ADVENTURES OF ACTIVISM IN BUDAPEST-ENTRY NUMBER 4

So at this point in my travels in Hungary I have gone from Budapest (which I likened to NYC), to Balatonfured (which I liken to the Hudson Valley Resort spots where Citizen Action has had many a staff meeting) and on to Pecs (pronounced Page) which I liken to a really beautiful Rochester.

When the reunion ended this morning with fellows from all five countries, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad.  I know I made new friends and I will be very curious about their attempts to organize. Saturday and Sunday we spent participating in narrative training’s and conversations about worldview, listening to about 15 proposals for funding of projects, and I even helped co-lead a discussion on racial justice.  That was a conversation that I would have loved to continue.

The Roma people are really targeted in Eastern Europe.  They are experiencing much of the same as black and brown people in the states.  Their schools are underfunded, they are very visibly discriminated in terms of employment, health care and all other services.

While at the reunion I met the Eastern European version of Billy Easton. He organizes parents around quality education, with a focus on children with special needs. Of course, he and I hit it off and I spent some time really learning about the education system.  Seems like the problems we experience in the states are similar to those of families and children in Hungary. The teachers in this country do not make good money.  They are actually paid less than people working in retail stores and retired teachers are really poor. You also do not get qualified teachers, especially for the Roma teachers.  No need for a certificate in order to teach them.  The results are what you would expect.

I have to say, the most interesting thing here is that organizing is a very new concept in these countries.  They do work through NGO’s and have also done community development, but community organizing…whoa….nothing.  So this group of people in these four different countries are basically the Saul Alinsky’s of Eastern Europe.  They are paving the way and they are making some amazing strides.

Tonight I left a meeting with a women’s group of Roma women fighting for repairs to their Kindergarten.  They have made some strides and are already thinking about growing their group in order to set themselves up for the next campaign.  It was amazing to watch them soak up the knowledge that Sondra from Community Voices Heard (CVH) was imparting on them.  They grasped every concept, asked questions when they didn’t understand and were very proud of the progress they made thus far.

Today I was imagining the weight of trying to build an entire country,  an American I met talked about being in the Sudan when it wasn’t even a country and I personally could barely grasp the magnitude of that.  It is hard enough trying to build Citizen Action!  Then here is this group of people trying to build acceptance for community organizing, bringing legitimacy to a field and a way of doing things that has never been done before. The weight of it all seems HUGE.  But, they are not shirking from it.  Many of them are not paid.  Many of them are volunteers who understand that they have to build something or the oppression will continue.  Furthermore, it seems like the right is gaining ground, not only in the states (they talk about Trump a lot) but also in Germany and Hungary and around the world.  At the end of the day, it is folks like us who stand in the way of the oppressor