"Vad gör vi nu?" - en nordisk sammankomst för dialog och handling efter terrordåden

"Ska vi hedra de alltför många döda efter vårt lands stora katastrof, ska vi hylla den anständighet vi som folk har visat denna onda vecka, måste vi vara villiga att gå in i de allra svåraste frågorna: Vad kunde vi ha gjort annorlunda? Och vad gör vi nu? " /Anne Holt på DN Kulturdebatt 27/7

Till alla berörda,

Vi är väldigt många som bär på de svåra frågorna som ett eko inom oss just nu. Kanske mer än någonsin behöver vi skapa utrymme för att besvara de frågorna tillsammans. Därför vill vi arrangera ett Nordiskt Open Space för att diskutera frågeställningarna "Vad kunde vi ha gjort annorlunda? Och vad gör vi nu?" Det hat och förakt som utmynnade i terror och massaker kan bara bemötas med en oövervinnelig kraftsamling för det positiva i vårt samhälle - demokrati, tolerans, humanitet och respekt för de mänskliga rättigheterna.

I oktober månad - tre månader efter de fruktansvärda terrordåden i Norge - vill vi samla mellan 200-500 personer från hela Norden, med en bred representation från olika sektorer - från civilsamhället, partipolitiken, skolan, kommuner och allmänt intresserade och engagerade personer - för att, trots den färska chocken, sorgen och förskräckelsen, börja bemöta och tillsammans skapa konkreta vägar framåt efter händelserna. Vi vill kanalisera den frustration och det engagemang som väldigt många känner just nu, till att bli oslagbart konstruktivt genom dialog och samverkan.

Många är redan i full färd med jättebra initiativ för att bemöta främlingsfientliga krafter och sprida värderingar kring tolerans, mångfald, demokrati, antirasism, öppenhet, humanitet och respekt för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Det är vår fulla övertygelse att vi kan växa, koppla ihop, sprida och skala upp dessa initiativ till sällan skådade proportioner genom dialog och samverkan över fler organisationsgränser, landsgränser och sektorer.

När vi samlar hundratals personer från flera nordiska länder i en tredagars dialog och handlingsverkstad så kommer vi att gå därifrån med nya allianser, konkreta samarbeten, nya projekt, faktiska ansökningar, finansieringslösningar och många fler resultat som vi inte kan föreställa oss idag.

Vilka personer känner du som skulle vara viktiga att ha med i denna sammankomsten? Varje person som anmäler sig får rekommendera ytterligare 3 personer som de vill bjuda in till dialogen - de får i sin tur utse ytterligare 3, osv, tills vi (troligen väldigt snabbt) fyller de 200 platserna och utökar till 500.

Gör såhär: Fyll i anmälan här: http://bit.ly/o6mI6R . Kopiera denna informationen eller skriv ett eget mail till de tre personer du vill bjuda och be dem att göra detsamma.

Preliminärt planerar vi att sammankomsten ska äga rum i Göteborg, på grund av närheten till Oslo, Köpenhamn och Stockholm (och generellt bra transporter från olika delar av norden). Preliminärt datum är 21-23 oktober - tre månader efter de fruktansvärda terrordåden och med tillräcklig tid för att folk ska få in datumet i sin övriga planering och att all logistik ska hinna ordnas. Mer information kommer så snart vi bekräftat plats, lokaler och exakta datum.

Med varma hälsningar,

Ola Nilsson

(Anne Holt, författare, jurist, politiker och före detta justitieminister i Norge, skrev på DN Kulturdebatt "En gång var han en annan" (27/7))

Rättviseförmedlingen crowdfunding

På en månad vill vi samla ihop 25 134 kr - en summa som motsvarar en krona per Rättviseförmedlare. Vi tror stenhårt på att vi kan göra det tillsammans! Under vårt första år har vi lyckats göra enormt mycket skillnad bara genom att finnas och att pumpa ut flera hundratals listor med tusentals tips på alternativ som skulle kunna bryta normer i olika sammanhang. Vi vill fortsätta att göra skillnad och behöver din hjälp

Another world is happening (at the HUB Brussels)

The words that greet visitors to the HUB Brussels don't hold back with the expectations. I was inspired to visit the HUB here in Brussels (as I wrote in the previous post), and decided to go to the March "Open Work Day" to get some nice community lunch, meet some of the entrepreneursthere, have a chat with people and get a sense of the place.

