Instead of just being tired from fighting many battles with social and economic conservatism, more and more progressives I’m encountering have become disillusioned with those who ought to be our champions.

There are number of head-scratching events in progressive politics in recent years that tend to sap our energy. In response, we can either cocoon or rebuild. Rebuilding community is the far better choice.

FOOD FOR CYNICISM

Without even describing the litany of right-wing causes of our malaise, here are some left-wing let-downs:

1) Obama is not Jesus and didn’t/couldn’t deliver on really good healthcare. So, we continue to fight harder to protect our system from American privateers while American progressives figure out how much their new president can actually accomplish.

2) The B.C. NDP failed to stop the mean, right-wing Liberal party from winning a third straight election largely because it alienated its base by rejecting its own party policy supporting carbon taxes. In reaching for centrists, the B.C. NDP lost much of its progressive base, who stopped funding, volunteering for, and even voting for, the NDP. Welcome to a third term of abuse after an election with the lowest voter turnout ever.

3) On the Saskatchewan NDP’s website the party leader declares these priorities: “strong business, strong labour, strong government.” Putting business first is disconcerting. Putting government last is no salve.

4) Proportional representation movements across Canada fail to resonate with the masses, in part from corporate media attacks and concerted neglect from mainstream progressive parties.

5) Split electorates in this decade lead to near ties in U.S. presidential elections, and stalemate minority governments in Canada and spurts of stillborn coalitions. But, within days of a minority government election in Britain, two parties form a functioning coalition, with hope for electoral reform. We should not be standing by while politicians form a coalition and pursue electoral reform in the UK when we could mobilize for the same goals. Yet, we do.

POLITICAL ABUSE SYNDROME

American psychologist Bruce Levine wrote on Alternet.org last December about the abuse syndrome that progressives seem to embody. Beaten down by the soft fascism of the corporate-government partnership, interpersonal alienation, consumerism and suburbanization, Canadians, too, seem unable to rise above our humiliation to exercise our democracy and vote out our economic and social abusers.

In his book, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, Paul Rogat Loeb warns against allowing our defeats to push us into a private life, ignoring the public sphere in despair. We cannot subcontract our democratic activism to professional political operatives. Democracy is a muscle that can atrophy. Obama’s healthcare plan is weak, in part, because the millions who mobilized to elect him stopped mobilizing after he was elected, not realizing that the same kind of effort was required for the next four years in order to force Congress to actually implement change.

THE COMMUNITY TONIC

So how do we lift ourselves out of our abuse syndrome? We can take our cue from the hive minds around us: monarch butterflies, bees, ants, starlings – those awesome birds that fly inches from each other in tight formation. If we human beings were able to cooperate to even a fraction of how the hive species cooperate, think what we could accomplish. Yet, our abuse syndrome keeps us from believing that the power of cooperation can defeat the isolation of the consumer individual. It’s so easy to forget the complexity of the social systems we have already created. We built them incrementally, with occasional grand leaps forward (Medicare, CPP). They have been steadily dismantled incrementally as well. And we cower as a people instead of linking arms to regain what we’ve lost.

Beyond recalling the power of human collectivity, we can remember the recent rebirth of the salon movement to fight social decay. We need to re-purpose that positive social movement to embrace those of us who suffer from disillusionment in progressive leaders and institutions. We need to begin by looking to one another.

Instead of retreating to our living rooms, we must invite people into our living rooms to work through the angst of missed expectations. Then we need to throw our hopes and principles into a crucible so we can focus on what matters most. We can’t retreat to the private life; we must be uplifted by the relationships in our private lives! Truly, why belong to a revolution that doesn’t include dancing? When the cynicism beats us down, we need to gather our people together, enrich our souls and our communities, go dancing and build each other up, because, though we might presume so, we are not alone.

We need to build more teddy bear catapults. We need to visit ArtThreat.net regularly to support and take part in artists’ efforts to engage in all things political. We need to write clever, insightful, clear 25-word letters to the editor. We need to follow the Yes Men. Community is the tonic for cynicism and shutting down, that’s for sure. It’s what’s keeping me going.

We really are all in this together – unless we embrace some kind of despairing, free-agent status. And when that happens, we have really lost. It is by restoring each other’s community spirit that we can win.

The above is a version of my commentary piece in the current issue of Our Times, Canada’s independent labour magazine. It was written before the G20 suspension of Canada’s constitution in Toronto.

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I was going to write something quite venomous on Canada Day about the queen’s characterization of Canada, but decided to let it slide. But I can’t:

The Queen said she has witnessed more than half of Canada’s national history and praised what Canada stands for.

“This nation has dedicated itself to being a caring home for its own, a sanctuary for others and an example to the world,” she said.

via CBC News – Canada – Queen calls Canada ‘example to the world’.

It wouldn’t have been so annoying if Canada Day weren’t just days after our constitutions was suspended by the security on acid in Toronto last month.

I’m no monarchist, but this is just gratuitous. I won’t suggest the queen is deluded about the underbelly of Canada. Her job as the hands-off head of state means she has no place commenting on our controversial issues. She’s a cheerleader and a sanctioner of paradigms.

What’s hers?

Well, she’s the Queen of the British Empire, no friend to egalitarianism, social justice or political liberty. Not that she’s a shill for authoritarianism, she’s a symbol of it.

So when she says that we are a caring home for our own, our increasing socio-economic disparities disagree with that, as do the hundreds locked up in Toronto.

When she says we are a sanctuary for others, we need to see if the citizens who generally support providing refuge for American deserters from the Iraq invasion and occupation will insist the government actually permit them to stay.

When she says we are an example to the world, she is absolutely right. We are an example of G8 and G20 leadership. An example of the proper way of putting neoliberal corporate interests in the highest of places in a nation. An example of how the world ought to behave when the masters are in town.

In short, we are an example of a middle power bowing down to the new world order. Democracy, rights, freedom, social justice, economic policies that work for people not global corporate interests are the enemy of the great sucking sound of the rich getting richer and the rest of us seeing dissent and free speech criminalized.

So on our road to reclaiming Canada, let’s dump the monarchy. Because in the end, when the queen says she’s witnessed more than half our nation’s history, she knows what she’s talking about.

And I don’t want to hear from the likes of her anymore.

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But fun is more than just, well, fun and games. Fun is a deeply human experience. And the struggle for fun, for pleasure and for the “right to play,” to quote a certain humanitarian campaign banned by our one-time benevolent Olympic overlords, is a contested ideal. Indeed, many an authoritarian regime has correctly understood that the right to play, the right to freely enjoy oneself can be the basis of deeply subversive process of liberation.  It is the often the basis for communities to come together, and as we all know, the people united, will never be defeated.

Politics & Football: A Long History

The Beautiful Game

As I write this, the most watched sporting tournament in the world is drawing to a close: the FIFA World Cup. 32 teams, representing all the Earth’s continents, with at least one or two solid sides from each, have made the World Cup a far more representative and far more watched sporting event than the Olympics could ever hope to be. From Paraguay to Ghana, the United States to North Korea, the Netherlands to Australia—the World Cup melds together a diversity of cultures rarely meeting on as level a playing field, both literally and metaphorically. Eleven players a side, one ball, ninety minutes: poetry in motion.

It is known as “the beautiful game” as much for the finesse and agility demonstrated by its top talents as for the simplicity with which it is played. Consider that to play a game of football all that is required is a relatively even surface, makeshift goals that can be made out of anything from walls, curbs, fences, rocks and trash and a ball. And even the term “ball” is used loosely in most of the world. Rolled up clothes, fruits, even plastic bottles melted into shape can substitute for a “regulation” ball used in professional competition. Generations of children have perfected this simple craft.

It is for this reason that football is the world’s game; the vast majority of the Earth’s people are overwhelmingly afflicted with that lingering capitalist disease known as poverty. Living in squalor, bats, pads, basketball rims and hockey sticks are a luxury most people will never experience to say nothing of clean drinking water. Football, on the other hand, is a game literally anyone of any economic status can play. Thus, football is often times one of the few outlets, one of the few luxuries, one of the few instances of fun for the world’s desperate majority. It has inspired generations of children in particular, regardless of stature, that this one game can lift them to better things. It is to this end that football has given us events such as The Homeless World Cup and the increasing popularity of women’s football.

