Calgary’s Mayoral Race 2010: What I don’t want to see

As everyone who pays any attention whatsoever to politics in this city will already be aware, Calgary’s 3-term mayor, Dave Bronconnier, announced last week that he will not be running for re-election this fall. This makes for the first “open” mayoral election here since 2001.

With candidates just starting to announce their intentions, I don’t have anything resembling a preference yet. I do have some notions of what I don’t want to see, though.

Misrepresentation in the media

In 2001, somewhere between a dozen and twenty candidates were on the ballot for mayor (I really cant remember the actual number and couldn’t easily find a reference online). You wouldn’t have known that, though, if your only source of info on the election was the mainstream (primarily corporate) media. They decided that there were only four “legitimate” candidates who merited any substantive coverage. The media gave effectively no attention to any of the other candidates.

I consider that to be viciously anti-democratic. All citizens should have an equal opportunity to learn about every candidate, regardless of how “serious” or “fringe” they may be considered to be by those in power (which includes the media who are currently very much part of the structures of power in our society).

Power = Opportunity = Responsibility.

The current dominant media have lots of power (although that does seem to be diminishing a little), therefore lots of opportunity. That creates significant responsibility — responsibility they are failing terribly.

In deliberately excluding the majority of candidates from the dialogue, the media denied the core principles of democracy. I hope we can avoid, or at least reduce, the same problem this time around by making all candidates part of the dialogue with fairness and openness.

Oppositional Politics

Ever since Ald. McIver decided, over a year ago, that he wanted to become mayor of Calgary, he seems to have been taking every opportunity to move us toward intensely divisive oppositional politics. He has manufactured “controversy” to create the very false impression of a war between two sides on council. He and his supporters have engaged in attacks on other members of council in an apparent strategy aimed at eliminating the possibility of anyone else being able to take a successful run at the mayor’s seat.

This is self-centred political ugliness that in no way serves the interest of our city and communities.

We don’t need elected representatives who are bent on tearing down their colleagues on council, who move the dialogue from looking at the complexities of the issues our city faces to unrealistic simplifications of “us vs. them.”

I do, actually, believe that all voices, including those I vehemently disagree with, should be at the democratic table — except for one. I see no place for those who want to destroy the opportunities we have for dialogue in favour of their own selfish political games.

With that, I truly hope that McIver and his ilk will be removed from council and replaced with people who can bring those “right-wing” perspectives McIver appears to represent to our city without diminishing the quality of the democratic dialogue.

“Your Worship”

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d like to see whomever gets elected as our next mayor take action to end the practice of referring to that office holder as “your worship.” (ick!) I’m not counting on it, but I can dream, can’t I?

New local political blog

This post is the first of mine that will be cross-posted to a new political blog going by the tongue-in-cheek name of “The Best Political Team in the Blogosphere™”. The blog aggregates a few, not especially representative (so far), local political bloggers with some very divergent viewpoints. I totally disagree with some of the stuff posted there so far, but that’s all to the good in democratic dialogue.

Calgary, mayor, election, city council, YYC CC, YYC.

Freedom of speech is not a simple issue

A couple of Calgary city councillors have posted on Twitter that they are “fighting” for freedom of speech/expression (Mar, McIver). This is a polarizing over-simplification of the issue before the committee at City Hall today (a bylaw proposal that would put some restrictions on the use of the public space around City Hall).

Statements like that speak as if this were a world of absolutes — as the extremists on all sides would have us believe — rather than the complex and complicated reality we actually live in.

Freedom of speech is an essential part of democracy, but, as with everything, there are necessary limits. It comes down to the old saying that “the rights of my fist end where the rights of your nose begin.” This is the reason why we have laws prohibiting “hate speech.”

Our “fighting” city councillors seem to be portraying the issue of a policy to govern the use of the public plaza at Calgary City Hall as a polarized one of either being completely for freedom of speech, or being on the slippery slope to totalitarianism. To me, that simplistic polarization is a shameful degradation of, and barrier to, a meaningful democratic dialogue.

Because there is speech that does harm (with recent concrete examples in the rallying of white supremacists on the steps of City Hall), we need to find ways as a society to prevent those harms.

It is impossible to have total freedom of speech because there are some forms of speech that end up impairing the freedom of speech of others. Hate speech is the most obvious of these in that it threatens the freedom of speech of those it seeks to victimize.

