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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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)

The recent controversy over the Vancouver School Board’s budget situation has been a bit of an interesting story to follow.  Much like every other school board in the province, the VSB has been wrangling with a considerable problem: the costs of providing a high-quality public education continuously increase, while the funding that comes from the provincial government doesn’t keep pace.

This isn’t a problem that only the elementary, middle, and high schools face; indeed, every public educational institution in this province, from the Vancouver School Board to Simon Fraser University must somehow find a way to balance their budgets in the face of increasing costs and stagnant levels of funding.  I’m certainly not an accountant, but the financial problem that all school boards — and our colleges and universities — face is a substantial one.  When costs increase and funding doesn’t match, then cuts to education need to be made because the provincial government has legally required all school boards, colleges, and universities to submit balanced budgets.   To repeat: all school boards, colleges, universities, and public educational institutions are required, by law, to submit balanced budgets.  This is a feat that even the provincial government itself couldn’t accomplish, instead, they amended their balanced budget law giving themselves a pass.

But the legally required balanced budgets aren’t the crux of this issue.  The true centre of the controversy was the fact that the Vancouver School Board stood up and spoke out about their financial issues.  They publicly called upon the provincial government to fairly fund education.  They postponed approving their budget because the legally required balanced budget would have meant substantial cuts to education and school closures.  They acted as advocates for education.

It seems that this was something that the province didn’t want the VSB to do.  The minister of education commissioned the comptroller general to investigate the school board’s management practices and report back with recommendations on how the budget could be balanced.  The submitted report essentially branded the VSB trustees as incompetent; apparently, they spent too much time discussing the impacts of underfunding on the school district, they spent too much time discussing how they could best advocate for education, and they didn’t spent nearly enough time just dealing with it and cutting education.  Of course, the issue of provincial funding was out-of-bounds for the comptroller general’s report.

It’s interesting to note what wasn’t out-of-bounds, though: the entire principle of elected school boards.  The report from the comptroller general noted that elected school trustees, for some entirely incomprehensible reason, felt that their job was to advocate for education.  And because education actually needs a lot of advocacy under the BC Liberals, the trustees had been engaging in advocacy.  So, the comptroller general suggested that the government should re-consider the ‘co-governance’ model of education.  Reconsider having elected school boards.

Why? Because, in my experience, appointed boards responsible for education don’t speak up as readily, and don’t embarrass the provincial government in the same way  when their funding is being slowly drained to unsustainable levels.

Elected school boards seem to advocate for their schools.  This seems to be dangerous — or at least distasteful — to the province.  So, the province should reconsider this arrangement, at least according to the comptroller general.

To understand this a bit better, it’s useful to compare the elementary, middle, and secondary school situation the post-secondary education situation.  And I will use a very familiar example: Simon Fraser University.  I graduated from SFU with a BA (Hons.) in Political Science and Labour Studies in June 2010, and I was an elected student member of the university’s Board of Governors from 2008 to 2010.

There are a number of similarities between the Vancouver School Board and Simon Fraser University.  The two have budgets comparable in size: the VSB’s is around $480 million, and SFU’s is around $420 million.  Because both organisations rely on employees to conduct their main activities, teaching, the majority of both budgets are dedicated to staff salaries and benefits.  Both organisations are public organisations, with funding from the provincial government being the primary source of funding.

Both organisations feel cost pressures in similar ways.  Each year, the costs of teaching increase: computers must be replaced, textbooks purchased, libaries updated, and so forth.  Inflation increases all costs across the board.  And while provincial funding tends to increase each year, it doesn’t match the increase in costs.  So cuts need to be made.

Both organisations have to make cuts in order to balance their budgets — the VSB is considering closing eleven schools, closing some programs, and increasing rents to nonprofit and community organisations, while SFU is engaging in round after round of layoffs, closing programs, and shifting more and more teaching from expensive faculty to cheap ‘temporary instructors.’  In both cases, the quality of education decreases.  In both cases, class sizes increase.  In both cases, education is at risk.

But there is a striking dissimilarity in how the two organisations respond to the problems of underfunding.

