All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Had Enough Of Crazy Town

Posted on February 7, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I will not be reading Crazy Town.

No disrespect intended to the book’s author, Robyn Doolittle, a Toronto Star City Hall reporter. Everything I’ve heard so far about it has been very positive. Her appearance last night on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart was dynamite. She ably and entertainingly encapsulated the last four years and the Rob Ford phenomenon in about seven minutes.

So kudos to her, and the newspaper that stood by her (and all its reporters) when things got ugly with their coverage of the mayor’s time in office.

But I’ve grown weary of this story and the man and his family and his hangers-on filling it out. For me, the novelty has hit its best before date. It’s stale. We’re caught in this blooper loop where the only thing that ever changes is the antic or pratfall that the mayor gets caught up in.

A sitcom that hasn’t been funny since the first few electric episodes. What If, this week, Mayor Ford goes out ice fishing and winds up falling in the water after his attempts at free-basing go awry!

No longer interested in actually trying to govern the city he was elected to lead, the mayor is out on the campaign trail, looking to re-capture the elusive lightning in a bottle that was so successful in 2010. So instead of attempting to broaden his base of support beyond his winning margin last time out, he’s embracing tighter the themes that made him mayor. Frugality. Customer service. Seething anger and outrage at those in power.

Except, it’s difficult if almost impossible to recreate the conditions which made those ideas resonate. Especially since, you know, as much as he’s trying to portray himself as an outsider again, he sat, until this past November, in the seat of power. This presents a dilemma for him. If he goes around complaining that he didn’t accomplish all the things he promised he would because of a recalcitrant and out-to-get him council, he’s opening himself up to the charge of not being a very effective mayor.

Does not play well with others.

If you like your mayors rogue, re-elect rogue mayor Rob Ford in 2014.

At this point, the mayor seems singularly uninterested in engaging with anybody who doesn’t share his exact world view. At Wednesday’s first official mayoral debate out at U of T’s Scarborough campus, he dropped any pretense of his aversion to the annual gay Pride celebrations being nothing more than bad timing with family commitments. I ams what I ams, he told the audience, channelling his inner Popeye, and I’m not going to change.

Racial profiling by the police in their carding system? Not council’s problem, shrugged Mayor Ford. Bring it up with the police. Who he supports, by the way, 100% except for those still conducting an investigation into his ties with certain criminal elements.

Did you hear that? No? Well then, the mayor wasn’t talking to you. It was the high pitched signal to his base that the battle was back at hand. Us versus them, folks. Us versus them.

Of course, Mayor Ford hasn’t kicked fully into relentless campaign mode yet. So far since he registered to run on January 2^nd, there’s really been a whole lot of nothing from his camp. Visits to private apartment buildings and fast food joints. Part time appearances at work, if at all. A personal jaunt to Vancouver that blew up into another sad spectacle.

Pretty much, the same ol’, same ol’.

Time to turn the page.

However, not in Ms. Doolittle’s book for me. I just can’t wallow any further in this sad, sordid tale of civic dereliction.

Rob Ford is a terrible mayor and a man of dubious personal character.

And he himself said he’s not changing his ways.

What more do we need to know?

— fed uply submitted by Cityslikr

Civic Engagement Is A Daily Thing

Posted on February 4, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

“A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.”

— attributed to Horace Mann, American educational reformer, among other things.

Point 6. (A recap of points 1-5)

We have been reduced in the democratic equation of late to two points of civic participation. Paying taxes and voting every 4 years (or whenever governments of the day deem absolutely necessary). Outside of that, it’s all, keep on moving, folks. Nothing to see here.

Just such an attitude has been on ample display in Toronto since 2010 where all we’ve heard about is the ‘mandate’. Through divisive service and programs cuts and subway debates to crack and drunken stupor scandals, we’ve been told a certain someone was given a mandate. You can’t challenge the mandate! Not until the next election. Decisions are only made at election time. You don’t like what’s going on in the interim? Vote your displeasure next election.

To contest the mandate is to be a usual suspect. Some sort of elitist, still bitter over losing in 2010, with no job and lots of free time to hang around City Hall, getting all snarky. Hard working tax payers know their place when it comes to governance. In the polling booth. Every 4 years.