It also explains why, increasingly, the world’s best players are emerging from the once “dark” and forgotten corners of the Earth. While we will likely never want for Wayne Rooneys and Cristiano Ronaldos, more and more the likes of Essien, Drogba, Messi, Ji-Sung and Honda are becoming household names. What other sport or even institution can claim to have such a true diversity of representation? Even the celebrated United Nations is dominated by the Security Council which is in turn dominated by a handful of veto-holding states, most of them Western states. As the game has become increasingly international, beamed to the homes and plazas of billions, the level of competition has elevated a once almost exclusively European and South American sport into a global phenomenon.

Socializing Entertainment

While the World Cup occurs only once every four years, much as with the respective continental tournaments (Euro, Africa Cup, Asia Cup etc) the period in between major international gatherings is an almost uninterrupted series of club fixtures. So much so that it has become something of a joke.

Nonetheless, football fans (read as “hooligans” in the American press) have garnered something of a reputation for a crazed obsession with their respective clubs. While it is easy enough to dismiss this as the idle, hollow pursuits of the unwashed masses (bread and circuses, as they say) there is actually a pronounced political dimension to this.

In most of the world, sport is anything but apolitical. For instance, it makes a difference whether one cheers for Celtic or the Rangers. The former were the team of Irish Republicans while the latter those of Protestant Unionists.  Inter Milan, one of Italy’s best known clubs, has had a long history of working class, left-wing support. Hamburg’s FC St. Pauli is a club which has been embraced by the neighbourhood’s working class and counter-culture scene and embodies perhaps the best a “political club” has to offer; “[the] organisation has adopted an outspoken stance against racism, fascism, sexism, and homophobia and has embodied this position in its constitution. Team supporters traditionally participate in demonstrations in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli, including those over squatting or low-income housing, such as the Hafenstraße and Bambule.” Moreover, “the club prides itself on having the largest number of female fans in all of German football. In 2002, advertisements for the men’s magazine Maxim were removed from the team’s stadium, in response to fans’ protests over the adverts’ sexist depictions of women.”

The Politics of FC St. Pauli (Video)

Even major clubs FC Barcelona, for instance, have continued to foster their social roots. “Barca” has had a long-standing policy of not wearing any corporate advertising on their jerseys, having only ever accepted the “sponsorship” of UNICEF. The fact has its origins in the history of the club, which had been composed of supporters of the Second Spanish Republic during the 1930s. On a tour of the US and Mexico during the Civil War in Spain, the players were treated as official ambassadors of the Republican side. Later, during the Francoist regime, Barcelona’s players and supporters earned a often dangerous reputation for being an organization that was willing to speak out and stand up for civil liberties and freedoms in spite of repression on the part of the fascist regime. These were no mere millionaire playboys.

There is a further point worth making, however. Like its arch-rivals, Real Madrid, Barcelona is owned, in part, by its fans. They have representation on the board of the club and no major decision regarding the club’s future is made without their approval. In Germany, all clubs are at least 51% community owned, preventing corporate domination of the game. Similar arrangements are found all over the globe, with communities embracing and defending their treasured sports teams. F.C. United of Manchester, for instance, was founded in 2005 by former supporters of Manchester United in specific opposition to the gross commercialization and corporatization of their team, as well as an increasing sense of alienation from the operation of the club as a result of the new, American, ownership.

There is an implicit recognition in these communities that while football may “only” be a game, it is also an organic part of the greater, social whole. Entertainment is an integral part of the human experience. And in so much as all members of the community are understood to have a right to entertainment and fun, and fan support is viewed as being integral to a club’s overall success, these groups have rightly understood themselves being part of the club itself and the club as part of themselves. These are their teams, and keeping them theirs means ensuring that rich and poor alike have an opportunity catch a live game once in a while. And moreover, to ensure that the club will play a function in the community beyond merely the weekly matches; politics is wedded to sport, not segregated from it.

Reclaiming Fun

As of yesterday, the former “GM Place” is set to become the “Rogers Arena.” We have swapped one corporate slogan for another. The overall state of the Canucks and most every other major professional sports side and league in North America is dreary at best. An ordinary, working family simply cannot afford to attend even a single session of “Canada’s game” in this country. At least not of the professional sort, to which all Canadian youngsters are said to aspire anyway. “We are all Canucks”—bullshit.

The People's Game.

Worse still, these franchises have little actual integration in the communities which they nominally represent. They contribute little and stand for nothing. Which is precisely why North American teams, like the Jets and Grizzlies and Sonics, have no real issue with moving from city to city. The dollar determines whether it will be the Utah or the New Orleans Jazz, Mormon propensity for black music be damned. Nothing else matters: the fan support is cosmetic as the real power is private and corporatized. Communities are merely expected to build multi-million dollar arenas, preferably at the expense of social housing, and like it.

In the grander scheme of things, the fate of professional sports in the world is essentially irrelevant, many would aptly argue. No one is suggesting we shed any tears for those who make millions chasing rubber discs and the like. Yet the fate of our “fun” is a telling reflection of the fate of our overall well being in these societies. Is it any accident in the countries where sports teams are considered community institutions, publically owned and politically active, that their general social welfare situation is in much better shape? Is it not entirely fitting that in a country like Canada where even basic services like education and healthcare are increasingly becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to the majority of people, that things like pro sporting events have likewise become obscene luxuries? The connection seems clear.

I thank you for indulging me in this somewhat banal commentary but I repeat only that all of it has been to say simply that the struggle for a better world is not merely the about “the conquest of bread.” We are no mere machines, requiring only food and sleep to return simply to the daily grind of exploitation and wage slavery. We require beauty, art, song and dance. We require community and opportunities for common, collective, joyous experience. For much of the world, football provides just this and it is why they fight for it and defend it. Much as we ought to.

Related Links:

The Anarchist Soccer Federation

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I can understand the reluctance to change the name of something like that park. The unscientific, but still relevant, Globe and Mail poll has people rejecting the idea 6 to 1.

Vancouver, Washington is thinking of changing its name to Fort Vancouver to re-assert its own identity. That kind of branding exercise is difficult and highly controversial.

But when it comes to other re-branding in our region, it hasn’t been so controversial. Eradicating “Queen Charlotte Islands” for Haida Gwaii and changing the names of the water around here to Salish Sea are less controversial because of relatively less impact of those name changes compared to Stanley Park.

But we also saw a sad and not so ironic example on Canada Day of a sickly outpouring of racism, bigotry and stereotypes during the Stanley Park name change debate. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disgusted.

So the article below suggests some politicians favour going with an informal name change, and I tend to agree.

In the 1980s, I recall people starting to talk about Haida Gwaii and being corrected, but then defending their use of the term with a description of some significant, but generally disregarded BC history. Ultimately, we got some good education and debate about an important issue. Now we happen to have a political name change as well.

Lately, I’ve been corrected by some as I’ve been refusing to acknowledge Myanmar as the new name for Burma because I don’t recognize the junta that changed its name. I was told at various times that I am in no position to confer that status. Nonsense. I am a citizen of the world. I don’t have to be a nation to make that judgement, nor does anyone else.

So as I watched a quarter century of “Haida Gwaii” usage lead to political change, I would like to see some similar political consciousness-raising around the nature of Lord Stanley’s park, and along the way, we can separate the emotional relationships we have with Stanley Cup from the debate.

So I’m going with Xwayxway, pronounced “kwhy-kway” to see if a quarter century from now the kind of Canada Day bigotry we heard last week can evaporate and we can all understand a little bit more about how 96% of BC exists as unceded First Nations land.

At the opening of an aboriginal-themed village site in Stanley Park last month, a native elder suggested renaming the park Xwayxway – pronounced kwhy-kway – which was the name of a native village at the current site of Lumberman’s Arch in the northeastern part of the park.

The concept garnered some support, with some politicians suggesting the park could be known by both names. Ian Campbell, a hereditary chief and councillor with the Squamish First Nation, said he would pursue a formal proposal. And tourism groups said it would be possible to build marketing plans around the new name.

The idea also gained support as a way of acknowledging aboriginal culture and history. In B.C., residents could look to the example of Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. And the Salish Sea is now used as a name of waters also known as the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and the Juan de Fuca Strait.

via No name change for Stanley Park: Stockwell Day – The Globe and Mail.

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But today we’ve seen another fail in the possibility of quality community journalism in BC with the announcement of another shakeout in community papers in BC. Black Press just bought out Glacier Media’s 11 papers and they’ll close the 4 that happen to compete with Black papers in Nelson, PR, 100 Mile and Quesnel.

The performance of its remaining publications should get stronger as the economy improves.

via CBC News – Media – 4 B.C. newspapers shutting down.

I’d venture to say that the performance of Black’s 4 papers that suddenly lose competition will get stronger very soon!