The Vancouver School Board trustees, elected by their constituents to both manage and ensure a high quality of education in their school district, have taken a public stand against underfunding.  They have loudly stated the obvious: if funding does not match costs, something has to give.  And unfortunately, what’s giving is the quality of education.  This is not good.

The Board of Governors of SFU take an entirely different approach.  No public pronouncements.  No public stands.  Instead, there are quiet pleas to an entirely indifferent Minister of Advanced Education.  Cuts are made.  Staff and faculty positions eliminated.  Programs closed.  Class sizes increased and quality of education decreased.  And no public stand is taken.  This is not good.

It’s not good for students in both cases.  Quality of education decreases in both cases.  And education is the key to a healthy society in so many ways.

But why is it that only the VSB takes a public stand?  The answer, to me, is contained in the comptroller general’s report to the ministry of education: the Vancouver School Board is elected.

The Board of Governors of Simon Fraser University is mostly appointed by the provincial government.  There are fifteen members of the board, and only five of them are elected.  Two are elected students, two are elected faculty, and one is an elected employee.  While the provincially appointed members don’t take orders from the province, their approach is entirely different to that of the trustees of the Vancouver School Board.  In my years on the Board, we spent a large amount of time talking about the issue of underfunding.  Each one of us acknowledged the severe challenges that it presented to the university.  All of us seemed to agree that this needed to be changed if the university was to be able to continue to provide high-quality education.

But we didn’t take public stands as a board.  The predominant thought amongst the majority of the board, those who were provincially appointed, was that advocating for funding wasn’t the role of the board.  Instead, the role of the board was to oversee the implementation of budgets that necessitated cuts because of provincial underfunding.  And maybe, if we were so concerned, we might from time to time write a letter to the Minister who would probably just tell us ‘too bad.’  The chair of the board and the president would meet with the minister privately, who would then likely just tell us ‘too bad.’

Despite all of us at least tacitly acknowledging the problems of underfunding, the provincially appointed members of the board were reluctant to take any public stand about the funding situation of the university.  They felt it wasn’t our role.  Instead, our role was, seemingly, to simply implement the cuts that the province mandated by underfunding the university.  Without public protest.

The trustees of the Vancouver School Board, on the other hand, seem to feel strongly that their role is to advocate for public education as well as doing the best that they can with what they have.  They have refused to simply implement the cuts that the province is downloading, at least without protest.  They are all elected by their constituents, and they feel a responsibility to them, a responsibility to education.  They don’t want to simply take a pronouncement that their underfunding is something that they simply have to deal with.

The difference here is that the Vancouver School Board is entirely elected by the people that their decisions affect.  They have a very consultative approach to governance, with the participation of stakeholders, including staff, parents, and students, as a primary goal.  They are democratically administering the school district, democratically managing and advocating for education.  Advocacy is a key role of democratic accountability, which seems to be incredibly different than the bounded realities of fiscal accounting that the comptroller general’s report considered to be the most important role.  The VSB is putting their advocacy for quality education above the passive implementation of provincial cuts.

Only a third of the Board of Governors of Simon Fraser University are elected.  The rest are appointed by the province.  They are overseeing the managing of the university.  They implement the cuts that the province passes down without public protest.  Public advocacy is something that they have identified as not being part of their role.

A foil exists in all of this: the province has the ability to fire the school board, and the province can replace its appointed members on the university’s board of governance at any time it wishes.  Provincial governments have fired school boards before, generally when there is a budget dispute between the board and the province.  Also, replacing provincial government appointees on university boards is something that happens regularly.  In 2001, after the province deregulated tuition fees, when the Board of Governors of SFU voted against raising tuition, the province replaced the Board.

The comptroller general’s report, as commissioned by the Ministry of Education, looked at the Vancouver School Board in the same way that the provincially appointed members of the SFU Board of Governors look at themselves.  The comptroller general ignored the democratically administered nature of education.  The comptroller general did not look at the issue of provincial government underfunding.  Instead, the business mindset influenced the report.

The comptroller general recommended that the provincial government review the ‘co-governance’ model of school district administration, the elected status of school boards.  The implication is that the university model is better.

But the university model is better in only one way: it implements the decisions of the provincial government, it cuts education, and it does this without public protest.  It is not democratic, and it is not responsible to advocate for education.

