not the motorcycle diaries

Last week I met with this guy who is working with Shack Dwellers International. He suggested I include them somehow in my thesis. Here are some thoughts about this:

SDI are a bigger social movement that the MST that started around the same time, but they don’t get the same level of attention in the global North/First World … SDI are international whereas MST is Brazilian, though it is strongly connected to Via Campesina, the global network of small-scale producers, rural workers and indigenous communities … The MST, being largely based on the struggle for self-determined land for farming, is a social movement that is heavily romanticised in the North … SDI, on the other hand, inhabit a ‘de-romanticised’ space (I guess it’s harder to romanticise life in a place like Smoky Mountain in the Philippines than on land that’s been won from ruling-class landowners in Brazil) …

…. Interestingly, both SDI and MST are primarily responses to rapid urbanisation in the South, which has pushed people off land and out of work. However, where MST are encouraging people ‘back’ to living and working off the land, SDI fights for a better life in slums and shanty towns.

Also,

Both movements look out for people’s dignity and self-worth as well as improving their material conditions … both movements are also made up of people who have been displaced by neo-liberal globalisation (the growth of the city, the globalisation of industry, the co-optation of the state etc) … both are directly made up of the people for whom they act … both are organised more loosely and horizontally than tightly and vertically … and to an extent, both identify as part of the global justice movement.