Good Sunday Morning!

As loyal readers, you likely know by now that I write GSM on Saturday. And I usually try to be right on top of the latest news. But today, I am going to take a chance and NOT write about the election results from the two elections happening right now.

With COVID and mailed in ballots, we may not know for a while how things turn out in British Columbia and in Saskatchewan. I am too nervous to think about the results in BC. I am so very proud of all 74 candidates, of a brilliant campaign and especially of our spectacular caucus of my own MLA, Adam Olsen and my dear friend, our BC leader, Sonia Furstenau. No matter the result, they ran the best and most inspiring campaign. I am too nervous to write about it.

And I am also too nervous to write about the by-election in Toronto Centre, where people go to the polls tomorrow. I will be making more phone calls for Annamie Paul tomorrow … All my love and best wishes to our amazing national leader.

For fun, here’s a little YouTube of Annamie and me with Mark Critch from “This Hour has 22Minutes.”

So what am I going to write about? Movies!

With the US election and crazy American politics on our minds, there two US political dramas that are well worth watching. The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Mrs. America.
Mrs. America is an excellent 9-episode series (findable on Fx for Hulu) about the efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s. The story focuses on the work of anti-women’s rights campaigner Phyllis Schlafly (played brilliantly by Cate Blanchet) plus a great cast depicting my heroes Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan (Tracy Ullman is fabulous in the role!), Shirley Chisholm, and Bella Abzug. The film makes a compelling case that Schlafly’s manipulation of the Republican Party not only defeated the ERA but led that party to a dangerous move to the right giving rise to the political power of the Christian Right – with disastrous results for democracy.
Due to COVID, the release of The Trial of the Chicago 7 was moved to Netflix, which I was happy to discover after missing it at Star Cinema. It is the work of Aaron Sorkin and also has an amazing ensemble cast taking us back to the 1968 Chicago convention and a completely outrageous political trial. The dramatization of the events involving Bobby Seale, Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, with stellar roles for the lawyers and politicos had a very talented cast (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Flaherty, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Noah Robbins, Mark Rylance, Alex Sharp, and Jeremy Strong.)

For me, the whole experience of watching the films was reliving a whole pile of memories. In the late 1980s, I became very good friends with Bella Abzug. Watching Mrs. America with my daughter, I paused the screen every now and then to tell a story or correct something. Like when Bella tells someone it was her mother who told her to wear hats. “No,” I told Cate, “It was her husband.” Remembering Bella’s story (play in your mind with a strong Brooklyn accent):

When I was first a young lawyer, I’d go for a deposition at another lawyer’s office. And I’d go to the receptionist and tell her “Bella Abzug, lawyer for the plaintiff.” And I’d take a seat in the waiting room and nothing would happen and after a while, I’d go back the desk and ask “What are we waiting for?” and the secretary would say, “We’re waiting for the lawyer from your firm.” And I’d say “I am the lawyer from my firm.” So I got so frustrated and I said to my husband, “What do I have to do to get them to recognize I am a lawyer? And Marty said, “Wear a hat. Secretaries don’t wear hats.”

The memories from 1968 were harder to process. I was 14 years old when I was tear-gassed at the Chicago Convention, when the National Guard in their trucks with rectangular screens riddled with barbed wire cut us off in Grant Park, blocking one direction and hundreds of Chicago police in their baby blue helmets started moving into crowds with billy clubs flying. Sharing those memories with my husband brought me back to the moment when I realized that all the protections of civil liberties in a democracy can vanish in a nano-second. In the film, former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark tells the court, “The police started the riot.” That’s what I remember.

I remember being separated from my mom who attended the convention as a delegate for Eugene McCarthy. The ticket she bought for me to sit in the family of delegates section was taken over by Chicago municipal workers with “We love Mayor Daley” placards. So I was there opening night only, sitting right behind Allen Ginsberg. By the next night, I was with the other family members of delegates for peace miles from the convention centre watching the convention on television. After the peace plank failed on the Wednesday night, despairing and sad, a few of us had all walked out into the park in the sunshine. I watched sailboats on Lake Michigan and a Blue Cross softball game in progress. There was no demonstration. But that’s when the military and the police rolled in. We only escaped by making it under an overpass to our hotel door, where we were only let in because we had a room key. I’ll never forget trying to wash the stinging tear gas from my eyes and how it stung my gums because of my braces.

That night my mom and the other delegates had a candlelit march to protest the violence, walking back from the convention centre the several miles back to the downtown. We were shell-shocked.

And now I watch the US. The horrors of Trump and the Proud Boys, the militias and the insane rumours and conspiracy theories. We can all hope and pray that there is a peaceful transition to a new Administration.

For now, fingers crossed we have a Good Sunday Morning!

Elizabeth

PS If you want to sign up, I am a panelist and what should be an interesting session:

Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020 11:00 AM Eastern Time
Paris: Getting to a Green & Just Recovery

For program details, visit Scaling Up website: https://www.scalingupconference.ca/program

Good Sunday Morning!

Election count-downs galore – Six days until voting is done in British Columbia and Saskatchewan!

Eight days until the two Toronto federal by-elections!

Fifteen days until the Prince Edward Island By-election in Charlottetown!

 

And the scariest of the scary elections- 16 days until the US presidential election.

All of these elections and their campaigns have been taking place in the shadow of COVID.

In all of these Greens are running to make a difference – and in most cases – to win.