The controversy around the Vancouver School Board and its resistance to underfunding is being used by the provincial government as a way to bring up the idea of taking away our elected school boards.  Not because it’s necessarily a better way of doing things, but because appointed boards don’t publicly complain and protest harmful decisions from the province.

This controversy is about education and it is about democracy.  The province harming the former by underfunding our school districts and universities and colleges, and it is trying to do away with the latter to enable it to continue on its way.

Either we believe in our education system and we elect people who will democratically administer the most important thing that a society can do to invest in itself, or we allow cuts to continue.  The provincial government seems to have made its choice.  Have you?

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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)

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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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Working from the reasonably solid premise that majority governments are inherently tyrannical, I prefer as merely a marginal improvement: minority governments. They’re no ProRep, but at the very least, they force more cooperation, though I use the term loosely. We’re seeing an evolution of expectations in and about Ottawa and now I think we’re going to see it in BC in 2013.

Let’s start with BC Conservative MP James Moore who tweeted this out last week: “All Conservative/Bloc/NDP MPs (& leaders) here for final budget votes. Only half of Lib MPs here, Ignatieff missing. Seems fitting.4:37 PM Jun 17th via UberTwitter”

I found this quite interesting for him to remark on this. His government exists because of the strategic absence of dozens of Liberals on key votes. The Liberals are in a de facto coalition with the Conservatives. Didn’t he get the memo/text/tweet/VM?

The Liberals show up to vote against the budget and other noxious legislation and they feel good about it. But they only send enough so that with the Bloc and NDP votes, they won’t have enough to defeat the government. And since some of those votes are confidence motions where failure means an election, the Liberals ensure enough MPs are at the spa to miss the vote because they’re afraid of an election now.

Now’s an odd time for the Liberals to be afraid of an election since the Conservatives are in a sucking place relative to other times since the last election. Except for the fact that the Liberal leader is not universally tolerated, loved, or followed in caucus. And the party on the ground still calls itself Canada’s natural governing party.

But federal MPs can be forgiven for this lame kind of strategy. All they are thinking about is jockeying for position until the polling shows they are in majority government territory. Not going to happen. Minority governments best reflect the split opinions in regions in the country.

I’m hoping that the crazy dynamics of minority parliaments will help citizens focus on what kind of cooperation it ought to take to get good things done. It will also show us some things we won’t see in majority governments: politicians who only jockey for power and how the Liberals and the Conservatives have the same anti-human, pro-corporate neoliberal economic agenda. Why? Liberal MP Scott Brison attacked opponents to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement even more than the government did and both parties voted for it.

Now everyone gets to see that the Liberals are just like Conservatives on fiscal issues. That’s important to know.

And now we have this United Party of Canada meme/thing/movement/Frankenstein forming, with lots of vague, feel-good, meaningless, substance-free, policy-void babble on the website: “We believe in you!”. Who knows now, but if they get any traction, dig an even deeper hole for majority parliaments.

And in BC we have new dynamics brewing for the 2013 election, just under 3 years away. Some context:

1. Last year, someone went rogue and floated the idea of Vision Vancouver going provincial, a mythical third party [try this and this]. That was killed immediately. Effective trial balloon, though.
2. Last week we heard more about a http://VisionBC.ca domain name. No smoking gun, just more talk, and one crazy reference to the party being centre-left. Isn’t the BC NDP supposed to be centre-left? Sure.
3. Two weeks ago a Liberal cabinet member quits not because believes the HST to be actually bad, but because he fears the recall campaign that will destroy him starting in November. Then the BC Conservative party first calls him a rat, then says that spokesperson went rogue also, then they suggest a place for him.
4. The Greens have and will continue to poll in the mid to high single digits, as will the BC Conservatives; more for them if they can get their messaging clear and pull some “real” federal Conservatives lurking in the BC Liberal party.
5. The right wing coalition in BC for the last thousand years made up of federal Liberals and Conservatives seems increasingly shaky. Some centrist/leftist federal Liberals may not be all that onside with the latest social contract-assassinating government policies.
6. There are federal Liberals in the BC NDP caucus and orbit.

