Polarization goes Local
It is filtering down from the national level, in the US, Europe, and yes Canada.
It was a late night Saturday as the local election results here in British Columbia started to come in. We saw a serious reset with new mayors, councillors and school trustees, in particular the new mayor of Vancouver is expected to set the once most liveable city on the planet in a hopefully different and better direction.
Where I live we also worked on change and I was pleased to help on the campaign trail and getting to some successes early Sunday morning. But what did astonish me through the whole cycle leading up to election night was the misinformation and often vile insinuations that somehow had invaded our community. Rather than agree to disagree and campaign respectfully our community’s Facebook page exploded and all sorts of crazy e-mails were making the rounds. Those were the visible pieces on the surface, what was not visible was worse. After putting out a gentle and carefully worded endorsement letter for a new mayor and council, I received in addition to some truly bizarre e-mails a few uncouth phone calls from people who indirectly questioned my integrity. Really?
Unbeknownst to me, the local quest to get more openness and residents participating in important decisions had somehow triggered the use of campaign tools like slander and misinformation. Some voters are using whatever tactic they think is useful to their cause and they are also incapable of debating the issues. Truth and objective facts became a victim and from thereon things went downhill to the most obscene personal accusations that had zero bearing on local politics. In Vancouver for instance, the moderate new mayor, Ken Sim, was branded a ‘fascist’ for proposing that it might be a good idea to hire 100 police officers to make the streets a bit safer. I have never seen this in my twenty-three years here in Canada. It was clear to me that the craziness that we are seeing all around the world is now solidly in place here and it has unfortunately trickled down to local politics. What makes it worse is that it was coming from people who up to a certain point you thought were entirely rational, reasonable and above all basically respectful (hey, here are the three ‘Rs’ we should be mindful of).
For me I opted to work with the people I not only trust, but who also presented some solid ideas on where we need to go next. In British Columbia at large that discussion increasingly revolves around housing. And that means not being ‘pro-development’ or ‘anti-development’ but finding ways to make more housing options available, increasing the tax base and letting people enjoy their homes and not extort them with the most byzantine procedures if they want to renovate their house. The NIMBY movement combined with an overly bureaucratic and lawyerly municipal service has made life in many places pretty difficult. It has often stopped the sort of development that communities really need. That was where a lot of the battles took place this election cycle. If you tried to find reason and build compromises by suggesting new approaches, well you would have been at the receiving end of some pretty weird shit (as Bush Jr. would say).
It is also clear to me that local governance has become too complicated with too many processes, decision layers and special interest groups interfering. Some vocal minorities who radically push things are often oblivious of the longer term impact of what they propose. It is a hard balance to manage these processes (and dramas) which is why so few good people want to run for public office these days. This in turn contributes to a downward spiral in the quality of local decision making. The people that do run are now often totally exposed to the most absurd accusations and unsolicited late night phone calls.
Well, hopefully things will improve following this weekend’s election. Vancouver’s tech community is keen to see new things happening and I am getting ready to support a new mayor working his way to re-unite and re-energize my community. All good.