If I’m trying to be even-handed here, such disengagement is not specific to this administration. Too many of us (save a band of dedicated city advocates) during the Miller era were lazy, with our heads buried or looking the other way. We assumed Toronto was in good hands and stood on the sidelines instead of pitching in and contributing. It left some of the accomplishments vulnerable to a tax-and-spend counter-attack. Exhibit A, Transit City.

In 2014, candidates need to encourage people not only to help elect them but to continue on in helping them govern once elected. Victory (or defeat for that matter) should not end at the ballot box. What you hear in line at Tim Horton’s does not constitute civic engagement.

Much more than the other two levels of government, the municipal level offers up a grand opportunity for more hands-on involvement by city-zens with the actual running of the city they live in. Anyone who wants to can get in there, get their hands dirty with governance. Attend meetings. Make deputations. Badger your local councillor directly. Mayor Ford has said he is accessible 24/7, right?

Municipal government is where the rubber hits the road, as they say, they being people I can’t bother looking up to properly cite saying it.

Of course, much could be done to further strengthen and deepen civic engagement. There’s a grassroots movement afoot for something called participatory budgeting. Small slivers of a city’s budget portioned off to be decided upon and spent directly at the community level. “Creating a more educated platform of voters overall,” says PGP volunteer facilitator, Christine Petro. “So I think this can only be good for the big project of democracy.”

Perhaps more radical still would be an idea to empower citizens at the community council level. Give them more than simply input. Make people decide on and be responsible for certain local issues throughout the city. Instead of simple an advisory position make room for actual governing.

Hey, hey.

That’s what elections are for, pallie. The people decide who governs them. Then we go home, watch the Leafs and do it all over again in 4 years time. Anything more than that would be pure… chaos.

Maybe.

But even if that were the case, it would be preferable to the democratic somnolence that has crept up on the citizenry at every level of government. The trend with voter turnout continues to point downward. Disengagement smacks of disillusionment.

That void is then filled with real special interests, not the pretend ones imagined by politicians who see any opposition as undemocratic and unsavoury. Participation and engagement beyond simply voting and tax paying amounts to vigilance. No one politician should be expected to keep democracy healthy and vibrant. Nor 45 for that matter, for a city of over 2.5 million residents with a multitude of needs and opinions.

For nearly 4 years now, Toronto has been bludgeoned with this idea of a manufactured ‘Nation’ that manifested its will back in 2010 and will do so again this October if need be.

My question is, where exactly has that ‘Nation’ been when every single decision has been made affecting them, every month at every council meeting? Where are they when matters are getting hashed out at committee meetings? Where is that nation when the heavy lifting of daily governance is going on?

Politicians only looking for civic engagement every four years aren’t really comfortable with democracy. Their preference is for more of a don’t call us, we’ll call you kind of arrangement. Give us power, stand back and we’ll take it from here.

That’s not engagement so much as it is honorary ceremonial status. The flag waver at a car race. The bottle smasher at a boat launch.

If you’re only expected to pay attention once every four years, it’s ultimately difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it.

— hopefully submitted by Cityslikr

From The Archives

Posted on February 2, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

(Today marks a month into the 2014 municipal campaign and, from an election standpoint, it’s been relatively quiet. At the mayoral level, more time has been spent on who’s thinking about getting in than who’s actually already in the race. Only two candidates have received any attention so far. One is the incumbent who is telling us that he’s busy out there campaigning which you can’t deny him, if by campaigning he means making a drunken spectacle of himself every time he appears out in public. The other, former Scarborough councillor David Soknacki, pretty much has the field to himself. With no one else around to lay a glove on him, he’s simply going about his business, delivering policy platforms and getting himself some name recognition in the vacuum that is nobody else being in the ring with him.

It’s a far cry from this point of time in the last campaign in 2010. The presumptive favourite to win it all was already hard at it. Giorgio Mammoliti was pretending he had what it took to be mayor. There was a nobody named Rocco Rossi threatening to come out of nowhere.

And on this day in 2010, with much hoopla, a young, baby faced contender kicked off what looked to be a serious run from the left as the heir apparent to the outgoing mayor, David Miller. Oh, what heady days those were. When anything seemed possible. Nothing was going to stop the Giambrone express!)