Just entering this social entrepreneur space sent all good vibes right from the beginning. I got there right at the end of lunch, so I sort of missed everyone else's introductions, which was a big bummer, but I'll have to make up for it by coming back again and again (and again, hehe!). I met some great people, just chatted with a few of the ones sitting around the table. One guy wh

o spoke some swedish due to his deep fascination and enfatuation with the language (which apparently is the sexiest one in the world...), and a couple of Basque girls who were working at the HUB as an exchange that their government has arranged for students to be able to do to the different HUB spaces around the world - what a great idea!

I also sat down and did a mini interview with Lorna, who is the manager of the hosts there, and has a really interesting story and great energy herself, and also with Leander

who is one of the members, who is deeply involved in creating the "HUB Marketplace" which is a complementary currency project. It was really interesting to get to know more about the HUB and some of the projects there. I have written an entry from my visit which will be published on the blog of the Swedish "Mötesplats för social innovation och Samhällsentreprenörskap" ("Meeting place for social innovation and societal entrepreneurship"), which I will link directly to once it's published.

My visit to the HUB Brussels certainly tickled my fancy, and I will definitely be going back and getting involved. It's just a really great space with some lovely people and a wonderful sense of community. Right down my alley!

So, à tout à l'heure HUB-ers!

/Ola Nilsson

Inspiration from the HUB Brussels

Today I came across a video interview with the founder of the HUB Brussels, Simone Poutnik. I came across it after visiting some other inspiring sites on The Art of Hosting and Natural Innovation. She talks about her process of founding the HUB, how it came about, how she did it, the key success factors and some inspirational stories from the process.

Talking to Hub Founders: Interview with Simone Poutnik from Hub Lausanne Initiative on Vimeo.

It was really inspiring for me to watch it, both because it gave me a bit of a humbling perspective on the time that it can actually take from idea to launched "product", and also because I really related to the situation she was in when she got the idea to start up - she was working from home and it was a bit lonely - I know the feeling! ;-)

So now I'm going to get in touch with Simone to set up a meeting to go visit the HUB, yay!

/Ola Nilsson

Lack of government in EU-capital celebrated

On February 17th 2011, Belgium matched the record for a country without government, previously held by Iraq, which was hence surpassed the day after. The process of deciding on who will govern the country, and indeed what country to govern, is still ongoing and the new informateur, Finance minister Didier Reynders, has his next deadline with the King already on March 1st to try and report some progress.

The record breaking accomplishment of not being able to form a democratic government was "celebrated" by some Belgians in the countrys capital Brussels. The most vocal and visible action on the day was a group of 249 students in the university town of Ghent who stripped down to their underwear to show our "common naked humanity" in protest against the efforts by some groups to separate the northern Flemish part and the southern Walloon part of the country. The picture above was taken by me outside the Palais de Justice during the preparations for the Brussels-version of the manifestations.

The movement to support the cohesion of the country and a resolution regarding government formation uses the slogan "Not in our name" and uses the Belgian flag as a symbol of national cohesion.

Though it is deeply tragic and problematic for the country not having resolved their government formation, it is interesting to observe the dynamics that are created when nationalist forces are pitted against forces that argue for cooperation and cohesion. On the one hand the situation surely provokes many to feel apathetic to the role of government and politics whatsoever, but on the other, this drawn out process of political insecurity surely has sparked some measure of interest in politics as well.

It remains to be seen what government Belgium will have. One thing is certain, it will need to deal with the consequences of taking power in the wake of such a shameful record, and it will need to raise a whole lot of trust with the entire belgian people regarding the democratic process and electoral politics in general.

/Ola Nilsson

Equality going global

Rättviseförmedlingen (The Equality Agency) is a new approach to a social equality movement, which has grown from one persons' idea, to a collaborative movement of over 21,000 people, within eight months. And now it's going global.

The Equality Agency (soon to be given another official name in english), is a pretty straight forward response to an all too common problem. The big problem is the commonly used phrase "there aren't any", or "we couldn't find any", which pops up just about anywhere were the contact networks, imaginations, or research skills of the people looking is limited to the dominant majority norm or a confined group within a certain field. So if the great problem is too limited contact networks, the simple response is: let's pool everyones networks, imaginations and research skills together instead!

One of the great things about the Equality Agency is that people join and get involved at their own leisure and level. Whether you want to suggest yourself to a search where you fit the match or if you want to pass on a specific search to the rest of your network, or go out of your way to find people to suggest to every search, it's all up to you what your involvement is. The idea is that peole like to share and contribute to something larger than themselves.

Speaking of something larger, the movement that started in Sweden and spread like wildfire there, gaining recognition in the press and social media, winning a national grant for inspiring social projects, is now building up for its first international launches.

