Heather Conn Blogs

At the recent Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), I saw the documentary ReGENERATION, about activism in today’s youth generation, and how to change apathy to hope.

I must have had high expectations for the film because it disappointed me. Sure, it had interviews with Amy Goodman, co-founder of Democracy Now, Vancouver’s Kalle Lasn, who started Adbusters, Noam Chomsky, and the late Howard Zinn, who wrote A People’s History of the United States. It emphasized the power of hope and how an individual’s choices and actions affect consumerism, the environment, media, and so on.

The film conveyed that we’re victims of mass media, “technological dependence, rampant materialism and the increasingly fractured relationship with the natural world,” as the VIFF program stated. I don’t disagree with any of that. But the film did not cover the Internet as a tool of empowerment and education, linking people around the globe and regionally in activism, awareness, and communication in ways not remotely possible decades ago.

I think of groups like Avaaz.org, who have used the Internet to remarkable advantage to educate thousands, if not millions, about sociopolitical issues around the world. Their online petitions have altered events and galvanized movements to stop destructive actions from environmental devastation to the sexual exploitation of children. The Internet has connected people to organize demonstrations and educational workshops on short notice with impressive results.

When I brought up this point in the question period after the film, director Phillip Montgomery dismissed my remarks, saying that he didn’t think that social media was the answer and it didn’t have the same powerful impact as a demonstration. I wasn’t talking about Facebook and Twitter. Sure, there is a lot of online crap out there, but I still think that activists and nonprofits can use the Internet to great advantage, whether through videos, blogs, or sending out info about an upcoming protest. Someone like filmmaker Velcrow Ripper certainly does.

I am happy that a film like ReGENERATION is out there to serve as a rallying cry, but it didn’t have the same inspiration and impact for me that a movie like The Corporation did. That is largely due to its story structure. It tries to cover too many areas without a clear presentation of distinct messages. For me, the last few minutes of the film, in which a female high school valedictorian speaks of the need for hope to her classmates, had the biggest punch. The doc needed more moments like that with an emotional edge.

Overall, the movie needed a list of simple, declarative statements, an informal manifesto, if you will, to anchor its message. It gave value solely to external action, not addressing how individuals can transform themselves and the world through deep inner, spiritual work. Look at Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. — that was a core element of their activism and look what global influence they had.

 
                                Franklin in 2006

She might not fit your vision of a revolutionary, but long-time Toronto activist Ursula Franklin has spent decades “fighting” for peace and social justice.

 

Now 89, this emeritus professor and author of The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, defines peace as “the presence of justice and the absence of fear.” She likes to quote the late A. J. Muste, the well known American peace activist: “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

 

Franklin was interviewed May 6 by Anna Maria Tremonti on the CBC’s The Current. Her carefully chosen words reflected her active, conscientious mind and commitment to progressive causes, from prison reform to women’s rights. Her many honors include the Order of Canada, Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, which legally declared girls and women in Canada “persons” for the first time, and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her dedication to advancing human rights.

 

During her CBC interview, Franklin advocated the practice of “scrupling,” rather than today’s cyber-obsession with “Googling.” In her view, people need to get together to air their scruples and make their opinions public; they can’t rely on experts and  publicists to suggest solutions. Too often, we hear that the problems facing society today are too complex to be left to the layperson. But the minds, especially of youth, need to be activated to address these issues, from globalization and environmental concerns to health and education.  

 

When Tremonti asked Franklin about the lack of interest in politics in today’s Canadian youth, she responded that apathy sets in when individuals, especially young people, feel that no one is listening to their concerns. Why bother to vote if no one cares about their opinions and the government will do as it pleases once it receives their votes?

 

Franklin is not willing to rest with the phrase “sustainable development“; she demands to know: “Sustainable of what, develop what, and for whom?” She continues to be an outspoken critic of policies of Canada’s federal government, especially its plan to build more and bigger prisons. Her husband Fred was much involved in the rehabilitation and support of prisoners.

