Radical municipalism in Greater Victoria? On politics, flexibility, and the upcoming election

I’m new to municipal politics.  A few years ago, I would have dismissed it as a bunch of upper-middle-class people arguing about zoning variances and dog poop.  And anyone that has attended a council meeting can tell you that there’s plenty of that.  However, municipalities do have a lot of power to shape our communities.  They have a significant amount of authority on a broad range of issues.  Conservatives and business people have certainly figured this out.  That’s why they’re so involved with municipal politics: it helps them increase profits, get deals done, and make sure their interests are served.  This should matter to lefty radicals, progressives, feminists, anarchists and others: there’s no point in dismissing municipal politics as too bureaucratic, or hierarchical, or conservative, or whatever.  It is all of these things, but that’s not a reason to ignore it.  So what does it mean to engage with municipal politics as a radical?  What are the different ways radicals might engage, affirm, relate, oppose, infiltrate, sabotage, and transform municipal politics?

This year, I’m trying to learn more about municipal politics (and urban politics more generally).  I don’t have a lot of knowledge or answers; I just think it’s an important place to experiment.  What follows is some ideas and questions about what it might mean for radicals to engage in municipal politics.

I’m going to vote in the upcoming election on Nov 19th.  And you should too (gasp!)  Not because you are a good citizen and it’s your duty or some crap like that, but because you understand that municipal politics matters whether you like it or not, and (I’m assuming) if you’re reading this, you have some radical political views and you’re not OK with the status quo.  More on that later–I’ll tell you who I’m voting for too, and why.  But this isn’t a simple call to vote–it’s a call to think about municipal politics more generally, and the multiple ways radicals can engage these processes.

For instance, the recent Juan de Fuca controversy (where a developer wanted to pave over acres of forest in order to build a bunch of vacation cabins) would never have happened in the first place without the approval of the municipality and the CRD.  And it would never have been stopped without the work of activists (and councillors) fighting against it in, through, against, and outside city councils, the Capital Regional District, and the Band Council system.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying radical activists should stop the awesome grassroots, non-hierarchical stuff they’re doing (like the Peoples Assembly of Victoria) and get involved in municipal politics instead.  That would be a disaster.  What I am saying is that the more we know and understand municipal politics, the more options and tactics become available.  What I’m asking is this: how can radicals engage with municipal politics in multiple, overlapping, and maybe even contradictory ways?  Is it possible to be flexible enough to work within bureaucracies at some times, and challenge their legitimacy and get in their way at others?

Participating in municipal politics is not going to lead to some revolution or massive transformative change–not in Victoria, anyway.  It’s not a vehicle for creating horizontal relationships or unlearning oppressive behaviours.  Victoria–and increasingly all municipalities in North America–remains caught in a neoliberal race to the bottom with other municipalities: fighting to encourage more crappy tourism, more horrible development, more of the same.  A municipal election is not going to change this.  But it could create way more breathing space for alternatives to corporate capitalism.  It could help alleviate some of the worst excesses of surveillance, policing, sprawl, and corporatization.  And I don’t think we’ll get co-opted just by showing up to vote, or by campaigning in elections, or by participating in institutionalized, bureaucratic politics in other ways.  The more we understand municipal politics (and the severe limitations of them), the more we can start to engage with them pragmatically.

So what does this ‘pragmatic engagement’ look like?  Well, I dunno exactly, and that’s for you to decide, but to start with, I’d suggest that you consider voting in the upcoming municipal election on Nov 19th.  I have never urged people to vote before, and it still feels icky.  But there are good reasons!  You can vote for up to 8; I’m only voting for 4: Ben Isitt, Lisa Helps, Rose Henry, and Philippe Lucas.  There are probably other decent candidates too; I’m just pretty confident that these folks in particular would be useful allies to a lot of ongoing struggles in Victoria.

