Tag Archives: Giorgio Mammoliti

Massacre At The AGO

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To cut the 6 front running mayoral candidates a little slack, one could say that they might’ve been sandbagged at the AGO’s Pug Talk: A New Mayors Vision For Architecture, Design and Planning In The City Of Toronto last night. Before the roundtable discussion commenced, Toronto’s former Tiny Perfect Mayor, David Crombie, took to the stage and warmed up the crowd with talk of a “continuation of regeneration of the public realm”. He spoke of “reimagination, reinvention and reinvestment” in the “civic magic” that makes all the difference between simply living in a city and loving living in a city. In 3 short minutes, I found myself plotting a Draft Crombie For Mayor movement.

Crombie was then followed by a grade school participant in the Pug Ed program which is “… designed to engage senior elementary school students in architecture, design and urban development…” who succinctly laid out a very green (environmentally speaking) plan of what he would do if he were mayor. As he finished up, one of the mayoral candidates said it was a good thing that he wasn’t running for office now. Truer words have never been spoken by anyone on the campaign trail.

And then came the real kick in the sack. A video clip of Councillor Adam Vaughan (clip starts at about the 83′ mark) taking part in an earlier Pug Talk where he spoke of the choice between wanting to “build a civilization or sustain a settlement” and needing to elevate the notion of city building above merely filling potholes and fixing street lights.  High falutin’ stuff, as Rob Ford and his zombie army might say if they knew what it meant, and certainly leaving many in the audience wondering why Mr. Vaughan wasn’t running for the mayor’s job.

The warm up act finished, it was now time for the headliners, and I don’t think it much of an overstatement to tell you that the next hour and three-quarters was nothing short of a big ol’ fucking train wreck.  It might’ve been more fun to watch if, you know, our collective futures weren’t riding on all of it.  I didn’t think it possible for a city that elected Mel Lastman mayor twice could find itself less than a decade later with even dimmer prospects. But it was difficult to shake off that sense after the performances I witnessed last night.

Joe Pantalone, bless his soul, I think has his heart in the right place. As a progressive, left wing voter, my sympathies are with him. It’s his struggles to straddle the middle way — distancing himself from the current administration that he’s been an integral part of but is the bogey man of this campaign, while trying to point out the positive aspects it has delivered — that leave him floundering, easy prey for vacuous political sharks like George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi. He’s fighting their fight and getting beaten to the punch constantly.

For a second consecutive night, Giorgio Mammoliti delivered what I saw as the most impassioned, least calculated performance. His wild swings for the fences never ever hit one out of the park or, quite possibly, ever got him safely on base but it seemed that he tied Pantalone for at least trying to mould their responses to the room they were speaking to. There was a sense Mammoliti believed the topic at hand was important even if he wasn’t sure about what needed to be done about it.

It was performance miles ahead of the rest of the mayoral pack.

Rob Ford was so far out of his element that it was almost embarrassing to witness. But not that embarrassing. He clearly has no mind for complex issues and his adaptive powers are equally absent. Despite having been given the questions beforehand, he answered none, only using them to launch into his now familiar spiel of out of control taxing and spending, blah, blah, blah. He was heckled by a suit just into his first rambling response and by the end the crowd was openly laughing at his answers especially the one where he claimed to have made Rexdale into Rosedale.

Was Rob ruffled? Hard to say. He always seems ruffled. For him, the crowd’s reaction had nothing to do with his performance. They were all just rude and a bunch of NDPers, he told reporters afterwards. Apparently, the man simply sees culture, education and discourse on weighty issues as some sort of socialist plot.

George Smitherman didn’t really use the opportunity of Ford’s missteps to further his cause much as he just was popping in on his way to another engagement long enough to take a couple swipes at Ford and Pantalone, buddy up with Rocco Rossi and mimic some of the key words and phrases he’d heard bandied about. Public realm. Elevated urban planning. We found it telling that the man had just returned from a trip to China that included a stop in Shanghai, arguably one of the architectural marvels of the modern world, and he made no mention of it at an Architecture, Design and Planning roundtable discussion!!! I guess his engineers hadn’t got the opportunity to program that into his hard drive yet.

As for Rocco Rossi and Sarah Thomson, they are little more than talkers of talking points. Rossi, the smoother of the two, seemed the most knowledgeable about the subject at hand and spoke baritonely about beauty and planning but in examining my notes, I realize I jotted down nothing of what he actually said. And Thomson still sounds as if she just recently joined the debate club. Her approach is exhaustively Wikipedian, able to talk about any topic that comes up but for no longer than 2 minutes a pop. Her ability to adjust to the crowd is as equally suspect as Ford’s. Last night speaking at the AGO to an audience with a large contingent of designers and architects, she began one statement as follows: “I don’t know if you know the ROM…” Yeah, my guess is they probably do, Sarah.