 

“Besides becoming a brilliant academic in a discipline where women were remarkably scarce, she had a keen interest in politics and, of course, feminism,” says Reverend Hanns Skoutajan, one of her Toronto mentees. “She fought for salary equality among the sexes especially in her university.”

 

 He adds: “‘Revolutionary,’ I would call her, but why is it revolutionary to be deeply concerned about the kind of country and world that our grandchildren will inherit?”

 

Skoutajan met Franklin when she was a professor teaching metallurgy at the University of Toronto. He remembers: “Besides teaching, I first encountered her on an anti-war demonstration in Toronto back in the 60s. She became my mentor as she was for many others who were concerned about fascist trends evidenced in many countries as well as our own.”

 

Franklin was born in Berlin to a Jewish mother and Gentile father, a troublesome heritage in Hitler’s Germany. The Nazis arrested the whole family and sent them to different concentration camps; however, they somehow managed to survive the Holocaust and were reunited after the war. She came to Canada in 1949 to continue her career.

 

Franklin recalls, as a teenager, hearing her mother admonish her neighbours in Berlin: “Don’t you see what’s coming?” She saw first-hand the seduction of the German people to anti-Semitism, racial intolerance, the glorification of violence, and a virulent nationalism. She decided to make it her mission to point out and warn people in her new home, Canada, of similar trends.

 

To protest the war in Iraq, Franklin led a parade of professors in full academic attire out of Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto when then-U.S.-President George W. Bush was honored with a doctor of law degree.

 

Franklin and her husband Fred have found a spiritual home in the Quaker religion, known as a Peace Church. However, Quaker meetings are considerably different from other religious services: they are silent. Only when moved by spirit is a member encouraged to speak and express their view. Every person’s opinion is seen as important as the next.

 

“Having attended Quaker meetings, I was always made aware of a spiritual presence but quite unlike what I had encountered in mainline or evangelical worship services where the word of God comes from the Bible and the preacher,” says Skoutajan. “While silence is powerful and scarce in our time, when that silence is broken by some deep concern it takes on a special authenticity.”

 

In his words: “There is a Spirit alive. One need not become a Quaker to experience it, but learn to listen deeply, dare to live mindfully, and seek peace and justice for all humankind.”

 

Many thanks to Hanns Skoutajan for providing the core of this content and giving me permission to put it on my blog.

Does the term “carrotmobs” conjure a riot of raving redheads for you? That’s what it made me think of, especially since I am one of those rare strawberry-locked folks (we’re only four per cent of the population, you know).

 

But this voice-of-the-veggies phenomenon is no hair-color love fest. No, it’s a citizens’ initiative that began in San Francisco in 2008 and operates on the opposite principle of a boycott. Rather than refuse to patronize a store because of its environmentally destructive business practices, a Carrotmob targets an eco-friendly business and shops there en masse at a designated date and time. This group action encourages consumers to reward stores that have committed to reducing their ecological footprint.

 

British Columbia’s first Carrotmob action was at Discovery Coffee in Victoria in October 2009. The event tripled the store’s usual sales for the day and has attracted a younger, more eco-aware clientele, according to owner Logan Gray. 

 

Now Vancouver, BC has launched its first Carrotmob caper for tomorrow, at Salt Spring Coffee on Main Street.  (The swarm site is near Main and 27th Avenue between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) Why this business? Omar Mutashar, who founded the Vancouver branch of Carrotmob, says that he interviewed a number of coffee shops on Main Street about the concept and posted video clips on the Internet; online voters chose Salt Spring Coffee as their Carrotmob shop of choice.

 

Salt Spring Coffee won because it has pledged 110 per cent of its May 16 profits to create more efficient lighting in its store. The progressive company, which started in 1996, uses organic, fair-trade coffee and is striving to become the world’s most sustainable coffee company. Besides the Main Street cafe/store, Salt Spring Coffee has its original shop, the Ganges Cafe, on its namesake island and a kiosk at the BC Ferries terminal in Tsawwassen.

