Leonard Benardo on Civil Society and the Politics and Practices of Civil Society Organizations

Guests featured in this episode:

Lenny Benardo, Executive Vice President of the Open Society Foundations, and  the founding director of the Open Society Fellowship Program. Lenny also sits on the boards of Bard College, the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, the European Humanities University in Lithuania, and my very own institution, CEU. He has published numerous articles in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the International Herald Tribune, Bookforum, American Prospect, and Prospect magazines. Having worked in Russia, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary earlier in his career with the Open Society Foundations, he has witnessed first hand the exhilarating atmosphere of the democratic transition in eastern Europe.

GLOSSARY

What are the Open Society Foundations?
(00:35 or p.1 in the transcript)

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve this mission, the Foundations seek to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, the Open Society Foundations implement a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. The Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

Investor and philanthropist George Soros established the Open Society Foundations, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. Their activities have grown to encompass the United States and more than 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities: source

What are the Revolutions of 1989?
(04:48 or p.2 in the transcript)

Revolutions of 1989: collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the end of the period of the Cold War and the removal of the Iron Curtain between Eastern and Western Europe. Primarily, it was the disavowal of Communism by all of the Eastern European states that were in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War II.

The seeds of the revolution were present from the very beginning, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia were pre-cursors to the Revolutions of 1989, which were the final cataclysm that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself just two years later.

The revolution began in Poland with the creation of Solidarity, the worker's movement that challenged the Communist government (the supposed representatives of the "workers' paradise) for authority. This was the first movement in the Eastern bloc that had not been brutally suppressed. This de-legitimized the Communist claim as representatives of the people's will. It continued when the Hungarian authorities decided to no longer interdict those seeking to leave the state by crossing the boundary between Hungary and Austria. This led to a flood of refugees from Eastern Europe streaming into Hungary to escape to the West. The defining event was then the collapse of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. With the exception of Romania, the revolutions were largely peaceful as the governments put up only token resistant to the clear will of the people for the end of Communist rule and democratic reform: source

What is the Black Lives Matter?
(16:28 or p.4 in the transcript)

Black Lives Matter (BLM): international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality. The name Black Lives Matter signals condemnation of the unjust killings of Black people by police (Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.

BLM activists have held large and influential protests in cities across the United States as well as internationally. A decentralized grassroots movement, Black Lives Matter is led by activists in local chapters who organize their own campaigns and programs. The chapters are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights organization that is active in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom: source

What is the Occupy movement?
(16:32 or p.4 in the transcript)

TheOccupy protests: a series of international demonstrations primarily directed against capitalism and economic inequality, sparked in particular by what are now referred to as austerity measures, official action taken by governments in order to reduce spending in the face of economic problems. Kicking off in Wall Street in New York, the Occupy protests had then spread right across the world, including such prominent locations as Frankfurt, Rome, Sydney, Hong Kong, London and various cities in the United Kingdom. As well as marches involving as many as 10,000 protesters, the demonstrations involved large numbers of people 'camping out', or occupying, key venues in cities across the world. One notable example was around the entrances to St Paul's Cathedral in central London, where over 200 tents formed a ramshackle campsite. This subsequently caused officials to close the cathedral due to health and safety concerns, the first time its doors have been closed to the public since the Second World War Blitz: source

What is the Arab Spring?
(16:34 or p.4 in the transcript)

Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The wave began when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar attempts in other Arab countries. Not every country saw success in the protest movement, however, and demonstrators expressing their political and economic grievances were often met with violent crackdowns by their countries’ security forces: source

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• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

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