So, the main question that I think needs to be addressed is not the falsely polarizing “are you for or against freedom of speech?” but, rather: How can we maximize the broadest opportunities for freedom of speech for all in our society, while protecting each other from harm?

I have heard concerns raised questioning “who gets to decide what is unacceptable speech?” There isn’t a simple answer to that, either. I do think we have a pretty clear way to figure it out in each situation: Speech promoting harm of others. In Canadian law, we have the entrenched principle of speech advocating harm to a group of people on the basis of ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.

Yes, the line is often fuzzy. Remember, this is not a world of absolutes. Sometimes we’ll just have to put in the hard work of meaningful and deep questioning and dialogue to figure these things out as we go. We won’t always get it right. But, if we stay away from absolutism, and remain open to questioning and dialogue, we stand what seems to be the best chance of learning and doing things better.

Absolutism is for the lazy — democracy is hard work (and totally worth it).

freedom of speech, hate speech, democracy, rights, Calgary, Calgary City Hall, polarization, YYC, YYC CC.

Calgary Election 2010 - Gathering Data

I’m trying to get an early start to gathering candidate information for the Calgary municipal election coming up in October this year. If you are planning to run, or have information about anyone who is going to run, please share. You can use the comments here, or contact me directly.

In particular, I’m looking for any public contact information (phone, email, office) and web-links (campaign website, Twitter, Facebook, videos, etc.).

All of this is to be compiled and made freely available online through the next iteration of the Calgary Democracy Project.

Candidate Videos

I’m also open to starting on the candidate videos, if any candidates would like to have one done. The format is pretty straight-forward. The candidate sits in front of the camera, standard interview style, and is asked 3 questions:

1. Why are you running?
2. What do you consider to be key issues and how do you propose to address those issues?
3. Why should people vote for you?

The videos are kept to under 10 minutes (arbitrary YouTube time limit, but also the typical limit for how long people can attentively listen to one person talking).

The only editing done is to cut out the interviewer’s comments and asking of the questions (unless the candidate’s responses total more than 10 minutes, then the focus is on cutting it down to fit minimizing any impact to the content of what the candidate says).

These videos are an attempt to bypass the superficial and generally content-free view of candidates we get in the corporate media, hopefully making the candidates a bit more accessible to the public. By providing more than just a 30-second, out-of-context, sound-byte, the videos can hopefully help contribute to a better informed electorate.

Calgary Democracy, Calgary, election, candidate, municipal election, YYC CC, YYC.

A parent’s perspective on the disability funding cuts

In this video from the “Not a Bake Sale” rally, the parent of an adult with a developmental disability speaks out on the devastating impacts the cuts to funding for people with disabilities would have on his son and himself.

Please join Albertans Who Care, across this province, in taking action to oppose the Conservative cuts.

PDD, Alberta, disability, disabilities, developmental disability, Conservatives, Conservative Party, Conservative Party of Alberta, funding, cutbacks, Calgary, rally, video, Closed Captioned.

Fighting Disability Cuts - Now Closed-Captioned

I’ve posted Another video from the “Not a Bake Sale” rally opposing the life-wrecking funding cuts to people with developmental disabilities in Alberta. This time, specific calls to action that all Albertans can participate in to oppose the cuts.

Please join Albertans Who Care, across this province, in taking action to oppose the Conservative cuts.

Closed-Captioning for the hearing-impaired

YouTube has made it pretty simple to add captions or multi-lingual subtitles to videos. They’ve posted a guide on how to create and add captions to videos you have posted on their site.

While adding captions makes your videos more accessible to the hearing-impaired (or people with non-functioning audio on their computers), it also makes your videos more “findable” by providing more text that can be searched.

You can also use this mechanism to add subtitles in different languages.

PDD, Alberta, disability, disabilities, developmental disability, Conservatives, Conservative Party, Conservative Party of Alberta, funding, cutbacks, Calgary, rally, video, Closed Captioned.

Ryan Geake from the “Not a Bake Sale” rally

Another video from the “Not a Bake Sale” rally opposing the dastardly funding cuts to people with developmental disabilities in Alberta. This time, Ryan Geake introduces the million-dollar bake sale items.


Please join Albertans Who Care, across this province, in taking action to oppose the Conservative cuts.