 

I think that Carrotmobbing is a fun, ingenious way to empower both consumers and businesses. It’s a grassroots action to show stores that their socially responsible practices will reap immediate community benefits and give them a financial edge. I hope to see a lot more Carrotmobs crop up in cities everywhere. Maybe we’ll  have Rhubarbmobs and Tomatomobs too. Here’s hoping . . .

 

Click here if you’d like to watch a video of a successful Carrotmob event in San Francisco, hosted by the initiative’s founder. As he says, it takes a carrot, not a stick to motivate people to positive action.

While walking in downtown Vancouver, BC, Canada yesterday, I noticed quite a few people wearing Vancouver Canucks jerseys and cars bearing Canucks flags. (Those small flags that flap above a car’s side window remind me not of sports celebration but of funeral motorcades.) Such are the signs of local sports fan fervor, since the Canucks last night were playing their season opener in the Stanley Cup playoffs  in Vancouver’s General Motors Place.  (They beat the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 in overtime.)

 

Although I admit to enjoying playoff games and have watched many a hockey game in my life, especially as a teenager growing up in Toronto, I still ask: Why can’t people get equally excited about other things that truly matter and affect lives more directly, whether it’s a humanitarian issue or a political decision like the HST (harmonized sales tax)? Sports games produce frothing direct-response from fans while many serious local and global issues and events barely garner awareness. I’ve always found this contradiction bizarre.

 

The  rapt attention of fans watching a sporting event is what prompted Keith Johnstone, co-founder and former artistic director of Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary, Alta., to create the concept of “theatresports.” He wanted to make people as excited about improvisational theatre as they were about supporting their favourite sports team. Hence, he created a competitive framework with actors and teams vying against each other in various fun categories doing spontaneous theatre.

 

The result is that Johnstone helped to create a massive audience for this free-flow acting medium, which has spawned successful troupes from the Vancouver TheatreSports League to the British television show Whose Line is It Anyway?. The latter program inspired a  dumbed-down version in the U.S. with the same name, hosted by Drew Carey. (I much preferred the original British show, which used more literary and cultural references.) For anyone with an interest in improvisational theatre, I highly recommend Johnstone’s book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre.

Here in British Columbia, the federal and provincial governments have decimated funding to arts groups and yet had no difficulty providing millions to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. During the Olympic protest at Vancouver’s Art Gallery (see my post under 2010 Winter Olympics), one guy held a placard that aptly read: “With glowing hearts we kill the arts.” Why do athletes, rather than artists, garner such esteem ?

 

I don’t think it’s a contradiction to enjoy both sports and the arts, but professional athletes and sports attract far too much money and attention relative to other human activities.  By comparison, everyday artists and their creative endeavors deserve far more respect and remuneration for their efforts. I wish that we had an entrenched patron-of-the-arts system and widespread guilds for individuals like those that existed in medieval times.

 

I also wish that many people cared as fervently about sociocultural, political, and humanitarian issues as they do about sports. Where are our priorities?

  

                                                                                                                                                                                                 — visual by Avril Orloff  

This week, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) asked 75 green-minded people their view of what’s critical to launching a successful community sustainability program. In a four-hour interactive session, held at the Cedars Inn motel in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada, here’s how some people responded:

 

Have a sense of urgency. Be bold. Acknowledge risk.
Have strong leadership. Take action and do it with enthusiasm.
Make it personal and engaging.
Understand people’s motivations and value. Recognize their differences.
Demonstrate concrete examples of sustainability and their benefits.
Involve youth and multi-generations.
Reassure people.

 

The SCRD, the local governing body for about 30,000 people who live along the coast northwest of Vancouver, hosted the fun event, which included a free vegetarian dinner and live music by local band Sweet Cascadia. Facilitator Julie Clark, the education and outreach coordinator for the SCRD waste management program, invited participants to respond to three questions:

 

1.  Thinking like the whole coast (region), what do you believe should be the goals of a sustainability education and outreach program?

2.  Think about a time when you experienced fabulous community engagement in action. What were the important elements?

3.  Think about a friend or neighbour who is not involved in the sustainability movement. What suggestions do you have to engage this person in sustainable behaviour?

