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အတိုချုံးပြောရရင်
Faced with a notoriously corrupt traffic police force, chaos on the roads, and many traffic deaths, Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus disbanded the corrupt cops and offered to retrain and rehire them… as mimes.
In the early 1990s, Bogotá was a city in crisis. Poverty, corruption, and crime were endemic, public faith in government had bottomed out, and life in the capital had, for many, descended into a battle of all against all. This was the situation that philosophy professor Antanas Mockus stepped into when he was elected mayor — an unlikely politician with unconventional methods (he’d campaigned in a spandex superhero costume) and an uncommonly large mandate for radical political change.
In his two terms as mayor (1995-1997 and 2001-2003), Mockus catalyzed tremendous improvements to Bogotá. Launching civic campaigns that involved massive, voluntary public participation, the homicide rate fell 70 percent, while the percentage of homes with drinking water increased from 79 to 100 percent.
The mimes infused Bogotá’s streets with common sense — or, rather, a sense of the commons.
There is no better example of the mayor’s audacious and highly effective approach than his program addressing traffic safety, which saw traffic fatalities drop by over 50 percent. After piloting the project with theatre students, Mockus fired 3,200 traffic cops from a notoriously corrupt police force and then offered them the option to be retrained and hired back — as mimes. Four hundred accepted the offer, trading their handcuffs and batons for white gloves and face paint.
Each day, the mimes moved through traffic and seized on opportunities to dramatize the struggles and frustrations of drivers and pedestrians. They heaped scorn on cars blocking pedestrian crosswalks and then gestured as if repainting the crosswalk, endorsing its existence. They helped elderly people cross the street, and pretended to push cars blocking intersections out of the way. In addition to the mimes, Mockus also distributed 350,000 “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” cards that citizens could use to peacefully express approval or disapproval of others’ traffic behaviour.
At first glance, it seemed an absurd way to make traffic safer, and Mockus was ridiculed in the press for pursuing it. But gradually, by making fun of drivers and pedestrians who didn’t follow basic rules and celebrating those who did, the mimes managed to transform the entire traffic culture of the city, successfully infusing Bogotá’s streets with common sense — or, rather, a sense of the commons.
The construction of the urban environment, a duty usually reserved for engineers, architects, developers, and the like, became, under Mockus' mayorship, the responsibility of all urban inhabitants. His programs for Bogotá viewed citizens as political beings who are always already participating in the construction of their city, either with their good or bad attitudes.
“The mayor's genius,” suggests Raymond Fisman, “was in recognizing that writing harsher laws or hiring more gun-toting policemen would be futile when confronted with a law-breaking culture. Instead he enabled Bogotá's citizens to make change themselves.” Or as Mockus himself explains it, “Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules and are sensitized by art, humour, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.” Mockus proved that creativity and humour can work where legal punishment has failed.
Originally published in Beautiful Rising.
အဓိကသီအိုရီ
Part of the genius of the mayor’s program was how it leveraged peer pressure to shift Bogotá’s traffic from a culture of impunity to a culture of courtesy rooted in unspoken rules. The mimes set a new tone, but it was when motorists themselves took up the dramatization of these rules — through “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” cards and other devices — that a new sense of right and wrong, “cool” and “uncool,” was established, changing social behaviour across the board.
အဓိကအခြေခံမူများ
Like so many other politicians who get swept into office with a mandate for radical reform, Mockus could have just settled into business as usual. But he didn’t; instead he used his power to do something audacious. He didn’t just “disarm” the traffic police, a wing of the repressive state apparatus he inherited (which would have been a stunning accomplishment in itself), he re-invented it, flipped it on its head. By turning corrupt state agents into gentle, beguiling civil servants, he created a “constructive vacuum” of state power that gave rise to people power. The lesson: The state won’t “wither away” on its own, it must be creatively dismantled in a way that invites civil society to take responsibility for the self-regulation of society. Mockus understood this and took provocative action to move that vision forward.
Unlike the cops, who depend on coercive force, the mimes’ only power was their capacity to scold or induce laughter. Because of their lack of authority and their vulnerability amidst the traffic, the mimes stood on the same level as other citizens, and thus were able to affect them more powerfully. It was precisely this empathic common ground that allowed the mimes to shift the traffic culture of Bogotá.