* * *

Adam Giambrone has a huge set of balls. [No comment. — ed.] They must be so big that he has to leave one at home any time he goes out because it would be impossible to cart around both at the same time for fearing of falling forward onto this face. We’re talking major league cojones.

How else to explain his declaration yesterday to run for mayor of Toronto? Adam Giambrone 2010. It’s a suicide mission. A World War I-like lurch up and out of the trenches onto the muddy, bloody, barbed wire fields of gore where the only realistic expectation is to be cut down in your prime. Giambrone is either deluded, blindly full of himself, youthfully idealistic or ambitious beyond the pale. Quite possibly, it’s a combination of all of the above. [We didn’t know just how right we were. — ed.]

Most rational politicians in his position would scan the political landscape in front of them and decide to sit this one out. There is anti-incumbency in the air; howls for the heads of any elected official held responsible for the abysmal shape of things. Look outside your windows, people! Crime is rampant. Roads are clogged and filled with rage. Rats have overrun the subways cars. And the Leafs, oh the Leafs.

Somebody’s got to pay. So if Giambrone were smart, he’d keep his head low, his ward 18 constituents happy and settle back into council this fall as one of the progressive headliners, standing up to the reactionary element that’s been beating its chest in these early days of the campaign. [Hello! Why was nobody listening to us? — ed.] He bears a double burden this election. As chairman of the TTC, Giambrone is the poster boy for all that’s wrong in the eyes of the media with our public transportation system. A coddler of evil unions, he’s also portrayed as one of Mayor Miller’s minions which is a bad space to be occupying presently.

Yet, there he was in front of a raucous crowd that was packed to the rafters in a bar in Little Italy, going public with his preposterously unlikely bid. So unlikely that cynics have suggested he is simply raising his profile and will retreat back to his ward race by September. [HaHaHa! If only it had been that simple. — ed.] That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as Giambrone’s got a fairly high profile as it is albeit largely negative if our daily papers are to be believed. If he is using this now as a profile raiser it would be for an all out run at the job in 4 years time after he steps away from the partisan rancor of City Hall and is seen to be doing good deeds in a social agency or the private sector. Or with an eye toward provincial [How’d that work out for you, Adam? — ed.] or federal elections in the near future, what with the French and Arabic he was throwing around during his speech.

(proof author was present last night)

Although judging from that speech last night, Giambrone seemed to be in this thing to win. He was passionate, articulate and spelled out the reasons why he wanted to be mayor. Yes, much of it was filled with broad generalities and pep rally platitudes (Better Tomorrows, Brighter Futures and all that). Still, I got a sense of the kind of city he wanted to build. Prosperous, of course, but with an emphasis on an equality of opportunity for everyone living here and not just us downtown fat cats and upscale suburban types. But even for those toiling away in Scarborough!

While short on details, he laid out in broad strokes how he wanted to do this. Ease of access on multiple levels. Opening voting to landed immigrants who have a stake in the city. Continued intensification of community policing in order to not only make neighbourhoods safer but to reduce a siege mentality that has descended on some places. And rather than run and hide from his TTC ties, Giambrone feistily embraced it, fully behind the idea of Transit City [No mention of a Scarborough subway in sight. — ed.], explaining that making it easy to get to work and back home and to all places in between will ultimately connect and bind people, neighbourhoods and communities.

So a full All Fired Up in the Big Smoke endorsement, you ask? Hardly. While impressed certainly, the devil will be in the details. Among other things, we most certainly will want to hear from AG [about any sort of monkey business on an office couch. — ed.], how he’s going to deal with the constant fiscal shortfalls that the city faces and the seemingly intractable approach City Hall has in coming up with solutions to that pressing problem.

That said, Giambrone projected a positive, can-do spirit as he entered the race, stating that Toronto is a good place to live. As mayor, he just wants to help make it better. A welcome relief from his opponents who are big on the cut, slash, cracking heads, general all round panic rhetoric that makes great headlines but seldom improves lives. That’s what running for public office should be about, right? [Note to self: ask the Toronto Star’s Royson James what he thinks about the scandal which chased Adam Giambrone from the mayor’s race in light of our subsequent scandal-plagued 4 years. — ed.]

— cautiously optimistically submitted by Cityslikr