 

As participants, we discussed responses with three different sets of people, rotating to a new table for each question. We summarized our answers as individual groups, then shared them with the whole group. A wonderfully creative artist, Avril Orloff, wrote our responses on a series of wallboards, using eye-catching imagery and lettering with a variety of coloured felt markers.

 

This process invited maximum participation and allowed us to meet three times as many new people than we would have if we had stayed at our respective tables. Although I was skeptical at first about how effective this method would be in producing practical and meaningful answers, I enjoyed the interaction and brainstorming and found it valuable. I discovered later that we were following World Cafe Guidelines, which I had never known about. The World Cafe Community website defines its approach as “a natural & effective way to host meaningful conversations that awaken collective wisdom & engage collaborative action.”

 

I enjoyed hearing the suggestions from each group; some sought immediate, localized changes, others took a broader outlook, emphasizing life philosophy and motivation more than specific actions. In my first group, I thought that defining sustainability would be a good place to start, since it has become such a buzz word and means different things to many people. Some people prefer the term “stewardship.”

 

A woman in my group recommended the definition offered by Jennifer Sumner, author of the book Sustainability and the Civil Commons: Rural Communities in the Age of Globalization, published by University of Toronto Press in 2005. Sumner thinks that since sustainability is such a vague concept, the forces of corporate globalization can co-opt it. She recommends a new understanding of the term, seeing sustainability as “a set of structures and processes that help build the civil commons.” Sumner defines the latter as “any co-operative human construction that protects/or enables the universal access to life goods” as distinct from market relations. She suggests a new term of “sustainable globalization.”

 

Julie Clark cited the 1987 Brundtland Report , also known as Our Common Future, published by an international group of politicians, civil servants and experts on the environment and development. This report defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The report highlighted three key aspects of sustainable development: environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity

 

The SCRD is putting its sustainability focus on three main areas: water conservation; solid waste (e.g. using it as a resource), and energy and emissions. As if to emphasize how our choices now will affect the next generation, participant Georgina Brandon gave the children who attended an eco-minded art project. She had them draw and paint signs that they paraded through the meeting area: giant vertical footprint outlines that cautioned us to limit our contribution to carbon emissions; a long, horizontal shelf of plastic water bottles, reminding us of landfill clutter and nonrecyclables, and outlines of chickens that encouraged food security and control over one’s own food supply.

                                                                                                                    — visual by Avril Orloff

 

Although this event didn’t result in any earthshaking revolution or instant change, it did provide inspiration, validation, and options for initiating change at a local level. Regardless of what definitions we use for sustainability, only actions will make the difference. I think that concrete goals, such as setting dates for achieving specific reductions of  greenhouse gas emissions, make a good rallying point. Make any efforts solution-oriented rather than harping on problems. The overriding question that Julie Clark posed was the perennial challenge: How do you engage the silent majority?

With a horned Viking hat, fake metal armour and scads of improv confrontation, actor/comedian Mary Walsh has challenged and discomfited some of Canada’s top politicians. Beyond her satirical Viking role as Marg Delahunty on CBC Television’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes (a show that Walsh created), she recently lashed out at the federal government for its indifference to child poverty.

 

If senior government had made the same financial commitment to abolish child poverty as it did to Olympic athletes, Canada would be a far different country, Walsh told the March 8 annual general meeting of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation at the Hyatt Hotel in Vancouver.

 

“We got the most gold ever won by a host country and they say that cost about $4.2 million per medal,” the keynote speaker said of Canada’s 14-gold-medal achievement. Walsh charged the federal government with failing to fulfill its commitment made decades ago to eliminate child poverty by 2000.

 

“If they had thrown money at that then, I think we could be looking at a different country today,” she said.

 

For the past six years, British Columbia has had the highest child poverty rate in Canada, with a shocking rate of 18.8 per cent in 2007, the last available annual measurement. Pitted against the $58.8 million spent to earn Canada’s gold medals, what does this say about our national priorities?!

                                                                                                                       — Heather Conn photos

Protesters in San Francisco demonstrate against Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics
and torch relay (April 2008)

 

With glossy new sports venues and millions of dollars’ worth of ads and merchandising, Vancouver looks poised to make the 2010 Winter Olympic Games a global success. But as the city prepares to host this mega-event, are Canada’s democratic traditions and ethics under threat? How do Olympic spending and initiatives relate to free expression, free assembly and democratic rights?

 

Any Vancouverite or visitor who publicly expresses anti-Olympic sentiment has faced, or will encounter, these chilling realities: censorship of anti-Olympic art; targeting for special policing and border control, and free speech limited to designated safe assembly areas  and protest pens. (See the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) website for more details.)

 

VANOC officials have received unofficial deputized powers to order the removal of visual materials that displease them or compete with the commercial interests of the Olympics’ corporate sponsors. Whether it’s the RCMP, Vancouver police or federal government officials at the Canada-U.S. border, authorities have created an oppressive atmosphere that tells us all: You have only as many civil liberties as we’re willing to grant you. We’ll tell you where and when and how you can voice discontent.

 

I find this extremely disturbing. Before or during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, if someone dares hold up an anti-Olympics placard (as shown above) and they’re outside the so-called “free speech zones” will they be arrested? It appears so.

 

The BCCLA recommends the abolition of so-called “‘safe assembly areas” for anti-Olympic protesters and that undercover police be prohibited from inciting wrongful acts and from infiltrating and leading in the planning of protests. (Click here to see recommendations regarding the Olympics and protest made by the Civil Liberties Advisory Committee.)

 

Last year, thousands of protesters and Tibetans from across North America converged on San Francisco streets in April to protest the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing and the event’s torch relay through Tibet. Many bore placards of anti-Olympic sentiment, complete with images of the Olympic rings converted to tank wheels, handcuffs, and bloodied bodies. These powerful images symbolized China’s human rights abuses and its ongoing torture of Tibetans. The New York Times even published a series of images of such placards.

 

When it comes to human rights, freedom of assembly and free expression, do Vancouver and Canada have more in common with China than with other democratic nations and cities? What a shameful Olympic legacy.

Excerpt from a B.C. Civil Liberties Association letter sent to Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his city council:

“[W]e are losing confidence in your political will to ensure that all voices are heard during the Olympic period, despite your repeated assertions to the contrary.”

 

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right for all, but you’d never know it these days in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The city recently shut down a public art space, which has operated uninterrupted since 2003 in the downtown eastside, after an artist displayed an anti-Olympic painting deemed “graffiti.”

 

Jesse Corcoran, a downtown-eastside artist, hung his art on a horizontal, wooden board outside the Crying Room studio gallery at 157 East Cordova Street, part of the urban area known as “Canada’s poorest postal code.” It showed the five Olympic rings; four contained a sad face and one showed a smiling face.

 

Although the art was not painted directly onto the exterior brick wall, the city of Vancouver forced its removal on Dec. 11, calling the art “graffiti.” It had been hanging there since September.

 

“There needs to be freedom to critique the Olympics,” Corcoran told The Vancouver Sun. He thinks the graffiti excuse is “a convenient way to silence this social criticism.” I agree.

 

Corcoran, a community-care worker, said that his art symbolized the many people who will suffer as a result of the Olympics; only a few will benefit. The homeless have been displaced by the closure of popular Oppenheimer Park in east Vancouver.  Pigeon Park on East Hastings Street is fenced off for repainting and beautification. There are reports of city representatives rounding up the homeless, giving them tickets to board a bus, then driving them to suburban areas like Chilliwack and dumping them off. Whether that’s urban myth or not, it’s disgraceful.

 

Although Mayor Robertson has made shelter for the homelessness one of his priorities,  the city seems more interested in casting Vancouver during the Olympics as a beautiful haven with no ” taint” of panhandlers, people with mental-health issues or substance-use issues. This oceanfront city is  just a prosperous place with glossy new venues and thousands of happy, smiling people, right?

 

I think it’s ironic that Vancouver and VANOC have touted artists and their projects from around the world as part of this upcoming global event. They want to showcase the city as a great patron of culture and the arts, yet grassroots artistic self-expression such as Jesse’s gets quashed.