So what’s the prognosis?

Ultimately, what I want is a vibrant free press. A group of media outlets that hold society and its leadership accountable.

Though I haven’t caught up yet to this episode of The Wire, I enjoy that this is flying around Twitter right now: “You know what a healthy newsroom is? It’s a magical place where people argue about everything all the time.”

Where there is a monopoly, like the CanWest stranglehold soon to be weakened in Vancouver, there is less chance of effective journalism. And while competition also leads to bad journalism sometimes as everyone tries to be the first, or nearly the first, to report the death of Gordon Lightfoot while he happened to be getting his teeth cleaned, I’d rather see some healthy competition as the good outweighs the bad, at least in my universe.

But I also read today that The Canadian Press is going to cease to be a non-profit cooperative purveyor of news as 3 media groups are going to now run it as a for-profit business.

And I’m left with some real sadness about the potential for community political dialogue. When community papers now weigh less than the fliers in the middle, it’s time to wonder if quality online outlets can go to press and put a paper in people’s hands. Certainly a place like San Francisco is a geographically tight and politically vibrant enough community for San Francisco Public Press to try creating a hardcopy edition.

In the end, I turn everyone once again to George Monbiot’s advice to aspiring writers: Choose Life! The 6 years of this site certainly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for this fantastic perspective on writing, politics, integrity and improving society. I only hope we can live up to a solid ideal, an ideal that Monbiot wrote about even before the explosion of blog-platform journalism and editorialism.

Because I know it just got harder today in BC and Canada for all of us to enjoy the ideal of a quality press.

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This year’s sea ice meltdown is well ahead of 2007 in loss of both area and thickness. The ice is failing at a record pace, in part, because it is at a record low thickness for the date. This ice is thinning at a record rate because of warm air temperatures above and because of melting from below.

via Daily Kos: Arctic Sea Ice Meltdown Accelerates: DK Greenroots.

See http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2010/060810.html

Here’s what I get from this graph:

• 30 years of general decline
• 2007 really sucked
• 2010 looks like it will be far worse than 2007 and it’s only early July
• Anomalous  years affect the line of best fit and normalize outlier behaviour

What does this mean? Climate change is not a straight line effect, but more logarithmic. Positive feedback loops accelerate the melt. And while everyone who thinks sea ice melting won’t rise ocean levels, that’s still correct. But what missing ocean ice will do is remove the plugs that keep the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers from tumbling into the sea.

When is the tipping point?

When do we realize something’s changed?

When do we think that we actually have to start really changing our lives in a myriad of ways, including cutting down on intercontinental trade that hurts economically vulnerable people, but also increases GHGs? The irony, of course, in international trade is if the northwest passage opens up due to Arctic ice melt, lots of innovators in intercontinental trade are going to want to exploit that new route, thereby exacerbating the problem. Suddenly, Churchill, Manitoba may become a shipping hub over the pole.

But in the end, I’m not really worried about climate breakdown and how it would affect me or my loved ones because so many techno-disciples believe humans are so innovative that someone will develop a superhero app that will save us all just before we cross the brink.

And if it weren’t for the SurvivaBall, I think we would have to get going on some plans here.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau once remarked that “the English people believe itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.” The same can be said of the modern Canadian populace except that even when we are “in-between” governments we are still largely a people living in self-deception. Something has been rotting in the State of Canada for a long, long time.

Toronto Burning?

The events in Toronto over the past weekend have illustrated a number of startling facts. To begin with, the Toronto Police arrested over 900 people. The vast majority of those have been and will be let go, without any charges. It has already become clear that what the Police were doing is “fishing.” They rounded up hundreds of innocent people in an effort to find possibly a handful of guilty individuals. This is a clear violation of rights, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has already suggested that court challenges will be imminent.

Remember that controversial “five meter rule,” passed in secret in the Ontario Legislature, that allowed Police to search anyone within a five meter radius of the G20 security fence, ask for identification, and arrest anyone who resisted? Well, funny story…no such rule existed. The Police lied. As of this writing, they have just admitted that they lied. But it’s okay; they lied to protect us. Without a shred of exaggeration this is the argument that just about every military junta and dictatorship in history has made when “momentarily suspending democracy.” We are suspending your rights to protect you. Protect you from the insidious dangerous “other.”

In Toronto the “other” was the notorious Black Bloc. The Chief of Police, Bill Blair, has said of the Black Bloc that “they came to destroy our city.” You will notice that in much of the media the argument has been advanced that the Black Bloc are foreigners of some sort or another. Either they are Europeans, professional terrorists or worse still…Quebecois (who were specifically targeted by the Police). No God-fearing, lawful, English-speaking Canadian could possibly engage in the sort of actions we saw in Toronto. We represent God and Country, Law and Order, the Crown and Parliament. They represent chaos, “anarchy” and violence.

Ironically enough, the entire idea behind Black Bloc is not exclusion but inclusion. The masks are worn to say, “we are you.” You need only don the black to join a mass that will protect you, will free you, will fight for you and all of us. Nobody complains about the heavily armed, masked Police. A body that in two days has committed far, far more crimes and more egregious crimes than the humble Black Bloc could ever hope to. Remember friends, when the people resist and put their lives and bodies on the line like they did in Toronto they have no mechanism to rely on other than themselves, their friends, their families, and the bonds of solidarity that exist between these groups. When people go into the streets like they did in Toronto, to confront a cabal of men and women who are actively destroying the lives of billions of people around the world, including our own—we do so with love. Love for our sisters and brothers in Toronto as much as in Mali and Nigeria and Thailand and Burma and Columbia and Argentina.

But Jasmin, you say, this one incident. One, unfortunate, weekend where things got out hand for everyone. No, it is not one weekend; it is a pattern of behaviour.

During the Olympics, the same massive security apparatus that was deployed in Toronto was used in Vancouver. Hundreds of cameras, miles and miles of fencing and a billion dollars worth of Police, military and private security guarding a two-week party for the rich and super-rich. The same violations, the same instances of police brutality were reported once again. Much as they were in Vancouver in 1997 at APAC Summit and in 2001 at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Again and again and again the Police and state, protecting the forces of capital, act with impunity, with violence, brutalizing ordinary citizens, outraged at the fate of their democracies.

Days before the G20, CSIS came out and without any sort of evidence whatsoever (that they were able to produce, at least) accused potentially thousands of ordinary citizens of being spies for foreign governments. When the expected storm of controversy erupted over this claim, CSIS furiously attempted backtrack on this claim. So, to what end would they do this? As in Toronto, as in Vancouver, as in Quebec it is to rule by fear, to rule by decree.

Our Local Lords

In BC an incredibly unpopular tax is being advanced despite the protests of the vast majority of British Columbians. The fact that we, as ordinary people, oppose the HST is irrelevant. Who supports it? The governing BC Liberals, the right-wing Fraser Institute and the corporate establishment they both serve. They rule through decree and the brute force of legislative power. The recall campaign that has been launched against members of this government, while popular amongst ordinary people, will have a difficult time toppling any actual MLAs. The rules for launching a successful recall campaign are so steep as to be functionally impossible. As unpopular as the Liberals have become, our system is as such that they are likely to remain in office until 2013, at least.

And if they do, the odds of them losing an actual election are just as shaky a prospect. Because, we must recall, Canada is one of only a handful of “democracies” in the world which continues to use a First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system, instead of some variation of Proportional Representation (PR). Thus, as it happens regularly in this Province in particular, we allow parties to win perhaps 50% of the popular vote and then translate this into 98% of the actual seats in the Legislature and Parliament. And even when an opposition party wins more than 2% of the seats, like the current incarnation of the NDP, they exercise exactly 0% of the actual power in Victoria.

It doesn’t help that when we had a referendum to attempt to change this atrocious system, the party that had historically made electoral reform part of its platform suddenly said nothing. In fact, in practice, they opposed electoral reform. Why? Because the NDP would rather be the perpetual opposition than allow for challenger to emerge on its Left that might actually force this party to stand on principle and ideology rather than an oft quoted rumour that they are not, in fact, the BC Liberals. They have become party to this same system, merely a Janus face of it.

At least in Ottawa there a multiple parties, you say. Often times, agreements are struck between the parties and this represents a consensus of the governed, yes? To answer this we should merely recall the most common refrain that was heard in the media and amongst many citizens when the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals attempted to form a coalition government. It was unconstitutional and illegal, they told us. We do not even understand our own system of government. We do not understand just how warped our “democracy” has become. We see little danger in a government repeatedly suspending parliament when they are in danger of losing power. Perhaps, understandably given our history, we see this merely as the latest in a long series of authoritarian practices which have sullied our “democratic” record.