If Vision BC formed, it could peel some NDP MLAs, operatives and wonks. It could pull Blair Lekstrom and Vicki Huntington in. It could pull George Abbott and Carole Taylor and a handful of current BC Liberal MLAs. It could make a run for government by playing to the centre [or centre-"left"] by featuring some kinder, gentler characters from the Campbell decade.

And if it shoots for government in 2013 it would have to start about now. If it misses government, not inconceivable for a new party [except for Vision Vancouver though], we could end up with a minority legislature: one step towards proportional representation.

With a minority legislature, we’d have up to 4 years for the minor parties to assert themselves, build their bases and impede any further majority governments. We’d also see a redefining of posture for the BC NDP and BC Liberals based on who’s left. That will bloody. There are already a number of MLAs who would not surprise me if they were right now sharpening knives.

And I reiterate this one thing about trust. Politicians who only seek power are easier to spot in an era of minority parliaments. How? They don’t do anything of substance while waiting for a chance to get more power. Demand that they act on principle and they go on vacation, hit the spa, tour the region on a kissing babies tour, anything to keep up the persona of manufactured leadership.

We cannot continue to tolerate that kind of nonsense. 308 MPs in Ottawa watching CBC Newsworld on their iPads to see if they’re tweeted about or more hopefully, trying to guide the Commons committee they sit on to do something of substance? 85 BC MLAs laying low in caucus wondering how they can maneuver themselves into something with a bigger office or hopefully something that makes a difference for people?

All I know is that in minority situations, there isn’t as much space under the radar anymore. And that’s good for all of us.

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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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Today I despin and respin aspects of the event.

1. I found out about the Libby Davies YouTube video the other night when someone called AnonymousProgressive emailed their link to me with a “wtf?”. The video was part of that person’s YouTube account. The video seems to be a re-edit of a video by katzd314, with a link to this blog piece. I emailed a second time to AnonymousProgressive [AnonymousProgressive@gmail.com] asking for their background in relation to the video and why they’re anonymous.
2. People often comment anonymously about Israel for many reasons including because they are afraid of vitriolic retribution and a myriad of other things, whether their fear is credible or not. This is the chill atmosphere that pervades dialogue about Israel, and many other highly controversial topics. Other times, people are anonymous because they’re up to no good. It’s hard to say for sure here, but so far it looks like entrapment/gotcha journalism, blogger style. There are lots of opinions about how legitimate/useful that is. Regarding the real intentions of the poster, I still haven’t received a reply to AnonymousProgressive’s anonymity. I’ll send them this piece to see if they wish to comment, anonymously or openly.
3. Let’s respin the video:
   1. The first question asked of Davies from the questioner is when did the “occupation in Israel” start, 1948 or 1967? Davies answers 1948. She stated that was an error here and apologized for any confusion that caused. Many actually wouldn’t see her 1948 answer as an error though.
   2. AnonymousProgressive then intersperses a defense that stating 1948 necessarily denies Israel’s right to exist. It might be a bit of a leap to say that stating that the occupation began in 1948 means a belief Israel should not exist. The UN Security Council is seen by many, like me, as far from a democratically legitimate body. The UN General Assembly’s votes are non-binding, while the 5 permanent members of the Security Council have vetoes on Security Council resolutions, which are binding. The creation of Israel has been under a cloud of illegitimacy since before 1948. Was there a forced expulsion of Palestinians, for instance? I think the same can be said for the settlement, creation and growth of Canada. At the same time, many people see no illegitimacy at all in the UN’s actions regarding Israel, or indeed Canada’s origins.
   3. Judy Rebick describes it far better here: “It is a matter of debate whether the occupation started in 1948 or 1967.  If you are of the view that the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes when Israel was founded was unacceptable than [sic] the occupation began there.  If you agree with the foundation of state of Israel whatever the costs to the Palestinian people then you think the occupation started in 1967.  Believing that the foundation  of the state of Israel was unjust does not mean that you think the state of Israel should not continue to exist.   I believe that the foundation of Canada was unjust but I don’t call for the dissolution of Canada; although I am starting to consider it.” I happen to think that since about 96% of BC is on unceded First Nations land, we are in a similar place of occupation. Look up the Royal Proclamation of 1763 on that one.
   4. Davies then explained that in Gaza, people are suffering and that you can’t get basic necessities there. AnonymousProgressive inserted a statement from a Hamas official saying that because of bread, there is no starvation in Gaza. That may be true. But there are other necessities than bread and other ways to suffer. The International Red Cross released an unusually bold statement on Monday calling for an end to the illegal closure of Gaza. They explain suffering circumstances beyond just the presence/absence of bread.
   5. The next question in the video is whether she supports the Boycott, Divest, Sanction [BDS] campaign against Israel. The textual commentary explains she is wrong, which is logically absurd because the question was whether she supports the BDS campaign. Her opinion is her opinion. An example of an unhelpful merging of fact/opinion/vitriol that muddies clear discourse. The textual commentary explains that BDS targets all Israelis “to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.” That could be one goal of many who support BDS. I remember a Boycott Brand America campaign several years ago. Many who supported it wanted to delegitimize the USA, many simply wanted President Bush to get out of Iraq: a political policy choice. Do all who support BDS necessarily wish to delegitimize the Jewish state? No. To say they all do is unprovable and a bullying tactic because it puts a chill on discourse.

