Lawmaker and political activist - nudging social change Since its founding in the 19th Century, only a half dozen anthropologists have been elected to public office. Ted was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives, representing a district of approximately 180,000 people in northern Tucson. Southern Arizona's first Clean Election candidate - Ted rejected corporate contributions and collected hundres of $5 contributions to qualify for public campaign financing. During his two terms, he introduced legislation to protect the integrity of the election system, co-authoring a bill that provided Arizona voters with a hand count audit of electronic voting machines. His bills focused on increasing financial support for university and community college students, protecting animal rights, improving energy efficiency and more. Eight-six of Ted's co-sponsored bills became law, a outstanding record for a Democrat in a Republican controlled legislature. for a full view of Ted's political actions, see Policy and Governance Leadership.
Human Rights - scholarship combined with action In the early 80s, human rights was not part of anthropological discourse. To the contrary, the American Anthropological Association had opposed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ted, along with Gilbert Kushner, broke the barrier. Working with Cultural Survival, they organized the first anthropological symposium to deal with this issue since the late 40's. Their work was published as a book, Human Rights and Anthropology (2nd printing). Since then, human rights has become a mainstream topic in anthropology. Downing's critics now publish on human rights.
In 1996, while working with the gathering tribe of Pehuenche (Southern Chile), Ted and Carmen faced an ethical dilemma of either joining in or denouncing serious human rights violations. Ted filed the first of three human rights violation charges against the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank, ultimately leading to the American Anthropological Association supporting his claims ( see Johnston and Turner 1998. Following hearings in Washington, the AAA ruled in favor of the Pehuenche Indians (Chile) and Ted's human rights complaint. Barbara Rose Johnson and Carmen-Garcia have described this saga.
Ted served on the Tucson Civil Rights Coalition throughout the 90s, which succeeded in gaining consent decrees on civil rights conlicts in his local school system. He continues to work and write on this issue and currently services on the Arizona House Judiciary committee where he struggles issues of unauthorized migration, the rights of victims of domestic violence, and scores of other human and civil rights issues.
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Involuntarily displaced peoples - countering poverty creation Over 10 million people a year are forcefully displaced by development projects. These innocent people who are in the way and lose their livelihoods and communities for the sake of development are highly likely to be impoverished by the forced resettlement. For almost twenty years, Ted has worked with a small community of scholars and human rights advocates to identify the impoverishment risks and alieviate the impoverishment. His theoretical contributions to understanding what happens to societies who are forcefully displaced is internationally recognized, especially the distinction he draws between routine and dissonant culture. He helped organize and is President of the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR) the only global network of involuntary resettlement specialists. See Involuntary Displacement Leadership.
Indigenous peoples - empowering people Ted's commitment to indigenous people's reaches back into his late childhood when his mother married George Downing, full blood Cherokee. Ted holds the original family allotment land in NE Oklahoma. Ted and wife, Carmen a Zapotec-Indian from Oaxaca, have worked as a team for many years and in many countries, specializing in training local indigenous peoples in computer, advocacy, evaluation, and research skills. They have focused on the rights of indigenous peoples who find themselves in the path of so-called development projects in Mexico and Guatemala. At the beginning of the age of microcomputers, he used his Fulbright Academic Program Award to train Latin American indigenous peoples to repair and use micro-computers for writing in their own languages. In 2002, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the International Institute for Environment and Development asked Ted and his team (Carmen Garcia-Downing, Jerry Moles and Ian McIntosh) to review the dynamics of the encounters between indigenous peoples and mining interests. Much of their collective knowledge is summarized in Plan B: What's going to happen to my people ? published in Cultural Survival.
As a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, Ted has co-sponsored numerous bills focused on improving the conditions of Arizona Indians.
Poverty alleviation Poverty alleviation is one of Ted's major concerns. In his anthropological fieldwork, he has lived and worked for many years among the poor in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Paraguay/Argentina border, the US/Mexico border, Southern Chile, Kenya, Saudi Arabia. His work has focused on the unintended impoverishment overty created when peoples are involuntarily displaced by development projects. In the Arizona House of Representatives, he has introduced legislation to protect the elderly and disabled from financial exploitation.
Methodological innovator - seeking ways to give powerless people a voice Ted and his wife, Carmen, have developed innovative ways to give peoples with little or no former schooling a voice. Among those are a battery of methdological innovations. For an example, see the method they developed for the mostly illiterate Pehuenche Indians of South America to express their opinions. |
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