At a bare minimum, when the media covers a major conflict between two sides – a union striking, say – it should include the briefest of quotes from people representing both sides of the conflict. This is not exactly a high bar to meet requiring the cheapest and simplest method
Continue readingTag: Education
Progressive Proselytizing: Media bias in covering the University of Toronto TA strike
At a bare minimum, when the media covers a major conflict between two sides – a union striking, say – it should include the briefest of quotes from people representing both sides of the conflict. This is not exactly a high bar to meet requiring the cheapest and simplest method
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Media bias in covering the University of Toronto TA strike
At a bare minimum, when the media covers a major conflict between two sides – a union striking, say – it should include the briefest of quotes from people representing both sides of the conflict. This is not exactly a high bar to meet requiring the che…
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Reject the Slow Motion Privatization of K-12 in BC
Privatizing education in BC has been largely subtle and hidden. Absurd conflicts like this below [Restricted Vancouver playground access sparks angry exchange between [PRIVATE!] school principal, parent] help the general public see what’s actually been going on for a long time with private schools. Mine mine mine mine mine mine
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Austerity Strangles Ontario: the TA strikes in Context
Photo by Philipp Hienstorfer Toronto is in the midst of an unprecedented strike by over 10,000 Teaching Assistants (TA) and contract faculty at York University and the University of Toronto: the country’s two largest universities. Only blocks away from the University of Toronto picket lines, the Liberal government in Queen’s
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Solar PV Nearing Grid Parity
Cambridge and #PWC [PDF] say #solar PV will be at grid parity on most of Earth, in only 2 years! “It is clear that renewables will be an established and significant part of the future energy mix, in the [Gulf] region and globally.” Regina’s potential ranks about 6th in the
Continue readingNorthern Insight / Perceptivity: Everything is awesome
Few students in BC graduate from post-secondary schooling laden with debt, according to Andrew Wilkinson, Minister of Advanced Education in British Columbia. Wilkinson asserts there is no student debt problem. He claims (wrongly): “70 per cent of students go through their higher education with no debt whatsoever. From the minister’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Nora Loreto rightly challenges the instinct to respond to tragedy with blame in the name of “responsibility”, rather than compassion in the interest of making matters better: Blame is the projection of grief, sadness or fear. It is the projection of our
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: What Happens to the Eloi When the Morlocks Leave Town: A Lesson for Jim Prentice from H.G. Wells
“History is a race between education and catastrophe.” — H G Wells HG Wells may not have had a time machine, but he was certainly prescient. In The Time Machine the narrator, known simply as the Traveller, invents a contraption that takes him to 802,701 AD. There he finds
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Saskatchewan Racist as Fuck No Surprise To Anyone But Folks Who Don’t Like Indians
Yeah, I stole the title from my own Twitter stream. I’ve seen these headlines over the last couple of days that talk about how SHOCKED everyone is to find out that SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH has PROVEN that Saskatchewan is full of people who pretty much hate each other. This should come
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jacques Peretti discusses how corporate elites rewrote our social contract in a concerted effort to the inequality we’re fighting today – and suggests it’s well past time to push back in the name of moral economics: Politicians have now, as then, conspired in
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: Many Canadians aren’t voting, particularly young Canadians. Why? Because politics moves slowly.
This article on the ongoing decline in Canadian voter participation, particularly by youth in the Globe today by Michael Adams, President of the Environics Institute for Survey Research and Maryantonett Flumian, President of the Institute on Governance has been shared by more than a few people I know on Facebook, so I
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: Many Canadians aren’t voting, particularly young Canadians. Why? Because politics moves slowly.
This article on the ongoing decline in Canadian voter participation, particularly by youth in the Globe today by Michael Adams, President of the Environics Institute for Survey Research and Maryantonett Flumian, President of the Institute on Governance has been shared by more than a few people I know on Facebook, so I thought I would share my thought on the subject and some of the ideas the article raises.
“One reason for declining turnout is a deep shift in social values away from deference to institutional authority. It used to be that if society’s leaders told us to do something, we did as we were told. Now people are more likely to make personal calculations about whether voting is worth the effort. Canadians are also less driven by a sense of duty than they once were. Eighty-three per cent of Canadians over 60 say voting is a duty; 48 per cent of those 18 to 39 agree.”
The decline in voter turnout over the past several decades is an inarguable fact, in large part driven by the continuing low turnout of Canadians under the age of 40. An interesting idea, however, is that while Canadians have turned away from voting as duty that must be done in service, Canadians do seem to still be engaged in voluntary civic activity that could be described as informal activism, compared to the “hard” activism of casting a ballot:
“Indeed, recent research conducted by the Environics Institute as part of the biennial Americas Barometer survey, supported by the Ottawa-headquartered Institute on Governance, found Canadians expressing civic engagement in a number of ways besides voting. These included signing petitions, sharing political information online, and participating in demonstrations and protests.”
A couple of thoughts: One, I think the relationship between these two sets of data (declining voter turnout but a continuing level of engagement in politics and public affairs being expressed through other, more informal activity) is a point against mandatory voting, a potential idea the authors float in the piece. Introducing mandatory voting would be a way to bootstrap voter turn out for sure, but given that Canadians are turning away from voluntary voting when cast as a duty, I have serious doubts it would improve the actual character of Canadian politics. (I’m also going to take this opportunity to shameless promote improving civic education, an issue I have heavily advocated for and engaged with as readers of this space would know).
The other thought that I have related to casual vs formal political engagement, particularly as it relates to youth. When you sign a petition, go to a rally, share something on Facebook, re-tweet something, or yes, write a blog, you get an immediate result, some emotional fulfillment that you have done something. People might like the post, re-tweet it to others, post a photo of going to a rally, etc. It gives you an immediate return on the emotional investment you put into it. It feels good to do these things, and they are relatively simple and time effective ways to help promote a cause you feel inclined towards.