A History of Violence

Say what you will about our imperialist cousins to the South but at least they had the “common sense” to revolt against the monarchy. Canada began as little more than a corporate holding of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the personal domain of the British crown. Little has changed in nearly a 150 years of history. We are now the personal holding of a number of transnational corporations and Parliament still governs, essentially, by decree. We have symbolic votes every few years and in the meantime we sit with our collective thumbs up our collective anal sphincters.

Yet we somehow have this popular conception of Canada as a benevolent, utopian, northern wonderland. This is a country steeped in blood and violence, against both its own citizens and the peoples of far flung nations.

To begin with, there is the obvious extermination and ongoing persecution of the Native Peoples of “Canada.” Many, quite literally, live in Third World conditions on reserves where there is little or no running water, electricity or most any other basic amenities. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie Canadian establishment is busily attempting to turn their ancestral lands into Golf Courses. And where extermination and exploitation have failed, cooption has been the watchword. Hence, the token Native “themes” during the Olympics, “power-sharing” agreements with certain Nations and the “marketization” of traditional cultures. The veneer of culture is preserved in the form of totem poles and postcards, while every significant feature of their culture is eradicated or banned.

It is no accident of history that the Canadian state attempted to ban the traditional potlatch, in part, because this bizarre habit of sharing things was a clear affront to the capitalist market system which was tightening its grip on the land. Nor is it an accident that the last Residential Schools, an experiment in cultural genocide, remained opened until the late 1980s.

While the Americans openly waged war and genocide against their Native Peoples, Canada did so only marginally more covertly. The effects were largely the same, however.  A similar fate awaited both Chinese and Indo-Canadians, who had been brought over in the thousands to work on the railroads as slave-like labour. The Canadian government actively recruited these people for exploitation and in turn targeted them for discrimination with all manner of racist legislation and policing.

After 9/11 there was a great deal of controversy surrounding Canada’s new anti-terrorism legislation. The controversy was misguided as critics seemed to be under the impression that these impositions on our civil liberties were somehow new. Even a cursory glance at the Canadian approach to civil liberties will demonstrate a history of violations.

The Boer War is generally regarded as Canada’s first “foreign war.” It is also, however, regarded as the first time that an entire nation of peoples, the Boers in this case, had been targeted for internment (i.e. placement in concentration camps). The British Army set up an extensive network of concentration camps, originally “refugee camps,” which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Boer civilians. Predominantly Anglo Canadian soldiers actively participated in these pogroms.

During both World War I and II, the Canadian government set up dozens of internment camps on Canadian soil. Thousands of Austro-Hungarian, German and later Japanese Canadians were interred in these camps, their rights denied, their property confiscated. After the war(s), they were released into a hostile climate, destitute and violated. Apologies and restitutions would not be forthcoming for decades and many are still waiting.

In October of 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to tackle the so-called “October Crisis” in response to the kidnapping of a British trade minister and Quebec cabinet minister by a Quebec sovereignist group calling themselves the “Front de libération du Québec” (FLQ).  During the period in which the Act was invoked, Justice Minister John Turner claimed that 497 people had been arrested, 435 of whom had been released by February of  1971 with no charges, 62 were charged, and 32 had been charged with offenses of a more serious nature. With tanks in the streets of Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, the Canadian state once again went fishing. Hundreds arrested, thousands harassed to capture a handful of suspected terrorists.

Since then, the modern Canadian approach to anti-terrorism has been marked by the outsourcing of torture, the illegal deportation of citizens to foreign prisons and a generally racist and two-tiered approach Canadian citizenship. Gods help you if you are a Canadian of colour stranded abroad. In the meantime, Canada has actively participated in the toppling of democratic regimes (Haiti) and in numerous imperial occupations (primarily Afghanistan, “merely” a supporting role in Iraq).

Canadian Democracy?

This has been a lengthy piece. Much has been skimmed over, still other topics ignored all together. All of this, however, is to make one very simple point: we do not actually live in a functioning, democratic state. We live in an oligarchic state which engages in a ritualized, symbolic process of electioneering once every few years, giving its citizens the illusions of democratic norms and actual citizen power. In practice, as the current government has shown, we have a very tenuous grip on anything remotely “democratic” in this country.

There is little to be said, I believe, for Canadian democracy. When speaking of Canadian politics it is more proper to speak of a Canadian regime, one that has for over a hundred years been involved in a war against its own citizens, and the citizens of foreign nations, often as a hand-maiden to still more powerful empires.

Events like the ones which took place in Toronto over the past weekend are a far more accurate representation of what people power looks like: necessarily in conflict with the state in capital. We are free only when we oppose, confront and eradicate these institutions and systems. The state and capitalism do not represent us, they do no protect us: they enslave us. And the institution of slavery, as French activist and author Yves Fremion has written, is perhaps unique in history in that it seemingly exists for no other reason than to be abolished.

• July 1, 2010 -- A Better World is Needed: The oh-so ‘Canadian’ style of dissent (8)
• June 26, 2010 -- Protecting the people elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who want them to do their work (3)

That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around for bringing it back further entrenched my concern with the lengths they would go to disenfranchise human beings further.

So I was very happy to see that a modicum of democracy was able to steer a BC legislative committee stacked with provincial neoliberals–a modicum, supported by intense organizing efforts. Though I wouldn’t put it past this government to implement the municipal corporate vote despite the committee report. Remember the impending HST?

In looking at the details of the committee’s report [Report of the Local Government Elections Task Force (PDF 638KB)], I was thrilled to see a few things.

• 6,039 petition signatures for the corporate vote submitted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business

I can’t be surprised they built a petition. I am happy to see they could only find 6,039 future corporate voters and their lackeys in the whole province of 4.2 million people to sign it.

• 2,354 member Facebook page against the corporate vote

Sure, it’s easy to build a Facebook group to push for something. But really it’s a huge effort to build a group and promote it to get this many people signing up in a short period of time. Not every movement can have the nation-wide hatred of abused prorogation behind it.

• 71% of the 920 written submissions commented on the corporate vote, with campaign finance being the topic of next greatest interest.  Many submissions touched on a wide range of other election‐related topics – from alternative voting systems to the date of the vote to elected officials’ accountability. The following identifies the general trends in those 920 written submissions:

1. Corporate vote – total: 223 for; 428 against
2. Local governments:  8 for; 23 against
3. Organizations:  11 for; 29 against
4. Individuals:  204 for; 376 against

I was especially thrilled to see an almost 2:1 ratio of submissions opposing the corporate vote to supporting it, with almost 3/4 of all submissions addressing it.

The following highlight a number of positive recommendations. Not to say that they aren’t controversial in themselves, but the fact that the elements and structure of our democracy are on the table is encouraging. I wonder if whichever of these changes come into force before the next municipal election will have an effect on what the public tolerates in other levels of government.

The report makes 31 recommendations for improvements to local elections to: ensure accountability; enhance transparency; strengthen compliance and enforcement; increase accessibility; and expand education and advice.

Key recommendations include:

* Establish expense limits for all campaign participants (e.g. electors, elector organizations and third party advertisers)

* Regulate third party advertisers, requiring them to register and disclose expenses and contributions

* Ban anonymous contributions

* Require sponsorship information on all election advertising

* Shorten the time for filing campaign finance disclosure statements to 90 days post election

* Establish a central role for Elections BC in enforcement of campaign finance rules and in making campaign finance disclosure statements electronically accessible

* Establish a separate Act for campaign finance rules in local elections

The Task Force recommends a four-year term of office to provide local governments more time to plan and implement their vision, and to reduce the potential for voter fatigue over time. It also recommends no general contribution limits, given proposed expense limits and the need to ensure that all affected by local government decisions can participate in local elections discourse

While it also recommends no corporate vote, the Task Force does recommend that UBCM, the Province and business groups work together to recognize the concerns expressed to the Task Force and to encourage effective local ways to engage with business, further strong relationships and foster a competitive business climate.

via Local Government Elections Task Force – Terms of Reference.

• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)
• April 27, 2009 -- No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV! (0)

Sitting here in Burnaby, it’s interesting observing the protests in Toronto on television or through social media.  Were I in Toronto, I would have been on the streets.  It would have been terrifying.  But it would have been liberating.

Yes, the protests and actions smashed some windows and burned some police cars.  Yes, the black bloc tactic was employed.  Yes, there were thousands in the streets.  But there’s a reason for this.  The people who are meeting in the downtown core of Toronto as part of the G8 and G20 are our “leaders,” our “politicians,” and they are the people who, according to the popular mythology, we have elected to do the peoples’ work.

