Alternative Governance
HOW SYMBOLS, HUMOR, AND METAPHORS CHANGED BOGOTA
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
MARÍA CRISTINA CABALLERO, HARVARD NEWS OFFICE -
Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it, "a 6.5 million person classroom."
Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá; he was successful mainly because people in Colombia's capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.
People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called "Supercitizen." People laughed at Mockus' antics, but the laughter began to break the ice of their extreme skepticism. . .
Mockus, the only son of a Lithuanian artist, burst onto the Colombian political scene in 1993 when, faced with a rowdy auditorium of the school of arts' students, he dropped his pants and mooned them to gain quiet. The gesture, he said at the time, should be understood "as a part of the resources which an artist can use." He resigned as rector, the top job of Colombian National University, and soon decided to run for mayor.
The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control traffic in Bogotá's chaotic and dangerous streets. He launched a "Night for Women" and asked the city's men to stay home in the evening and care for the children; 700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them.
When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.
"The distribution of knowledge is the key contemporary task," Mockus said. "Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.". . .
He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic indicator of the shift in the attitude of "Bogotanos" during Mockus' tenure is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it had garnered in 1990.
Another Mockus inspiration was to ask people to call his office if they found a kind and honest taxi driver; 150 people called and the mayor organized a meeting with all those good taxi drivers, who advised him about how to improve the behavior of mean taxi drivers. The good taxi drivers were named "Knights of the Zebra," a club supported by the mayor's office.
Yet Mockus doesn't like to be called a leader. "There is a tendency to be dependent on individual leaders," he said. "To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don't like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved ... I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to learn.". . .
Most important to Mockus was his campaign about the importance and sacredness of life. "In a society where human life has lost value," he said, "there cannot be another priority than re-establishing respect for life as the main right and duty of citizens." Mockus sees the reduction of homicides from 80 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2003 as a major achievement, noting also that traffic fatalities dropped by more than half in the same time period, from an average of 1,300 per year to about 600. Contributing to this success was the mayor's inspired decision to paint stars on the spots where pedestrians (1,500 of them) had been killed in traffic accidents. . .
Here are a few more innovations from Antanas Mockus' two mayoral terms:
Mockus mobilized people to protest against violence and terrorist attacks. He invented a "vaccine against violence," asking people to draw the faces of the people who had hurt them on balloons, which they then popped. About 50,000 people participated in this campaign. . .
Voluntary disarmament days were held in December 1996 and again in 2003. Though less than 1 percent of the firearms in the city were given up, homicides fell by 26 percent, thanks in part to the attention given to the program by the media. The percentage of people who think that it is better to have firearms in order to protect themselves fell from 24.8 percent in 2001 to 10.4 percent in 2003. . .
Mockus noted that his administrations were enlightened by academic concepts, including the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has investigated the tension between formal and informal rules and how economic development is restrained when those rules clash; and Jürgen Habermas' work on how dialogue creates social capital. Mockus also mentions Socrates, who said that if people understood well, they probably would not act in the wrong way.
Luis Eduardo Garzón, the new mayor of Bogotá, is the first leftist who has been in charge of the second-most important political position in Colombia. Said Mockus, "His election expresses a consensus around the importance of addressing social issues. Garzón has the challenge of opening space to new political forces in a country that has been dominated by a 'bipartidismo bobo' (dumb two-party system)."
FULL STORY WITH PHOTOS
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
RECOVERED HISTORY
EMPEROR NORTON MAY FINALLY GET HIS DUE
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/15/SFSUPES.TMP
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - More than a century after a quirky San Francisco character who called himself Emperor Norton I ordered a bridge be built spanning the bay, a move is under way to name the later-day Bay Bridge in his honor.
The drive was publicized by Chronicle cartoonist Phil Frank in his strip "Farley" -- perhaps a fitting forum for a man who walked the streets of San Francisco in the late 1800s with a plume in his hat and a sword in his hand, issued his own currency and declared that calling the city "Frisco" was a High Misdemeanor.
