City Election and Charleswood Part 5

Timothy Martin, candidate for Charleswood-Tuxedo



Timothy Martin is one of the seven candidates running in the Charleswood-Tuxedo riding. By profession he is a lawyer and on his website says that he has gone before council and the province a number of times. He doesn't indicate is what capacity though.

He indicates that he wants to balance the budget and have no tax increase. At the same time, he wants to improve bike paths, roads and recreation areas. He is pro-development and wants to grow the tax base this way. He supports transparency but has not indicated how that might be done.

He has indicated that crime is a big issue and suggests better policing.

One again, I am left a little bit at sea about what policy changes the candidate is thinking about specifically. In terms of transparency, he mentions allowing public scrutiny of contracts but doesn't say whether this will be the law, whether you can examine contracts on the website or whether he will show the details of past contracts.

I hope to see further details on policy.



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My Politics

The issue of how Active Transportation and how it is affecting River Heights along Grosvenor Avenue and my post on it was mentioned on Kick FM's Great Canadian Talk Show on Wednesday.

Marty Gold said I was a "avowed lefty." I managed to catch that part of the show in between appointments at work. It made me laugh a bit and I dashed off a correction and "centrist" was added later on.

I guess to clear up any confusion, I should say that I am not a NDP or Progessive Conservative on the provincial front. In terms of the NDP, I find them to be very light on vision but prone to taking ideological stances on issues from hydro's transmission line to forcing Manitoba drivers to buy ethanol gas. In ten years, crime has got worse under their governance.

I don't support the Tories because I feel they still have too many problems with social conservatives who are reactionary. There is a strong hint of anti-urban forces within the party. In recent years the policy platform has been based on fear or crazy things like bringing back the Jets.

I have held both provincial and federal Liberal memberships in the past but they have both lapsed. I donate monthly to the federal Liberals because I still believe they are better than the high spending Tories. I am in complete opposition to Stephen Harper because of his style of politics, his ideology and for his lack of control over fiscal matters.

I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal in that I'm anti-deficit, a supporter of low taxes and pro-business. I also support allowing gay marriage and de-criminalizing a host of laws that only encourage organized crime to get involved as we have seen historically with Prohibition.

In terms of this election for city office, I want my new councillor to show some vision, address the issues with more than vague answers and to be transparent in terms of how they govern. I expect the same from my mayor.

I am comfortable with the term centrist. I believe it is where I stand politically and for the most part, I think people in the city pretty much straddle the center as well. We don't necessarily need a populist telling us what we want to hear. What we do need is someone with vision who can lead either to the left or right depending on the city's needs.



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Charleswood-Tuxedo panel on CBC Radio

I will be taking part on the CBC panel this Friday on election race in Charleswood-Tuxedo.

I don't know when it will air on CBC Radio but I suspect segments will be on in the afternoon on Friday. If I hear anything else, I'll let you know.

If anyone has some points to make to the panel, get in touch with me.



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Fury In River Heights-Active Transportation

Looking east on Grosvenor Avenue. No parking signs went up on Saturday. Right, Westworth United Church.



Looking west on Grosvenor Avenue. No parking signs went up on Saturday. Left, Westworth United Church.



There is absolute fury in River Heights about the no parking signs that went up in front of Westworth United Church on Grosvenor Avenue on Saturday. Voters are calling John Orlikow and his assistant was shocked to hear the no parking signs are in front of the church.

The church has been present since the 1950s and the parking across the street on Grosvenor Avenue has been used by people for services on Sunday, for funerals and weddings, for rummage sales and teas and ironically, for voting.

This all came to an end Saturday when the no parking signs went up. People will be forced to park on Lanark and Beaverbrook Streets which are already filled most Sundays.

The bike path will run in front of the church on the north side and no parking will be the rule on the south side of the street.

People were talking about civil disobedience defying the rule and challenging the city to ticket and tow. It is possible that a lawsuit will be contemplated since the economics of the church renting its hall will be greatly affected.

The ones who should feel the most heat on this are the elected officials. Some could face defeat if they don't put a stop on some of the dimwitted blockage of a church to function. Sam Katz, are you listening?



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City Election and Charleswood Part 4

Dashi Zargani, candidate for Charleswood-Tuxedo.



I still haven't heard a lot to tell me about the policy distinctions of the candidates.

CBC Radio will be featuring a discussion in the next day of the Charleswood issues. It should be interesting.