But they’re not doing that work.  And the people are rightfully unhappy.  And they want to protest this lack of work.  And they do. And the police put on their riot gear and pick up their batons and pepper spray and beat back the people in the streets.  Why? They’re “protecting” the people in the meeting from the people in the streets.

The protesters in the streets of Toronto, of Vancouver, of Genoa, of Buenos Aires, of Santiago, of Johannesburg, and of so many other cities and towns and places around the world are demanding a different world.  And they’re demanding a different world, a better world, in the only way that might be left.

Emma Goldman famously said, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  So many of the people in the streets of Toronto today were there because they voted for a difference.  And no matter who was in power, promising that difference, it has yet to come.

The media argue that the protesters in the streets have resorted to “violence.”  Smashing a window is not violence.  It is destruction of property, certainly, but not violence.  And the property being destroyed when someone smashes a window of a bank or a transnational corporation is but one manifestation of an inherently violent system, capitalism, which requires subjugation and exploited labour and alienation.  The window of a bank is one manifestation of a system with forcibly enclosed public spaces, which removed people from lands and removes the product of peoples’ work from their own control merely because they must work to survive.

The smashing of a window is an act of freedom, as it smashes the manifestation of the violent system and strikes at its heart.

And our “leaders,” the politicians, know the violence of the system and its inherent contradictions.  The capitalistic desire to profit more created the commercial ‘products’ and predatory lending and so forth that caused the economic crises that hurt so many.  The crises that the G8/G20 meetings are struggling to address, in order to restabilize capitalism.

And the people don’t want this.  They want their education system to be free and of high quality.  They want public health care. They want equality and freedom.  This is the peoples’ work, and it is what so many of us vote for, when we are permitted to vote.

But our “leaders” aren’t doing this work.  And so the people are in the streets, protesting.

And the fences go up, and the police march in, and the boots come down, to protect the people who have been elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who elected them.  Who want them to do their work.

Friends, we have a choice.  We can continue to hope that the people that we vote for will actually do the work that we want them to do.  Or we can do it ourselves.

I’ll see you in the streets.

• July 1, 2010 -- A Better World is Needed: The oh-so ‘Canadian’ style of dissent (8)
• June 30, 2010 -- Canadian Authoritarianism: Then and Now (10)

An interesting thing happened a few years ago: green got big. Saving the environment became all the rage in even the most conservative of quarters (i.e. the G8). Reducing emissions, tackling climate change, encouraging the use of alternative energies—a new day had truly dawned for humanity. While certain intellectually challenged sectors of the American Right, in particular, continued to maintain that this whole “climate change,” mercury in our drinking water, destruction of the Amazon Rainforest thing was all part of some elaborate communist plot, most of the international community agreed that it was, genuinely, a serious issue; one that posed a serious threat to the welfare of all people on this Earth.

And then the global economy collapsed. Not because of this communist plot, mind you, but because that’s what capitalism does. It collapses, on a regular basis. If we just take a look at the 20^th century, for instance, we see major economic downturns in 1901, 1907, 1910-11, 1929 (you know, the big one), 1973, and most of the 1980s and 1990s in rotating fashion across the US, Europe, Russia and Japan. The 21^st century began with the collapse of the so called “dot-com bubble” which was followed by a wave of corporate scandals of fairly epic proportions (Enron, WorldCom, Tycho etc). The 2000s had been shaky at the best of times, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the floor well and truly gave out. As of 2010, the crisis has yet to be subdued and a number of advanced capitalist countries stand on the brink of collapse (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain—the so called PIGS economies).

So, capitalism, which had always been a failure for the working and impoverished peoples of the world (i.e. the vast majority of humanity), once again had an explosive bowel movement. Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t merely a few billion people that would suffer as a result—it might be the entire population of the planet, as a whole. Suddenly, climate change as an issue disappeared. The focus, once again, became saving the market from itself. Banks needed be bailed out, oil companies needed to be given more favourable tax breaks and regulations needed to be scrapped for all our fellow corporate “citizens.”

In one, sweeping moment even the illusion of “hope” in the ability of the capitalist system to reform itself, to pause, to reflect, to attempt to save that which sustains life itself…washed away. The environment would have to wait. The market was the entity which needed saving. The very thing that had brought the Earth and humanity to the brink (and, arguably, well past the brink) of annihilation was to be saved. Trillions of dollars would be invested in preserving an economic and political system which had failed like clockwork for every generation since its inception; both in daily practice and in seismic episodes, experienced by the entirety of the globe at once. Capitalism, the single most destructive force in history would have to be saved, they told us.

The idea that “market-incentives” could be used to save the environment, to resolve the problem of climate change was quickly unmasked as farcical in one, simple gesture. Presented with a choice between saving humanity itself or preserving capitalism—the world’s leaders, both political and corporate, chose capitalism. The monolith would be resurrected once more.

Another irrelevant gathering of these global elites, these walking criminal syndicates is set to take place in Toronto over the next few days. We have been told that the environment is not a priority, nor are social issues such as maternal health and women’s rights or poverty or education. The priority is “stabilizing the world’s financial system(s).” The stone heads, as it were. No expense will be spared to protect these dignitaries as they meet to carve up the rotting carcass of a planet in its dying throes.

The billion dollar security budget, the razor wire, the surveillance apparatus, the riot police and private security forces—these are merely the symptoms of a rot far, far deeper. Capitalism is a cancer and our species seems to have developed a terminal case thereof. Our leaders and our states have failed and failed and failed again to act in the face of certain environmental and social collapse if this system is allowed to continue on unabated. We, ordinary people, must organize, must oppose, must resist, must challenge, must seek to undo this system like every generation before us has. Except unlike they, we must do so with the knowledge that if we fail to act now it may very well be the last opportunity anyone will ever have to save what remains of this planet.

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The Fraser Institute’s latest report is a shining beacon of vagueness and generalities, touting their usual stance that the holi polloi have been misguided, and led down the path to ruin and destruction by the evil anti-HST movement.

Amongst the vast piles of heifer-dust in the report, Gordo’s lapdogs assert the following points, ad nauseam:

• HST will create financial gains for poorer families
• HST does NOT shift the burden of tax onto the individual when it is taken off of corporations, because reductions in personal income tax will outweigh the at-the-till spending
• HST is a fair and more effective manner of taxation than the existing PST system, which forces businesses to pass on costs to the consumer through reductions in rate of ROI/low wages/high pricing.
• Precedent set by provinces which instituted HST taxation (NFLD/NS/NB) show that the competitive nature of the HST directly related to cost reductions in form of lower pricing. Sayeth Niels Veldhuis:

Our study explains why reductions in income taxes must be considered along side the increase in sales taxes in order to get an accurate picture of the impact of HST on British Columbians. Overall, the income tax reductions significantly mitigate the effect of the HST, in a relatively minor increase in the total tax bill for the average BC family.

They then go on to explain that the HST is a gentle tax on consumption, and that the government will use lube when they gently penetrate our collective wallets for a piddly $410M over the next 12 months.

If you just drink this tasty purple Kool-Aid, gentle citizen, you’ll see that the HST is good for you….

So, why is it then, that Stats Can is painting the HST as more of a violent financial raping, than a romantic encounter?

• Stats Can’s HST analysis anticipates that the provincial government will be hauling in $1.5B over the next 12 months.
• The Statistics Canada report allowed for increases to personal tax credit, tax rebates and incentives, costs to business.
• The very people that the Fraser Institute claims will be least harmed  (low income/elderly etc.) are singled out in the Stats Can report as people who will be hit hardest.

Methinks that Ye Olde Fraser Institute is trying to get British Columbians to close their eyes, plug their noses, and open their mouths so they can cram a heapin’ helpin’ of HST flavoured cod swallop down our collective throats.  They are asking us to believe that after the miracle tax is initiated, retailers will leap about as in Wal*Mart commercials, slashing prices willy-nilly! Employers will toss extra money at us! What is good for corporations is good for all of us! The evil dragon of Personal Income Tax will be slayed! British Columbia will be a veritable utopia! Hurray for the wonderful world of trickle down theory! Whee!

I wonder why it is that I’m so hesitant to chug my Kool Aid?

The HST is wonderful… if you’re a large corporation. No more pesky PST tacking on 7% more than you’d pay in AB or other HST provinces! Decreases cost of machinery! Creates investments! Easier tax reporting! Yet, how often is something that favours big business going to benefit John and Jane Public?

