Civic Engagement: What Can Councillors Do? Part Two

As stated previously, I believe that the only authentic way to improve local governance on a long-term basis is to 'increase the relationship of engagement between the residents and their Councillors'.

The direction of the engagement is paramount. It has to come from the citizenry to be authentic and longstanding. The primary impetus has to come from us.

However, I also believe that Councillors must do what they can do to help build this new relationship of engagement. Here's my second suggestion towards this end.

A Councillor should have a Facebook account.

Like it or not, point out what you will about its merits or its negatives, social media is here to stay. I do not believe it's the foundation on which engagement between Councillors and their residents should take place; it's an adjunct.

And Twitter? I believe that the use of Twitter has managed to trivialize the transmission of information on the political stage. Some dignity is called for when it comes to the means by which we regard the mechanism for ensuring our well-being, and I'm not convinced that 'Twitter' and 'dignity' have much in common.

Civic Engagement: What Can Councillors Do? Part One

As stated previously, I believe that the only authentic way to improve local governance on a long-term basis is to 'increase the relationship of engagement between the residents and their Councillors'.

The direction of the engagement is paramount. It has to come from the citizenry to be authentic and longstanding. The primary impetus has to come from us.

However, I also believe that Councillors must do what they can do to help build this new relationship of engagement. Here's my first suggestion towards this end.

A Councillor should have an effective blog or site.

We are now in 2011. The landscape regarding staying in touch with residents has changed drastically over the past 15 years. No longer is a paper newsletter or pamphlet or flyer on its own a reasonable default. I put it this way because I recognize that not everyone has online access. (I should add that electronic newsletters and mass emailings fall under the umbrella of a blog or site.)

If a Councillor does not an effective blog or site, then I'd question their sincerity in wanting to promote communication with their constituents, to contribute to this increase in the relationship of engagement.

Of perceived local governance dysfunction...and chocolate?!?

It's no secret that there is a fairly wide-spread perception that there's legacy dysfunctionality at City Council. (For the sake of this discussion, I'm willing to limit the time-frame to that during which the PanAm Games Stadium Site Selection Process has been going on.) I don't have a good enough grasp on the 'proof', haven't formed a qualified opinion, so I'm not going to weigh in here. (Though the impressions I have gotten are slowly coalescing into something I wouldn't classify as 'positive'. These, combined with my thoughts on the general state of many Councillors' 'performance' in meetings will be the subject of an upcoming piece.)

But the article 'Council Needs Concrete Goals to Overcome Personality Conflicts' over at Raise the Hammer by journalist Joey Coleman raises some valid questions that have to do with this 'perception of dysfunctionality'.

No apologies; I just couldn't resist.

Over at Raise the Hammer, an article on return on investment in West Harbour with that as the stadium site veered off when one of the consistently more annoying wags made a comment I just had to take off on.

"Our city fathers made a lot of mistakes over the yrs. One of them being the water front along the bay. It should have never been developed into the industrial nightmare we see today."

My comment was grabbed onto by one of the more cogent of RTHers, and that so got me going that I replied.

I've dealt with this stuff before. Here. I've commented on it since then, recently even. This idea that people looking back seem to place a modern template over the circumstances at the time-frame they're examining. Hold it up to our standards, with all the advantages of hindsight that sometimes more than a century's worth of lessons learned has provided.

How nice.

So now, in this instance, we've got people looking at the 'mistakes' made by our 'city fathers' over the years as well as captains of industry...and hey; let's throw in the workers who found gainful employment as a result of all these 'mistakes'. All 'should have known better' and can be held accountable for the indisputable environmental and social ills brought about by everything perpetrated way back then.

Good Lord.

To me this twaddle isn't just misguided, it's wholly self-indulgent. The very notion of going back and second-guessing an entire society based on what we've learned is worse than what trolls produce...because trolls are asinine beyond measure, and for the most part, these guilt-based revisionists are very intelligent. So the annoyance they leave in their wake is of a particular kind; they should know better.

