Breaking the Silence

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:07:59 -0500

Breaking the Silence

By Rafal Pankowski

Download full notebook below.

In this notebook, several tactics used by a volunteer organization in Poland, Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again), are featured. Like many organizations, Nigdy Wiecej uses a number of tactics to carry out its work. Two of the tactics explained in this notebook are the use of cultural resources in the community to recruit activists and the organization of activists into an information-gathering network. The experience highlighted here demonstrates ways that these tactics have been used to engage and involve young people, a segment of the population whose attention can be challenging to capture and even more difficult to hold onto. Not only is different tactics described but also, how the tactics are combined to reinforce and strengthen each other. While Nigdy Wiecej used these tactics to fight racism and neo-fascism, one can imagine other ways that they might be applied to broaden involvement in human rights, especially among the youth population.

Never Again (Nigdy Wiecej) is an anti-racist network and publication in Poland. More importantly, it is part of a growing movement against racism in Europe. Rafal Pankowski describes here how Never Again uses cultural events such as concerts and football games to recruit young people to this movement. Through this recruitment, they have organized an extensive network of volunteer correspondents throughout Poland to report on and challenge the tolerance of extreme-right and racist groups and ideas in their society. These correspondents are taught to carefully and regularly report any and all incidents of racism and xenophobia in their districts. Never Again’s organizers then process and synthesize this information, publishing it in a magazine that is distributed to thousands of readers, including many mainstream journalists, throughout Poland and Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced to the concepts of human rights and anti-racism at Never Again’s concerts. Thousands have signed up to join the organization. Of these, over 150 have been trained to serve as volunteer correspondents, each one producing monthly reports. The result is the most exhaustive source of information on hate crimes and racism in Poland.

The publication serves not only for general education: It has also provided important investigative reporting that has prompted coverage of these issues in the mainstream Polish media. This strategic combination of cultural recruitment, maintenance of a broad volunteer network, careful documentation and public education is Never Again’s unique contribution to our tactical notebook series. This notebook provides an overview of the creation and functions of Never Again’s volunteer correspondents network. It includes some basic background information, describes how cultural mobilization is used as a recruiting method, discusses the way the network functions, both in the field of gathering and of distributing information, and explains difficulties involved in sustaining a network on a voluntary basis. Finally, some attention is given to possible applications of Never Again’s experience in human rights struggles in other countries.

The Turkish translation of this notebook is provided to us by the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly.

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violence, extreme-right

Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence