Thank you to Tony Blackett for inviting me to open your assembly and a special welcome to Margaret Wheatley, who will inspire all of you as you explore connections, community and citizenship.
The last time I spoke at a Building Connected Communities Workshop I was a Member of Parliament wrestling with the dilemma of resigning from that role in order to run for a position I had never aspired to hold.
I used that workshop to talk about what builds social capital and how that translates for disabled people. I asked them, as I now invite you, to think about asset-based community development and strengths-based personal development in the context of what makes a community more resilient in the true sense of the word.
I have described my life since September 4 2010 as a journey of discovery.
Every path I go down always leads me back to the people – not as individuals, although they play an important role, but as neighbourhoods and communities.
When we think about disaster preparedness, the messages we give are very individual:
Have I got enough food and the means of both storing and heating water to get me through at least three days? Have I got a transistor radio and a torch (including one not requiring batteries)?
Substitute these questions:
Who are our neighbours and what could we do together as a neighbourhood or community to support ourselves when disaster strikes?
Preparing communities for both response and recovery sounds like a hard thing to do and it is hard when the people who live in those communities are not engaged with each other and the communities themselves are not engaged with the decision-makers in central and local government.
I have read a couple of books that I want to recommend: Neighborhood Power: Building Community the Seattle Way by Jim Diers. I attended a seminar he held in Christchurch and met him in Seattle – our sister-city. He taught me the importance of community activism and building relationships within communities.
I then read The Abundant Community by John McKnight & Peter Block. This is an amazing book that has given me the words that give voice to my longstanding concern about the effect of consumerism on society. I quote:
“A citizen is one who is a participant in a democracy, regardless of their legal status. It is one who chooses to create the life, the neighbourhood, the world from their own gifts and the gifts of others…
A consumer is one who has surrendered to others the power to provide what is essential for a full and satisfied life. This act of surrender goes by many names: client, patient, student, audience, fan, shopper.
All customers, not citizens. Consumerism is not about shopping, but about the transformation of citizens into consumers.”
When describing the abundant community, the book talks about a competent community building on the gifts of its people, characterised by associational life and hospitality. It’s not about the council doing things for the community; it’s about the community doing things for themselves.
But it seems to be a real challenge for central and local government to stop thinking of their citizens as nothing more than taxpayers and ratepayers or consumers of the services they provide.
And that is what a commitment to true resilience requires.
We are united around the council table in wanting to reach out to our communities and offer to them the ability to co-create our city. We know that participatory planning and collaborative decision-making are the pre-requisites to a truly inclusive form of citizen engagement.
The irony is, with people expressing such little trust in governments, it is in fact governments that have to learn how to trust the people.
I hope you can discuss and share what it takes to build connected, inclusive communities of active citizens. And how the very process of so doing might change for the better the nature of the communities we live in - whether or not we have to face a disaster like Christchurch has.
Every path I go down always leads me back to the people – not as individuals, although they play an important role, but as neighbourhoods and communities.