What was most discouraging about this particular evening was that it offered up the perfect opportunity for the candidates to unveil a grand vision of why they want to be mayor and how they see the future of the city coming together under their leadership. Not one of them rose to the occasion. The proceedings had started out with glimpses of heavyweights in the forms of David Crombie, Adam Vaughan and a pre-pubescent child. It ended with a choice of lightweights.

It may be time to turn our attention to our respective council races in order to send strong representatives to City Hall in the hopes of at least trying to mitigate the disaster that’s taking shape in the race to be mayor.

— despairingly submitted by Cityslikr

The Debates Drone On

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Walking out from Trinity St. Paul’s church… er, Centre after the latest mayoral debate, I was accosted by a young fellow who stepped in front of me, blocking my path and demanded to know if I was Rocco Rossi.

Now, I have been called a few names in my time that were not my own, many better, most much worse, but never one this curious. Was I Rocco Rossi? If I’d been quicker on the uptake, I would’ve acknowledged that, yes in fact, I was Rocco Rossi but I had no time to stop and chat since I’d just stolen Sarah Thomson’s wallet from her purse and needed to make a quick getaway. That would’ve got the Twittersphere a-buzzing.

I could then take my act on the road, doing a little door-to-door canvassing under the name of Rocco Rossi, not so much campaigning as panhandling, begging for money, claiming that my fundraising had dried up since Rob Ford entered the race. I’d accept non-cash donation as well. A nice hot meal would be nice because I was so very, very hungry.

Oh, the things I’d do if I were the pretend Rocco Rossi.

Aside from that unusual ending, the debate itself proceeded pretty much as expected except that George Smitherman was absent who, it would appear, no longer needs to debate his opponents now that China has anointed him Mayor of Toronto. Taking his spot up on stage was Howard Gomberg, one of the 24 or so “other” candidates officially registered as mayoral candidates. How the evening’s hosts (a series of Bloor Street West business improvement areas and residents associations) decided upon Gomberg remains a mystery. The debate moderator, Gus Sinclair, began to explain the selection process but then simply didn’t and moved on to the candidates’ opening remarks.

This only increased my cynical suspicion of nefarious motives in choosing Gomberg to warm George Smitherman’s seat. An actor, improv-ver, spouter of New Ageism and all round genial old guy who wows the audience with his beat poetry/raps, Gomberg might be just the candidate to scream “Fringe!” loud enough for everyone to simply ignore all the other outsiders as cranks, pranksters and jokesters. None worthy of further consideration.

That Mr. Gomberg acquitted himself to the degree of not being an embarrassment was a good thing. Aside from injecting a little levity into the proceedings, however, he didn’t bring much to the table but, at least, he was not the clown prince. How could he be, what with Rob Ford sitting beside him?

Clown, buffoon, gas bag and blowhole. All these descriptors of Ford come easily but they don’t actually do justice to the monumental ignorance the man displays in terms of governance. It’s all about customer service to Ford; answering phone calls, filling potholes, putting name tags on city employees. There’s a paucity of imagination in the man (and presumably his rabid followers) that is simply staggering. Every time he stands to speak or rather, vent, H.L. Mencken’s quote immediately springs to mind. For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Of course, Rob Ford merely delivers the populist, grassroots version of the same song and dance sung by candidates Rocco Rossi and Sarah Thomson. Much of the evening’s talk was of fiscal responsibility, getting our financial house in order, running a tight ship, profligate spending and taxing. No degree of counter-argument penetrated their discussion.

Councillor Pantalone claimed that under the Miller administration municipal spending had risen less than government spending at either the provincial or federal levels. No matter. We must get our fiscal house in order before going to the senior levels of government, cap-in-hand. But the provincial and federal governments just posted $20 billion+ and $50 billion+ deficits respectively. They are hardly the paragons of financial probity that Toronto needs to be justifying itself to. Cities aren’t allowed to run annual operating deficits, Pantalone points out. Immaterial. Until we get serious about cutting taxes and spending, we cannot expect other levels of government to take us seriously.

So it went in circles. Ideology trumping informed debate which was especially discouraging last night as the audience largely brought their A-game, posing questions about land use development, population density strategies and socially inclusive gentrification. For his part, Joe Pantalone engaged in a thoughtful, deliberate manner, most of the time. But it’s a difficult slog as he doesn’t possess an orator’s power of persuasion, coupled with the fact his opponents were mostly content to talk trash and shit, brushing Pantalone off with the school yard taunt of Miller Lite. (No. I most certainly am not Rocco Rossi.)

Bringing me to a most unsettling conclusion: Giorgio Mammoliti came across as the evening’s most intriguing candidate. Setting aside for the moment all the man’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, he struck me as someone who genuinely is searching for a way to make this city better and more vital. Yes, his thoughts and plans drifted in and out of lucidity and he says sinister things like, I know where the money is, but he seems like a candidate who is not set in a rigid belief system. This leads to many a contradiction (even within a single statement) and backtracking which could well be a very solid indication that he doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about. Yet, on this night at any rate, it felt refreshing, popping up as it did in a sea of unyielding certainty and blinkered absolutes.

