US-Ireland Alliance

Mitchell Scholar Frank McMillan’s work in Belfast

Frank McMillan, Betsy Katz, John Brown Jr.

By Inez McCormack

February 3, 2012

Frank McMillan heard of the work of PPR (Participation and Practice of Rights) through a friend in the States who had previously interned with the organisation. Upon arrival in Belfast as a Mitchell Scholar in 2007, he contacted us and asked if he could be useful in any way. We then met with this modest, gentle young man. For the next 2 years he put his extraordinary mixture of intellectual, organising and creative skills at the service of local disadvantaged communities.

PPR enables marginalised communities and groups to effectively participate in economic and social decision making in order to change and improve the quality of their lives.

There is a growing understanding by “ordinary” people of the connection that exists between economic and social inequality, and democracy. People are increasingly exercising the right to have a say on the conditions that govern their lives.

PPR is contributing to a growing recognition that the ability to participate is integral to deepening democratic practice and to reconnecting economic growth and social progress at the global and the local levels.  Its work is providing effective tools and means by which the marginalised can make their voices heard.

It has received international commendation. Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Human Rights Commissioner, has described the work of the organisation as “…groundbreaking”. 

Frank led and organised (with local leaders) community-based campaigns for changing economic and social conditions in some of the most deprived areas of Belfast which had been at the heart of the conflict. A particularly innovative piece of work was enabling local children to campaign successfully for their local area to be cleaned and maintained through setting indicators on the right to play. He then connected this work with the community campaign for urban redevelopment to change their conditions for the better instead of passing them by, as has been the experience of many urban communities.

This innovative regeneration work integrated policy and practice. It created belief in participation in the most deprived areas and required decision makers to evidence their decisions on both resource and impact. Fundamentally this work requires a change in relationship between decision makers and the marginalised to be based on right and respect.

Frank supported communities in conducting research on the extent of local problems – e.g. failures in public service delivery – and engaging and negotiating with government ministers to bring about sustainable change. He enabled local groups to learn how to produce publications, factsheets, press releases, responses to policies, and use freedom of information requests to support campaigns.

He jointly published, with PPR staff, the first academic article about PPR work on mental health in an American publication at Harvard – “Health & Human Rights”.

When Frank returned to the States he continued to support the work of PPR, connecting with others who are also struggling on how to make the connection between local groups effectively tackling dispossession to an understanding of inclusive democratic practice.

He gave presentations on the work of PPR on panels at the National Forum on the Right to Housing in Washington DC (sponsored by the NLCHP) alongside American groups dealing with newly vacated properties and military bases and in front of grassroots and national organisations from across the country.

It is interesting to hear Frank describe how voices are heard or silenced in decision making in the USA. Working with PPR, he said, provided him with a political analysis for thinking about the importance of participation - particularly of the most vulnerable - in decisions about how resources are allocated and used in an effective way.

He saw his experience in Belfast, working on local issues as critical to his current work as an organiser for the Industrial Areas Foundation. His first experiences meeting with political leaders, civil servants, and even bringing community leaders together came from his experiences at PPR.

Frank’s experience in NI, especially on Girdwood and Shankill, emphasized the importance of common struggle for bringing people together and overcoming division. It puts, for him, the political polarisation in Northern Virginia in perspective. 

He currently works with local leaders to lead, organise and develop strategy for an organisation-wide campaign to hold three major financial institutions accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis in Prince William County, Virginia. He says his first experience thinking through strategy was at PPR and the focus on significant listening and research prior to the beginning of this campaign was learned from PPR.

The campaign won $360,000 in 2011 to fund five new non-profit, HUD-approved housing counselors to help families avoid foreclosure and have begun serious negotiations with two financial institutions for a multi-million dollar reinvestment for predatory lending from these three major institutions. 

Mary Robinson commented at a recent International Conference:

“The absence today of respect for healthy democratic participation is the promise that yesterday’s failures will be repeated tomorrow.”

Frank helped to develop and design a means of effective participation based on dignity and right. These were utilised by the toughest and most deprived communities, such as the Lower Shankill. They were effective in getting practical outcomes but, just as important, in reshaping the decision-making. He has a remarkable capacity to analyse public policy and practice in clear ways that made them usable and accessible by local groups. The ability to connect that thinking with imaginative organising at local level produced, and continues to produce, extraordinary results.

What Frank left behind him in Northern Ireland was enormous warmth and affection for a very talented and very decent young man. He also left behind enduring capacity in the communities in which he worked of their belief in their own abilities to make and measure change. In the States Frank is continuing to enable those who need change to be a real part of making it.  In doing so he is strengthening the practice of democracy.

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Inez McCormack is well known for her political and trade unionist work in Northern Ireland.  She surprisingly has something in common with Margaret Thatcher – she was portrayed by Meryl Streep.   Inez founded and currently advises the PPR (Participation and the Practice of Right) organization in Belfast.  She has contributed this essay on the work of Mitchell Scholar, Frank McMillan.  During his year at Queen’s, Frank volunteered for PPR, and stayed on in Belfast a year after to work there.  HE currently works as a community organizer in Northern Virginia for an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation.  His work focuses on developing local leaders to address social justice in their communities -- like affordable housing, access to health care, and immigration.  Inez’s piece is an example of how many Scholars contribute during their Mitchell year, how they learn from those experiences, apply those experiences in their own careers, and remain connected to the island.