Power from Below

Power is usually associated with physical strength or with someone wealthy. In this case, Dr. Frances Fox Piven, when saying Power from Below, she is referring to another kind of power.

Power from Below is ‘the possibilities for popular social movements to effect change’ (Public Sociology, 2016)

This is the power of people who do not possess resources or forces yet they still manage to prevail and make their point count.

Theoretically this power is within everyone but in reality, it is rarely used. This is because usually it involves cooperation and if others would not want to cooperate the plan will fail. This is like the example of the ant colony where one ant is tiny and insignificant, but all together they can achieve great tasks.

In my working experience, I knew a lot of colleagues who felt “safe” with what they had and they feared change or standing up for their rights. They used to tell me that I am still young and could afford to lose my job and find another one whilst they had a family and were getting “old”. From their point of view they were a bit right, it is always risky and I could understand, but yet, they were older adults therefore they had a lot of experience. They knew the factory inside out and all that knowledge/experience cannot be replaced easily. They could not understand that the factory needed them as they need the factory.

But here is where it gets tricky, you cannot have one person stand up, cause one is replaceable easily whilst all of them is not. Cooperation is one of the keys to this so-called Power from Below.

In my opinion it is the most important, our lecturer sent us an article relating the subject called” Ali Ferzat, cartoonist in exile” (the Guardian, 2016) which talked about this cartoonist who passed on messages using illustrations. One day he made a drawing about their president and he got abducted and beaten up badly on his hands which he still suffers from. Here we can see the bravery of this man who stands up and uses his skills to send massages all over the world, even after being beaten up, but we also see how easily a single person can be targeted. Imagine if the whole country stood up beside this artist, or the whole world stands up against all the injustices occurring around. That would be some true power, from common people and making things right once and for all.

What would the president then do? Abduct all the country? Bomb all the country? He needs them more then they need him. All of his power come from his citizens.

Global warming, everybody is talking about but few are those who are doing something. One of the funniest things is that there are still people who do not believe, but anyway, why don’t we all stop buying fuel or using cars? We have to show them that they are in need of “us” not the other way around. If one person does not use the car, he won’t make much of a difference and probably gets fired from work for arriving late. But if all together we strike and rebel to not use fuel we would make a huge impact and drive renewable energy to be our main resource.

Power from below is very powerful but it needs to be harnessed and understood. One other problem I see is that it can also be used to do bad things. For example, artists can draw to pass a negative or offensive messages or cooperative man rising in a terrorist/threatening army to inflict damage to others. Hopefully good will always surface and prevail on evil and by cooperation we can achieve incredible things.

References

Public Sociology, 2016. Frances Fox Piven. [Online] Available at: https://isapublicsociology.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/frances-fox-piven/ [Accessed 5 November 2016].

the Guardian, 2016. Ali Ferzat, cartoonist in exile. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/ali-ferzat-cartoonist-exile-syria [Accessed 5 November 2016].