poem on deliberative democracy

If you are into current fiction and film from China, or also if you follow other news, you will have encountered the petition office in Beijing, maybe also those of other cities. “I am not Madame Bovary”, the new film based on the novel  我不是潘金莲 by Liu Zhenyun, is about a particular petition. A few days ago, I met representatives from the Beijing office and a few scholars of labor conflicts in China. There was a small symposium at the University of Vienna, convened by the law faculty and the East Asian studies institute. Some presentations were about “deliberative democracy”, 协商民主. It seems to be an important recent development. I am not into labor studies per se, but I translate current poetry, and especially the poetry of migrant workers is certainly very directly related to labor conditions. And this symposium in Vienna was on the day when Austrian news were about another impending general election this year, after the protracted presidential elections last year. So I thought of the following poem. You can also find it on my blog together with another note.

Martin Winter

DELIBERATE DEMOCRACY

everyone wants deliberation
what do workers want
more money
more rights
less accidents
less insecurity
less misery
less discrimination
what do employers
and state agents want
nothing
in comparison
they have everything
only in certain cases
certain uncertain cases
they are very certain
everyone needs deliberation
rather than killing and maiming
each other
china has talked about democracy
very much
at least since 1919
austria too
so let us deliberate
how to give workers
in certain uncertain cases
maybe just a little bit
of deliberation

MW May 2017

Martin Winter <dujuan99@gmail.com>

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