In the end, what comes from all this? Some discussion, some facts, some opinions, a mis-stated year, an apology, some analogies, and some unfounded logical leaps. This seems to be standard in my observation of dialogue about Israel over the last quarter century.

So then other Canadian federal politicians start condemning Libby Davies for her views. Again, Judy Rebick notes that the vast majority of Canadians do not have a positive view of Israel and just over half have a negative view. So who is offended by criticism of Israel?

I won’t put on my tin foil hat and try to list them all. But here’s the answer: those who have a stake in supporting the status quo. That includes Canada, Israel’s “best friend,” regardless of whether that’s a Conservative or Liberal government in Canada.

But we learn more when we see Murray Dobbins’ accounting of how Jack Layton reacted to Davies’ comments, apologizing to the Israeli ambassador and forcing her to make a public apology. This perpetuates the chill that there is something untouchable about talking about Israel…to the point of avoiding commentary on Israel’s killing of flotilla travelers in international waters; how is that not an international crime?

Virtually the same thing happened the week after BC NDP candidate Mable Elmore won her nomination in Vancouver-Kensington in March 2009. Using the word Zionist in an interview she gave years earlier came back into the public eye. BC NDP leader Carole James forced Elmore to apologize.

And if you’ve heard of the hitherto great journalist Helen Thomas, you can read two perspectives about the price she paid for carelessly weighing in on issues around Israel, along with a defense of her. Clearly, the stakes are high for engaging about Israel.

There is clearly a minefield around Israel discourse. There are inferences, presumed implications, assumed emotions, leaps to conclusions, fear of bad political spin, confusion around who exactly are politicians’ constituents, fear of perhaps offending a group regardless of how logical or reasonable it may be.

All these add up to a chill. A chill that I have felt victim to if you look at the very little I have written in 6 years about Israel, out of a reluctance to deal with the [at least chill-induced perceived] onslaught of opposition. That is, until recent weeks when the absence of political action in the world to address human rights violations motivated a flotilla of civilians with aid to attempt to break a blockade that violates “international humanitarian law“. Then the Rachel Corrie was kept from landing in Gaza.

Now there is a ship of German Jews readying to sail to Gaza. This should help cut the Gordian knot of simplistic manipulation and intellectual abuse that is the all-spin zone around Israeli issues and the machinery of the chill over so many who should feel free to speak their minds.

And here’s your test for today. Take a look at this classic editorial cartoon and see if you can engage with it on rational, emotional and political levels without sliding into a reactionary place. You are, of course, fee to like or dislike, respect or oppose it

And a final test, if you are still unsure of whether Zionism is a necessarily offensive word in North America, read its use and context here and try to separate the definition and use of “Zionism” and the writer’s opinions about Zionism. This should clear/muddle things up for various people. How about you?

Finally, I intentionally waited until I finished writing this before reading most of this piece by Paul Burrows to avoid restating everything that resonates with me.

So, I want to live in a community where we have open dialogue about controversial issues. When events are spun and a chill sets in, we all suffer fron this. I think our job is to not settle for simplistic answers and to be critical of the spin and “follow the money” to see who benefits from each position on the table.