Look; it's not like I can't identify aspects of our past that can be easily labeled as 'Questionable' or 'Ill-advised' or 'Societally Irresponsible'. But were I to indulge myself and go off on something I wish had turned out differently, I'd focus on the Automobile-Petroleum-Rubber Complex. One wherein instead of our entire friggin' culture predicated on driving and all its concomitant villanies, it's primarily predicated on what was already in place before Henry Ford and his ilk commandeered the economy: rail. Suck on that for a while.

Or how about this: instead of Thomas Edison holding sway, Nicholas Tesla ruled the day.

Or: no American Revolution. Instead of a badly-directed British Empire, George III had a far more benevolent approach to colonizing North America...and instead of two nations, we currently have one.

Or how about instead of finding a continent of vulnerable 'savages', the French, the English, the Germans, the Spanish and the Dutch found a people who were not going to simply roll over and give up.

Or if these are too far-fetched, what if we'd never had Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, Harris...and Bush, Jr? (Twice.)

Oh, hell; throw in Harper.

OK, OK; now I'm getting obstreperously indulgent.

Burlington Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward's community site is up and running, and can be found here.

I'm looking forward to watching how it's used to promote civic engagement, and if Hamilton Councillors can learn a thing or two from this media-savvy politician.

This week I had some contact with the Hamilton Civic League. I love the motto on their site: 'Transforming democracy inaction to democracy in action'. At some point I'd like to get into some of the 'feedback' I provided them (it was extensive and relevant to what I talk about here regarding civic engagement), but for now, I wanted to post something else.

I'd shared my thoughts with a dear, old friend of mine. She picked up on an element in the correspondence regarding teaching 'Civics' in our school more thoroughly in an effort to increase eventual voter participation and general resident involvement in local governance. Here's a paraphrasing of her thoughts:

"Although a early-inception course in civics would serve to create better informed youth -one already inclined to intelligently exercise their civic rights and responsibilities with more reliability than we adults- to me what would be even more useful would be an early-inception course in 'Being Human 101'.

No matter how many opportunities students have in which to learn, what ultimately determines their desire or ability to engage is the lens through which they see, the lens as determined by their individual soul journey. A course that helped kids grow in the way they needed would assist in polishing this lens, and thereby make their 'vision' all the crisper.

Whether to complement the good family environment they may enjoy, or to counteract and ameliorate a more inhibiting home life situation, such learning would serve to provide kids with an invaluable 'How it all works' understanding of the mysteries that continue to thwart those of us as adults who haven't been able to master sufficient basics on our own, thereby distorting our 'vision' of Life."

Even though I don't see any possibility of such a basic inculcation about living your life of being injected into mainstream education, I love the 'step back' she took from what to me was a very practical suggestion. Because she's right. We don't provide much in the way of this kind of learning. Maybe for most, it's a bit too 'touchy-feely'. Moreover, maybe this is something good parenting should address. Nevertheless, I think she's nailed it: we may well be falling down in giving our children the tools they'll need to compete in an ever-technological world (not that Canada does that badly in international surveys, by-and-large), but we seem to also be doing so in the broader 'Life-skills' area. (This isn't something that's happened overnight. Context about your-life-lived and the tools that inform it has probably been diminishing -or at least in a state of flux- for going on five decades now. Whatever you can say about the prowess of our current youth to navigate through and with the technology available, I don't believe that there's as strong a comprehension about Life fundamentals as there 'used to be'.)

Though it would be easy to go all 'dark cloud' about this stuff, I'll confess I'm filled with optimism: there's so much room for improvement, the potential for a better Life for us all is astounding.

Two thoughts...led by a question

And the question is this:

"Do you find it acceptable that generally less than 40% of eligible voters tend to exercise their franchise in municipal elections, that generally 60% of those who vote, cast their ballots according to 'name recognition', and that generally people are either ambivalent or ill-informed about the goings-on in their local governance?"

If you do, then you're reading the wrong blog.

If you don't, then I have something more to say on this subject.

