Agnieszka (right) in the row of 'critics' in the foreground. Team Syntegrity 2017, Artchimboldi, Barcelona. For many years now I have been meeting activists in Poland and in Europe – people working in NGOs, social movements, informal environments and cultural institutions. Some are embedded in professional western NGOs that resemble corporations, some occupy theatres or take over factories. We keep on talking about our actions, engagement, about our goals. Recently, we have started talking more about politics, because it looks as if the time when civil society ran in parallel or completely separately from politics is coming to an end. It looks as if the time when civil society ran in parallel or completely separately from politics is coming to an end.
Maintaining virtue in NGOs
Civil society is a great idea. In a perfectly liberal-democratic world, where parliament really represents society and its diversity, where politics (and the space between politics and business) is not always populated by the same people, and where political parties articulate interests and develop ideas (or at least take seriously what think tanks are telling them), instead of just serving citizens the daily pulp called ‘message of the day’ – that’s where civil society can do a lot.
Making an icosahedron.It can create a space to engage people in defending different values, in scrutinizing those in political power (in such an arrangement, guardian, ecological, feminist or social equality organizations deliver a wake-up call if problems arise, and mobilise citizens so that politicians, enlightened or not, have to deal with a given topic). It can also organize people with hobbies or those who love their local area. All of this can be done by civil society in a perfect world. But as it happens, we do not live in one.
