Keeping the flame aliveReflections on our history, our present and our future

Dr Simon Duffy ￭ The Centre for Welfare Reform ￭ 14th-15th August 2013 ￭ Wellington ￭ New Zealand Disability Support

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Citizenship: right here, right now

Citizenship is the right goal

Being a citizen is better than being ‘normal’

it brings us together as equals

but also as unique free individuals

Equal and different

What is wrong with institutions?

1.Devalued lives - the institution defines your place, your role, your purpose.

2.No freedom or control - the institution strips you of freedom and personal authority

3.Impoverishment - economic power is nullified

4.Sheltered, but homeless - a home is more than a roof - it’s vital to control privacy and security

5.‘Care’ not help - ‘care’ already assumes the passivity and lower value of the person ‘in care’.

6.Disconnected - the institution cuts you off and leaves you within a hierarchical system where abuse can become natural

7.Loveless - relationships have no place in the institution

1. Direction - It’s risky if my life lacks meaning and value

2. Freedom - It’s risky if I cannot direct my life, communicate or be listened to.

3. Money - It’s risky if I lack money or if I cannot control my own money.

4. Home - It’s risky if I cannot control who I live with, my home and my privacy.

5. Help - It’s risky if I’ve no one to help me and if I cannot control who helps me.

6. Life - It’s risky if I am not a valued member of my community.

7. Love - It’s risky to have no friends or family.

Why citizenship is safer

Citizenship is also very practical. We can use the idea of citizenship to think about how to help someone.

Citizenship is possible for everyone

it just might take some extra thought

1. Purpose

Demanding of man that he assumes his condition and not till his neighbour's field, he [Rebbe Yaakov-Yitzhak, The Seer of Lublin] said: "There are many paths leading to perfection; it is given to each of us to choose our own, and by following it with great dedication, we can make it become our truth, our only truth."

Elie Wiesel

2. Freedom

I used to think that freedom was freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience. But freedom needs to include all of the lives of all of the people. Freedom is the right to sow what you want. It's the right to make boots of shoes, it's the right to bake bread from the grain you've sown and to sell it or not to sell it as you choose. The same goes for a locksmith or steelworker or an artist - freedom is the right to live and work as you wish and not as you're ordered to. But these days there's no freedom for anyone - whether you write books, whether you sow grain or whether you make boots.

Vassily Grossman

3. Money

You could no more make a city out of paupers than out of slaves.

Aristotle

Self-interest is the most powerful engine for individual and social development, in other words, social progress, in other words social justice. It is when the most disadvantaged in society have the opportunity to improve their lives in their own self-interest that change will take place.

Noel Pearson

4. Home

Then the old Vainamoinen put this into words:'Strange food goes down the wrong wayeven in good lodging;in his land a man's better at home loftier.If only sweet God would grantthe kind creator allowme to come to my own landsthe lands where I used to live!Better in your own countryeven water off your solethan in a foreign countryhoney from a golden bowl.'

The Kalevala

5. Help

There are eight degrees of charity, one higher than the other. The highest degree, exceeded by none, is that of the person who assists a poor Jew by providing him with a gift or loan or by accepting him into a business partnership or by helping him find employment - in a word, by putting him where he can dispense with other people's aid. With reference to such aid, it is said, “You shall strengthen him, be he a stranger or a settler, he shall live with you” (Lev. 25:35), which means strengthen him in such manner that his falling into want is prevented.

Maimonides

6. Life

True love leads a man to fulfilment, not by drawing things to himself but by forcing him to transcend himself and to be something greater than himself. True spiritual love takes the isolated individual, exacts from him labour, sacrifice, and the gift of himself.

Thomas Merton

7. Love

Resources multiply in networks created by intentionally building relationships that cross boundaries & serve people's deepest purposes.

Seymour Sarason

Citizenship is the full realisation of our interdependence - the value we bring to each other in all our differences.

The lame rides a horsethe maimed drives the herdthe deaf is brave in battle.A man is betterblind than buried.A dead man is deft at nothing.

From Viking - Havamal

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