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Some quick thoughts about #OneCity | #TOpoli #transit

Juggling live-blogging, tweeting, and this, so nothing profound, but a couple of things:

1. I wouldn’t assume that “the mayor is back in charge of transit” just yet. Just because OneCity didn’t fly doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly got anything more than shouting “subways subways subways” until our ears bleed.

2. Whatever OneCity is or was, at least it contemplated tying transit expansion to public revenue. You want infrastructure? You gotta pay for it. If nothing else, that’s the beginning of an adult conversation. Beats the shit out of “I can’t support taxing the taxpayer.”

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Politics, decency, and finding common ground: the restoration of civility | #TOpoli #cdnpoli

So I was listening to Matt Galloway talking to Karen Stintz on Metro Morning Friday. The interview isn’t up on the CBC web site yet, but as you might imagine, the topic was the future of public transit in Toronto in the wake of Thursday’s decision by council to opt for LRT on Sheppard East. 

It wasn’t long before the conversation turned to the extent to which the debate had been polarized. And what struck me more than anything else at the time was the care Councillor Stintz was taking not to apportion any blame for that:

As some of the subsequent Twitter talk shows, it’s not as if Ms. Stintz has undergone a wholesale conversion and been born again as a progressive. That’s not really the point. It’s not about where she or anyone else falls on the political spectrum. Nor is it about transit any more. No, the lesson here was about civility.

As someone much smarter than me remarked subsequently, so what? She’s conducting herself and and dealing with civic affairs the way it’s supposed to be done. That’s a baseline. Team Ford is below that. And in an ideal world, it should be a matter of course rather than something to be remarked upon. Unfortunately, in today’s world, where mud is flung and insults are a regular part of political discourse and everything is venomous and nasty and personal, a resolve to rise above it is something worthy of celebration, regardless of politics. Pour encourager les autres.

I’m lingering on this because it touches upon some of my favourite themes: public discourse, citizenship, and civic engagement. In the long term, those are all enhanced by a collective effort to restore a measure of civility and goodwill to the way we do things. It benefits us all, individually and as a community and a society, no matter who we are or what we think.

That brief reference to genuine conservatism reflects a much wider concern: the long-term project of reclaiming and reinvesting the conservative tradition with its honourable and time-proven roots. It’s what I like to think of as the Tory sensibility: decency, camaraderie, and a willingness to reach out to one’s opponents, set partisanship aside, and recognize that at the end of the day, we’re all committed to the same things. Our differences needn’t set us at each other’s throats.

So how did we get here? From a spirit of community, bipartisanship and the occasional beer with the other side to an era of dirty tricks, robocalls, electoral fraud and handbooks for disrupting the work of parliamentary committees?

It wasn’t by accident, and as with many things, it starts with words, their connotations, and their rhetorical effect. More than two decades ago, Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz worked with a group of U.S. Republican operatives to craft a linguistic strategy for controlling conversation and framing discourse; the idea was to demonize and smear opponents as much as possible by using loaded words like “sick,” “pathetic,” “traitor,” “grotesque,” and other verbal hand grenades. We’ve seen the effect that’s had on politics and popular culture down there. Public discourse has been poisoned and the body politic has been damaged to a point from which it may never recover.

Fast forward to Canada today, where we’re hearing words like “turncoat,” “backstabber,” “stand with the child pornographers,” and so on. This is born of a desire not just to defeat one’s opponents, but to destroy them. Win at any cost. No substitute for victory. 

Is it hyperbole to suggest that the Gingrich/Luntz disease has infected us up here?

And then let’s go back even farther, to a contrast between realpolitik and “amateurism” set in the 1930s. (Yes, it’s from a work of fiction but we can still learn from it …)

Idealism? Nostalgia? Naivete? All of the above? Perhaps. But surely we’re all better off when we can acknowledge legitimacy in viewpoints with which we disagree. 

(And let’s acknowledge, of course, that there’s an element of classism in this. When you discuss values like decency, honour, and gentility, you’re betraying a certain way of looking at the world. Notions like noblesse oblige stem from a privileged background. I have to keep reminding myself that the lens through which I look at things is a product of that. It’s a luxury not everyone has.)

Yes, it’s nostalgia for a gentler time. There’s no shortage of people willing to remind us that the world isn’t like that any more, and that things have changed. 

And this is where the need to push back gets thrown into stark relief. The events of the last few decades — the growing inequality gap, the hollowing-out effects of “free trade,” the vapid coarsening of popular culture, and the continuing assault upon the social safety net, for starters — should demonstrate the moral vacuum at the heart of the agenda to which we’ve all been subjected. Now more than ever, it’s time to push the goalposts back, reclaim public discourse, redefine genuine principled conservatism, re-Occupy the public sphere and win back the words. 

We can start with a commitment to civility. Listening to your neighbours and giving your opponents the benefit of the doubt isn’t a sign of weakness, and it isn’t a class thing either. And by the same token, demonizing, misrepresenting, name-calling and smearing isn’t a civic virtue. It contaminates public discourse and lowers us all, and it needs to be called out for what it is.

Ultimately, we can have whatever kind of conversation we want. Do we want something that reflects well upon us, or do we want to sound like isolated mayors and tabloid columnists? I know which way I’d go.

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City Council is Supreme | politics | via @Torontoist and @hamutaldotan

… we are optimistic. We have a government that is working. It is making decisions based on evidence, and it is defending those decisions over time. It is a government that has set a direction on the most fraught and most important policy file we have. It is a government that is doing its job even though Rob Ford isn’t doing his, and if it keeps on doing so Toronto may come out of this mayoralty in better shape than many of us had feared.
via torontoist.com

Hamutal Dotan puts the events of the last few weeks in a calm and well-reasoned perspective. What follows is, for the most part, from a comment over at the Torontoist site.