This week I've been fortunate to have been the recipient of some solid input regarding this pet cause of mine, considering an 'increase to the relationship of engagement between residents and their Councillors in local governance'. Some of it was shot my way, some of it resulted from an unexpected reference being dropped in front of me, some of it I had to dig around to find. Hence this editorial. (At the least.) And these two thoughts.

1) We live in a coerced culture. We are consumers, materialism junkies. And this is very much 'informed' (I'm being nice here.) by the manufacturers by way of advertising and marketing. Mainstream Media, or MSM.

We have, to a great extent, become 'sheeple'. I figure this has taken -and I'm being a tad liberal with the time-frame- since the advent of Madison Avenue and the ascendency of television. Here's the result:

-We've been riding a wave of crap food for about a half-century. For convenience, for lower costs, for variety. The bottom-line for me is that it's done us no good; pandemic obesity, Type II Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. What we eat and how we eat it has, not to put a too 'conspiratorially' fine point on it, been 'informed' by food conglomerates in cahoots with government agencies, with politicians, with MSM. We've always had the ability to go in a different direction, but we've -passively– chosen not to through potentially four generations.

-We've been co-opted by the 'Medical-Pharmaceutical-Government Complex. I don't want to tap into that 'conspiratorial' energy too much, so I'll just leave it at that. Again, we've always had the ability to go in a different direction, but we've -passively– chosen not to through potentially four generations.

-Tied in with this is our abrogation of our personal responsibilities to look after our personal health and fitness. This despite a huge 'fitness' industry...and the strange paradox of a 'thin model' paradigm in MMS, while witnessing the aforementioned obesity pandemic. Once more, we've always had the ability to go in a different direction, but we've -passively– chosen not to through potentially four generations.

There is a strong case to be made for the notion that how we ended up where we are in our local governance is yet another variation on these themes.

I'm not here to argue this case, but rather, to show that we sure haven't had the same forces at play in striving to make for a better paradigm. Lip-service has been paid over the years to engagement, to involvement, to citizen participation, we've had, some shining moments, some nice interludes...but really, is it too far-fetched, too unreasonably cynical to say that we've always had the ability to go in a different direction, but we've -passively– chosen not to through potentially four generations?

2) My cringe-mechanism has been triggered many times this week. Mostly by being brought face-to-face with that attitude supremely prevalent in today's world: 'Us vs Them'. In the Comments sections at Raise the Hammer and The Hamiltonian. In MMS, online in general.

The most striking example was during a thorough examination of some materials dealing with making things better at City Hall. In the suggestions as to how this might be accomplished.

None of it was overt, none of it was as blunt as proposing there even is an 'Us vs Them'. But I had to wonder just how entrenched this mentality is when residents consider their Councillors, City Council, the work being carried out on their behalf, when the tack a civic advocacy group's message has strong intimations of this mindset.

Consider that these are people who genuinely and sincerely want to improve our governance. I would never, ever question that this is their sincere goal, that they have the best of intentions at play.

But I can't help but feel there's something truly wrong when we feel compelled to take a combative approach to creating a better construct. It reminds me of the sign I put up above the time-clock at a store where I worked 'back in the day':

'Staff whippings will cease when morale improves'

I don't see much being accomplished with a solution that has distrust and frustration at the core. I don't see much being accomplished when the solution uses the near-enmity that so many Hamiltonians feel about their elected official. I don't see much being accomplished at all.

At least not much good being accomplished.

My take on things, my 'solution' has as its foundation, not only a groundswell of respect, for self, for neighbourhood, for community, for city, but also collaboration. Genuine collaboration between the citizenry and their elected officials, the Councillors.

I believe that we need to be considering ways to migrate to another way of seeing local governance. A new approach to how the well-being of Hamiltonians is determined. We need to see ourselves as part of the process, not as a party affected by the process.

I believe that we need to begin moving away from the 'Us vs Them' mentality. Where there's a combative undercurrent. A palpable negativity. Because in truth, there is no 'Them'. It's all 'Us'. The accomplishment of arriving at that mindset will show itself in so many different ways.

I can't wait.