Voice of Grant

When I hear a survivor speak.

2015-07-20T22:08:00.000-06:00

Sadness is not my emotion when I hear a survivor speak.
I feel gratitude to them.
I feel pride from them.
I feel power with them.
Every word made by a survivor is a solid stone in the foundation we are building on which our voices will grow.

Save the sadness for the countless still unheard.
Still silenced by their violators.
Still silenced by communities afraid to face our long histories of collective failures.
Still silenced by the ones so close who should have been the strongest pillars for raising our voices but who took on shame instead.

We are shouting ourselves whole.

—

(Inspired by comments posted when a friend posted the video When My Rapist Showed Up In “People You May Known” by Kevin Kantor.)

Calgary Democracy: About all the candidates

2013-10-20T10:38:00.001-06:00

I'm asking Calgarians to forward this message, and perhaps post the link on sites like Twitter and Facebook, please.

CALGARY DEMOCRACY: ABOUT ALL THE CANDIDATES

For the past six years, I've been running a project called Calgary Democracy. It's an effort to compile information about all candidates in local elections and make that information easily accessible to potential voters (and anyone else who might be interested).

http://calgarydemocracy.ca/

For this year's municipal election (voting day: Monday, October 21) the site has a list of all the candidates (Mayor, City Council and the two School Boards), their web-links, contact information, and social media links.

There's also a list (which I believe to be complete) of all the published candidate survey responses. Various organizations, from radically different perspectives, have surveyed candidates on issues such as arts, business, campaign finance, labour, sports, sustainability, taxes, transit, transportation, and more.

The site also has a calendar of events, primarily candidate forums and debates, but that's mostly done now as the election period is almost over.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

I'm far from the only one trying to bring information to the public in this election. For example, all of the local media have special election sections on their websites, and many advocacy groups have posted candidate and issue information. I want to highlight a few non-commercial websites in particular:

City of Calgary, Official Election Information. (http://calgary.ca/election/)
Find out which ward you are in, where to vote, how to vote, and more.
Livestream Calgary video archive. (http://www.livestreamcalgary.com/category/videos/)
This volunteer group provided live video feeds of many of the election forums, and have made the recorded videos available online.
Calgary Politics. (http://calgarypolitics.com/)
An "aggregate" blog compiling posts from a variety of local bloggers. They have been interviewing many of the candidates, including for the School Boards.

MOTIVATIONS

Calgary Democracy is run, not as non-partisan but, as "omni-partisan". I have tried to include every applicable available link and source (even the ones I personally find offensive).

I actually believe that democracy is a good idea. So, I don't want to tell people who to vote for. Instead, I want people to bring their own perspectives and consideration to the issues and make their own individual choices.

For that to work, we all need access to all the information. That means not just talking about the "top job" (Mayor), and not just talking about the candidates considered "most likely to win". It means talking about all aspects of the decisions we face. This includes the "unlikely" candidates, and the positions some consider "less important" (such as the School Board Trustees).

LOGISTICS

All content on the website has been posted by me. There are a few reasons for this; the biggest being that I custom wrote the web server software and it's a hassle to write a secure multi-user system (that code is in the works, but isn't ready yet). I'm also very wary of opening up the site too much because of the high volume of political disinformation that gets posted online. It would be awful to have a candidate's info page filled with attacks on the candidate that obscure the candidate's actual message (even if I really dislike their message).

Calgary Democracy is a zero-budget project. The website is run on my personal web server (along with other websites I host). I've received no money for it this year (I did receive some personal donations in 2010 for the project to help me be able to spend less time doing job work and more time working on the project). I'm not asking for any donations this year because I just don't want to deal with that. I wouldn't say no to friends inviting me to a vegan lunch or dinner occasionally, though ;-)

CONTACT

I always appreciate hearing from people who may have found the site useful. Did it help you to choose amongst the candidates? Did it help you decide whether to vote or not? Are there things you would add or change?

Email: open@calgarydemocracy.ca
Twitter: @yycelect

Declining numbers of women candidates for Calgary City Council

2013-09-25T10:39:00.001-06:00

In my understanding of democracy, it functions best when the full range of perspectives in the community can be heard as a part of the democratic dialogue. In a “representative democracy” like ours is supposed to be, this means that the representatives should probably roughly match the makeup of the population they are to represent.

Unfortunately, this is very far from the case in Calgary.

Taking just one attribute of the population — gender — our elected officials don’t even come close to matching the population. Roughly half the people in Calgary are women; but only 20% of our City Council, and only 17% of candidates in the current election, are women. Further, none of the candidates or elected representatives are identified as trans.

20% of the outgoing Calgary City Council are women (3 out of 15).
17.24% of City Council candidates in the October 21, 2013, municipal election are women (10 out of 58).
40% of City Council seats have only male candidates (6 out of 15).
Only 1 City Council seat has more than one female candidate — Ward 7 with 2 (out of 4).

In contrast, a significantly higher percentage of School Board candidates are women:

56.52% of Public School Board Trustee candidates are women (13 out of 23).
42.86% of Separate (Catholic) School Board Trustee candidates are women (6 out of 14).

Why so few women?

The following factors are generalizations, not absolutes. There are certainly exceptions. Some men face some of these, but to a lesser extent than women in general. Not all women face all of these, and not necessarily to a considerable extent on an individual basis.

However, the overall effect is a considerably larger set of hurdles and barriers for women to overcome to enter, and stay in, political life than men face. Trans people face these problems and more.

• It is rare for a male candidate’s appearance to be commented on. For women, it is rare for it not to be discussed — and it is often one of the first things mentioned (especially in media).

• It is typically more expensive, in terms of personal costs, for women to run than men. Really. Social expectations for women’s appearance virtually demand the use of makeup, expensive wardrobes, and hair-styling, in order to be “taken seriously”. Men, while still expected to “dress nicely” are held to much lower standards of appearance.