I am looking at the websites of the candidates to see if I can find out anything that will help me in my vote.

At the moment, I am looking at candidate Dashi Zargani. Dashi was one of two people who filled out a questionnaire and the answers have been posted here.

Dashi also has a website that you can view here. I think the answers he provided to the questionnaire provide more details.

In his bio, Dashi says he has been in Winnipeg since 1995, is of Iraqi descent, is married and has three children. It doesn't say where he works in the bio but in the questionnaire he said he is a business owner. I believe he owns the White Tower restaurant on Roblin Blvd.

His bio says he supports tax increases at the rate of inflation. He also says the neighbourhood and the city needs more police.

He indicates that he will have weekly and monthly open houses and forums with residents.

One of the areas Dashi says he will look to improve is city infrastructure. And by that he means roads, bridges and water and sewer work. He believes bus rapid transit should hook up with the IKEA.

The platform is a fairly general one but not inconsistent with some of the other things I am seeing on websites of the candidates. Still, I am craving more detail. I hope to see more of Dashi's stand on a variety of issues in the media, on his website or in flyers to my door.



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Snoring

This is what happens when you substitute orange juice for a cup off coffee.



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Flipping our structures

Johan Galtung coined the term structural violence to describe the practice of negative peace, imposed peace, peace of the empire, peace at the point of a gun. So, what would structural nonviolence look like, that is, positive peace?

I hold the unchanging conviction that religion exists to serve humanity; humanity does not exist to serve religion. And it is by pursuing the challenge of serving humankind that religion can overcome the tendency toward fundamentalism and authoritarianism and provide the fertile soil from which a genuine culture of peace and empathy may grow.

¾Daisaku Ikeda, Subverting hatred (p. 8)

When religion serves humanity rather than humanity serving religion, we can expect a transformation in at least one driver to war. How can we extend Ikeda's challenge to other realms?

When money serves humanity instead of humanity serving money, that will be a welcome change in the Gordon Gekko Greed Creed.

When homes are built so that they prepare a person for a lifetime of low energy consumption, that will help housing serve humanity instead of humanity serving housing.

When nationalism serves humanity, so that ethnic dances and food and legends of loving serve a nation rather than aggression and hatred of others forcing humanity to serve nationalism, that will transform another driver to war.

When the safety of our families serves a common security rather than notions of individual security serving the security state, we will finally begin to value true security in peace rather than the illusory security of one people at the expense of another.

When a nonviolent military serves humankind rather than a nation of sheep serving a domineering military, we will have achieved the sustainable result Ikeda and others have worked so hard to reach.

These are visions, of course, that quickly become hard work, undertaken by those who understand that they will be regarded as quixotic at best, and sometimes as dangerous threats. That is why, even when those who favor violence in the name of justice are investigated by the security state, the nonviolent challengers are also investigated, again and again. This is just what happened when the FBI decided to investigate some of the groups who were organizing demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008. Some of the organizers posted photos and videos of molotov cocktails far in advance, possibly not understanding that the FBI and Homeland Security have zero sense of humor about such things. Sure enough, there has been a far-reaching investigation, including the well known pacifists, Catholic Workers. We are used to it.

Yes, some of the organizers of the opposition to the Republicans had expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the FARC in Colombia, as well as the violent Palestinian insurgents. I'm sure some were rooting for the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are using violence to get the US military out of their respective nations. When people do that, they are using this quaint thing called freedom of speech. Is it smart speech? No. Is it speech that will win adherents in America? No. But it is still free, we hope.

We on the pacifist side should be able to organize opposition to war without harassment and intimidation by the state. We want to draw in others to this peace point of view, not drive them away. We think our message of nonviolence is one that could resonate with people and we want, then, to strikingly differentiate our message from anyone who promotes or even permits violence as a method of change.

"But we need solidarity," say those who are more morally flexible about methods. "We want the same thing in the end."

No, we don't. They want a world in which armed force resolves the question. They happily accept our wimpy nonviolent help, but reserve the right to kill others in the name of their goals. We want to be seen as quite different and as committed to nonviolence. We want a world where violence doesn't resolve or manage conflict and we cannot get there by countenancing violence, period.

The means and ends are twinned, intertwined, and inextricable. As a pacifist, I refuse to join with those who use violence. They are not my people and I am not with them, fundamentally. I'd encourage factionalism. I'm a splitter. But I'd join with others who are also seeking change using nonviolence, even if they only use it tactically and strategically, as long as they commit to only nonviolent conduct in the cause for which we work.

