Grassroots community activation: lessons of hope

During the past 30 years professors and students of the Social Community Psychology program at the University of Puerto Rico have accumulated experiences, knowledge and uninterrupted work as part of grassroot community organizations. The work developed within an ongoing PAR collaborative relation. Experience Systematization (sistematización de las experiencias) sessions have produced important lessons which have generated knowledge from and with the communities. The liberation, decolonialization and participative methodology perspective has suggested directions of political actions. These summoned academics to assume political positions contrasting the objectivity, neutrality and proselytizing concerns of both academics and grassroot community organizations. The political perspective ((Alvarado, Botero, Ospina, 2010) shifts from the politics and public policy perspective, which has contributed to the dependency on political parties and election-oriented activation. The grassroots community movements phenomenon is a psych political endeavor where the political and subjectivity constituted each other in a continual unfolding. Participative methodologies have been an educational and transformative ground creating alternative political practices. The links of solidarity among grassroot community organizations have taken steps towards a commons (communis) political alternative. Events such as the Summer of 2019 in Puerto Rico, which resulted in the demise of the governor and his close political acquaintances, will be commented. The results of grassroot community conglomerate IDEBAJO proposals will be addressed. The theme of this conference evolves around ways to foster and sustain solidarities. We have worked within a community and local context, while striving to engage beyond our geographical and knowledge borders. One outstanding lesson has been solidarity which has provided a firm ground of continuity and engagement, with its ups and down. Our hope is solidarity and engagement with each other in this Congress. Has the Community Psychology made changes within itself to reach our hope?

Pou Rangapū: Establishing Partnership to Create Change for Minority Groups in Organisations

Gender, sex, and sexuality diversity (GSSD) was an open and normalised discourse in Māori society pre-colonisation. Colonisation has been detrimental to these understandings of GSSD, with heterosexual and cisgender being enforced as the only 'acceptable ways' of being, and thus creating shame and persecution of any people that do not identify within these categories. This pathologisation can be seen through the application of colonial laws (e.g. criminalising of homosexual activity, marriage inequality) which impacted on all GSSD people in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Currently, there is still marginalisation of GSSD people-with limited research showing this is also true in university setting. Because there is limited Aotearoa specific research about GSSD university experiences, I conducted research within the University of Waikato to gain an understanding of our campus space from the perspectives of GSSD staff and students. Results from focus groups and a campus wide survey were then utilised to inform an appropriate intervention in our university space, with the purpose of the intervention being to address the issues shared by GSSD people in the research. Having a framework as a guideline was imperative to this next stage of research, as it was going to be used to inform the steps of the intervention. In this presentation, I will discuss the framework that was created in collaboration with my supervisor, Dr Bridgette Masters-Awatere. This framework outlines partnership between researcher/s, an organisation, and marginalised community/s within an organisation. The framework specifies the steps that each stakeholder needs to take to reach the goal of creating change for marginalised communities in organisational spaces. Outlined will be the responsibilites of each stakeholder involved in the partnership, including the shared responsibilities that they have. Although our research was specific to a university setting, this framework can be utilised in other organisational spaces with other marginalised community groups.

The effects of climate justice matter to our most marginalised and often invisible peoples, who endure the worst outcomes from disasters, both natural and ‘human-induced’ throughout the world. This presentation explores the effects of the 2011 Aotearoa New Zealand Canterbury earthquakes on the working conditions and lived experiences of 12 sex workers and seven key informants to understand how the earthquakes effected their livelihoods, health and wellbeing. Framed by a critical participatory action research approach, that privileges the knowledge people hold about themselves, this work was developed alongside sex workers. In this way, research questions, interpretations and research outcomes were co-constructed by sex workers, for sex workers. A social capital model was used to unpack the experiences of displacement, and the influence of stigma for the sex workers on the earthquake recovery process. It demonstrates how sex workers in Canterbury have been marginalised and ignored throughout the recovery and rebuilding of Ōtautahi (Christchurch) City. It is argued that a model of decriminalisation for sex workers enabled them and their sex workers rights organisation, the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, to contest an unjust Local Government bylaw that attempted to ban street-based sex workers from working in residential areas following the earthquakes. This research represents the way in which groups with little social power, because of social and economic constraints, endure increased harm following a disaster. It is a form of activism in that it calls for anyone engaging in Disaster Risk Management and community psychology to understand the human rights issues associated sex workers and disasters, which are continuing to increase as an effect of climate change.

Beyond stigma and compassion: trans women sex workers resistance and community building

Trans women sex workers in Lido Tre Archi, Italy, live with multiple marginalised social identities as “trans”, “women”, “sex workers”, and in some cases “migrants”. As they struggle to access basic local services, they constitute the main voice of the research project we ran and present.
This presentation will explain how in two years of coalition building we accessed trans women sex workers as research participants and community agents of social change. The preliminary work, also entailed reframing narratives based on mere stigmatisation or compassion for sex workers in general, and trans women sex workers in particular.
We will explain how the social, policy, and physical contexts intersect to create a spiral of isolation as well as how trans women sex workers express their resistance to the ongoing oppression of their selves and their bodies. We will conclude showing what social change they ask for, and how we are working as community psychologists to see this happen.