Human rights expert Heather Roberson Gaston, panel “Democracy under siege”, on the Conference “Defending Democracy and Human Rights”, December 12, 2024 Skopje.
Obviously, we have this problem with raising racism, that you can see in both places, very much connected in economic situation, in both places, connected to ongoing war in Ukraine, and the disinformation and polarization… Which is something that I can sense so much more acutely in North Macedonia, and in US, we are much more isolated.
“We have the economic crisis, called inflation, that obviously everyone in North Macedonia is very familiar with, people in US are also familiar with this, and I think what tends to happen is that even this is a global phenomenon, the price of medicine is higher than it should be, it’s harder to get a doctor than it should be, it’s harder to get housing than it should be, and things feel so dysfunctional, and this is global, but people experience it locally and don’t necessarily know that almost the rest of the world is experiencing this.
So, it’s very hard for any incumbent party to stay in office in that situation, because people think: who I am going to support… So the voters want changes, I saw that in North Macedonia and in the US as well, the desire to try something new.
There are so many reasons that Trump won, he won in to many places, it was racism, it was sexism, but the issue of disaffection and lack of interest in democracy is really toxic, because, when people stop valuing democracy, or they say – look, it doesn’t offer what it says it offers, they are less upset when somebody takes democratic opportunity away. Because, the whole idea, the error has been taken out of it.
In terms of solution, there are people who are really good at bringing people into the fold, bringing the disaffected, and it’s such a skill, and not everyone has it, but it involves empathy, forgiving someone for being totally different from you, it involves meeting people who are completely unlike you, and allowing people to save face, kind of extending kindness and say- well join in anyway, come and meet other people. Come into the fold, instead retreating, and campaigns are not able to do that, but organizations, people that do this again and again and again, work on things like human rights and democracy, they can be very talented, and those people, all over the world, really deserve our support.”
D. Tahiri
Camera: Atanas Petrovski/Igor Chadinovski
Editor: Arian Mehmeti
Photography: Robert Atanasovski/CIVIL
CONFERENCE, FULL VIDEO, Streamed live on December 12, 2024:
https://youtube.com/live/1f2Eo1ZXEQ0
PHOTO ARCHIVES: #DefendingDemocracy, Panel 1: Democracy under Siege
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#DefendingDemocracy, Panel 2: The Rise of Far-Right Nationalism
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#DefendingDemocrcy Panel 3: Countering Authoritarianism
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#DefendingDemocracy conference, Panel 4: Commitment to democracy
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#DefendingDemocracy Conference (overall)
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#DefendingDemocracy – workshop and meeting with the press
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#DefendingDemocracy PRESS CONFERENCE
For more information on the Conference, please visit the special website DefendingDemocracy