That, to me, is how you actually build a movement. It's not by agreeing to act in unthinking coalition with the self-anointed radical fringe. It's by reaching to the majority and convincing them that it is in their enlightened self interest to support the policy change you believe is crucial. When you outreach to them as a nonviolent activist, they are more likely to be drawn in. If they think you are allied with wingnuts who want to throw bombs, they will logically avoid you.

Thus, in the end, those who look like dividers become uniters. Pacifists should divide from those who favor a permission of violence. That will help them unite the majority toward peace, toward a culture that rejects violence at every level.

References

Smith-Christopher, Daniel L., ed., Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions. Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1998.

Ash Is As Attractive As Ever

Polo Park 8

Exterior of Hollister storefront.

Polo Park continues to get ready for Christmas. Skechers is now open and Forever 21 and BCBG MAX ARIA are building. Now word comes that a young favourite Hollister is going to open in the mall.

Hollister moves into the recently vacated Addition-Elle store. The retreat of Addition-Elle should come as no surprise. They are following Tommy Hilfiger out to Kenaston. No sense having two stores so close together.

Hollister only has seven locations in Canada so far. This should prove a major attraction for people outside Winnipeg to come to the city to pick up clothes not easily found elsewhere in the province.

Overall, Hollister has only been around for 10 years world-wide but it has swept the U.S. coast to coast with bright T-shirts and hoodies. Their exterior storefronts are intriguing and the inside has various rooms. One outstanding feature is a wall bank of TVs that features two views on either side of the pier at Huntington Beach. It is live footage of surfers. Cool.

Hollister usually like to place side by side with its older sibling of Abercrombie and Fitch. However, space at Polo Park in nearly filled save for the huge empty spot of McNally Robinson at 20,000 square feet.

The other exciting news in terms of Polo Park is what is happening just north of the mall. Work is well under way for Corus Entertainment's radio stations. CJOB, Power 97 and Groove 99 are moving soon from Portage Avenue. However, the radio stations occupy only a small portion of the nearly 200,000 square feet of space being developed. Word has it that the anchor store to the development is T and T Supermarket, a Vancouver-based Loblaw's owned Asian food grocer.



Illustration of the new development.

T and T is planning a 45,000 square foot store which dwarfs the recently opened Lucky Supermarket which opened on Winnipeg Avenue earlier this year with 20,000 feet of retail space. Sun Wah Supermarket on King Street is only about 13,000 square feet.

The CBC said some Asian retailers are fearful of the competition whereas some people said that the store will appeal to a variety of customers of non-Asian descent who are looking for produce and products.

The store will be a great addition.

However, I can't be the only one thinking that issues of traffic in the area are only going to get more complicated.



View of the busy Polo Park area.



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Pious dedication to rhetoric

"If we are to honor the slain of Auschwitz and every other site of barbarous inhumanity, we must create the consciousness that makes such slaughter impossible"

--Sharif Abdullah (p. xiii).

When a man beats a woman and apologizes tearfully and expects, and gets, her love, her devotion, her heart, her soul, her body and her free labor, is he encouraged to repeat his violent ways or is he being shown gracious, loving forgiveness? Some women argue that there ought to be zero tolerance of such behavior, and they are correct. Some argue that without forgiveness we have no chance for relationship with anyone, since we all make mistakes, and they are correct.

So the challenge, it seems, is finding that line of no more crossing. One side of that line produces relational work, investigation, mediation, new agreements and a fresh but conditional restart. The other side, once crossed, is where forgiveness may still happen but relationships end. She moves out and he doesn't get to see the children again. Enough violence perpetrated leads to this outcome for most rational people.

Now, I'd assert, is the time for us to wonder in our society if the Obama administration has crossed over that line. Drone attacks in Afghanistan increased, thus increasing Afghan civilian deaths in the name of decreasing American soldier deaths--and creating yet more profits for war contractors, two phenomena that are eerily simultaneous in so many cases. Troops are surging into Afghanistan, evoking what foreign troops always have. The British lion limped out, paws full of thorns. The Soviet bear yowled and fled with a snout full of bee stingers. The American eagle is beginning to look like a plucked chicken after failing in Iraq and now failing in Afghanistan.