• Philippe Lucas (an incumbent) has been a constant voice against the gentrification of Pandora Green and the need for a fixed-site needle exchange.  He’s also been working lots on encouraging local food and farmers’ markets.
• Lisa Helps started a micro-credit lending scheme that provides loans to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get one from the banks.  This creates possibilities for incomes that aren’t reliant on corporations and big business.
• Ben Isitt has done tons of work on affordable housing in Victoria.  He’s also an academic with a wicked analysis that he makes accessible, rather than dumbing it down.
• Rose Henry has done loads of grassroots work on homelessness and she’s the only candidate I’ve ever heard talk about (and work on) colonialism and decolonization for more than a few seconds.

Don’t live in Victoria?  Well, other municipalities like Saanich, Central Saanich, Langford, etc are arguably just as important–sometimes more so.  There are lots of politicos, I’m sure, who can tell you the ins and outs of Victoria municipal elections: strategic voting, political influence, who has the best chance of being elected, blah blah blah.  My main reason for voting at all is that these elections are often decided by a margin of 100 votes, so voting actually means something.  Plus there aren’t hundreds of seats like the federal election, so it actually matters who gets elected where you live (sorry Elizabeth May).  It matters because crappy stripmalls, condos, and tourist traps all depend on the support of City council, and if the municipality had different priorities, things would be a little less destructive and messed up.

There are also ways to affect municipal politics beyond the election cycle. 

Here’s one example to consider: a new ‘Consensus Statement on Victoria’s Economic Development Strategy‘ has just been released by a loose network of policymakers, activists, politicians and other people in Victoria.  It talks about the need to support local businesses (rather than large corporations) and focus on projects that nurture community resilience and sustainability.

Many radicals will be ambivalent or outright hostile to this consensus statement: it leaves out any analysis or mention of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, or private property, and the way those processes reinforce economic inequality, big business, and unsustainable ways of life.  But there’s a difference between dismissal and engaging this effort strategically or critically.  The statement is interesting because it’s tuned to municipal politics in Victoria.  Based on who votes right now, no candidate is going to get elected on an anti-capitalist platform.  The City also depends on businesses and property owners for its revenue.  But an anti-corporate, community economics platform could help drive a wedge into municipal debates, where politicians actually have to start making choices between supporting corporations or supporting small businesses and local, community-based economic policy.  It could generate conversations and get people thinking critically about jobs, development, and investment.  Most of the time, municipal politicians just insist they like all business, big and small, and they pretend that corporations aren’t actively destroying alternatives.

Another example beyond election cycles: Neighbourhood Associations often have a lot of sway in determining Official Community Plans, rezoning, and bylaws, which has huge impacts for construction, policing, surveillance, taxation, social programs, and community events.  Neighbourhood Associations (and city councillors) claim to represent their whole neighbourhood, so you’re being spoken for, whether you like it or not.  For example, Neighbourhood Associations were key players in the gentrification of Pandora Green.  They have a lot of authority, and radicals can engage with this authority in multiple ways.

Anyways, municipal politics is not going to stop being bureaucratic, hierarchical, or business-friendly anytime soon in Victoria.  It tends to be dominated by older, white, policy-minded people.  There are lots of paradoxes and traps around co-optation, assimilation, and deradicalization.  But refusing to participate on principle is also a trap, I think.  It’s a conservative reaction to a messed-up system, rather than a creative engagement with it.  What that creative engagement means is an open-ended puzzle, and it will depend on who you are, what struggles you’re involved in, and what your objectives are.  But that puzzle is complex.  I think it’s worth thinking about and messing around with.

Pandora Green: Tactics and Questions

This post is about the recent bylaw that will criminalize camping on Pandora Green, leading to some more general questions about effective anti-poverty organizing in Victoria.

Watch the bchannel video for an overview of the Pandora Green context.

The City of Victoria recently finished their third reading of a new bylaw that will criminalize camping on Pandora Green.  The bylaw cites safety concerns about folks who camp there wandering into traffic.  On Thursday (Sept 23rd) the City held a public hearing on the bylaw, where over 100 people attended, mostly in opposition to the bylaw.  The meeting itself was a strange combination of bureaucratic civility, mundane issues, passionate and moving speeches, and the depressing feeling that the outcome would be the same no matter what was said: they’re gonna pass this bylaw.