And I chose my words carefully – the voting will be done by October 24 here in BC, but with the volume of mail-in ballots some anticipate we may have a longish wait to have the results.

We had extremely good news from our New Zealand cousins. Their election on Friday resulted in a landslide win for Labour and its leader Jacinda Ardern. The success of the Greens in New Zealand has gotten less notice on this side of the Pacific.

There are several important take-aways from the NZ vote. Twenty-four years ago, New Zealand got rid of First Past the Post, opting for Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).

Quick refresher: under MMP the parliament reflects the way the electorate actually voted in terms of allocating seats to align with the percentage vote by party.  Some seats are won as we do in Canada – the winning candidate got the most votes in that electoral district. The rest of the seats are “at large” – not tied to any particular district, but used to rebalance the proportion of seats to the proportion of public support.

Ardern’s victory puts paid to a typical objection to Proportional Representation – that it always results in minority governments. This NZ election makes it clear that, even under MMP, a party can win a majority government.  I will leave to one side the reality the one party having all the power does not give us the best kind of decisions.

The major right wing party, the National Party, suffered a huge defeat.  New Zealand First, a smaller right wing effort, lost all its seats falling far below the 5% vote threshold.   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54519628

For the New Zealand Greens and co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson, the election result was a huge win.  Winning 8% of the popular vote, Greens will likely emerge with ten seats (up from 8) under MMP. As well, in a stunning breakthrough popular young Green MP Chloe Swarbrick won the seat of Auckland Central. (You may remember Chloe from the Green Party of Canada Convention in 2018 by video link or from her quip in parliament “OK Boomer.”)

Chloe Swarbrick’s win is only the second time in the NZ Greens’ history that a seat was won on FPTP terms.  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/election-results-2020-the-greens-chloe-swarbrick-has-historic-win-in-auckland-central/QWFZDA46IWABJZEML7FLUQIQFA/

It is important for Greens, especially in BC, to consider how and why the NZ voters returned the Greens with more seats in Parliament.  Greens went into the election looking at falling numbers in the polls. In fact, there were serious concerns that the party would fall below the 5% threshold. They had worked constructively with the ruling Labour party for three years under a CSA – Confidence and Supply Agreement. (Sound familiar?)

Unlike the BC CSA, the New Zealand Greens had Cabinet roles, with co-leader James Shaw holding both minister of statistics and climate.  Ardern’s strong climate policies owe an enormous amount to Shaw. So too was the New Zealand COVID lock-down a credit to Shaw, who as minister of statistics explained to skeptical members of the other parties the nature of exponential growth of virus infection rates. The “go early-go hard” strategy was also a credit to Greens.

But being supportive and collaborative in a CSA often leads to the “junior partner” losing ground.  That is why Chloe Swarbrick made the brave decision to leave the party list for an at-large seat and contest Auckland Central to win the seat outright – just in case the party failed to hit the 5% threshold.

But the New Zealand electorate could see there was no chance of the right wing National party gaining ground. Like the BC Liberals, their campaign was a flop and support in free-fall.  At the last minute, there was a surge of support for the New Zealand Greens.

The dynamics are similar in BC. John Horgan is no Jacinda Ardern. If British Columbia has a Jacinda Ardern, it is our own Sonia Furstenau! BC Greens now have the momentum. Fundraising records are being smashed and pundits point to Sonia’s debate performance as reason for voters to switch to vote Green.  Click here to find ways to support the BC Green campaign in this crucial final week: https://www.bcgreens.ca/support_sonia_furstenau?splash=1

And looking to other inspiring Green leaders, Annamie Paul continues to impress at the national level. In a stunning column in the Toronto Star, three prominent names from the three main parties call on voters in Toronto Centre to vote Green. Liberal Greg Sorbara, former Minister of Finance, veteran Tory Hugh Segal and NDP former Cabinet minister Zanana Akande penned a call to non-partisan support for Annamie Paul, saying she “deserves to win” in Toronto Centre. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/10/13/green-party-leader-annamie-paul-deserves-to-win-toronto-centre-byelection.html

Annamie and her team are giving it their all – despite the high COVID rates in this densely populated urban riding.  Please offer to help. This link takes you to instructions for how to volunteer and make phone calls into the riding, how to donate and when to join call-in parties! https://www.annamiepaul.ca/welcome

Lastly, I am distressed that former NDP MP Murray Rankin’s terrible offence against Canada remains unmentioned as he runs in what was Andrew Weaver’s Green seat in Victoria. In 2015, media could never get him to answer the simplest of questions: how much were you paid by Bilcon, a US mining company, to testify against Canada?  I know of several people who have sent letters to the editor of the Times Colonist on the Bilcon issue, but the letters remain unpublished.

Nicole Duncan, school trustee, is a tremendous Green candidate in Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Read about Nicole here: https://nitter.fdn.fr/NicoleBCDuncan

Read about Murray Rankin, here:  http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/930

And here.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/10/17/Trade-Deals-Core-Community-Values/

Please, if you live in Victoria, do whatever you can to help Nicole hold that Green seat!

Best wishes for the coming week!  In the PS to this message I am sharing a survey that the Canadian Federation of University Women, a group to which I belong, is circulating. If you are a senior, please take a moment to fill it out.

With love and thanks,

Elizabeth

P.S.

CFUW Senior’ Survey:  Senior Issues Related to Aging.

Although this is a very comprehensive survey, it takes about 6 minutes to complete.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RXHK962