 

This sets a dangerous precedent against freedom of expression. As David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, has said: “This [removal of anti-Olympic art] is an excellent example of our worst fears.”

 

Meanwhile, Canada Customs officials at the B.C. border recently detained and grilled U.S. journalist Amy Goodman, accusing her of fomenting anti-Olympics sentiment. Find out the details on my blog; it’s the second item under Media.

A police officer tasers a homeless man who refuses to leave his temporary, tarp-covered dwelling on a city sidewalk, resulting in the man’s death. A crack dealer in a wretched downtown eastside hotel offers to pimp out his female friend so that she can pay him back for the drug money she borrowed. A clerk at a government housing office can find no record of a homeless woman’s application for rental accommodations, even though she’s made repeat submissions for the past seven months.

 

These dismal events, taken from real-life experiences of people who live on the streets, appear as provocative, grim scenarios in the Headlines Theatre play After Homelessness. Two weeks of performances at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver, BC and the Holy Trinity Cathedral in New Westminster have produced a compelling production, guaranteed to rip away the don’t-get-involved complacency of any middle-class viewer.

 

The play features six main characters, performed by actors who have all known homelessness in their own lives. These range from Nico (Justine Goulet), a young, dreadlocked rebel with a punk attitude and a desire to remain drug-free, and Shawna (Sandra Pronteau), a crack-addicted thief, to Bob (Kevin Conway), a near-broke man on lithium who finds solace in alcohol after eviction from his condo.

 

In another play, these characters could well appear as crusty stereotypes, eliciting pity or even dismissal from a contemptuous audience. But Headlines Theatre bills itself as “Theatre Making Policy”; as artistic director David Diamond tells us from onstage, it’s not enough just to write and perform a play about homelessness.

 

As a society, we need to come up with positive outcomes  for those who battle daily with homelessness and any accompanying combination of addiction or mental illness. How can social solutions reflect compassion, respect, and dignity when city authorities too often treat the homeless like a blight that deserves no cure?

 

The play After Homelessness invites audience-members to think beyond knee-jerk responses and bureaucratic models that degrade people and their situations. Instead, it offers viewers the chance to respond immediately, from their guts. How?

 

By yelling “Stop!” any time during the production when they can relate to a particular incident or attitude performed onstage. The audience-member who calls out goes onstage temporarily and replaces an actor, taking on the same role through improv interactions with the other characters. The results? Sometimes different outcomes and kinder choices, but always ones in keeping with the character’s original profile. In other words, no magic solutions.

 

At times, Diamond stopped the action, asking the actors to share their innermost secret thought in a scene, one that they would never normally share. In one case, the female audience-member whose character was angry and frustrated over her lack of success with the housing registry, replied: “I feel like blowing the place up.” Her remark shocked me, yet it reflected her true sentiments in that situation.

 

Diamond told our Wednesday-night audience at the Holy Trinity Cathedral that mainstream media were not reviewing this play because of its audience-motivated interaction, performances and discussion. Supposedly, this format did not render it a “real” play, worthy of coverage. What crap.

 

(Ironically, in the next morning’s Vancouver Sun, an editorial had the headline: “Policy breakthrough: House the homeless first, then help them with their problems.” It acknowledged the “classic Catch 22 — you can’t get help to solve your problems until you have a place to stay, and you can’t get a place to stay until you’ve already solved your problems.”) Gee, I wonder: Did the writer see the play? 

 

I applaud the performance format of After Homelessness, especially in a region where millions are spent on creating Winter Olympics venues, with comparatively little money targeted for adequate shelter and housing for the urban homeless.

 

A study by the International Olympic Committee concludes that the construction of new affordable and social housing has not kept up with the number of homeless people. A 2008 Metro Vancouver count recorded at least 2,660 homeless people, a whopping 373-per-cent increase since 2002.

 

                                                                                                                         — Heather Conn photo

“Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes.”

“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible and suddenly, you are doing the impossible.”                                                                — St. Francis of Assisi