Norton, who occupied a 10-by-6-foot front room of a Sacramento Street lodging house, would have been a present-day constituent of Supervisor Aaron Peskin. And so it was Peskin who picked up Frank's idea, molded it into a resolution and brought it to the Board of Supervisors, where it was approved Tuesday 8-2. . . The resolution, if approved by Mayor Gavin Newsom, next will travel to the Oakland City Council and on to the California Legislature. . .
Joshua Abraham Norton -- who, according to his Chronicle obituary, hailed from Scotland -- was a businessman who came to San Francisco by way of South Africa in 1849 to try his luck in the Gold Rush. It is said that he lost his fortune -- and his mental stability -- after making a bum investment in the rice market a few years later.
In 1859, he proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and, shortly thereafter, the Protector of Mexico. For the next 20 years, he issued proclamations defending minorities and championing civil rights, which were reproduced in local newspapers. Meanwhile, a number of merchants honored Norton's own specially printed paper money. . .
BBB - Emperor Norton became so powerful within his capital that on 21 January, 1867, when he was arrested by policeman Armand Barbier on the grounds of insanity, the public were shocked. The chief of police apologized and members of the police began to salute Norton when they saw him.
He influenced the people of San Francisco in very real ways. He printed his own bills that most shops accepted from him. These can now be worth a lot more than their face value in auctions. One story about him tells us that during a pogrom against the Chinese, he went into the middle of the street and prayed, and the crowd dispersed.
Joshua A Norton died on 8 January, 1880, and was buried two days later in the Masonic cemetery. His funeral cortege was two miles long; 10,000 - 30,000 people attended his funeral, and the day was marked by a total eclipse of the Sun, viewable from San Francisco at just after 4 pm. . .
He owned next to nothing, and yet his life can never be forgotten. He has been described as a symbol of democratic freedom because in any other system he would have been killed as a threat to the leaders' authority or as an insult to monarchy. From Norton we can learn that you don't need money, influence or sanity to become a valuable member of society. We also learn that the public will respect those who make them laugh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A678026
EMPEROR NORTON'S PICTURE
http://prorev.com/2004/12/emperor-norton-mayfinally-get-his-due.htm
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
MARÍA CRISTINA CABALLERO, HARVARD NEWS OFFICE -
Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it, "a 6.5 million person classroom."
Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá; he was successful mainly because people in Colombia's capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.
People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called "Supercitizen." People laughed at Mockus' antics, but the laughter began to break the ice of their extreme skepticism. . .
Mockus, the only son of a Lithuanian artist, burst onto the Colombian political scene in 1993 when, faced with a rowdy auditorium of the school of arts' students, he dropped his pants and mooned them to gain quiet. The gesture, he said at the time, should be understood "as a part of the resources which an artist can use." He resigned as rector, the top job of Colombian National University, and soon decided to run for mayor.
The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control traffic in Bogotá's chaotic and dangerous streets. He launched a "Night for Women" and asked the city's men to stay home in the evening and care for the children; 700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them.
When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.
"The distribution of knowledge is the key contemporary task," Mockus said. "Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.". . .
He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic indicator of the shift in the attitude of "Bogotanos" during Mockus' tenure is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it had garnered in 1990.
Another Mockus inspiration was to ask people to call his office if they found a kind and honest taxi driver; 150 people called and the mayor organized a meeting with all those good taxi drivers, who advised him about how to improve the behavior of mean taxi drivers. The good taxi drivers were named "Knights of the Zebra," a club supported by the mayor's office.
Yet Mockus doesn't like to be called a leader. "There is a tendency to be dependent on individual leaders," he said. "To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don't like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved ... I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to learn.". . .
Most important to Mockus was his campaign about the importance and sacredness of life. "In a society where human life has lost value," he said, "there cannot be another priority than re-establishing respect for life as the main right and duty of citizens." Mockus sees the reduction of homicides from 80 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2003 as a major achievement, noting also that traffic fatalities dropped by more than half in the same time period, from an average of 1,300 per year to about 600. Contributing to this success was the mayor's inspired decision to paint stars on the spots where pedestrians (1,500 of them) had been killed in traffic accidents. . .
