's my wish for you well uh we have also another question uh and brilliant ariel was asking whether uh would he be considered uh old school if uh we think of activism without any digitalization or using of technologies the old school uh activism what do you think about that well for me it's hard to think about um activism without technolo
gy just in the same way that it's hard to think about anything without technology in our lives today i mean some level of tech use will be had mostly because that's how people communicate that's how they talk to not just to government or to us that's how they talk to their kids that's how they talk to their grandparents that's how they are so yeah so i don't i can't really see what that would mean in practice but what i do know is that a lot of the traditional advocacy efforts and more old schoo
l in the sense that it's you know what's required is sitting down having coffee building trust uh talking about issues getting to know people's lives like we do all of that and i think that's fundamental to the work that we do without that it's really really hard to build communities of trust that can act together on tough issues um so i don't think that any of the old school methods have died in any way but i do think that if we if you don't have some elements of technology embedded in the way
that you work it's it's hard to do any kind of work not just activist work in the world today i'm the kind of activism that i'm most familiar with that is maybe still not so much uh driven by technologies kind of residential movements neighborhood movements that are trying to kind of defend their um their neighborhood vis-a-vis a developer or a renewal project etc so they for in the past and still today it heavily relies on the neighbors social relations and of course today these new technologie
s uh allowing them to get organized maybe in an easier way but that kind of activism has been there for quite some time and then other kind of like you know petitions and collecting signatures these we that used to exist before these digital times but we were actually writing letters or really collecting signatures but now in a way we are using new mediums to facilitate that process so i don't really see that so different as well from uh from how it used to be and maybe uh another way is like yo
u have to be on the field you have to make direct contact with the people i agree like that is the major source of the activism but now when we are on the field we try to incorporate different again means that allow a better engagement and better storytelling and better kind of documentation so in our crowd a crew when we go to a field we will have producers cameramen photographers drones so that we could really effectively collect the information and tell these stories off to people and help to
voice their concerns in a more effective ways so in a way without the real con contact with the people with the real issues being there putting your feet on the ground that wouldn't be possible to incorporate these new technologies but it definitely helps to our work meanwhile they have other uh questions coming up and uh you can still send your questions by the way dear audience uh so we have a question uh from glarbeck which is whether uh in terms of sustainable urban activism what kind of in
teractions are possible with the field of art want to go first please yes why not go ahead go ahead all right um no go ahead you say go ahead so that's why i think there's a lot the arts i mean in our work we have to be multi-disciplinary you know we are okay dealing with this physical spaces which means maybe it is seen as the domain of the architects the urban planners urban sociologists but uh what we try to do really to include in our team as well as our kind of engagement with other other c
reatives we really try to incorporate art in our work artists filmmakers um different storytellers so that is a very clear need but also we take the benefit of inco incorporating uh these different realms in into the work for first of all to give a definitely multiple perspective on the issues that we are dealing with and to allow us also to tell um the stories of the issues that we are facing in different ways and also to connect with engage with a whole new setup whole new actors that maybe no
t necessarily included in when we think of certain activism uh in in our work here yeah i mean there is um i don't know if you've seen this there is a doc and a relatively new documentary on steve bannon the far right uh the american far rights pundits communicator former editor breitbart and it's it's um i highly recommend it it's it's very uh interesting to see how he operates and how he thinks it's called the brink the documentary i think it's on apple the apple store and um and at some point
in in the film he says something that has stayed with me about the way he thinks i don't think this is a phrase by him but he just repeats it a lot he says culture is upstream from politics and i think that if we take that into heart and we really think about that it can really help us understand how how the far right has come to dominate so many uh countries in recent years is by investing in in culture in a way it's by investing in a in a narrative that that it that has won so i don't think t
hat political leaders win very often i think that political narratives win uh and really the big fight is about the stories that we're telling ourselves um what are the stories that stick what are the reference points that we that we want for us what are what is our identity as nations as the world as humanity how do we think about ourselves what do we value and those things i think are much better conveyed by artists and storytellers than by activists so working with art i think is indispensabl
e it's really really crucial because without it we're kind of trying to create change in a cultural juice you know that that surrounds all of us that is against that change um so really like the air that we breathe the water that we drink those things are defined by culture and by art and then is inside of that context that we as political activists try to operate well uh thank you uh i i know alessandra your schedule is a bit packed today as always but uh you you may be leaving if you like ther
e's one more question to yashar uh it's it's about the city councils uh if you if you like uh as i said you can be leaving uh and yeah [Music] one of our audience was asking one participant was asking uh actually i'm going to blend in two questions there was one question about the city councils how participation is being shaped in municipalities in city councils whether there is really participation there is a real possibility of participation and there was also another question about local gove
rnments whether people with authority meaning probably with political clout and also with expertise with knowledge sometimes or hired as experts preventing the participation process what do you think about that so the the city council i guess they mean the uh right the inter in our context or is it all right silicon all right so they can't consider it um well you know each city has their own dynamics in turkey in terms of how these city councils can't constantly work but in a way for alexander t
o be familiar these are supposed to be those uh institutional setups under municipalities in turkey where representatives from civil society but also kind of notables activists could be part of to give advice on the municipalities but not necessarily their being allowed to make decisions so in a way it is an advisory board trying to make the municipalities more democratic or partisan but in action most of the time yet kind of best it is just a council with a bunch of people and at worst they are
just selected by the mayors themselves and being very much manipulated arm of an an elected official a mayor so but what we see like okay there is a definitely a potential if the syria council not only in terms of who they kind of been composed of but how those members been getting to the city councils if we can set up those democratic mechanisms where uh that the representative of civil society actors could be uh elected and be sit on these councils and really put a real pressure on the munici
palities to make them more partially they can they can work but that is not what we really see in experience in turkey how the city councils unfortunately work again there are some kind of with attempts with good intentions but we are far from being really having perspective democratic mechanisms uh where the uh elected representative of civil society is sitting at these councils and in terms of the questions of the role of the expert and the academics i wasn't sure if i got it right maybe you c
an help me again like what was the point over there uh i i our participants might clarify it further if i'm got strong but from what i understand it's more activism vis-a-vis more theoretical based knowledge or political power those with political power or authority one type of authority or other more expertise authority or more as i said political authority preventing activists from doing their work actually and taking part in the participatory process well again um we we need the kind of techn
ical uh expertise clearly like the kind of issues that we are dealing with as a technical uh has a technical aspect you know whether it is housing it is transported is uh urban greenery it is uh climate adaptation in our cities they are we need research we need academics we need technical people to put in their unbiased maybe independent opinions but of course we need activists to really make things move and also political actors to take in their agenda certain issues higher than the others you
know that is so these are not really again replacing each other but we have to find a way the activist has to put their pressure they have to be active in making animal rights really matter for the municipalities and then the technical research and the reports and everything would come and support that how to really make istanbul or sao paulo or other cities around the world more animal friendly or again how we can make our cities climate friendly but we have to make the political actors really
put higher agenda these issues really matter and that is i think the role of the civil society in general but also independent activism particular well thank you uh i really would like to thank you both because uh as two brilliant young people uh to act with you really inspired me i think that's a really nice uh note when ending this dreadful year uh and i think we have at least my energy is thanks to you as we're approaching 2021 and thank you very much for your participation and i hope to hear
more about your activities in the coming years thank you thank you for this invitation thank you thank you to our audience and our organizers too bye everyone great to meet you all right thank you
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