PDD, Alberta, disability, disabilities, developmental disability, Conservatives, Conservative Party, Conservative Party of Alberta, funding, cutbacks, Calgary, rally.

Alberta’s Conservative government threatens the well-being of people with disabilities

The Conservative government of Alberta is trying to take back money they had committed to provide needed supports for people with disabilities in our province ($12 million in the last part of the year for People with Developmental Disabilities across Alberta). The Conservatives are endangering the welfare of some of our most vulnerable citizens at the same time they are giving billions of dollars to private oil and gas companies — the wealthiest industry in our province.

Please join Albertans Who Care, across this province, in taking action to oppose the Conservative cuts.

In Calgary, there was a public rally held on December 18, 2009, to oppose the vicious funding cuts. Called the “Not a Bake Sale”, the rally featured such items as a million-dollar cupcake (which, oddly enough, no one bought).

In this video from the rally, Elaine Yost, Executive Director of Options, speaks to the impacts the funding cuts would have on the programs and services provided by agencies that provide support to people with disabilities.

PDD, Alberta, disability, disabilities, developmental disability, Conservatives, Conservative Party, Conservative Party of Alberta, funding, cutbacks, Calgary, rally.

The immorality of most personal motor vehicles

In terms of individual human activities, private motor vehicles have one of the highest — if not the highest — rates of killing people who are not in the vehicle causing the accident (such as pedestrians, cyclists and people in other vehicles).

From a moral standpoint, using a private motor vehicle — when there is a safer alternative available — means valuing personal convenience over the lives of others.

To be clear: Given that most travel and transport could be done with safer alternatives, the vast majority of drivers and their passengers are effectively saying that they are willing to endanger the lives of other people for their own, selfish, convenience.

That’s without even getting into the awful environmental, social and economic impacts of a society that supports personal motor vehicles when there could be viable alternatives.

Please note that I am careful to not make this a value judgement against every single driver or personal motorized vehicle. There are situations where there aren’t viable alternatives (such as for many emergency vehicles, some rural usage and some transportation of the physically impaired). There are also situations where it is a community or society as a whole that is responsible for failing to support alternatives. In those cases, the individual who does not have a viable alternative may not be acting immorally in driving a personal vehicle, but they do hold the moral responsibility to do everything they can to push their society to change for the better.

I am also very specifically referring to personal motor vehicles, such as cars and trucks. Mass-transit, while often using motor-vehicles, has a much lower rate of injury and death than private motor vehicles.

car, truck, suv, motorvehicle, immoral, unethical, morals, morality, killing, convenience, driving, transportation.

Why I’m quitting the critical mass bike rides

For me, the fundamental goal of the critical mass rides is pretty straight forward, and can be summed up with a frequent chant from the rides here:

More bikes; less cars!

We’ve been coming together as a bunch of cyclists in Calgary every month since the late 1990’s to try to show that bikes belong on the road, to encourage people to get out of their cars and onto bikes, and to encourage cyclists to feel confident about riding streets suitable for commuting.

What has become clear to me is that some of the people who show up to the critical mass rides don’t share that goal. Their goal is to express their anger at cars. This results in some riders trying to block traffic by spreading out to take up all lanes (even when there’s just a few of us in the ride), riding aggravatingly slow specifically to annoy the drivers behind them, and even shouting obscenities at drivers.

Last month, my tolerance for this abusive behaviour and willingness to expend effort to try to mitigate it — after almost a decade participating in the Calgary rides — finally ended.

Hostility isn’t helpful

Being abusive toward drivers may be a “release” for the individuals who do it, but it harms the cause. Drivers who are angered by the harassment are not going to be inspired to drive more safely around bikes, they are not going to see cycling as a positive mode of transportation, they are not going to be inclined to ride a bike instead. Rather, they will dig in their heals and become more aggressive in their driving.

I have seen very direct and immediate results of this with the few occasions where angered drivers have hit critical mass riders from behind (thankfully, these attacks have so far been not enough to knock the bike over or cause injury, but that can be put down to luck that is sure to eventually run out). There was even at least one case where an angered driver threw a non-empty plastic water bottle at a rider.

Even if folks don’t care about angering the drivers and pushing them away from cycling, the harassment of drivers that some individuals take it upon themselves to do during the critical mass rides puts their fellow riders in immediate danger.

