‘Together, we stand!’
By Dr. Toni Pyke
When my younger sisters and brothers were growing up, I remember watching an animation titled A Bug’s Life that I have since watched many times over with them and also with my own children since it was first released in 1998. The story follows a colony of ants who live under the control of grasshoppers that exploit them through fear and intimidation and demonstrates how the ants stand up to oppression through courage, creativity, and collective action. The main character in the movie is Flik, an inventive ant who is always messing things up for his colony and is considered an outcast in a colony that conforms. One of his biggest mishaps during the movie is to accidentally destroy the food stores that were supposed to be used to pay off a bully grasshopper called Hopper, who demands that the ants gather double the amount of food – which means more work and less food for them – or face annihilation. Flik is the only one who is determined to stand up to Hopper to end the oppression. It demonstrates how oppressors often stay in power only because the oppressed believe that they are powerless. Once the ants rejected that fear, the imbalance collapsed.
The relevant clip in the movie that reveals this reality is where the grasshoppers are in their secret base, partying and Hopper demonstrates to his fellow grasshoppers the potential power of mass movement:
“You let one ant stand up to us and they might all stand up to us. Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life. It’s not about food, its about keeping those ants in line.”
I was thinking about this scene when I was attending a conference on Thursday, 27th November, hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL). The conference was titled, “People, Power and Policy: Reevaluating the Role of Civil Society in Irish Democracy” and was held at the F2 Centre in Rialto, Dublin. The focus of the day was to provide a situational presentation and wider discussion of the contemporary civil society landscape in Ireland and abroad, including the growing threats and barriers to full participation, and the role that civil society plays in upholding democracy. The day was hugely informative – but at times somewhat discouraging in its assessment of the status quo.
Panellists from the community and voluntary sector, as well as regulators, politicians, academics and policymakers discussed the various barriers to democracy such as regulatory issues facing civic space. Also explored were some of the tools and solutions to overcoming these realities and ways in which the relationship between the State and the community, voluntary and non-profit sector can be better communicated, strengthened, and protected while also recognising and supporting the sector’s independence.
The 3 key moments that stood out for me were:
i) “Will democracy prevail at all?”; “Europe is in a state of paralysis” as it “sleepwalks” towards autocracy;
ii) growing distrust among the population, fuelled by social media and ‘fake news’ and intensifying threats to the “guardrails and institutions” that protect our rights;
ii) “there is still time” to defend our democracy.
The EU commissioner Michael McGrath gave the keynote address noting that “we need civil society” and that we must encourage ways with which to build the resilience of the sector and to work together with the EU in ensuring that the ‘tools’ at its disposal are used to defend our democratic values across the member states.
At the end of the conference, the final question to each of the panellists was: “What gives me hope?” A key response across the presenters was, collaboration – we can’t do this alone and that we needed to get out of our silos and work together to defend the values and principles at the heart of our democracy.
“Now more than ever, we must affirm the indispensable role of the community and voluntary sector in safeguarding democratic values, promoting social cohesion and contributing expertise to policy formation and debates” (ICCL).
The conference and the animation reiterate the key to our freedom – collaboration. We must all work together to ensure that our hard earned democracy survives the challenges and attacks from forces not aligned to the values, principles and ethics that we hold dear.
The link to the conference agenda: 251106-Event-agenda.pdf