• Sexist social attitudes are still prevalent in our society. Women who “dare” to stand for public office face derision just for that (where men are often lauded for having the “courage” to stand for office). Women are still seen as “less capable” than men by our social institutions (as exemplified by the fact that women in Canada receive an average of roughly 70% of the income men do for the same work).

• Gendered child-care expectations mean that women who have or intend to have children are expected to have more responsibility for taking care of those children, leaving significantly less time to pursue public life. If a parenting woman chooses to run for office, she will often face negativity for “choosing politics over her children” — something that almost never is suggested of parenting men in politics.

• Women in the public eye face higher rates of being targeted for violence and sexual harassment.

There are other factors not covered here, but those should be sufficient to illustrate the point of this post.

So, what are some things we can do?

• Acknowledge that this is a problem if we actually want democratic representation.

• Build our understanding of the problem and spread awareness.

• Work to diminish, and ultimately eliminate, the factors that make it harder for women to participate.

• Support women candidates and volunteer for their campaigns.

• If you’re a woman or trans person: Run for office.

• Recognize that gender is far from the only attribute used to diminish the participation of parts of the community. Ethnicity, disability, age, financial status, and more, are all factors that have disproportionate levels of representation.

• When you see or hear something that is a factor diminishing women’s participation: Speak out. Ask people why they are commenting on female candidates’ appearance rather than their policies. Write letters to media when they talk about how women are dressed rather than how women are campaigning.

Ways to connect on this issue

Equal Voice is “a national, bilingual, multi-partisan organization dedicated to electing more women to all levels of political office in Canada.”

Women Suffrage and Beyond: Confronting the Democratic Deficit is a set of events happening in Calgary from October 3 to 4.

Comparing 2010 and 2013 City Council elections

The total number of candidates for City Council for 2013 is 62.1% of what it was in 2010, but the number of women running saw an even greater decline, being 52.6% of the number who ran in 2010.

	2010	2013
Female incumbent:	4	3
Female candidates:	19	10
Total candidates:	95	59
Percentage of women on the ballot:	20%	17%
Number of City Council seats with no female candidate:	3	6
Number of City Council seats with more than one female candidate:	3	1

To see a list of all candidates in the election, you can visit the Calgary Democracy website (that I run).

Lest we remember.

2012-11-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Lest we remember.

Lest we remember the veterans left disabled, impoverished, and denied supports.
Lest we remember the internalized violence of the military, the brutality, the “friendly-fire”.
Lest we remember the countless women soldiers sexually violated and shunned by the military.
Lest we remember the military families turning to food banks and charities for support.

Lest we remember the facts about past wars, rather than opportunistic jingoism.
Lest we remember that our “government” would rather spend millions advertising lies about past wars than spend a dollar to avoid having a soldier, or their family, fall into poverty.
Lest we remember the politicians who care so little about what happens to people in the military and veterans that they doze off in meetings with them.
Lest we remember that they spend our money to send our children, our siblings, our parents, our friends, our neighbours, to kill and be killed, to maim and be maimed, to destroy and be destroyed.

Lest we remember the military’s contributions to the long history of genocide and injustice against indigenous people of this land.
Lest we remember the contributions of anyone not white enough, or male enough, or “straight” enough, or Christian enough, in our reworking of history.

Lest we remember that Eisenhower’s warnings about the rise of the military-industrial complex came true.
Lest we remember that ever more and more of our resources, energy and wealth, are being siphoned away into the military and the corporations that profit from it, while poverty, disparity and injustice grow.

Lest we remember that, for all the posturing about protecting rights and freedom around the world, our military has ignored many who truly needed it, while attacking those who didn’t.
Lest we remember that our military turned a blind eye, and a deaf ear, to the people of Rwanda.

Lest we remember that war destroys not just human lives, but all other creatures and plants, and the very Earth.
Lest we remember that there is nothing good, or patriotic, or just, about killing and destruction.
Lest we remember that war is not glorious, or honourable, or just.
Lest we remember that war is vicious, destructive and the death of our “humanity”.

Lest we remember that no one has “freedom” while we continue to spread the injustice of war.

Lest we remember, we forget.

(Photo by Michelle Ress, used under Creative Commons license.)

An activist view on protest restrictions outside Calgary City Hall

2012-10-18T15:23:00.000-06:00

There have been some concerns raised about the way the new “Municipal Complex Bylaw 38M2012” may restrict protest outside Calgary’s City Hall and Municipal Building downtown. (You can download a PDF of the bylaw. If the filename comes up as “DirectDownload.aspx” just change the name to end in “.pdf”, and hope that The City eventually fixes that problem on their website.)

Please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer (although I play one on the Internet :-) ).

Update:

Since I posted this, friendly City Councillor Brian Pincott has informed me that the old bylaw required a permit for any use of the Municipal Plaza. The new bylaw takes away that requirement, actually making it more accessible to protest.

I honestly had no idea of that particular old rule—and violated it at least dozens of times with permit-less rallies there. (Which illustrates the general leniency of bylaw enforcement in a lot of—but certainly not all—cases.)

Is the Bylaw trying to outlaw protest?

I suspect that people expressing concern about this bylaw “banning protest” may have seen the part restricting protest inside the building. That does not apply to the exterior of the building (notably, “Municipal Plaza” and the sidewalk—which are where all of the countless protests I’ve participated in there have been held).

It’s important to note that the inside of the “Municipal Building” and City Hall, like with all buildings, have been restricted from protest demonstrations for at least as long as I am aware of, so this does not change that.

What is changing for protests?

One significant provision the bylaw introduces, that I don’t recall being in place before, is that, during business hours, no bullhorns or other sound equipment can be used without approval.

(As a matter of pure speculation on my part, I’m guessing that this provision is a result of the religious evangelists who relentlessly, noisily, set up right outside City Hall many times every week.)

