I like Bowinn Ma a lot. She is the British Columbia Member of the Legislative Assembly representing North Vancouver-Lonsdale. She’s a good person, attuned to local urban needs, and has all the right approaches to policy making. in her second term, she is now the Minister of Infrastructure, a perfect job for an engineer with an abiding interest in how people move around well. She has recently been the champion of some legislation that I vehemently disagree with, but that’s politics. On June 27, her constituency office was bombed at 4:15 in the morning. It was a small device that went off. It happened a week after Minnesota state speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, and another left wing Minnesota state senator was also shot. I have not heard any ongoing conversation in my circles about the fact that one of our MLAs had her office bombed during a time of political violence in North America. This strikes me as NOT OKAY.
Barak Obama spent an hour talking to Heather Cox Richardson, during which he dropped this line that “the system has been captured by this with a weak attachment to democracy.” Here’s the clip. Here’s the full interview. I appreciation Richardson’s commitment to the grass roots, but it’s not just the case that bottom up is the only way we make change. Bottom up vs top down is not a moral position. Bombing an MLA’s office and assassinating democratically elected representatives is also “bottom-up” change making. Democracy moves very slowly, which is its feature. But the public square has developed incredible potential to reinvigorate that, except that the tools of democratic engagement and grass roots conversation have alos been captured by “those with a weak attachment to democracy.” I don’t have answers, and Obama’s ideas sound old now, but in essence, I don’t know what other choice we have. We are quickly losing the ability to deliberate together, and that is the essence of democracy.
The guy who inspires me the most in this space of democratic renewal these days is Peter Levine, whose work I often share. Here he is in conversation with Nathaniel G. Perlman on The Great Battlefield podcast. He recently shared work on trust in institutions from CIRCLE which studies youth engagement in civic life. There are some good lessons in here for people working to keep robust democratic engagement alive, and especially making the generational hand off. I’m of the mind that one way to generate trust from citizens in democratic institutions is to bootstrap it by institutional leaders working from a basic stance of trust in citizens. The CIRCLE study is important work. If you work in a democratic institution, including education, media, government, and other organizations essential to a functioning pluralistic society, it’s a must read.
Community Foundations are a powerful group of civic institutions in this country. I have worked with many, including my own local one here on Bowen Island, and the Vancouver Foundation, the largest in Canada. Their work is important, influential and essential, especially as we enter a new period of austerity. A story this past week surfaced on how community foundations in Canada are working to support local journalism so that news on local issues can be properly covered. As a person who lives in a community with a great local newspaper, this is fantastic to see.
Summer is here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. After some unsettled weather the annual summer high is doing its best to get established over the north east Pacific Ocean. That weather feature brings us long stretches of sunny, hot, and dry weather, usually starting in mid-July and going until mid-September with very little rain. It’s our drought season here on the edges of the temperate rainforest of the Pacific coast. We launched the kayak today, realizing that its a heavy beast and we’re probably going to need a little set of wheels to get it to and from the kayak rack by the beach where we store it.
Elon Musk wants to start a new political party. US politics is no longer amusing. I guarantee he will do none of the work required to create a democratic alternative. In starting his new party the richest man in the world said “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” The irony is at ridiculous levels, given Musk’s recent scraping of all kinds of the government data on its citizens and his own heavy reliance on government funding to keep his businesses solvent. Elon Musk is not likely to build a democratic alternative to the two parties of oligarchy in the US. When the biggest grifter of them all, who now knows your social security number, tells you you are getting your freedom back if only you will join his own charismatic movement, run in the opposite direction.
I got a new iPhone last week and set it up yesterday. It took all of 20 minutes of my phones sitting next to each other to transfer everything from my old phone to my new one with about five minutes of me tapping buttons and answering questions along the way. Once done, the new one looked exactly like the old. A very very nice user experience. No heavy lifting involved.