Here are a few more innovations from Antanas Mockus' two mayoral terms:
Mockus mobilized people to protest against violence and terrorist attacks. He invented a "vaccine against violence," asking people to draw the faces of the people who had hurt them on balloons, which they then popped. About 50,000 people participated in this campaign. . .
Voluntary disarmament days were held in December 1996 and again in 2003. Though less than 1 percent of the firearms in the city were given up, homicides fell by 26 percent, thanks in part to the attention given to the program by the media. The percentage of people who think that it is better to have firearms in order to protect themselves fell from 24.8 percent in 2001 to 10.4 percent in 2003. . .
Mockus noted that his administrations were enlightened by academic concepts, including the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has investigated the tension between formal and informal rules and how economic development is restrained when those rules clash; and Jürgen Habermas' work on how dialogue creates social capital. Mockus also mentions Socrates, who said that if people understood well, they probably would not act in the wrong way.
Luis Eduardo Garzón, the new mayor of Bogotá, is the first leftist who has been in charge of the second-most important political position in Colombia. Said Mockus, "His election expresses a consensus around the importance of addressing social issues. Garzón has the challenge of opening space to new political forces in a country that has been dominated by a 'bipartidismo bobo' (dumb two-party system)."
FULL STORY WITH PHOTOS
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
RECOVERED HISTORY
EMPEROR NORTON MAY FINALLY GET HIS DUE
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/15/SFSUPES.TMP
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - More than a century after a quirky San Francisco character who called himself Emperor Norton I ordered a bridge be built spanning the bay, a move is under way to name the later-day Bay Bridge in his honor.
The drive was publicized by Chronicle cartoonist Phil Frank in his strip "Farley" -- perhaps a fitting forum for a man who walked the streets of San Francisco in the late 1800s with a plume in his hat and a sword in his hand, issued his own currency and declared that calling the city "Frisco" was a High Misdemeanor.
Norton, who occupied a 10-by-6-foot front room of a Sacramento Street lodging house, would have been a present-day constituent of Supervisor Aaron Peskin. And so it was Peskin who picked up Frank's idea, molded it into a resolution and brought it to the Board of Supervisors, where it was approved Tuesday 8-2. . . The resolution, if approved by Mayor Gavin Newsom, next will travel to the Oakland City Council and on to the California Legislature. . .
Joshua Abraham Norton -- who, according to his Chronicle obituary, hailed from Scotland -- was a businessman who came to San Francisco by way of South Africa in 1849 to try his luck in the Gold Rush. It is said that he lost his fortune -- and his mental stability -- after making a bum investment in the rice market a few years later.
In 1859, he proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and, shortly thereafter, the Protector of Mexico. For the next 20 years, he issued proclamations defending minorities and championing civil rights, which were reproduced in local newspapers. Meanwhile, a number of merchants honored Norton's own specially printed paper money. . .
BBB - Emperor Norton became so powerful within his capital that on 21 January, 1867, when he was arrested by policeman Armand Barbier on the grounds of insanity, the public were shocked. The chief of police apologized and members of the police began to salute Norton when they saw him.
He influenced the people of San Francisco in very real ways. He printed his own bills that most shops accepted from him. These can now be worth a lot more than their face value in auctions. One story about him tells us that during a pogrom against the Chinese, he went into the middle of the street and prayed, and the crowd dispersed.
Joshua A Norton died on 8 January, 1880, and was buried two days later in the Masonic cemetery. His funeral cortege was two miles long; 10,000 - 30,000 people attended his funeral, and the day was marked by a total eclipse of the Sun, viewable from San Francisco at just after 4 pm. . .
He owned next to nothing, and yet his life can never be forgotten. He has been described as a symbol of democratic freedom because in any other system he would have been killed as a threat to the leaders' authority or as an insult to monarchy. From Norton we can learn that you don't need money, influence or sanity to become a valuable member of society. We also learn that the public will respect those who make them laugh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A678026
EMPEROR NORTON'S PICTURE
http://prorev.com/2004/12/emperor-norton-mayfinally-get-his-due.htm
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