What was already restricted?

In addition to restricting amplified sound, some other notable restrictions that can affect protests (all of which were previously in place, if I recall correctly) include:

Candles are restricted under the fire restrictions (no candlelight vigils without express prior approval in writing). Exception for religious ceremonies (so no ban on smudges).
No free-standing signage (e.g., placards we carry are okay but no sandwich boards set up on the ground).
Not permitted to engage in “event” activities on areas designated as memorials (such as the police memorial that obstructs a big chunk of the Plaza).
Not permitted to engage in “events” there overnight between 11pm and 7am.
The municipal plaza may be booked by groups (or The City) for events. When booked, it is designated as “exclusive use” and other activities will not be permitted. We should still be able to make reasonable use of the public sidewalks in those cases, provided we don’t interfere with the booked event.
There is a generic grant of authority to the “Complex Manager” to arbitrarily declare activities as prohibited (10.2.d). I would not expect this to impact most protests — except in cases where there is apparent or actual threat of violence, significant obstruction of individual access to the municipal facilities, or people engaging in offensive/lewd activities.

There is an interesting bit I believe they got wrong. The Bylaw includes the public sidewalk as part of the “Municipal Complex” and subject to the restrictions set forth in the Bylaw. Given what seem to be relevant precedents up to the Supreme Court level, I would not expect that to hold up in court if they tried to restrict “reasonable” protest on—and general public access to—the sidewalk.

However, there is also precedent for mass events (such as concerts and festivals) to be reasonable restriction of access to public space. So, it is legal to restrict protest and other use in those public spaces that are temporarily occupied by such an event (like when the New Year’s Eve celebration blocks off Macleod Trail and adjoining sidewalks between City Hall and Olympic Plaza).

Restrictions against gathering on the steps

Here is something that could potentially affect us: In the maps at the end of the Bylaw, you can see that they define all of the steps and ramp areas as “Entrance/Exit zones” and prohibit gathering in those areas entirely (10.3.a).

I’m thinking, in particular, of the steps adjacent to the sidewalk that are immediately north of the main ramp to the municipal building, since we have countless times used those as a position for people to address a crowd.

In spite of that definition and restriction, my expectation (given what has gone on before both at the “Municipal Complex” and other government sites) would be that we would generally continue to be able to make general use of those areas outside business hours so long as such use did not significantly impair access to the site for non-participants. During business hours, we could probably make limited use of those areas unless things were “quite busy”.

In any case, the provision does give the City clear grounds to direct us away from those “Entrance/Exit zones” as they may choose.

Summing up

All in all, given past experience, after an initial read-through, I do not expect the changes and additions in this bylaw to notably impact most protest actions around the municipal building and city hall.

There could be cases where they call for a shutdown of use of bullhorns or p.a. systems—but I would be surprised if they use that much at all against protests (since, again, I’m guessing the primary reason for that is not protests, but the noise from the noisy religious evangelists who set up right outside City Hall annoying the City Council members in their offices there). In any case, legal restrictions governing amplified sound were already in place, so I don’t see the bylaw changing that for us.

#yyccc.

Discussion inspired by comic about societal views on rape and feminism

2012-07-03T16:34:00.000-06:00

I’ve been a part of some lengthy discussions online sparked by this comic by Kate. (I first saw the comic via my friend Lee who shared a link from imgur)

Please read the full comic before proceeding…

Yes, some of my language below is insulting, but that is in keeping with the flavour of the cartoon (and my frustration level).

These discussions centre around feminism in particular, but have strong parallels to other anti-oppression struggles. Here’s some of what I wrote in those discussions:

“But, but, but… men are victims tooooo!”

Every time some male idiot chimes in with some awful statement, like the ones the off-camera dude does in this cartoon, I mourn a little for humanity.

I’m a male survivor of sexual violence, a male survivor of non-sexual assaults, and a male survivor of extensive bullying, but I don’t feel in any way threatened by recognizing and shouting the fact that patriarchy is an extreme evil, that violence in our society is heavily gendered with females being the predominant targets, that females are systemically targeted for sexual violence and abuse, that the longest running war in human history is the war against women.

The idiot males trot out numbers of female-on-male partner violence, but conveniently ignore the context that the vast majority of those incidents are self-defence or responses to extended periods of abuse (I also consider those responses to abuse a form of self-defence).

The idiot males trot out numbers of male victims of violence, conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of those are male-on-male violence. Males make up the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of violence.

By trotting out their complaints of “reverse sexism” these idiots act to reinforce patriarchy by belittling or dismissing the very real sexism, the very real systemic gender oppression, in our society.

Acknowledging and addressing the pervasive sexism in society does not mean putting men down. It does not mean “emasculating” males. It does not mean putting women, women’s issues, and women’s needs, above men. It means acknowledging the truth of our reality and working to end oppression for the real benefit of all.

As a male survivor, advancing feminism (and all other anti-oppression struggles) makes the world a better place for me and everyone I care about. It's not a “zero-sum game” where advancing women’s rights means taking away from men’s rights. The reality of anti-oppression work is that it’s more like an “exponential game” where every advance against oppression makes things better for everyone (even those who society has raised in the role of oppressors).

“Resistance is HOT!”

Yes, women who fight for their rights, who challenge oppression, are “HOT AS HELL” — because it speaks to an intense strength of character to rise above the massive forces of oppression arrayed against them in virtually every aspect of life under patriarchy.

Patriarchy harms everyone

The enforcement of gender roles harms both those placed into the role of oppressor and those oppressed. No one gets out of systems of oppression unharmed. But it remains critical to acknowledge which way the oppression flows.

I've long held that the greater responsibility for the work of feminism rests with men, being the ones that patriarchy has handed the position of "Privilege". We have greater opportunity to contribute to the work because of our privileged position.

To be clear, when I speak of men’s “greater responsibility for the work of feminism” I don’t mean to suggest that men should be leading or guiding feminist movements. In all anti-oppression struggles, those coming from positions of privilege need to spend more time listening to, learning from, and supporting the oppressed than anything else. The work of feminism needs to be rooted in meaningful, supportive and learning, partnerships.

Object-oriented design using Ruby on Rails

2012-06-29T11:56:00.000-06:00

Warning: Computer programming geek talk time. Skip this if you’re just here for my politics…

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been doing a pile of reading (and screencast watching) on approaches to object-oriented design when using Ruby on Rails. I always take it as a good sign when I learn a new approach that makes me think “I want to go back and rewrite all my code this way.” (Although, of course, that would not be the best choice. It’s usually better to integrate new approaches with ongoing/new development rather than start over from scratch.) There’ve been a few of those moments during this recent reading, so I’ve decided to compile a list of what I’ve been looking at — both as a reference for myself, and to reinforce what I’ve been studying.

There is a pile of good stuff in these articles (and vids), but the single biggest for me is the point about segregating “business logic” (the methods that actually do the domain work) from persistence (database calls). There are a few different ways suggested for doing that here — I’m not sure yet which I favour.

Objects on Rails is probably the most comprehensive piece on this subject. It’s an ebook (viewable free on the website, or for $5 in non-DRM PDF, ePub and Kindle formats). There is little hand-holding in this book. Unless you are already well-versed in things like ruby meta-programming, it can be a challenging read (but well worth it even if you don’t get everything right away — some of the other materials that follow should help round out your understanding). I’ll go ahead and call this the essential piece out of this collection. It’s not to be skipped.

Some related articles include:

The Secret to Rails OO Design (and the follow-up Better Ruby Presenters).
Making ActiveRecord Models Thin
Evaluating alternative Decorator implementations in Ruby
Stubbing Is Not Enough
Extracting Domain Models: A Practical Example
Videos:
- Why You Don't Get Mock Objects

Something that came up a few times is how to apply the SOLID principles to Ruby development (since SOLID was conceptualized around typed languages like C++ as opposed to dynamic languages like Ruby).

Ruby Best Practices: SOLID Design Principles
Videos:
- SOLID Object-Oriented Design
- SOLID Ruby

The subject of DCI also gets a bunch of attention, but I haven’t got through these readings yet:

2012-05-22T14:44:00.001-06:00

The following was posted on Facebook. I reprint it here in its entirety.

An Open Letter to English-Canadians, who might be feeling that Quebeckers have taken leave of their senses.
by Daniel Weinstock on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 1:09am

An open letter to my English-Canadian friends. Please circulate in your networks as you see fit.

You may have heard that there has been some turmoil in Quebec in recent weeks. There have been demonstrations in the streets of Montreal every night for almost a month now, and a massive demonstration will be happening tomorrow, which I will be attending, along with my wife, Elizabeth Elbourne, and my eldest daughter Emma.

Reading the Anglo-Canadian press, it strikes me that you have been getting a very fragmented and biased picture of what is going on. Given the gulf that has already emerged between Quebec and the rest of Canada in the wake of the 2011 election, it is important that the issues under discussion here at least be represented clearly. You may decide at the end of the day that we are crazy, but at least you should reach that decision on the basis of the facts, rather than of the distortions that have been served up by the G&M and other outlets.

First, the matter of the tuition hikes, which touched off this mess. The rest of the country seems to have reached the conclusion that the students are spoiled, selfish brats, who would still be paying the lowest tuition fees even if the whole of the proposed increase went through.

The first thing to say is that this is an odd conception of selfishness. Students have been sticking with the strikes even knowing that they may suffer deleterious consequences, both financial and academic. They have been marching every night despite the threat of beatings, tear-gas, rubber bullets, and arrests. It is, of course, easier for the right-wing media to dismiss them if they can be portrayed as selfish kids to whom no -one has ever said "no". But there is clearly an issue of principle here.

OK, then. But maybe the principle is the wrong one. Free tuition may just be a pie-in-the sky idea that mature people give up on when they put away childish things. And besides, why should other people pay for the students' "free" tuition? There is no such thing as "free" education. Someone, somewhere, has to pay. And the students, the criticism continues, are simply refusing to pay their "fair share".

Why is that criticism simplistic? Because the students' claim has never been that they should not pay for education. The question is whether they should do so up front, before they have income, or later, as taxpayers in a progressive taxation scheme. Another question has to do with the degree to which Universities should be funded by everyone, or primarily by those who attend them. So the issue of how to fund Universities justly is complicated. We have to figure out at what point in people's lives they should be paying for their education, and we also have to figure out how much of the bill should be footed by those who do not attend, but who benefit from a University-educated work force of doctors, lawyers, etc. The students' answer to this question may not be the best, but then it does not strike me that the government's is all that thought out either.

And at least the students have been trying to make ARGUMENTS and to engage the government and the rest of society in debate, whereas the government's attitude, other than to invoke the in-this-context-meaningless "everyone pays their faire share" argument like a mantra, has been to say "Shut up, and obey".

What strikes the balance in the students' favour in the Quebec context is that the ideal of no up-front financial hurdles to University access is enshrined in some of the most foundational documents of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, in particular the Parent Commission Report, which wrested control of schools from the Church and created the modern Quebec education system, a cornerstone of the kind of society that many Quebeckers see themselves as aspiring to. Now, it could be that that ideal is no longer viable, or that we may no longer want to subscribe to it. But moving away from it, as Charest's measures have done, at least requires a debate, analogous to the debate that would have to be had if the Feds proposed to scrap the Canada Health Act. It is clearly not just an administrative measure. It is political through and through. Indeed it strikes at fundamental questions about the kind of society we want to live in. If this isn't the sort of thing that requires democratic debate, I don't know what is.

The government has met the very reasonable request that this issue, and broader issues of University governance, be at least addressed in some suitably open and democratic manner with silence, then derision, then injunctions, and now, with the most odious "law" that I have seen voted by the Quebec National Assembly in my adult memory. It places the right of all Quebec citizens to assemble, but also to talk and discuss about these issues, under severe limitations. It includes that most odious of categories: crimes of omission, as in, you can get fined for omitting to attempt to prevent someone from taking part in an act judged illegal by the law. In principle, the simple wearing of the by-now iconic red square can be subject to a fine. The government has also made the student leaders absurdly and ruinously responsible for any action that is ostensibly carried out under the banners of their organizations. The students groups can be fined $125000 whenever someone claiming to be "part" of the movement throws a rock through a window. And so on. It is truly a thing to behold.

The government is clearly aware that this "law" would not withstand a millisecond of Charter scrutiny. It actually expires in July 2013, well before challenges could actually wind their way through the Courts. The intention is thus clearly just to bring down the hammer on this particular movement by using methods that the government knows to be contrary to basic liberal-democratic rule-of-law principles. The cynicism is jaw-dropping. It is beneath contempt for the government to play fast and loose with our civil rights and liberties in order to deal with the results of its own abject failure to govern.

So that is why tomorrow I will be taking a walk in downtown Montreal with (hopefully!) hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens. Again, you are all free to disagree, but at least don't let it be because of the completely distorted picture of what is going on here that you have been getting from media outlets, including some from which we might have expected more.

Daniel

#GGI, Quebec, student protest.

If they were serious about reducing abortion rates…

2012-04-26T16:43:00.001-06:00

A quarter of a century ago I attended protest rallies to stop the then Conservative government of Canada from bringing forward legislation to take away women’s rights to decide what to do with their own bodies.

Today, there are protests against the current Conservative government of Canada’s effort to bring forward legislation to take away women’s rights to decide what to do with their own bodies.

For those opposed to abortion, prohibition won't stop it — that will just lead to more dead or mutilated women like there were before it was legalized. If you really want to stop abortions, work to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that cause them.

So, what’s the single biggest factor in rates of unwanted pregnancy? Women who are living in poverty. If you’re opposed to abortions (or pro-choice, for that matter) — the best thing to do is to work to end women's poverty.

See also:

abortion, pro-choice, M312, no debate.

Vote strategically, or vote your conscience?

2012-04-15T14:13:00.009-06:00

With the way the Alberta provincial election seems to be shaping up, I’ve heard a lot of folks talking about possibly voting strategically for the Progressive Conservative Party in their ridings out of desperation to avoid having the Wildrose Party win. People are struggling with whether to vote for the candidates most likely to block the candidates they dread, or to vote for the candidate that would best represent them.

I’ll avoid, for the moment, discussing here the broken nature of our electoral system that leads to such choices…

Voting Your Conscience

It’s never a mistake to vote your conscience — to vote for the candidate who best represents your values — even if you expect them to “not have a chance”. Even if they don't win, showing support for those candidates shows which positions have support and does a couple things:

It shows those elected which types of voters they need to appeal to more.

When the Alberta Greens saw significant increases in percentage of vote (even though we didn’t win seats from those votes) there was a corresponding increase in some of the green policies being adopted by the provincial government — a prime example being the grizzly bear hunt ban. Subsequently, when the Alberta Greens were taken over and shut down (the takeover was led by a fellow who is now a Wildrose candidate, make of that what you will), there was a corresponding backtracking on those policies — in this example, the grizzly hunt ban was lifted.

Even parties that don’t win can affect policies because the winning party wants to get some of those votes in the subsequent election.
People who vote mostly vote for who they think can win. A party that receives increasing votes in an election stands a much better chance in the next election because more people will think they have a chance of winning. It’s not good that so many people vote that way, but it’s reality.

So, we’re not just voting for this election, but for future elections, too, where there will hopefully be better chances of people we support winning.

Strategic Voting

All that said, there are times where a “hold your nose” strategic vote may be your best choice.

I once (just once) voted for a federal Progressive Conservative candidate, Joe Clark, in order to prevent the election of a Reform/Alliance candidate. Clark was definitely on the “Red Tory” side of that party (before it was taken over by Reform/Alliance), and even served as parade marshall for the Calgary Pride Parade one year — so it wasn’t an utterly heinous choice.

So, what should one do?

In the end, both the strategic and conscience votes have an impact — so neither can be dismissed out of hand as invalid choices in our current system. It’s up to you, as an individual citizen, to make the hard decision which of the possible outcomes is the better focus for your vote.

Even when it doesn’t seem like it, when the media and leading parties try to marginalize diverse opinions, all of our votes do actually make a difference.

vote, abvote, Alberta election, strategic vote, vote your conscience.

Wildrose Alliance Party would set back social advances in Alberta

2012-04-06T13:02:00.004-06:00

A survey of party leaders conducted by the Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association last year has some troubling quotes from Wildrose Alliance Party leader Danielle Smith:

The Wildrose is committed to enshrining property rights in an Alberta Constitution, and views the protection of property rights the most fundamental role of government.

So, property rights trump social responsibility, human rights, the environment, health, education, democracy?

And, yes, in spite of recent denials and obfuscations, she is on the record in favour of “conscience rights”:

the Wildrose will ensure conscience rights for marriage commissioners and health professionals.

wra, wrp, abvote, Alberta election, Wildrose, Wildrose Party, Danielle Smith, conscience rights, property rights.

Calgary Activist Network — back from the dead

2012-03-14T12:37:00.005-06:00

Back in January I started doing a bunch of work to rebuild the Calgary Activist Network website. The network had largely wound down in the mid-2000s, leaving just a single page of links to a few other online resources.

Now the calendar of events is back up and running and I’ve posted over 60 events in the past couple weeks.

The new feature I’m most proud of is the ability to subscribe to the calendar of events using calendar applications on your computer or phone. With that, you don’t have to remember to visit the website, but can instead just look at your calendar to see what’s coming up.

