Department of Public Administration, HWR Berlin/Berlin School of Economics and Law, Berlin, Germany.
Brooklyn College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York, USA.
Am J Community Psychol. 2022 Jun;69(3-4):294-305. doi: 10.1002/ajcp.12593. Epub 2022 Mar 15.
In the context of global democratic crises and pervasive neoliberal policies, civil society organizations (CSOs) play a critical role in promoting democratic processes and advancing social change on local, national, and transnational scales. However, such organizations also (need to) grapple with how they themselves put social justice and democratic principles into practice, and resist coloniality within. This article examines these questions in the case of People Powered-Global Hub for Participatory Democracy, a recently found transnational CSO that advocates globally for participatory democracy as a mechanism for social change and employs these principles in its own governance and operations. The analysis focusses on the creation of People Powered and its first year of practice. Drawing upon decolonial frameworks-and based on our own experiences as founding members of People Powered and our reading of interviews and documents-we identify concrete practices through which the organization seeks to enact epistemic justice, shift power, and emphasize relationality. We argue that People Powered's decolonial roots, collectively articulated values and commitments, radical transparency, and its consistent employment of meaningful participation and reflexivity have built and are likely to sustain this transnational solidarity for social change. At the same time and perhaps critical for fostering solidarity and social change in the long term, People Powered embraces, rather than evades, tensions and contradictions that emerge in these efforts.
在全球民主危机和普遍存在的新自由主义政策的背景下，民间社会组织（CSO）在促进民主进程和在地方、国家和跨国层面推动社会变革方面发挥着关键作用。然而，这些组织也（需要）努力解决如何将社会正义和民主原则付诸实践，并抵制自身内部的殖民性。本文以最近成立的跨国民间社会组织“人民力量-全球参与式民主中心”为例，探讨了这些问题，该组织在全球范围内倡导参与式民主作为社会变革的机制，并在自身治理和运营中运用这些原则。分析重点关注人民力量的创建及其第一年的实践。本文借鉴了去殖民化框架——并基于我们作为人民力量创始成员的自身经验以及对采访和文件的阅读——我们确定了组织试图通过哪些具体实践来实现知识正义、转移权力和强调关系。我们认为，人民力量的去殖民根源、集体表达的价值观和承诺、激进的透明度以及其对有意义的参与和反思性的一贯运用，已经建立并可能维持这种跨国团结，以实现社会变革。同时，为了在长期内培养团结和社会变革，人民力量可能需要接受而不是回避这些努力中出现的紧张和矛盾。