It became pretty obvious that the bylaw wouldn’t address concerns about safety; it certainly won’t make homeless folks any safer, since it will push them into spaces where they’re more vulnerable to police harrassment and other forms of violence.  Some folks talked about the broader contexts of colonialism, racism, police violence, stigmatization and gentrification that are part of everyday life on the streets.  Others made arguments about democracy, and urged the City to consult with the folks who would actually be affected by the decision: the folks camping on Pandora Green.  Some situated this bylaw in the broader context of the City’s plans to beautify/gentrify Pandora Green.  Others urged the councillors to recognize that the bylaw simply wasn’t going to achieve its stated purpose: no one would be made safer.  Taken together, all of these arguments formed a pretty rock solid argument against the bylaw… but it’s going to be passed anyway.

The aim in this piece isn’t to argue against the bylaw; the folks who came to City Hall have made a pretty convincing case for that already.  Instead, the aim is to ask a question: what do we do, as people trying to be allies with the homeless community, in situations like these, where it’s pretty obvious to everyone that this bylaw doesn’t make any sense, but it’s going to get passed anyway?  When the decisions aren’t based on reasoned arguments, should we engage in reasoned debate ourselves?  What are the limits of this debate?  The point here isn’t to second-guess what folks did on Thursday night, but to ask some questions about the future of anti-poverty work around Victoria.  What tactics might we adopt and experiment with in this context?  How do we do radical politics in a context like Victoria, where we have a pretty reactionary/conservative majority, with a mix of liberal paternalism and straight-up hatred/violence/repression when it comes to issues of poverty and homelessness?  It’s pretty obvious that the ‘appropriate channels’ of consultation provided by the City are set up to co-opt dissent and legitimize the City’s authority.  But it’s also too simple to reject municipal politics: they’re making decisions with or without us, and these decisions have important impacts.

The Victoria Coalition Against Poverty is undertaking some pretty promising experiments in this context.  The group is working on a “People’s Plan” for Pandora Green, in order to counter the City’s own plan to ‘Beautify’ Pandora.  They’ve been serving food and interviewing the folks who spend time there, in order to develop a plan of how the City could take the $500,000 beautification funds, and spend them on things that would actually improve the conditions of life on Pandora Green.  A lot of the suggestions have been pretty simple and practical: public washrooms, clean water, a fixed consumption site, a needle exchange, better social services with less bureaucracy, and of course: housing.

How can we work to make these ideas a reality?  To be sure, we need direct actions, spectacular events, and other tactics that will show the City that people are fed up with their repressive policies and fiscal austerity when it come to poverty and homelessness.  We also need to find ways to get at the paternalism, xenophobia, and paranoia of the majority of Victorians.  How can we chip away at the NIMBYs (not-in-my-back-yard), the neighbourhood associations, and the other groups that buttress the City’s brutal policies?  VCAP is leading the way here, and the People’s Plan does double-duty.  Hopefully it helps develop a sense of community, creates solidarities between homeless and housed people, and it deepens everyone’s understanding of the connections between racism, colonialism, poverty, gentrification and bureaucracy.  But it also intervenes in municipal policy-oriented politics, by putting forward a feasible plan that makes a lot more sense than the status quo.  The plan is brilliant, but it takes a lot of work from some pretty overworked folks, and VCAP is still looking for new members. In this sense, maybe what’s needed is not so much a flash of brilliance or a revolutionary tactic, but ways to get more folks who will be committed to the more mundane and thankless parts of anti-pov organizing: flyering, press releases, long meetings, food prep, and so on. But of course, creativity and commitment to the nitty-gritty aren’t mutually exclusive.

How can we work to create the conditions where things like the People’s Plan won’t fall on the deaf ears of cynical bureaucrats and paternalistic, paranoid Victorians?  How can we create spaces where these folks might let down their guard and actually be able to hear about the problems of poverty, and see the connections between gentrification, beautification, stigmatization and police repression?  Is it even possible to create these spaces, and is it a good use of our time and energy?  What other actions, practices, and projects could we experiment with?