If you are effective enough, or the enough people are a part of the same cause, you can even get some pretty tangible results from casual activism, particularly since online activism happens in real time and can snowball pretty quickly. We’ve seen this happen enough times that I don’t have to link a particular example even; a person, brand, company etc sends out an insensitive tweet, says something discriminatory, etc. It gets publicized, hundreds of thousands of people tweet, Facebook, blog or something else the dismay and condemnation towards this, and the offending party issues an apologize, removes a social media manager, or announces a change in policy. I’m honestly not demeaning those who engage in a lot of political activity and activism online, since it can in fact have a pretty quick result. You see something you don’t like, you share a message publicizing the offending content or spreading a message, which lets you feel like even as an individual you are part of a greater cause, and not infrequently, you actually get a tangible reaction.
Compare that to the relatively more glacial pace of “hard” activism in politics and government. Bills go through multiple readings, go to committee, and can take years to be fully implemented, and that’s just on the government side. Within political parties, ideas can take years to gain popular support and become politically acceptable enough to become official party policy.
Right now, I have plenty of things that I’m annoyed at about the Harper government. Using the traditional tools of formal political engagement, what are my options. Well, I’m helping out my local Liberal candidate, encouraging people to read up on him, and consider voting for him…in an election that is scheduled to happen 8 months from now. And even if I do manage to change to minds of a lot of people at the doors, we have a majority government federally right now, so if the Conservatives just want to try and ride out the storm and push whatever issue and policy forward, they’re fully capable and entitled to under out parliamentary system.
Sure, occasionally we’ve seen public opposition ferment to the degree that the Conservatives have had to back track or change course on a handful of initiatives such as the Fair Elections Act and potentially Veterans Affairs, but by and large in a majority government, the ruling party can do whatever they please as long as they keep at least a certain segment of the electorate onside, regardless of how loud those who are in opposition howl, or tweet, or blog, protest or petition. (I’m using the Conservatives as a punching bag, but I’m take my partisan hat off as the core concept remains the same regardless of which party holds power.)
So with that in mind, what can political parties and “traditional” political activists like myself do?
I think blending the ideas of formal and informal activism, through use of national days of action to train volunteers outside of an election period, but also things like internal petitions and social media teams are important. These are both ideas that have been developed in large part from the Obama campaign and brought north. While constant emails from parties can get annoying sometimes, you wouldn’t get them so constantly if they weren’t effective at engaging you in between elections.
I also think this should be a lesson to parties and activists to push to make sure they are responsive and relevant to the issues that people care about, as opposed to scandal mongering whatever happens to be the issue of the day. This is something that, to be frank, in the run up to the last federal election I think the opposition did too much, and it allowed Harper is position himself as “the only leader focused on jobs and the economy”, with a similar scenario I think playing out in Ontario with Hudak’s relentless focus on smearing the government when people had in large part moved on and wanted to hear what parties said on other issues.
Ensuring parties themselves are open is also important to make sure people’s itch of engagement is scratched. The introduction of the supporter category during the federal Liberal leadership was a good first step, but personally I wouldn’t be opposed to going a step further and letting supporters vote in nomination meetings.
If we are, as Susan Delacourt suggests in Shopping for Votes, that Canadians are taking a more consumer based approach to politics, Canadian political parties can’t afford to overlook the importance of instant gratification in appealing to both the population as a whole and potential volunteers and activists.
The Liberal Scarf: Many Canadians aren’t voting, particularly young Canadians. Why? Because politics moves slowly.
This article on the ongoing decline in Canadian voter participation, particularly by youth in the Globe today by Michael Adams, President of the Environics Institute for Survey Research and Maryantonett Flumian, President of the Institute on Governance has been shared by more than a few people I know on Facebook, so I
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: As If You Needed Another Reason to Pick Up a Musical Instrument.
Playing an instrument enhances your cognitive abilities. I just wonder if they’ll find a way to motivate people to practice. 🙂 Filed under: Education, Music Tagged: Music, Playing an Instrument, TED talk
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Rethinking Economics Waterloo Conference, Feb 7
Ali Kraushaar and Geoff Evamy Hill, co-founders of the Rethinking Economics Waterloo initiative, are organizing a conference to be held Feb 7. It looks good! See below. — We want to inform you about the Rethinking Economics Waterloo Conference happening at St. Paul’s University College on Saturday, February 7. We invite you and
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Logic: How to PWN an argument, without getting the RPOJ
If you want to take down somebody else’s argument, a certain familiarity with the nature of intellectual or philosophical (as opposed to playground) argument is required, so that you can construct your own counter-argument. In an intellectual argument, the person putting forth an argument sets out a number of premises
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Alberta Needs Charlie Hebdo
Wednesday’s massacre of eight journalists, five of whom were political cartoonists, at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo unleashed a torrent of “We are Charlie Hebdo” editorials across the world. Newspapers fell all over themselves in an effort to demonstrate solidarity with the slain cartoonists—but they had a concern. Was
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – Charlie Hebdo
Oh, those wacky religious Muslim terrorists are at it again going all murder happy on people who dare to make fun of their religion. This event is completely ludicrous and, in 2015, should not be happening, some reasons off the top of my head: 1. Mohammad, Jebus, Krishna, Sif –
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How to Excuse Your Child from the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA)
Well, it’s that time again: Foundation Skills Assessment in BC. There are so many things wrong with the FSA tests. I won’t go into them here, but you can read about many of them in these places: Foundation Skills Assessment: Another Dirty Trick The BCTF on the FSAs. And so
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