My activism centres around reducing (ideally, eliminating) harm in the world. Anyone who is adding harm is not an ally.

I believe the first priority of anyone in the rides needs to be the safety of the other riders. Anything that compromises that is not appropriate.

Another cost: Fewer participants

Another big area of impact from the hostility of some individual riders is that it keeps a lot of potential riders away. In the countless discussions I’ve had with people at and away from the rides, it’s clear that the hostility is probably the biggest factor in keeping the participant numbers down (Calgary has among the smallest critical mass rides of any of the cities participating — quite possibly the smallest per-capita).

Being in a hostile situation is not most people’s idea of a good time.

Critical mass can’t be “fixed”

All that said, critical mass is a “happening,” not an organization. No one has any authority, there is no decision making body or way to set down rules. That’s all well and good when all the riders share a constructive intention but, when some individuals who don’t care about others’ well-being infiltrate the ride, it can end up doing more damage than good.

I and no one else is in any position to exclude the damaging behaviours from the critical mass ride. I’ve tried for years now to use “moral persuasion” and leading by example, but that has proven to be unable to stop the un-compassionate individualistic mindset.

So, I decided part-way through last months ride, when I again saw a few individuals take it upon themselves to endanger their fellow riders, that that was my very last critical mass ride.

After almost a decade in the rides, you could say I’m more than a little disappointed.

An alternative?

At the same time I decided to quit critical mass, I also decided to pursue an alternative for advancing cycling. I want some other form of mass ride that overcomes the harms associated with critical mass.

Here are the things I want to see in a ride:

• Safety as the clear top priority for everyone.
• Showing that cycling is fun.
• Taking the old slogan to heart in our practice: “We’re not blocking traffic; we are traffic!”

I want a ride where parents look forward to bringing their kids, where seniors feel welcome and embraced, where the types of cyclists who are nowhere to be seen at critical mass show up in droves because they know to expect a safe, fun and constructive event.

I want a ride where cyclists we pass, pedestrians and people in cars will end up thinking “that looks like fun — I wish I was riding a bike.”

Interestingly enough, within a week of my decision to quit critical mass, I came across the similarly motivated Critical Manners movement. There are some ideas from those rides that might apply to a new ride here.

Dealing with disruptions

One of the key differences from critical mass would be in the approach to anyone engaging in hostility during a ride. I think we need to have a clear set of rules, and a clear set of responses to violations.

For example, if an individual or a few decide to try to block traffic by taking all the lanes (or the like), the group of riders could first ask them to stop that. Failing that, the ride could pull over to the side, stop, and wait for the hostile riders to leave. Not so much fun, but the hostiles would hopefully soon learn that they don’t have the right to impose their individual will on the rest of the riders.

Where to from here?

My intention now is to try to get a first ride happening in September — not on critical mass night. I am also actively discouraging people from participating in the critical mass rides. I’m hoping, sadly, that it will die out here so that it won’t continue to create more harm for cyclists.

I encourage folks to chat me up on this in person. You can also post comments here or on the Calgary Critical Mass discussion board.

What are your ideas for making a successful ride that will engage a wide range of cyclists and promote cycling in our city?

critical mass, critical manners, cycling, bicycle, activism.

Introducing Calgary MediaCamp

With all the video production I’ve been doing lately, my recent experiences at CivicCamp and TransitCamp, and with the reminder that Media Democracy Day is coming up in October, I’ve been thinking about what we could do in Calgary to advance local media.

Over the past week, I’ve talked with a number of folks who work on their own projects or with local organizations producing media. The idea of holding a “MediaCamp” unconference is starting to come together.

MediaCamp would be an opportunity for people to share existing and new media projects, build new collaborations, and advance the state of media democracy in our city. It would bring together people in the city who are working on — or wanting to work on — media, especially (but not exclusively) independent and non-commercial.

This is to have a pretty broad scope, welcoming people with all manner of media involvement: Advocates, arts, bloggers, books, commentators, documentaries, editors, hosts, journalists, podcasts, print, publishers, radio, reporters, television, videographers, web, etc.

I’m starting to pull together planning meetings this month. If you have ideas for this and want to get involved, please check out the Calgary MediaCamp group I’ve set up for the organizing.

Calgary, MediaCamp, YYC media, yyc, media, media democracy, Media Democracy Day.