Or maybe I’m already desperate, clutching at straws, waiting and hoping for someone to step forward and give me one good reason to think that dark days don’t lie ahead for Toronto.

— not yet but close to fearfully submitted by Cityslikr

Meet A Mayoral Candidate XVII

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It’s Friday, and if you can tear yourself away from watching the World Cup for a moment, cast your eyes this way for our weekly Meet A Mayoral Candidate.

Up today: HiMY SYeD, the Peoples’ Mayor!

Now, we don’t want anybody to finish this post and walk away thinking it’s an out-and-out endorsement of Mr. SYeD. It’s too early for that. Questions still remain that need to be answered. But we will confess to having somewhat of a crush on the candidate, politically speaking of course. So consider what follows to be an unapologetic endorsement of HiMY SYeD being taken very, very seriously as a candidate for mayor of Toronto in 2010.

We first encountered Mr. SYeD at the Better Ballots Mayoral forum earlier this month. He popped up on stage for the one minute presentation given to all registered candidates for mayor who had not made it into the main debate portion of the evening. And as show business people say, he killed, delivering a rhythmic speech that ended with a very funny call to arms. This Election is not about Left or Right. It is about who is being Left behind, and who’s Right behind them. We’ve sent enough Cowboys to City Hall. Now, It’s Time for an Indian. The visual joke being, Mr. SYeD is of southeast Asian extraction.

Apparently, this was not the first time he made an impression at a political venue. Back in 2006 at Dave Meslin’s City Idol competition, SYeD created a stir as reported in NOW magazine. “The citystate has been replaced by the neighbourhood civilization,” says candidate HiMY SYeD (his spelling, not mine). “You don’t need a councillor, you need representation for your neighbourhood. You need a superhero for your neighbourhood!” Stripping down to a Superman costume, he jumps off the stage, through the crowd and out the door.

So just a gifted performer with a knack for publicity stunts? No, that’s Rob Ford’s schtick minus the ‘gifted’. Sifting through Mr. SYeD’s work and online presence (and he has a very large online presence; so much so as to be slightly daunting to techno-dolts like us), we begin to discover a highly thoughtful, active and involved citizen. His resumé is wildly varied but with a unified core: politics. Islamic banking and finance, civil rights activist, photojournalist, Torontopreneur – a founder of Torontopedia. Mr. SYeD is up to his eyes in the life and wellbeing of this city.

On the campaign trail, he Tweeted responses to questions being asked of the 6 media picks for mayor at this week’s CP24 televised debate. (Freezing Wages/Salaries “Across The Board” is irresponsible w/o Forensic Accounting & considering Unintended Consequences) He attends council meetings, appearing to know more about what’s going on at City Hall than those like the above mentioned Mr. Ford who’ve been elected to represent it. Just a couple days ago, SYeD revealed to the Tweetosphere that Councillor Paula Fletcher once again pressed the wrong button and voted in favour of a motion that she claimed to be against just as she did in spiking the University Avenue bike lane proposal. Oops! She did it again…

Sifting through the mountains of content that Mr. SYeD produces on a daily basis, we begin to decipher the coalescing of that whole ‘Vision’ thing candidates ought to bring to the table when asking us for our votes. While the front running candidates are competing to simply nibble around the edges of what this city needs in order to grow prosperously, equitably and sustainably (or choosing to ignore that necessity altogether), HiMY SYeD has made the leap from Ward 19 councillor candidate to mayoral to tackle the governance of Toronto head on. “It is time for our city to reset, reboot, restart, and take on the challenge of what I call “Remalgamation” and get on with finishing the work that was started in 1998 when six cities… merged into one.”

Taking his biking message to Rio.

One city. “As people, we are all born with human rights. These are universal and should not be up for negotiation. In deference to the jurisdictions in which we may live, we have some elastic level of Civil Rights. Civil Rights are by their very nature, a permanent negotiation within the society. By simply living within a city’s borders, are there certain inalienable municipal rights? Regardless of citizenship, residency, class, gender. What is the right to the city?”

It is in pursuit of the answer to that question where we see the emerging vision of candidate HiMY SYeD. For him, the rhetoric of this mayoral campaign has been all about the things and “stuff” of Toronto – infrastructure, bureaucracy, taxes – and precious little about its people. Thus, when trying to answer our lame question, If the present mayor would like his legacy to be that of the Transit Mayor, how would a Mayor SYeD like to see his legacy written, it seems best to just go back to the beginning of this post. HiMY SYeD, the Peoples’ Mayor!

Yes, more specifics will be required as the campaign proceeds. But candidate SYeD has earned the right to have those specifics aired to a citywide audience. He needs to be up on stage with Mssrs. Ford, Mammoliti, Pantalone, Rossi, Smitherman and Ms. Thomson each and every time they debate. Failure to make space for him will reveal a cravenness and fear of having a truly meaningful discussion about the future of Toronto on the part of our mainstream media and the leading candidates themselves. We, the people of Toronto, should not be denied that discourse.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr