Hennessy and McKee: Activism One Year Later

Desmond Cole, now a city journalist, delivers his all-night deputation through puppetry as Dave Meslin watches.

In this installment of a Hennessy and McKee, Toronto Citizens will discuss the nature of grassroots activism with Ontario Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Director Trish Hennessy and Massey fellow and U of T political academic James McKee.

DH: It’s been a year since the all night deputations filled city hall in an outpouring show of civic activism. With more than two years to go in this administration, is that enthusiasm sustainable? How can it grow?

Hennessy: I can’t help but think the genie’s out of the bottle and there’s no corking it. Over the past year I have been amazed by the level of engagement, live and in person at City Hall, but also on social media outlets such as Twitter, where citizens live tweet crucial council meetings just because they care. We hear so much about the purported Ford Nation, but what we saw during those night deputations last year is that Ford Nation is an idea, not necessarily a reality.

In fact, I can’t help but wonder if the Ford brothers said yes to their own radio talk show in order to try to turn the idea of Ford Nation into reality. What is clear is this: the growth of community activism and deepening engagement in civic politics shows that Torontonians do care about their city and about their public programs. I’d like to think that’s affected some of the political turnarounds that have happened at City Hall over the past year. Small victories help feed engagement. But, so too, does leadership that is inclusive and set on growing the tent. If I were among the core activists involved in civic activism, my focus would be on even greater civic engagement from every corner of the city. What we’ve learned from city council meetings last year is that there is a real appetite for such engagement.

McKee: I agree completely with Trish that we’ve seen big changes in the character and degree of civic engagement in Toronto in the last few years And absolutely the majority of the people that signed up to depute at 3AM for five minutes or less were passionate and cared about cuts to city services.

But I don’t think Ford Nation is wholly dead and I think it has something to do with the mechanics of sustaining public sentiments – be they angry and resentful or compassionate and expansive.
Indeed the very ways in which we talk about public moods turns out to be a really tricky problem actually – at least for people that study this kind of thing. We can assume that public civic-mindedness emerges as the result of some combination of cognitive awareness (that cuts to city services amid fear-mongering over *fictive* high deficits for example are to be resisted) and the emotional attachments to those services that actually motivate people to go register to depute. Typically it is the last step – the motivation to action – that we don’t always see in politics and political mobilization efforts. So while we might accept the claim that the number of people who, for example, are going to celebrate the City Hall ‘depuversary’ tonight might be pretty small, clearly the deputations last summer are striking in how there seemed to be a really active civic sentiment emerging. (I think it was even more telling that the mayor and some councillors tried to dismiss this as just the ‘usual crew of protestors’ when it really wasn’t).
And as I said, I don’t think Ford Nation has completely gone, in large measure because of the ties between the cognitive content of the Gravy Train rhetoric – easy to digest, overly simplified – and the ease with which many citizens are able to get angry about this rhetoric. Because of the ease with which simmering but ill-informed resentments can be more readily (re)activated, compared with those attached to more complex issues, concerned with equity and other claims to justice, i wonder about the emotional terrain of Toronto politics two years from now. A lot rides, as Trish noted, on the character of political leadership – whether we see another kind of anger-driven Ford campaign will matter a lot for the character of  the progressive civiv engagement that we’ve started to see sprout here in the city. I think the response has been really tremendous so far – can you imagine a blog like this under David Miller – but sustaining complex sentiments is much, much harder over the long haul.
Hennessy: I find it interesting how many people accept the idea of Ford Nation as reality just because Ford won the election and gave his voters a brand name. To me, Ford Nation only exists if it becomes an identifiable loyal following. That fact that Ford had trouble filling the halls with his own followers — even when he encouraged Ford Nation to come out — suggests that hard loyalty isn’t there, though there is no doubting some of Ford’s talking points strike a chord with some people in the city. When we did focus groups of Torontonians who voted for Rob Ford as Mayor, I didn’t see signs of devotion to the cause in the room. I did see voters who struggled with the choices in front of them in the last election, who liked Ford’s genuineness even if he was unpolished (or perhaps because), and who decided to give him a chance. Many were honestly worried about the financial state of the city. Some will always vote for the candidate who wants to cut. But a loyal Ford Nation following did not emerge in those focus groups. (I wrote about Ford Nation mythology here).

On the other hand, there is a consistently engaged and active group of especially young people in this city who are following civic politics the way some people follow hockey. They share information with each other, call play by play at city hall meetings, spark conversations and campaigns on Twitter, and they suggest to me a level of commitment and engagement that’s hard to bottle up. If they didn’t exist, actively engaged one year later, I’d be tempted to agree with Ford’s characterization in the early days that, as James put it, it was just the ‘usual crew or protestors’. James is right: it really wasn’t the usual suspects. That suggests to me a shift in political engagement in this city.
DH: If the idea of “Ford Nation” was greater than the reality because of the branding and narrative it provided, then does the newfound activism in the wake of Ford need something similar (Marcus Gee’s Scoobies moniker notwithstanding)? Or is it enough to have that passionate engagement that represents a shift beyond the usual suspects?
McKee: I wonder if we’re actually talking about two different things here; pondering whether Ford Nation – and a possible progressive counterpart – are genuine entities or not is different from thinking about the kinds of narrative, emotional and psychological resources that citizens draw upon when they act collectively in aid of political mobilization. I don’t think Ford Nation is ‘real’ in the sense of membership lists or business cards (Deco joke!) but i think the deeper issues that were attached to the easy jingoism of the ‘Nation’ language still resonate with a large population – and for varying reasons.
It was, as Trish so wonderfully demonstrated, when ‘normal’ voters came to the ballot box in 2010 they didn’t have a lot to choose from. And most striking in her study, respondents held Jack Layton in equally high regard.  This indicates to me that the right mix of personality, policy and rhetoric can win people to either conservative or progressive candidates right now. The good judgment of the public also matters: Ford’s numbers have plummeted. His level of disengagement with serious policy debate (Ferris wheels and weigh-ins anyone?)  and his sometimes churlish manner in council when he doesn’t get his way clearly doesn’t help him stand out in a mixed field for 2014.  Indeed, the recent Forum Research poll that had Ford getting pummeled by Olivia Chow in a one-on-one race is a good example of policy depth winning out over unpolished charm.
What does this mean for a progressive wing in city politics? If the Scoobies are just the tip of a pinko bike-riding iceberg then a new mayor appears  likely in 2014. But just as Ford Nation never quite materialized, I’m not convinced the leading vanguard of the Latte Elitist party are deep in numbers either. There is a public, deeply conflicted at the provincial level and equally committed to the NDP as they are to the Harper Conservatives federally. I tried to suggest in my last response that big shifts come when collective self-interest (the rational side) align with the emotional side (why group care enough about a specific issue at a specific time to mobilize around it). At a minimum the buzz around City Hall is a great start.
Hennessy: James, I wonder what you think about this: I’m actually a little dismayed about talk of potential mayoral candidates lining up against Ford so early into the season. (This story, for instance)

The groundswell of political engagement, especially among younger Torontonians, could easily get stifled by a need to crack the whip and back a reasonably viable candidate at a time when I think civic politics needs a little more free flowing air to move beyond the current political stalemate.
That’s what was so interesting not only about the outpouring of civic engagement we saw at City Hall a year ago, but that strands of it survived — that a group of committed citizens with no clear ‘leader’ continued to engage, with each other and with the political process, all these months later suggests decision-making wasn’t solely reduced to how much power a) the mayor and his brother have b) the progressive factor on city council c) or the twists and turns of the mushy or mighty middle (or whatever term you want to give that faction).
To me, that’s worth celebrating: not just the fact that people came out in droves for middle-of-the-night City Hall sessions but that, a year later, they remain committed and connected even though they’re not elected or vying for a political seat. If I were them, I’d use the occasion of the one-year anniversary of their group engagement as a means to figure out how to broaden that engagement to the outer reaches of the city, how to broaden the tent.
DH: Trish finishes with a concern that is talked about more than acted on: how civic engagement can extend north of St. Clair. Given the disparate, leaderless nature of city hall’s activism, what are the barriers to connect with this area of the city and how can they be overcome? 
McKee: Right to the million dollar question! I think for a start it is to resist the ugly language of the suburban-downtown divide that is so quick to reappear – witness the last round (rounds?) of the Transit City and One City debate. It is hard to get out from under the logic of ‘we deserve a subway just like those downtown folks have.’ It really isn’t a novel way to win political support – but the combination of self interest and a feeling of – i guess you could call it resentment –  is one of the biggest problems facing a more inclusive movement.  And it doesn’t help when the so-called downtown elites refer to their fellow councillors’s suburban wards as industrial parks.

A sense of shared purpose comes from face -to-face contact is what gets minds changed (and there is a huge field of study in psychology and emotions that reveals just how important collaboration-in-proximity really is.). What would that look like, in this city  under current policy conditions? I’m not sure it would happen right now, but i certainly think some form of citizen consultation panel would be a good start.

In a roundabout way this gets me to Trish’s first point – i really don’t worry so much as feel annoyed by the kind of early speculation. It has always felt like easy column inches for journalists more than a serious reflection of campaign dynamics.  Council is on summer holidays now and so we can begin to endlessly speculate about the horse race. The horse race is the problem – a point at the core of proposals such as the Ranked Ballot Initiative. With a lot of local media attention, and with significant endorsement in the media and among political types it is the kind of engagement that renders the politics of the false divide wholly moot.

The point is to help people who don’t see themselves as activists to be able to engage. In a political culture that tries to demonize political dissent as the work of foreigners and radicals, this really matters if we are trying to sustain a more inclusive political culture.
Hennessy: What James said. 

Democracies aren’t meant to be powered solely by the leadership of elected officials — those officials are supposed to reflect the will of the people. It requires civic engagement from every corner of this city, province and country to keep the basic tenets of democracy alive and well.
I want Canadians, Ontarians, and Torontonians to get excited about their own democracy. That starts with believing your own actions matter, as do the actions of our elected officials. The two can be mutually reinforcing.
The Ranked Ballot Initiative, RaBIT, is but one example of the kinds of discussions we should be having as a community about the vibrancy of our democracy, about new ways of engaging more people, and about better ways to reach political decisions that reflect the needs and aspirations of the many. But even if we make no formal changes to ‘the system’, people can still have an effect on their political culture. Ultimately, that’s the lesson from last year’s heavily populated City Hall sessions.

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