At this point, it’s just me posting events to the site, but I hope to get other folks adding listings soon. (There’s still a little bit of back-end code I need to put together to get that workable — and understandable by non-geeks.)

Currently, to add an event to the site, people can send an announcement to the Calgary activism announcements email list (which has been running in one form or another since 1999). Please use plain text in those emails, and no attachments (no posters, pictures, Word documents, etc.).

The updated Activist Network site should make it easier for me to get announcements out to the email list, for those who prefer email.

There are a couple of other spots available where announcements are going out. On Facebook, there is the Calgary Social Change page. On Twitter it’s @CalSC.

Western Interventionism in Activism

2012-03-08T22:27:00.004-07:00

There’s a basic question activists should ask before taking an action in support of people outside our own communities: What do the people affected want to do?

What we heard directly from Sudanese activists, at the time Calgary-based Talisman Energy was exploiting that country’s oil, was “get your company out of our country.” So, that’s what we worked to do. What we heard from South African activists during apartheid there was “cut South African business off.” So, we boycotted and promoted sanctions.

If we’re going to do anything “for”, “about”, or — much better — with the people of, Uganda, the direction of our efforts needs to come from the people there who are working for positive social change in their communities. If they decide there are ways that we in “the west” can be useful in making a difference, then great — let’s do that. But if they decide that they need to handle whatever they’re doing without our involvement, it’ll not be our place to interfere or presume to “know better.” They’re not ignorant, primitive, simple-minded, backward, or in any other way less than us (it’s probably the other way around, assuming they haven’t spent their lives being bombarded to the same extent as us with U.S.-dominated western media).

While visiting Europe, in response to the question “What do you think of western civilization?” Gandhi is reported to have said “I think it would be a good idea.” Yep.

activism, intervention, Kony 2012, Uganda.

On Voting

2011-05-02T07:10:00.000-06:00

I'm not voting against anything. I'm voting for what I see as the best opportunity to make things better in my community and the world.

I'm not voting to have "my side" win. I'm voting for us all to come together and work out our problems, challenges and opportunities, in open collaboration.

I'm not voting to have my voice heard. I'm voting because I want all voices to be heard - including the majority who are silenced by our current systems.

I'm not voting for this election. I'm voting for the long-term.

Keeping track of government & civic events in Calgary

2011-01-11T14:15:00.002-07:00

After a too-long absence due to a mix of holidays, sickness, life stresses and burn-out, I’ve started loading up the Calgary Democracy calendar with relevant events again, especially meetings of our municipal government.

Stay up-to-date automatically

Near the top of the calendar page, there are a couple links you can use to add the calendar to your calendar application (on your computer, smartphone, or other networked device). If you subscribe to the calendar, you’ll automatically get updates without having to go back and check the website.

For example, I use this on my smartphone, which means I just need to go to my phone’s calendar to see when the next City Council meeting is.

The City’s challenging information

The City currently posts information about upcoming “Boards, Commissions and Committees” through a fairly minimalist calendar page. They don’t provide any way to take a feed of that data so it can be auto-loaded into your calendar, or shared on other websites.

Consequently, I’m currently manually copying and pasting (and cleaning up and reformatting) the listings from that website to create calendar entries in the Calgary Democracy calendar.

The agendas and minutes for those meetings are kept on a completely separate website (actually, 2 separate websites — one for archives of pre-October 31, 2010 meetings, and one for meetings since then). Their calendar site doesn’t yet link to the agenda & minutes site, and the latter only links to the former indirectly.

Agendas are often posted only a few days before a meeting, so it’s challenging for me to update the Calgary Democracy calendar with them.

Unfortunately, the full package of information being made available for the Councillors at the meetings is not yet being made available to the public (that I can find). So, we’re still missing a lot of crucial information about what is being discussed on our behalf.

yyc data, yyc cc, Calgary, Calgary City Council, calendar, events, schedule, open data.

Why ending fluoridation of our water is a good thing

2011-01-05T14:49:00.003-07:00

Thankfully, Calgary City Council is looking at finally ending the fluoridation of our water supply.

Why is water fluoridation inappropriate?

The state has the (controversial) right to restrict access to certain consumed items (e.g., narcotics, prescription drugs, food additives, alcohol for minors, unpasteurized milk, etc.). It should not, however, have the right to impose the consumption of anything on anyone (with the possible exception of where an individual would otherwise be “a danger to society” such as forcing anti-psychotic drugs on extremely violent mentally ill individuals).

Putting fluoride in our water is a deliberate act of forcing involuntary consumption of that fluoride onto people. Some of the proponents of fluoridation will say “you don’t have to drink the water, then”. That’s true, if a person is wealthy. That is entirely wrong for the large percentage of low-income households in Calgary, as well as the growing homeless population. Do we really want a society where the rich are the only people who get to say no to what the government wants to put in their bodies?

To use an extreme example to illustrate my point: There are people who’s health and well-being would significantly benefit from receiving antidepressants they aren’t currently getting. Should we therefore put antidepressants in the water supply to ensure they get those drugs? Of course not. So, why are there people who think it’s a good idea to put fluoride in the water to benefit the fraction of the population who might benefit from it who aren’t otherwise able to get that fluoride?

Surely, in this “modern age” we can come up with far more targeted and efficient ways of providing fluoride access to those who might benefit from it but can’t otherwise secure it of their own means?

Should we just let this “little” issue slide?

On Twitter, Ron McMahon said “Fluoridation is a dead issue Calgarians have REPEATEDLY voted to keep this.” Well, before the imposition of fluoridation, following a plebiscite a couple decades ago, the pro-fluoride lobby lost many plebiscites where Calgarians repeatedly voted to block it.

So, by the logic McMahon suggests, we should have never brought in fluoridation in the first place. That logic might be taken to imply that we should never change our minds as a society — a notion with which I respectfully disagree in the strongest possible terms.

