新作坊

There is Enough Time: Rethinking the Process of Policy Development

摘要：

Such responses to a different set of questions on violence allow us to define violence differently. Many now view the daily, pervasive, systematic, and normalized unequal distribution of resources and power as institutionalized violence. We know that being a previous witness to, or victim of, family violence is related to subsequent youth violence (Lungren, 1995). A similar relationship exists between the institutional violence of racism, sexism, and economic inequity and the violence described as interpersonal injury. The root causes of violence constitute violence themselves, and violence begets violence. To stop this cycle of violence, we need to create peaceful, cohesive communities with intact social networks. Social justice education and action advocating an equitable distribution of wealth would seem to be a prerequisite. As Dr. Martin Luther King (1961) noted, "peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice." "Upstream" intervention strategies for violence prevention will logically involve policy work to affect structural economic and social change on an institutional level, in contrast to individually focused approaches. Public policy interventions that emerge from an equitable participatory and democratic process can address the issue of power by enabling people to develop their own voice through telling and analyzing their own stories. In a social change process, this also means that "professional" providers, practitioners, and advocates must commit themselves to be partners with, and take leadership from, ordinary citizens in this process of transformation. Such a process for the development of policy initiatives builds the concrete, grass-roots support needed to mount effective campaigns that relate to people's real lives, and the process itself can be seen as an intervention. Powerlessness has been recognized as a broad risk factor for disease and injury, and empowerment as a process, "can also be demonstrated as an important promoter of health" (Wallerstein, 1992). Recent research in the area of resiliency (Garmezy, 1991) has identified protective factors that support the importance of addressing empowerment, hope for the future, and meaningful relationship to community within violence prevention strategies. Conscious care must be taken to avoid the taking over of grass-roots-controlled processes and organizations by "professionals," "absorbing them into the bureaucracy and intrinsically conservative `reactive' policies of larger institutions such as public health departments" (Labonte, 1986), or by mega foundations with intact hierarchical structures. Expecting professionals (if invited) to participate as equal partners in any process of grass-roots-controlled social change transformation may be the most significant challenge.