The HST now lays a hefty weight on tax payers, because corporations are no longer going to be kicking in their portion. We are now tithing that missing chunk of dough. I fail to see evidence in the Fraser Institute report that actually depicts HOW the little guy is going to save these fabled truckloads of money. Exactly what kind of personal income tax cuts will we be enjoying so that we no longer feel violated when we’re forced to cough up an additional 7% out of pocket when eating out, getting our hair cut, paying the cable bill, jumping on a plane or buying a house? Who is going to ensure that employers – having realized substantial savings – show us the money? I’m skeptical that my ever rising grocery bill is suddenly going to take a dip because the grocer is feeling the love.

I’ll bet the government won’t even bother to use lube.

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I take issue with the the city’s PR claims of sustainability, livability, an urban sanctuary and our awareness of our impact on nature.

I don’t care what kind of international awards we get for livability based on whatever contrived cosmopolitan criteria. We have a homeless crisis, an affordable housing crisis, an irrational worship of cars, a defunding of transit and green living alternatives, a glaring lack of useful green space on the east side, fervent disdain for pedestrians and people on bikes and a glaring lack of the word “upscale” in the description of how we’ve gentrified industrial land into “beautiful modern upscale neighbourhoods” just like Shanghai, as if they’re a model to emulate. How much does it cost to buy on Concord Pacific lands or the Olympic Village?

Our greenwashing civic spin is reaching across the Pacific Ocean to a degree that we should be watching more carefully.

Vancouver Pavilion Experience

The Vancouver Pavilion introduces the communities, the people and the ideas that earned Vancouver the reputation as the most livable city. Vancouver, like Shanghai, transformed industrial land into beautiful modern neighbourhoods between hosting Expo in 1986 and the Winter Olympics in 2010. The name “Urban Sanctuary” reflects the way the city enjoys nature and is aware of its impact on nature.

Vancouver warmly welcomes you to visit our small pavilion with big ideas about modern wood design and sustainable, livable communities.

via Blog | Open Dialogue – City of Vancouver.

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Unions began by people focussing their political will. Our future lies in reinvigorating this social will to action. We have the capacity to engage our communities, help people see their interconnectedness, and motivate responsible planning for a sustainable future.

The State of the Unions

Unfortunately, however, despite the existence of refreshing exceptions, the union movement is under profound stress due to the following reasons:

* Union density has been declining for over a generation;

* Governments and corporations have declared unions a critical enemy to their neo-liberal agenda, which aims to minimize the role of the state – our public institutions and elected governments – and maximize the role of private business;

* Demographic shifts indicate that many of our core activist members will retire from their jobs and our unions, taking with them core activist wisdom;

* New members replacing retiring workers are open to the superficial charms of neo-liberal messages since they have been raised in an era where cuts to social programs are the norm and the social legitimacy of unions has been under assault;

* Because the fabric of society is no longer so infused with unionism, union members do not necessarily fully know what unions are for or how they need to accomplish their goals, and;

* We too often contract out our political activism, letting organizations (political parties, unions and other NGOs) do the political work for us after we contribute donations or dues to the cause. This reduces our willingness and capacity to actually practice democracy.

The State of the World

Having watched the failure of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, I am now asking: How are we going to re-frame our local, national and international economies to put human beings first, ahead of corporate profiteering – all to avert climate breakdown?

A destabilizing global economy, peak oil, and the ecological consequences of tar sands exploitation threaten to change the economic playing field. Pushers of privatization, deregulation, regressive taxes, and de-funding government services essentially assert individual values over community values and action. This challenges our solidarity.

Unions embrace individualism as well when they raid each other for relative power gains in a zero-sum context, instead of organizing the unorganized and mobilizing members for political action. Conservatives attack our solidarity from the outside while we undermine it and our bargaining power from the inside.

So, in this context, the union movement can no longer take for granted an established, respected place in society from which to act. It must re-engage with its current and new members on a core philosophical level to help build a foundation of social, economic and political values.

But how do we do that in a rapidly changing world? We embrace the new world.

Systems of organizing and activism are changing rapidly. After the prime minister literally phoned in his second parliamentary proroguement in December, a grad student in Edmonton started the “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” Facebook group. It collected 225,000 members within weeks, and it led to nation-wide rallies in late January this year. This surprised party politicians. Left far behind the crest of that organizing wave, many of them merely showed up at rallies as citizens. After Parliament resumed, the group transformed itself into Canadians Advocating Political Participation. While using Facebook, Twitter and text message mobilization (a new feature of U2 concerts, even) is no panacea, the use so far of this social media has demonstrated that there are new ways of directly mobilizing political sentiment. Unions need to recognize that the ground is fertile for facilitating political action among their members, their families and communities. Mobilization is still happening, just not inside traditional organizations. We need to join that movement.

At the same time, money works differently now, and we should take advantage of that. Now that corporate and union donations are no longer allowed in federal politics, unions can devote resources to educating and politicizing their members so they can directly engage in politics – with their money and their time. In the end, this will also enrich members’ relationships with their unions, creating stronger organizations.

Unions can also help frame climate dialogue. Activists young and older are increasingly alarmed at the lack of meaningful political action being taken to avert climate breakdown. They don’t necessarily see political parties as organizations that are progressive enough, or powerful enough, to make a difference. Unions have a valuable opportunity to sponsor a dialogue on ecological and climate issues. Some have already taken up this challenge. More than just defining and debating the scope of green jobs, unions can re-establish their historical place as community mobilizing organizations leading a new vision for how we will design our communities, in this case to avoid climate crisis.

Our past really is our future. The labour movement’s origins in the coalescing of political will into a movement – the union movement – is the very kind of union mobilization and activism we need in the 21st century. We must re-establish our place in socially progressive communities. We have been missed and we need to take part again.

The above is from my commentary piece in the current issue of Our Times, Canada’s independent labour magazine.

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As Toronto prepares to host the G20 Summit in a few days time, the media has been abuzz once more with the salacious prospect of street clashes between black-clad anarchists and riot police. The notorious “Black Bloc” has been presented as some sort of international, traveling cabal of professional provocateurs who have migrated, en masse, from the streets of Athens to the streets of Vancouver and now Toronto. As the mainstream media cannot even present a semblance of balanced coverage of the ongoing apartheid regime in occupied Palestine, or the occupation of Afghanistan or Iraq, it seems pointless to hold our breath for anything akin to a rational analysis of the growing anarchist movement across the globe; what they stand for, what they want. As such, this task falls to one such as I.

To that end, some brief remarks:

On Understanding

A frequent refrain from the uninformed, upon hearing of an anarchist gathering or a rally is twofold: who are these lunatics who want to bring in a dog-eat-dog world of chaos and violence? And secondly, I thought anarchists were against organization? How could they possibly organize anything? These aren’t real anarchists; real anarchists are long bearded savages who speak in tongues. This statement is usually followed by a smug cacophony of bellicose laughter.

While these are all very much nuanced observations they all suffer from one, significant, collective flaw: they’re absolutely moronic. One can certainly forgive ignorance of a given political phenomenon, but to use one’s ignorance as a truncheon and to, in turn, assert this ignorance as fact (i.e. “real anarchists don’t organize anything, real anarchists eat children and raw chicken livers!”) is inexcusable. Then again, this is the general “style” of modern media culture as a whole so one need hardly be surprised. Nor is this the first time that anarchists have been the victims of drummed up media hysterias—the 1890s, 1920s and 1930s were noted for their “Red Scares” which included, of course, the spectre of the (usually European/foreign) anarchist in North America in particular.

Over a hundred years have passed since that original hysterical onslaught, and yet few in the media have sought fit to do much research beyond the crass stereotypes that were established during that Gilded Age. As anarchist ideas and ideals are finding an ever wider audience, these “analysts” and “reporters” continue to rely on hackneyed caricatures and straw-men arguments to buttress their various accounts. Lost in this repetitive drone, however, is the simple truth that one must understand before they can judge, one way or another.

Whether one agrees, for instance, with the policy of the current BC government on, say, public education or on the proposed Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), one must understand their arguments on their own terms. What do the Liberals think they are accomplishing? What do they view as their own objectives and their own principles? Only then can we begin to debate whether or not these are sound or unsound public policies. The same method, however, applies to any political phenomenon—from establishment political parties to Islamic fundamentalist militias to, yes, even the anarchist movement.

Understanding Anarchism

So, what do anarchists believe themselves?