Really, it’s got nothing to do with Karen Stintz and where she falls on the left / right spectrum. The most important thing about Hamutal’s analysis is the counterpoint it provides to the narrative being pushed by more than one corporate media outlet, which is one portraying Toronto’s city government as being chaotically adrift. Any comment or suggestion that describes council as akin to a bunch of kids squabbling in a sandbox just helps to reinforce that narrative, and let’s not have any illusions about whose interests THAT serves.

Just think about who benefits from that perception. Who do you think wants everyone to dismiss government, civil servants and the public sphere in general as dysfunctional, ineffective and corrupt? Just listen to the radio on Sunday afternoon sometime as Brother Doug tells his listeners that he wouldn’t trust any of his fellow councillors to run a kid’s lemonade stand. Not hard to see where he’s going with that. Once again, if you haven’t read what J.M. McGrath and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler have written in this regard, take a few minutes and go through it.

So no, what we’re seeing now isn’t the ideal situation, but council is showing that for all its disparate elements and conflicting interests and personalities, it is capable of conducting the city’s business in a mature and responsible manner. Sure, it would be nice if the mayor would play ball and show leadership, but what the last few weeks have shown is that council can function, albeit untidily, even if he doesn’t. That’s a good thing.

Ultimately, what it’s demonstrating is that just because something is “political,” it isn’t inherently icky and sordid. As Shelley Carroll pointed out on Monday, governing is an inherently political process. Setting budgets, allocating resources, balancing interests, determining civic priorities … all of these are political acts, properly situated in the public realm. Pretending that they’re conducted in some rarefied space that’s only recently been soiled by politics is the height of hypocrisy. In order to believe that, you’d have to believe that the firing of Gary Webster had nothing to do with politics. 

We may or may not get a rational and well-thought-out transit plan out of this. And god knows we’re nowhere near out of danger in terms of the damage that Team Ford can still do, both to the institutions and processes of governance in this city and to civil public discourse. But at least we know council can function cooperatively and democratically, with or without the mayor, and that government isn’t something to be viewed with contempt. 

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Video: @JoshMatlow on #transit planning | #TOpoli #TTC #Toronto

From a meeting on the future of public transit, hosted by Toronto councillors Josh Matlow and Karen Stintz, Feb. 28, 2012.

One caveat:

OK, two caveats:

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Video: @JoshMatlow on population density and subways | #TOpoli #transit #Toronto

From a meeting on the future of public transit, hosted by Toronto councillors Josh Matlow and Karen Stintz, Feb. 28, 2012.

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Video: @KarenStintz’s opening remarks, Feb. 28, 2012 | #TOpoli #transit #Toronto

From a meeting on the future of public transit, hosted by Toronto councillors Josh Matlow and Karen Stintz.

@DavidHains: Great minds … | #TOpoli

Just uploading some video from tonight’s transit meeting hosted by Josh Matlow and Karen Stintz. There’ll be more on this, but in the meantime …

Time for a #TransitCity happy dance? | #TOpoli #TeamFord

Last summer I wrote a short post about Jack Layton’s legacy of generosity. 

There are many elements to citizenship — respect, engagement, critical thinking — but of all those elements, it’s hard to top generosity of spirit. It’s something we can all aspire to, even if we fall short. I’m going to give props, yet again, to Hamutal Dotan’s marvellous piece in that regard on Torontoist.

Just so my own biases are clear, I’ll set out my definition once again: Generosity of spirit does not look for external validation or reward. It is extended without any expectation of a quid pro quo. And it is extended to those who do not deserve it precisely because they do not deserve it. That is what makes it what it is.

It’s a high bar to clear, and I’ll admit right now that I don’t often meet it. I wish I could. I’d be a better person if I did, but today I just can’t.

We’ve seen the results of today’s vote at City Council. Whether it means we can truly move forward with the development of public transit remains to be seen, but if it does nothing else, at least it will serve as an unambiguous repudiation of Team Ford’s approach to government and to the conduct of public affairs.

It’s hard to pick the three stars of Team Ford from today, but perhaps we might start with Doug’s hectoring of Gary Webster. (Whatever we’re paying Mr. Webster, he more than earned it today.) Add to that his bullshit about the St. Clair ROW being a disaster, and his coarse, vulgar talk about the TTC needing an enema, and you have to wonder — just what does this guy add to public life in Toronto? What good is he accomplishing? 

And then there’s Giorgio Mammoliti’s idiotic posturing about a Finch subway and unmoral (h/t Ivor Tossell) attempts to torque the downtown-suburban divide yet again. (I know, I know, I’m breaking my own rule by talking about him.) 

And then there’s this classy bit:

If anyone wants to nominate a third star, I’m all ears.

In the larger picture, perhaps it’s time to start fashioning a definitive rejection of the entire Fordist philosophy. I can’t give a comprehensive list of what that will entail, but we can start, I’d submit, by affirming support for well-paying unionized public-sector jobs, both as a critical element of our community’s economic base and as an example for private-sector employers to follow. We can flesh that out in the days to come.

In sum, maybe — just maybe — we’ve finally come to see the limits of resentment as a governing philosophy. It’s what put Team Ford in control, but take it away and they’ve really got nothing else. And as we learn more about the gulf between campaigning and governing, its shortcomings become more and more apparent. It’s the easy path — it requires no critical thinking, no empathy and no engagement beyond the predictable hissy-fits of tabloid screed-writers — but it diminishes us all.

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