The online movement has received an interest from New York, London, Oslo, Berlin and several other cities and countries outside of Sweden. Now the process goes from expressing curiosity to doing initial needs and network analyses and mobilizing people and allies in the places where there is real potential for growth, relevance and making a difference.

Quelle Différence is involved in this exciting process of a movement going global, coordinating international contacts and allies, compiling best practice and how-to material and contributing to the english-speaking press and PR-work.

I am having a lot of fun with this process and I am looking forward to seeing the results in the actual spread and growth of the project. Early 2011 is going global time! See you out there!

/Ola Nilsson

quelle différence

Meeting the racist gaze

This is a piece I wrote over nine years ago, one day when I met some every day racist comments in the grocery store. I came across it now, and could sense the frustration I felt then, as I feel the frustration now at seeing a racist party take place in the swedish parliament. It's on speaking out against every day racism...

When I saw the big headlines about the immigrant suburbs on the morning news I should have guessed that day would be something out of the ordinary. On the news they spoke agitatedly of family feuds, neighbor quarrels and they pulled out cultural differences and agressiveness as underlying factors. The police officer invited to comment, sitting upright in the sofa, highlighted the importance of the local police, and that there wasn't actually a problem with the neighborhood itself.

Sure enough, those headlines made it to national media as well, just like the time when a vietnamese man had fired shots in a restaurant in Oslo and his picture was put on the cover of all the large newspapers to point out the connection between the violent act and his ethnicity. The press loves to point a steady finger when it comes to placing the blame on the immigrants. These may be stories of crimes committed, but the news really blow up by stating the perpetrators nationality, ethnicity or housing area.

When the media perpetuates the case of ethnicity as a cause of crime with vivid descriptions of barbaric knife fights and gun waving, the public opinion is sure to get fired up. Those were namely the exact opinions openly expressed by the two ladies ahead of me in the line at the grocery store later that day; "it almost makes you a racist, doesn't it?" "Well, if they come here, they have to adjust, at least when they step outside their appartment".

After a weekend when several friends of mine had shared their stories of repeated verbal racist confrontations, I found myself in a situation where I could no longer just pretend that I didn't hear and go about my business. I had to act.

After fumbling for words and encouraging them to read a book or something I got an astonnished reply; "Well you got some nerve! I actually work with immigrants, and many of them don't even want to adjust". I expressed my sympathies for those people who had immigrated to Sweden just to be met by her racist attitudes. Then she took a swing at me instead, saying "it's people like you who go to protest rallies and vandalize."

There I was, standing in my postal service uniform after a day at work and couldn't really put together her arguments. I let her know my opinion that everyone who lives in Sweden is an integrated part of society and contributes in their ways, and that the true obstacle to integration and participation is that people who have immigrated here have to struggle against racism and discrimination in swedish society on a daily basis. If immigrants aren't "integrated" it is because of the racism that shuts people out based on their origin and color. And regarding any protest rallies, I said that I thought there was a whole lot of change that needed to happen in society if we were to move forward, and perhaps one way to express that is through rallying around those issues.

The other woman, who had made the initial "it almost makes you racist" remark and then stood in the background making puffing sounds and rolling her eyes, I met again on our way out of the store. I encouraged her to check her own issues before accusing immigrants for being the cause of her xenophobic attitudes. She countered with the lame "it's a free country and people are entitled to their opinions", and she actually had friends from Iran and other countries. Yet again, my condolences went out to the iranians who had such a "friend" who would betray them and actually help perpetuate racism through expressing her blatant opinions behind their backs.

That day really had turned out not to be like any other day, at least not for me. But at least I had had the privilege to choose to confront the everyday racism that I had met. I wondered how many people of color had been attacked by racist slurs that day, without having the option to stay out of it. I wondered how many employers had put new applications in the "no" pile that day because they thought that employees with "different" surnames may just create a problem on the job. The last thing I wondered was perhaps the thing that worried me the most. I wondered how many of us white swedes had read the paper that day, nodded and sighed and thought that we gave those immigrants a chance, but they just couldn't adjust.

I propose that we check ourselves and our opinions, start believing the best in people, stop generalizing, and start realizing that there are differences in power in our society, where immigrants are pushed down by white swedes to positions of inferiority. If we even go that far, we will have actually gone further in our analysis than much of the media, who would rather sell papers by perpetuating racist stereotypes. Unfortunately we have a long way to go before we can reach a more antiracist and fair society, and unfortunately, the media is not likely to help us get there.

So start breaking the silence. Step out of your comfort zone and speak out when you hear racist remarks. That is the only way that we can make our society more humane and open.

/Ola Nilsson