Zac Ryan, again on Twitter, suggested that ending fluoridation isn’t worth it because “there are bigger issues to tackle.” By that measure, we should just ignore anything that isn’t a big issue. Potholes? We’ve got bigger issues. Off-leash dog parks? We’ve got bigger issues. Home break-ins? We’ve got bigger issues.

It is the job and duty of our City Council and City Administration to sweat those “smaller issues” along with the “bigger issues.” It’s not either-or.

YYCcc, fluoridation.

Data Visualization video

2010-12-27T18:28:00.006-07:00

I watched a very cool (and relevant to local open data efforts) video on web-based data visualizations. It’s from Apple’s developer conference earlier this year and covers recent (and some experimental) web standards for doing dynamic, interactive, data visualizations, including on arbitrary shapes like maps.

Unfortunately, you have to login with a (free) Apple ID (and possibly register for a free developer account) on Apple’s Developer portal, and then get linked in to iTunes (which is free, but you need it installed and I don’t think they have a version available for open source platforms) to get access to this video. But, for data geeks — especially those interested in the possibilities of Open Data — this is probably worth it.

The license restriction on the video doesn’t seem to restrict me showing it to others on my laptop, so maybe we can get folks together for a group viewing some time (it’s about 45 minutes).

Technologies Covered

Javascript and dynamic loading of data from XML and JSON sources.
CSS effects (including touching on the newer animation effects).
HTML5.
HTML5 Canvas: Dynamic graphical drawing in HTML.
SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics.
Inkscape: Open source vector drawing tool (generates SVG).
Raphaël: Javascript library for dynamic vector graphic handling.
WebGL: Experimental dynamic 3D rendering in web code.

Getting the Video

If you are keen to see it now, and willing to jump through a bunch of hoops, here’s how you get to the video. This is all free, but a bit of a pain if you’re not already registered with Apple’s developer programs:

At every step of this, login, or create a login, if you need to:

Go to Apple’s Developer videos page for WWDC 2010.
Choose between the HD (big) or SD (small) video format, and select the appropriate “View in iTunes” link.
Once the “WWDC 2010 Sessions” page is open in iTunes, select the “Internet and Web” section (last one in the list)
The video is for “Session 509 - Creating Info Graphics with Standard Web Technologies”. Click the “Get” button to download it.
Once it’s done downloading, you can watch it in iTunes (it’ll probably be in the “iTunes U” section in your iTunes player), or open it with another video player.

If someone figures out an easier way to get at the video, please let me know!

#yycdata.

Don’t just vote — engage

2010-10-15T14:18:00.003-06:00

Just getting yourself out to vote, while necessary, isn’t going to be enough to get a better city council and school boards for our city. If we are to achieve that, we all need to get out on the last few days of the campaign to engage our friends, neighbours, colleagues, etc., in getting them out to vote. The more people who vote, the greater the odds of getting a more representative result from the election.

Please tell everyone you know that you are voting (or have voted if you did the advance vote). Nothing encourages behaviour in people more than seeing others engaging in that behaviour. “Primate see, primate do.”

However, I strongly recommend against saying things like “you should vote” — nobody likes being told what they “should” do (and it often triggers a rebellious response leading to the opposite behaviour out of spite). Far more effective, in my experience, has been things like “I’m voting on Monday, have you thought about your vote?”

If that hook catches them, I then say something like “there is a website with links to all the candidate information if you want to know more about what the choices are,” and then give them the link to Calgary Democracy.

Support your candidates

If you have a candidate you really like, please try to volunteer a couple hours with their campaign over the next few days. They really need to make a big final push to get their name out as much as possible. With so many of the races being very close this year, it genuinely could make the difference in determining who wins.

Those who choose not to vote still have the right to complain

2010-10-13T21:57:00.004-06:00

I’ll start off by saying that I’m an avid voter. Not only do I vote in every government election I can, but I’ve voted in a school board by-election, for my credit union board, and more. If I had had the chance, I would have voted before I was 18 (I’ve been politically conscious for most of my life). I can not, in any way, be considered a non-voter. Further, I actively engage people with resources intended to support their voting, have moderated candidate forums, been an election station worker, and run workshops to help people better understand the voting process.

Please keep that in mind as you read the rest of this.

I’ve often heard people say around election time “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” That’s wrong on more than one level.

On a basic freedom of speech principle, people have the right to complain no matter what they have or haven’t done.

There are more than just a few non-voters who see voting as an endorsement of a system they object to (I object to the current system, too, I just think that voting can help reduce some of its harm). Not voting in a system they disagree with should in no way limit their right to complain about that system and its actions and consequences. In fact, those people are often the ones with the most to say in complaint of the system.

There’s a quote on a button someone gave me years ago: “If 10 minutes every 4 years is all you put into democracy, that’s all the democracy you’re going to get.”

Voting is not democracy. Voting is a tool which can be applied in some contexts in support of certain aspects of democracy. However, democracy itself is a much, much, bigger pie. Just because someone doesn’t participate in one aspect of our society does not mean they must give up any right to participate in the rest of it.

So, to all the non-voters out there: Please keep bringing your voices to the democratic dialogue we need to be having as a society.

Who gets to decide who the “legitimate” candidates are?

2010-10-06T18:04:00.000-06:00

There is a lot of talk online and in the media about the “front-runners” in the election. Various individuals and media are pushing for a “front-runners-only” mayoral debate.

What the gosh-darned heck (to be honest, the words I’m actually thinking are much more graphic and vile) gives anyone other than the voters at the voting booth the right to narrow the choices of the voting public?

If a candidate is on the ballot, they should be able to be a full part of every candidate forum (applicable to the office they are running for) and have fair opportunity for equal coverage in the public media. Anything less is a taking away of access from the voters and is a violation of democratic principles.