At this juncture I could quote any number of rather eloquent anarchist theorists to explain the anarchist creed to the uninitiated but for the sake of brevity let me use merely the words of the anthropologist David Graeber, who describes the anarchist philosophy as being one which simply insists on “autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, [and] direct democracy.” The term anarchism itself comes from the Greek anarchos, meaning “without rulers.” Thus, when anarchists speak of anarchy they do not speak of chaos or anomie as is popularly understood but rather of a social order based on true freedom and mutual respect, not authority and hierarchy. The famous circle-A symbol often associated with the movement signifies precisely this: “anarchy is order” as Proudhon put it.

In short, anarchists emphasize independent, voluntary decision making, organized directly by individuals and communities themselves for the common benefit of all therein, with power being devolved to the lowest possible atom of these societies so that each may have a say in directing their own life, and the direction of their broader community. In light of all this, anarchists are avowed anti-capitalists and anti-statists—viewing both systems as fundamentally authoritarian and exploitative.

As such, anarchists have historically been concerned far more with practice than they have been with any supposed ideological orthodoxy. Anarchist methods of organization can be seen in everything from the indigenous band council of the Americas to the reclaimed factories movement in Argentina. Most of the contemporary anti-globalization movement has been profoundly influenced by anarchist ideas and tactics even if only a fraction of the membership might overtly identify as “anarchist” as such. We’re not the jealous type: what we care about is results, not labels. Hence the motto: “anarchists make better lovers!”

Prominent historical and contemporary anarchists have included the likes of Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Emiliano Zapata, Lucy Parsons, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, George Woodcock and many others. Individuals such as Helen Keller and Mahatma Gandhi, amongst other notable figures, never expressed themselves as anarchists, per se, but their actions and own ideas closely followed the shape of the anarchist philosophical and practical framework, leading many anarchists to embrace them as their own. Aside from these figures, however, anarchists come from all walks of life and in every shape, size, colour and temperament: we are organizers and activists, workers and students, retired and unemployed, artists and academics, lovers and fighters.

Anarchist Terrorism?

It is usually at this point that someone will scoff and proceed to inform us all how, “no, no, what anarchism is really about is terrorism—blowing stuff up! Also possibly mohawks and listening to the Sex Pistols. But mostly terrorism!”

To begin with, there are many anarchists who are, in fact, pacifists and the current has a long-standing tradition within the movement: Leo Tolstoy comes to mind as a prominent example. Nonetheless, there have been many anarchists who have refused to disavow themselves from violence. So, a few points need to be made on this subject.

First, the idea that anarchism is a violent ideology or the most violent ideology out there is a bare faced lie. If we were to take all the people who have ever been, even accidentally, killed by anarchists as compared to the number of people killed every year by nominally democratic states such Canada (to say nothing of the US or Israel!) there would be no comparison whatsoever. This is, furthermore, to say nothing of the violence committed every day by corporations and capitalists around the world. The BP disaster alone has done more damage to the Earth and all its inhabitants over the past month than any anarchist has, could ever have or have wanted to. In short, the capitalist and statist system that dominates our world currently is violent and coercive by its very nature. The same simply cannot be said of anarchism.

It is true that anarchists have, however, participated in violent revolutions and insurrections and it is further true that anarchists have also committed acts of terrorism (usually assassinations of monarchs, Presidents and the sort) in which, unfortunately, innocents have also been hurt and killed. The debate about the use of violence to attain ones ends has been a divisive issue within the movement (and outside of it!). Nonetheless, almost without exception, the major theorists and proponents of anarchism have agreed that individual acts of terrorism, the so called “propaganda of the deed,” accomplishes little. What is necessary is social revolution, mass movement mobilization—not vanguards of enlightened, sacrificial martyrs who will “inspire” the masses through bold acts of heroism and/or stupidity.

As many revolutionaries recognized even during the 19^th century, killing a single monarch or a single capitalist meant little when the issue was not the individuals but the system as a whole. It is why when one looks beyond the bold headlines of young Greeks smashing windows and battling police, we see a movement that has spent decades building an infrastructure of social change: social centers that teach people valuable life skills, including language classes for migrants, libraries, cafes, restaurants, free schools, free medical clinics and most every other resource a functioning community needs. These are the means by which we build “the new society within the shell of the old.”

It is not to say, as many tepid liberal commentators would have us believe, that violence is inherently evil. No, violence is a tool and the critical question is the manner in which it is marshalled. As a local Vancouver activist said during her speech in the post-Olympic “riot” navel gazing, how many of the people who cursed The Bay window smashers also spent their nights toasting and celebrating the Zapatistas? Why is a militant indigenous movement, famous for their identity-concealing masks, celebrated for their resistance to the Mexican state but Canadian or American or Greek anarchists, employing very similar tactics (in fact, far more “peaceful”), shunned? Why is Marcos a romantic icon, but the Black Bloc a spectre of evil? Like the Zapatista mask the Black Bloc is merely a tactic, above all, to protect fellow demonstrators and grows out of a legacy and history of police and state repression. Recent events have done little to dispel the idea that the state, even one as supposedly benevolent as the Canadian one, actively plots against its citizenry. The mask is as much a self-defense mechanism as it is, as with the Zapatistas, a sign of solidarity.

In any case, it is not to say that we cannot disagree on the need or efficacy of violence—quite the contrary, as my preceding comments on the history of this debate should have hopefully illustrated by now.  But let us be honest, as well. The great evils of the modern world (the state and capital) do not, have not and will not accept change. The necessary changes that are required, for instance, to resolve social inequality, to resolve global corporate exploitation, will not be acquiesced to by the ruling classes.

Ask the indigenous peoples of the Americans how their governments dealt with their calls for autonomy. Ask the Argentines or the Chileans how their military juntas dealt with attempts at peaceful change. Ask the Thais how their government dealt with calls for free and fair elections. Ask the Palestinians about Israel’s benevolence.  Ask the Nigerians how BP and Shell have dealt with their calls for a greater share of their country’s oil wealth. Ask the Bolivians how Bechtel dealt with their calls for a greater share of their country’s gas and mineral wealth. Ask any of the world’s peoples, really, how their “elected” state representatives, or unelected corporate and capitalist overlords have dealt with their calls for a better world.

None of this is to suggest that violence, itself, will usher in a better world. In fact, used improperly it will surely bring misery to all involved. What is needed is social mobilization, first and foremost. Only at the point at which such a movement exists (i.e. Bolivia, Thailand…Greece?) does the notion of violence become a legitimate means by which power can be transferred from the few to the many, and divided democratically and directly. Until then, it remains largely useless and dangerous. This conclusion has been one repeated through the ages by almost every serious anarchist theorist who has wrestled with the question of true, radical social change.

Few movements begin violently, and few grow by means of violence. In fact, violence at this juncture predictably stifles growth. But, inevitably, serious revolutionary movements must confront the reality that their opposition will not cede the reins of power quietly. As everyone from George Washington to Comandante Marcos has agreed it is just and reasonable, in the course of struggling for a more equitable order, wherein the “governors” have ceased to enjoyed the confidence and support of the “governed” for the latter to rebel against the former—by any means necessary.

Demanding the Impossible

There is one last objection generally raised against the social order which anarchists advocate. The refrain usually goes something like this: it’s a nice idea but it’ll never work. Human nature won’t allow it. It’s usually the sort of remark made by people who fancied themselves sometime “radicals” but are today little more than office pencil pushers. To justify the betrayal of their own ideals, they seek to implicate you in a broader culture of indifference and apathy.

Emma Goldman spoke to this sentiment in her famed essay What is Anarchy? when she remarked: “Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.” I find no better or more apt words to counter this supposed objection.

We would do well to remember that women, for instance, were never meant to get the vote. Or that the American slaves were never meant to be freed. That apartheid in South Africa would never be abolished, or that the colonialism more broadly would never leave the continent. Education and healthcare were never meant to be free. And workers were never meant to have an eight hour day or the right organize unions. All this and much more were once said to be “impossible.” It was often times made seemingly impossible by the use of great violence on the part of Presidents, generals and tycoons alike. The list of excuses used to permit injustice to continue are long and varied. To paraphrase a famous dictum, however, we might well remark that history is the record of the impossible made real. So it is with us today, those still fighting, still resisting, still organizing.

Some might well argue that “autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, [and] direct democracy” are an altogether bad idea and not worth pursuing in the first place. Those concerns, however, do not concern us. We no more acknowledge this as a valid argument than those who did and do suggest in many parts of the world today that some peoples are inherently inferior to others, or that some peoples should not be allowed the right to self-determination. These are the slavers and tin-pot dictators of the world and their perspectives are relevant only in so much as they need to be abolished from the face of the Earth and replaced with opportunity and ability for every woman, man and child to live according to their heart’s desires.