We are beginning to feel like the family who was rescued from the redneck wife beater by the tough cop, who has now moved in and started beating everyone too. George W. Bush gave us eight years of misery, even though we let him back in our bed in 2004 (some of us who felt particularly repulsed by him were outvoted). Now Obama is beating the tar out of everyone and yet sounds so calm about it as he glances over his shoulder at the Nobel Peace Prize on his desk, being used as a paperweight to hold down the stacks of war contracts for the profiteers of violence. Is he bipolar? Is he in touch with reality?

Are we? We have the rhetoric of peace and the reality of violence, and we seem incapable of looking beyond the left or right choices. What will America do in November? Throw out the Ds and bring in the Rs. The Pledge to America is really a Pledge to Violent People. One minor part is to gun owners--we love you, stock up on more of them--and to war hawks--the only spending that will really go up and up is military. More violence for America and more violence from America. What a great pledge. Frying pan, fire, frying pan, fire, frying pan, fire. Brilliant. BushObamaBushObamaBush.

This is why some of us Just Say No to violence, period. One side sells it and does it and the other side sells a slightly different brand and does it, and they are just two sides of the same coin. BushCheneyRumsfeld was heads, ObamaEmmanuelGates is tails, but it spends the same.

Like some kind of persecuted religious minority, we who hold to nonviolence are unheard, disregarded and laughed at when we actually say something meaningful in public. We tend to feel beaten, hopeless at times, and just look toward living lives that, at the least, cause little harm. At the least, we feel, we aren't adding to the level of violence in the world. At the most, we begin to do what Sharif Abdullah calls for, the creation of conditions that make these barbarous acts unacceptable. This means going beyond rhetoric and creating that new reality, beginning with ourselves, doesn't it?

References

Abdullah, S. (1999). Creating a world that works for all. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

City Election and Charleswood Part 3

As I have indicated, I am trying to learn all about the seven candidates running for election for the Charleswood-Tuxedo riding. I sent a questionnaire out early so that I could inform myself and two of those running have replied and I have posted the results. I have heard back from a few others saying that replies are pending. So far only two or three flyers have arrived from candidates. They had basic information and contact numbers.

In the interest of learning more, I went to the City of Winnipeg's election page. In the past, I was able to see where the candidate lived which I considered important in determining whether the person running was actually a resident of the ward. The rule used to be that you had to a resident of the municipality for six months and this continues today.

Now I'm not basing my decision solely on whether a candidate lives in the ward but I am interested if they know the local issues well and live them. In other words, I am not fussed about someone who lives close by to a ward if they are well versed in what happens in the area they are running. Still, if someone is from right across town, it might prove an issue. With that in mind, I went to the city election site to see what the addresses of the candidates are. I was surprised at what I found.

There are no addresses listed.

Initially I thought this was a reflection of candidates being duly and publicly recorded only when they were officially in the race at the deadline. I found that this was not the case.

What has happened is that there is a change in policy. I spoke to City Clerk's office and they said they will not put up the addresses on their website ever. Never. As in not now and not in the future.

I asked if this was a privacy issue raised by the Privacy Commissioner. It is not. I asked if I could see the addresses of those running and was told that I could. I just had to come to the City Clerk's office and ask to see the addresses.

I was confused. I asked if the Privacy Commissioner did not have a problem with the information of where a candidate lived then why was this information being withheld? I asked if there had been a complaint about the information being on the website. I was told of no official complaint. I said that if it was a question of security that it made no sense since the information can still be accessed by going to City Hall.

I can think of no incident involving the security of a councillor as the result of their address being known.

I asked the official at the City Clerk's office that if I got the addresses for myself from their publicly available papers at City Hall and published them, would I be in trouble. I was told no.

I ask this because in the province of Ontario, The Toronto Star actually printed pictures of the mayoral candidates homes in the paper. The addresses of the candidates there are published for all to see.

In the interests of getting to know the candidates, I am publishing their addresses here and a map location.

I may include a picture of their houses like the Toronto Star did as well.

Dashi Zargani
8-215 Edgeland Blvd





Paula Havixbeck
423 Laidlaw




Jarret Hannah
62 Alenbrook Dr





Timothy Martin
11 Bloomer Crescent





Steve Szego
618 Cathcart St





Wendy Lenton
46 Savoy Cresent





Livio Ciarelli
864 Community Row







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A Big Bash For The Khan Family

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City Election and Charleswood Part 2

I have heard from another of the candidates running for the Charleswood seat. He has said that he will be filling in the questionnaire but that he has been inundated by them in the election.