Coming home across Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound last night, with a working tug boat carrying a log boom to the mills on the Fraser River.
Parking Lot is actually the name of this blog, a partial reference to the facilitation tactic of listing issues not germane to the current conversation thread. These lists are stored in a “parking lot” for later, although often these become “wrecking yards” when the issues never resurface again.
At any rate, here is a summary of the links and notes I’ve posted in the past week. Dive in and explore some of the interesting stuff.
Not much going on today here on our little island. It’s a cool summer day, sunny and clear with a steady inflow wind. This evening we’ll probably head out for a paddle, but for now, here’s some music I’m enjoying this morning from my regular feed of music sites that feed me good stuff. If you’ve ever been in one of our Harvest Moon online courses, you’ll know that the music we play during the sessions is an important and curated part of the program. These are a few of the places I find that music.
- Samba Toure, a protégé of Ali Faraka Toure, has a profile of his career at World Music Central today. This might be the whole soundtrack for the weekend.
- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released a beautiful album last year, and a couple of days ago they did a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR with four songs off the album. Gosh, Rawlings’ melodic lines are so very sweet on this whole record.
- Maria Popova posts a timely reflection on joy featuring a Nick Cave written after the death of his son.
- My favourite Canadian jazz guitarist, Reg Schwager, has just made all of his music available on Bandcamp for $63. I already have most of it, but his latest release there, In Between, features 8 original compositions in a classic jazz organ trio setting, with Michel Lambert on drums and Steve Amirault on organ. Beautifully produced to bring out the best of Reg’s tone and swing.
An old picture of my friend Corbin Keep reading the National Post, which I think he was doing for my amusement!
My sources for nuance in the current news desert are mostly living in the blogosphere (or it’s quasi equivalent in the public gardens of Medium and Substack). Here are the sites I read pretty much every time the publish something to dive deeper into the civic and policy issues that affect me.
Canadian issues
- Dougald Lamont’s Substack is the site of former Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont. He publishes incredibly detailed essays on current policy topics skewing towards economics and political history in Canada.
- The Tyee is a progressive news site covering British Columbia and Alberta politics. They often bring on journalists through grants and bursaries to cover issues in depth and their analysis is thoughtful, grounded and referenced. They also have whimsical pieces and great book recommendations.
- The Hub is a conservative site that has no RSS feed, so I have to manually check it every week or so. In a world in which I associate conservative politics with right wing bluster, culture war nonsense, populism and juvenile name calling, The Hub stands alone in Canada on its side of the political spectrum with thoughtful analysis on politics, housing, climate, and economy from a market-centric perspective. As a not-right-wing person, they manage to infuriate me in a way that causes me to look up why I think I’m correct in my opinions. I appreciate that.
- Policy Alternatives from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is the site that makes me pump my fist and say “right on!” CCPA is a well established left-wing policy institute that has been doing fantastic public policy analysis in Canada for decades. It would be fun to take one of their papers on one from The Hub and jam them into a ChatGPT thread to see what comes out.
Policy in other parts of the world
- Letters from an American is the newsletter of Heather Cox Richardson who has become a popular commentator on US politics. As a historian, she puts the events of the day in historical context, but does not hide her ire at what the current administration is doing to her country.
- Intercontinental Cry is the website of IC Magazine and reports on events around the world from the perspective of their impact on Indigenous peoples. There is lots of stuff here you will never hear about otherwise, and it’s not all grim news. There are brilliant pieces on resilience and resurgence and great film recommendations to boot.
- The Economist sees the world through a free market, classical liberal economics lens and that perspective is incredibly important for understanding the global trade world and the implications of political and policy decisions on everyday stuff like the prices we pay for the things we need. Another site that makes me rage sometimes, but I have to go look stuff up to understand why.
I’m curious what sources you read for good analysis of the events of the day, beyond news and daily reporting. I’m especially curious about the sites you read that challenge you. Leave them in the comments for us all to check out.