The truth wants to be free. We all need to practice how to hear it and cut through the impediments.

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Where is the balance of power, messaging, spin?

So it turns out the BC Liberal party’s premier’s office spends about as much as three core government watchdog groups.

Not only did this government first get elected in 2001 then immediately cut the budgets of the Auditor General and Elections BC, but 9 years later, the party leader’s office will spend at least $9.711m before 3.31.2011 while the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Information and Privacy Commissioner and Ombudsperson have collective budgets of $9.855m, only $144,000 more.

The 2001 optics still work here: there’s a new government and it will brook little effective criticism. The spoils of winning all but 2 seats in 2001, I guess. And all of the Liberals’ criticisms of the NDP’s weak transparency regime in the 1990s have come home to roost. Who loses? British Columbians.

And the electorate just takes it, sucking it up while now less than half of us vote. Sounds like a perfect storm to me.

See for yourself, below. At least the AG’s office has more funds to spend since they’re “supposed” to audit the whole of government, but with less than double the premier’s office budget, I think it’s still an unfair fight.

2010/2011 Schedule of Voted Expenses

Sums granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011 and the purposes for which they are granted

Ministry of Attorney General — Crown Proceeding Act

via Bill 22 — 2010: Supply Act, 2010-2011.

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By the way, while I’m not commenting on this news release, I would like to mention here that the International Committee of the Red Cross has just released a very important statement on ending the closure of Gaza. People will of course support or condemn this ICRC position for good, bad, non-rational or compelling reasons. But I’m not writing about that today.

Committed activists and ideologues on all sides of Israel issues contribute to this intense level of spin expertise. Within the discourse, there are, among other things: facts, disinformation, misinformation, irrational attacks, flagrantly hyperbolic analogies, opinions, rhetoric, invective, anger, racism, Polyannaism, political agendas, global conflict paradigms that in part revolve around middle eastern land, and the governments and lobby groups of dozens of countries. It’s a classic imbroglio flambe.

I will take but one example of a variety of things I have to say about Israel. Let’s start with an analogy, knowing full well that it can be creatively re-interpreted by anyone with an agenda to accuse me of pretty much anything. I can handle that.

[Note: just for fun, let me state clearly that I make no comments in this entire piece about whether "the state of Israel ought to exist or not"...just so that if anyone accuses me of being on either side of it, I'm just not talking about that issue in this piece. Later, though. Oh, and preemptive disclaimers are a feature of a society of discourse living under a chill.]

Here’s my question. Can anyone criticize policy decisions or actions of Israel’s government?

Can Canadians criticize the government of Canada for supporting tar sands development, or even spending tax money on child care subsidies? Typically, yes. And in doing so, few seem to be accused of being racist, anti-Canadian, or harbouring hatred for Canadians.

Can Canadians criticize the US government for its support of a free trade agenda with despotic regimes, or even spending tax money on food stamp programs? Typically, yes. And in doing so, few seem to be accused of being racist, or harbouring hatred for the American people, though to be honest, many are accused of being anti-American for criticizing or supporting something someone else either agrees with or disagrees with. That’s too bad. Chills suck.

If France begins above ground nuclear testing on a “French” island in the Pacific Ocean or embraces a Tobin Tax, do I necessarily hate/love the French people for decisions of the government, regardless of who voted for what and by how much? I wouldn’t think so. I think I’d still appreciate their cinema and fries.

So a while back I wrote [in a poem] about the difference between a people and a government’s policies [see below]. Are there any differences? What should be the significance of the differences? And if you are interested in testing your attitudes toward this issue, take this test: read this article and see if you can de/re-spin everyone’s perspective. It’s pretty complicated, but a worthwhile exercise. Maybe I’ll get around to doing that in here one day.

via 22 Impolite Questions: a Response to Rhetoric Crimes « Politics, Re-Spun.

are Noam Chomsky and Phyllis Bennis anti-American if they criticize their imperial government?

and what about Israel?

am i anti-Semitic if i disagree with the domestic or foreign policy decisions of the de facto fundamentalist Jewish theocracy in Israel?

do i wish all Jews in the world dead because i don’t agree with any given decision of the Israeli government?

are Noam Chomsky and Phyllis Bennis self-hating Jews if they oppose any given decision or set of decisions of the Israeli government or decisions of the US government that support Israeli policy they disagree with?