I tried to mitigate than by sending it way back in July but it could be that many people were already calling or writing the candidate even then.

In the interests of trying to get to know the candidates better, I am resorting to looking at their websites. If I meet any on door to door rounds, I will write about the encounter. I may try some phone interviews as well in the first weeks of October.

I still have no idea who to vote for in the election but I am willing to post all the information a candidate wishes to put out that will shed light on the focus of their campaign.

As far as the race for mayor goes, I am at a total loss as to how to vote. It is very discouraging.



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Caveat: Conflict industry

The party line, if you like, on nonviolent social change is that it must be entirely indigenous, or it will be criticized as being imported by some imperial outsiders. Those outsiders will always be acting selfishly and with no concern for the people on the ground, without real care for the indigenous populace.

Thus, the Civil Rights movement was branded by the jingoists in its day as communist. The antiwar movement in the 1960s was a tool of the reds. The nuclear disarmament movement was clearly inspired and supported by the Soviets. And just as that was always the case in the US--I was certainly accused of this, at least until I went to the Soviet embassy in 1987 and got arrested for offering nonviolent resistance to their nuclear arsenal--it is the same pretty much everywhere else. The tendency is quite Maoist, Manichean, those who oppose me are in a big conspiracy against me and are all in league with each other, and they are in cahoots plotting to hurt us all.

This is how demagogues manipulate people and it is how wars occur. If I am an elite leader and I want to stay in power and enhance my power, I've learned this lesson on my way up, on my path to power over others. Paint anyone who stands in my way as an enemy of those whom I need to actually fight my battles for me. Call all Muslims terrorists who have the destruction of America uppermost in their minds--and call all who clamor for peace enemies of my country and label them as in league with our enemies.

This is the conflict industry.

Steve Daniels and Greg Walker (2001) warn those who are interested in resolving conflict that there are sometimes those whose "job security as individuals depend more on the perpetuation of the conflict than on some calm, quiet settlement. We call these people the 'conflict industry'" (p. 44).

This is the gun shop owner, the lawyer, the prison guard, the general, and the politician who is the champion of his people. The old joke: Who is the poorest guy in the little town? The only lawyer. Who are the two richest guys in town? The two lawyers, after the second one moves in. The conflict industry is always going to try to capture as much power and wealth as it can. That is why we have a Pentagon that is bloated beyond all recognition or possible value. The military contracts are obscenely profitable and just enough war is quite advantageous to the elites who can keep fear and hate alive, so that we pay our taxes to support it all, so that we vote in the politicians who in turn vote in massive military spending.

Either you're with us, or you're with them. The commies, the terrorists, the fill-in-the-blanks. This bipolar disorder is what defined the Bush regime, just as it defines the role and power of Ahmadinijad and Hamas. It's Hitlerian and it's how demogogues fool us again and again.

The nonviolent, collaborative alternatives, then, are a major threat, and must be branded as inimical to the safety of the average person. The peace movement must be labeled as naive and unpatriotic, a tool of the terrorists. Those who favor gun control or gun bans are stereotyped as enemies of freedom, as sniveling cowards who will welcome dictators. And we see the same sad human tendency elsewhere--those who favor democracy or human rights in Afghanistan are just crusading slaves to the imperialist Westerners. Those who favor women's rights in Gaza are Zionist agents. It's the same dynamic in our human psyche--we offer unthinking loyalty to those who convince us that they are fighting for us, and, oh, by the way, now you should all fight for me, I mean with me, well, under my command, and we can hope to triumph over the forces of the evil enemy.

Sarah Palin knows how to do this quite well. Set up the sense that everyone on 'that side' is persecuting you because you are standing up for the average person. Sound normal--that is, ignorant of world affairs and like the average small town mom with your dysfunctional family and frustrating bureaucracy--and then begin claiming that you have the common sense to know who the enemies are. Make ignorance of our world a point of pride, and complete dependence upon our war machine as a patriotic value, even if it bankrupts us and creates a couple billion more enemies worldwide.

So, on the enlightened self-interest side (aka the nonviolent side) of the equation, we need to figure out ways to resist the labels they attempt to affix on us and we need to find the elites who are doing that and instead label them as members of the conflict industry who are acting not in the public interest, but rather in their own selfish interest and to the detriment of the majority. This should be part of every nonviolent struggle.

References

Daniels, Steve E., & Walker, Greg B. (2001). Working through environmental conflict: The collaborative learning approach. Westport CT: Praeger.

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