In short, we demand only the world.

Conclusion

When the billion dollar circus comes through Toronto, much as it came through Vancouver, there is going to be opposition to it. Had Francis Fukuyama been right, the events we have seen transpire in Athens, Geneva, Seattle, Quebec City, and to a far lesser extent Vancouver and soon Toronto would never have occurred. As he had promised us, the end of history had arrived. Capitalism and the liberal democratic state had triumphed and would shortly homogenize the entirety of the globe. Since then, the global capitalist economy has continued to fail the vast majority of the world’s population, beyond even just this most recent of crises, and yet has continued to be propped up by the coercive arm of the state.

Those black-clad folks in the streets, “kids” as some like to call them though their ages run the line from young to old, are our better selves reflected and resisting. They are what we ought to be. They are what we can be. They are a spectre of a much broader movement, a movement not afraid to defend itself, but above all committed to a better world and actively involved in creating as we speak. They do not make apologies for feeding the hungry any more than they do for confronting those who ensure that these same conditions of hunger, starvation and poverty continue unabated.

Anarchism is sometimes referred to as the “the beautiful idea.” I am of like mind. There is an unbridling beauty in the passion of those who have for hundreds of years continued a struggle against some of the most totalizing forces in history. Those willing can easily discover this beauty but doing so requires an open mind and an open heart—a dangerous proposition for those merchants of closed minds and numbed hearts. Hence the misinformation, hence the caricatures, hence the deception.

I invite you, however, to try to understand us on our own terms and ask yourself then we’re quite the terror we are made out to be. Ask yourself from whom you have more to fear: those inviting you to participate in creation of a world in which we abolish fear, hunger and inequality? Or those who in the name of “protecting” you turn your cities and homes into open-air prisons, who wine and dine while billions live in abject poverty because of their decisions, who murder innocents in the name of democracy but move at every turn to stifle and silence dissent?

See you in the streets, friends.       

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So now the task is to pick out a list of ideological contenders for the BC Conservative Party. Their policies are here including their tax policy, elevated in stature during these exciting anti-HST days.

We all know right wing people. We all know Liberal supporters who have to hold their noses when they learn of the latest anti-human, anti-social slash combined with a tax cut to rich people or corporations, all the while selling out provincial economic interests in exchange for global neoliberal races to the bottom. They really need an opportunity to see if the BC Conservatives actually would offer a choice that would keep them from vomiting.

So think of all the current BC Liberal MLAs, the former MLAs, the candidates who lost, those not afraid to share their ideologies, those who aren’t afraid to mention their federal party affiliation, those NDP members/MLAs/candidates who aren’t really all that left wing at all when it comes down to the issues.

When you do that, you may end up with a dozen or more without much effort, likely including the 7 or so at the top of the hit list of the recall campaigners who will be making solid use of the anti-HST petitions to force some by-elections and destroy this provincial government.

And in an era when majority governments have lost much/most of their legitimacy, the provincial 2013 election will not be so easy, especially with voter apathy rising as voter turnout dipped below 50% in 2009.

So when you land on some contenders, send them to the Conservatives in email or Twitter or even Facebook if you haven’t quit yet. I’m sure they’d love to hear you’re thinking of them!

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This changes everything.

HST opponents can email MLA Lekstrom to congratulate him at blair.lekstrom.mla@leg.bc.ca and while we’re at it, we should email the rest of the BC Liberal Party encouraging to follow that lead.

“It is clear to me that the residents of Peace River South are opposed to the harmonized sales tax and are unhappy with the way in which our government moved forward with this policy.”

- via CBC News – British Columbia – B.C. cabinet minister quits over HST.

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The government announced yesterday funding to ensure discounted fares for students around the province. The CFS declared a victory holding the government accountable to its election promise.

I have a few questions about this announcement:

1. Will the BC Liberals actually deliver the money in this era of tough choices?
2. Will they re-announce this money as often as they do other transit re-announcements? Have you heard of the Evergreen Line, once, twice, three times?
3. Has someone done the math to figure out if the money the government is pledging will be sufficient to pay for the subsidized rates and increased service required to make the system work?
4. The government enjoys legislating public sector wage increases without funding them, forcing public bodies to cut elsewhere to cover those cost increases. Will the transit systems be forced to cut elsewhere to cover a funding shortfall? Will the systems be “encouraged” to further privatize or partner with corporations or even more radically increase the adcreep in our transit systems?
5. How are post-secondary students so lucky to achieve such a funding increase for transit, but not actual education, especially when after being re-elected a second time this government slashed health authority funding across the province by $360,000,000? Perhaps post-secondary students without cars are a growing demographic of BC Liberal voters?
6. Why, other than to enhance its greenwashing agenda, do the BC Liberals toss a few millions to expand transit to help the environment while spending billions to increase car traffic and exacerbate climate breakdown?

Good news like this needs to be watched carefully. And I know the CFS will be watching this carefully. If the announcement is less than what it seems  I’m sure we’ll hear about it, or that student lobby body will certainly lose a portion of its credibility.

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Despite their radical socialist leanings and connections to labour, Vision so far has tried to play ball with Campbell’s B.C. Liberals.

via 24 Hours Vancouver.

I honestly can’t think of one radical socialist Vision politician.

And then there’s this:

VSB Chair Patti Bacchus dismissed an independent review of Vancouver’s board of education that describes them as incompetent and overtly political.

The entire review was politicized to the teeth. Independent is bunk.

And how Rich Coleman connects to those other areas of relations between Vancouver and the BC Liberals would only make sense if Coleman were premier.

Otherwise, this piece is a good example of how the BC Liberals don’t play well with others. And don’t really care.

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But how does Vancouver ever become the first car-free city in North America? It’s all about systems theory.

Sure, elected leadership reflect dinosaur corporate interests. It will take us to “think outside the box” and embark on “grassroots mobilization” to self-actualize our “community organizer” vibes…and all the other cliches. But really, it’s about understanding the interconnectedness of everything.

And it isn’t necessarily about converting everyone who shows up to the festivals and getting them to sign a petition. It’s about living the community we envision. People will come. They will enjoy the day. The next day they will watch cars drive over all the great kids’ chalk art. A small part of their souls will be maimed.

Then next year we will have maybe more than four locations. Then we’ll have more than one day. Then people will finally stop griping about bike lanes in the downtown.

And through this we simply manifest the reality we want. Systems theory. Let’s see how the main areas of systems theory play out in car free days:

We move from understanding ourselves merely as isolated individuals to seeing ourselves as parts of a social, community whole. We are part of a hive mind. We have our own existence, but when we get to stroll down the yellow line of Main Street, we’ll see how our neighbours are a part of us.

We will realize that the objects in our communities are not distant items, but connected to us. When cars drive on our streets, we are separated from all these objects. Sitting on the pavement in the middle of Main and King Ed chatting with friends and sharing popsicles helps us see objects as part of us, not alien.

In the end, we become more attuned to our context. We get to question it from the perspective of sitting on the road instead of bolting across King Ed on a yellow light to catch a bus.

When we adjust our normal relationship with roads we get to move past the normal and embrace the rich quality of alternatives: what we can do with streets if we don’t let cars on them. Knowing comes from doing.

Instead of being humans with defined roles in an urban world, when we shift our relationships, we notice the patterns and processes that consume us. We enjoy different relationships and get to evaluate whether we really need the prescribed, unquestioned patterns we have endured forever.

Finally, when we take the rubber off the road we get a chance to build new patterns and relationships with the people, landmarks, shops, artists and green space in our road communities. We can’t get outside any box without experiencing an alternative. Imaginations can be powerful, but a car-free day is worth a thousand words.

And just like another great cliche bumper sticker: when the people lead, the leaders will follows. Eventually, the politicians will start showing up to car-free days because they’ll realize there is a serious constituency there. That’s where we earn the political legitimacy to force the leaders to follow our lead and start legislating car-free space.

And the fact that it’s all an open source, volunteer coordination effort is just icing on the cake. Actually, really, though, if it were all sponsored by Red Bull or Dasani, it would flop.

So what are you doing on Father’s Day? I know what I’ll be doing.

YouTube – Car Free Vancouver.

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Imtiaz Popat on “The Rational” and I, talking about the HST, the Vancouver Parks Board’s dance with class war and gentrification, and federal coalitions in the UK and Canada!

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video.

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.5.31.10.mov

Enjoy!

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