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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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So should I be seeing if anyone wants to contribute here beyond me?

The first question is whether it’s worth seeing if anyone has pieces to contribute to this site. It’s not like anyone can’t already set up a blog at WordPress in less than 2 minutes. So people would have to see value in contributing “here”. And there’s nothing to preclude someone from contributing here AND wherever else they live online and off the interwebs.

Then the question is who should be contributing?

6 years ago when I started this site, I asked friends who lived on various spots on the political spectrum to contribute ideas with the idea of creating some comment dialogue among contributors, like a virtual salon. It never took off. Maybe because it was 6 years ago and not now. Or maybe it was because I don’t believe in the effectiveness of a left-right political spectrum and instead prefer a 2D or 3D spectrum like at PoliticalCompass.org so a left-right paradigm may have been doomed to fail.

I don’t have a richly developed sense of what “kind” of people ought to contribute to this site beyond a few things: not crazy people, not racists or bigots, not folks who would get the RCMP visiting me in my home to discuss what contributions I approve. I certainly don’t think that only people I agree with should be contributors. That’s just not worth anyone’s time.

I put it out to the community of you folks.

So if you are inclined to contribute more than just comments to this site, think about it. Toss your ideas into a comment in this post about creating a contributor community here. Send me emails. Tweet me. Figure it out to whatever extent you wish. I don’t have all the answers, or any answers necessarily, though I do have inclinations.

Let’s see what the crucible burns for us!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (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)

Last night I watched the movie The Contender [see here and here]. Nice film. Full of manipulation, ego, opportunism, a light dose of self-righteous McCarthyism, gender politics and an appeal at the end for people to choose integrity when it’s just as easy not to.

It was made in 2000, so it missed the decade of cynicism, lies and despair that we’ve seen, but even if it were a worse movie it still provided a litmus test we can use to determine if someone in politics [elected or otherwise] is worth your time. Just how petty are they?

Cynicism and self-absorption are one thing, but real pettiness encompasses those and other discouraging traits.

So if pettiness is currently the defining quality of politicians, we are truly in a shitty state. And is it any wonder why so many people of substance are avoiding the traditional political arena, choosing to make a difference elsewhere.

Don’t expect voter turnout to start climbing back up any time soon. The people seem to be using the pettiness scale already and I don’t expect they’ll stop.

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)
• April 27, 2009 -- No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV! (0)

STV is polling quite high and I expect it to pass. This means that you no longer have to plug your nose voting for someone to keep someone else from running the place. And it also means you don’t have to waste your vote in a protest by voting for a candidate who won’t win, all to avoid abstaining.

STV means the proportion of votes going to parties will come very close to being translated into seats in the legislature by making sure that someone you rank will use your vote to win a seat.

So if you can’t handle Gordon Campbell anymore, and would prefer not to vote for the NDP for whatever reason, but you feel you need to do it now, here’s how you can put a smile on your face.

When you cast your ballot, vote for STV as well to make sure that the next election will mean that your ranking of candidates won’t be wasted as one of them will almost certainly use your vote to become elected.

The most frustrating thing for me leading up to any election is listening to smart, passionate, concerned friends voting for parties they hate to keep from wasting their vote. Or else they don’t vote and I can understand why. If the system is this broken, it needs to be fixed.

I think for a place with only two political parties our current system is awesome since the winner will have to get more than 50% of the votes. 19th century Canada was such a place, but even then the parties didn’t need to represent women or other politically undesirables.

But in a place like Vancouver, BC and Canada, there are no two parties that effectively reflect everyone’s identities and passions. This is why we get vote splitting, unearned majority governments, wasted votes, apathy, anger and cynicism.

It’s astonishing that we can fix all these things just by changing the system.  STV here we come!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• 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)

We talked about the myth of journalistic objectivity, the provincial election, the crappy media coverage, how the polls show likely increased voter turnout is bad, bad news for the neoLiberal party, as well as our 5-year anniversary party last Friday night. But we never got around to Billy Bob Thorton. Too bad.

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.4.20.09.mov

Enjoy!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• 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)