Yes, it can make things tedious and messy, but democracy is worth every single bit of effort it demands.

Yes, it is often painful to have to sit through the speeches of some of the more “interesting” candidates, but the alternative in our present setup is to shut out the diverse voices in our society from full meaningful participation. That is not democratic.

The problem is not too many candidates, or “fringe” candidates. The problem is our archaic electoral system.

Workable alternatives

Our current electoral system doesn’t provide a fair way to narrow down the selection from a field of many candidates. The way our ballots are set up (“first past the post”) really only works well if you have no more than 2 choices. The solution to the problem comes in getting rid of our current system and putting in place something that actually allows for more refined selection processes.

Some good possibilities include things like alternative balloting systems, or multiple run-offs in the lead-up to the final vote, or something like the primaries held in the U.S.

So, rather than damaging what little semblance of democracy we have in this society by cutting out candidates from full participation in the public dialogue, let’s all step up our efforts to transform the system to allow for a more refined process than the archaic single “X” on a ballot.

Polls are not an expression of democratic will

The main thing used to excuse the exclusion of candidates are the polls that have been made public. Election-time polls typically show strong leads for just a few of the candidates on a given ballot. This is then used to justify excluding the non-leaders from further attention (thereby ensuring they are eliminated from having a chance of winning).

Published polls end up pushing public opinion in favour of those already in the lead. That’s the main reason I’m opposed to polls being made public.

Some try to present the poll measurements as something we can use in place of actual votes (such as in run-offs). That is not legitimate. The only way you could have a poll that truly represented the will of all eligible voters would be to poll every eligible voter. Otherwise, you’ve always got a margin of error greater than zero.

Some argue that our voting would also not be considered legitimate on those terms because so many eligible voters don’t vote. That argument is wrong. Those who choose to not vote have a fair opportunity to participate and choose not to. They are saying “this is not important enough to me to expend any effort on, so I’ll just accept what everyone else decides.” That is still an expression of their opinion, so fulfils (although quite poorly) the requirement that their voice have an opportunity to be expressed within the democratic system.

Inching closer to democracy

2010-10-02T21:58:00.001-06:00

I am very excited by the tangible increase in accessibility, accountability and openness in this election which is countering, at least a bit of, the traditional biases that traditionally serve to diminish our efforts at democracy. Some encouraging examples from the current election:

We have seen multiple lists of candidates in commercial media, and on advocacy group websites, reordered from biased ordering to alphabetical or random in direct response to complaints raised on Twitter.

We’ve seen ads for one candidate removed from CTV’s page listing their interviews with all the candidates, again in response to complaints on Twitter.

Due to a mix of citizen-led pressure, peer-pressure, and media awareness, we have many candidates pre-disclosing their donor lists — for the first time ever (that I’m aware of) in Calgary politics. This has made for some interesting, and sometimes quite telling, reading.

We have increased awareness of, and some tentative early actions for, accessibility for people with varying needs (such as disabilities and English as a second language). Many event organizers are becoming aware of the need to have wheelchair access. Some online videos are being subtitled for the hearing impaired and translated into other languages. There certainly remains much still to be done to ensure equal access for all, though.

We’ve had much increased — although still far from perfect — awareness of rules restricting campaign signs on public land.

We’ve had (or are having) public all-candidate forums for every ballot in the election — thanks in large part to significantly increased civic engagement with groups like (and especially) CivicCamp. We’ve got more people aware of and attending those forums thanks to the calendar on Calgary Democracy (shameless plug), increased social media “word of mouth”, and increased coverage from traditional media (increased relative to previous elections). And we’ve got more people exposed to the content of those forums through online distribution of videos, along with what seems to be more broadcast of forums on radio (thank-you CJSW) and television.

We have quite a few candidates engaging in previously unheard of levels of accessible dialogue with citizens. A significant portion I’ve seen of this has been through online tools such as Twitter, but also through what seems (at least to me) to be a higher quantity of accessible public events than usual.

It’s still far from “enough” in my view, but these are very encouraging developments and do bring us closer to democracy.

Alberta soldiers excluded from voting

2010-10-01T17:43:00.004-06:00

The Calgary Sun reported today that many Canadian soldiers from Alberta who are stationed overseas (such as in Afghanistan) will not be able to vote in this month’s municipal elections throughout the province.

Now, those who know me know that I am no fan of the military, but I am somewhat of an extremist when it comes to including everybody in the democratic process. It is a travesty that these citizens are being left out of the process because of an inability of the various levels of government and the Canadian military to find a way to enable the soldiers to vote.

The problem stems from these factors: Typical mail delivery time for overseas military is apparently at least 5 weeks. There are just 4 weeks from nomination day until election day in our municipal elections. The Provincial legislation governing municipal elections only allows for traditional voting station balloting and “Special Ballots” which must be physical paper (not electronic), but which can be mailed or otherwise transported from outside the province.

In discussions on Twitter today, we talked about what I consider to be three very doable possibilities:

Provide “Special Ballots” (that’s the legal term under Alberta Provincial election regulations) that allow for candidate names to be written in by the voter. A supply of these fill-in-the-name ballots could be made available to the remote military operations (with various authentication measures) and, with the cooperation of the military, could be filled out by the voters and rush-delivered back to Canada for inclusion in the election day counting.
Change the provincial legislation to make a special exception for overseas military operations to allow for electronic voting. This would require collaboration (and legal wrangling) between the Province and the military, as well as imposing a blanket policy to include this voting method for all Alberta municipalities (who currently have some leeway in defining their own paper balloting procedures).
Provision for establishing remote special polling stations at military bases overseas. From a municipal elections offices stand-point, this would not require much variation from existing procedures for setting up special polling stations at hospitals and such. The big difference would be in allowing for remote reporting of results, to be verified by the later delivery of the actual ballots. This, like the previous option, would require some coordination with military officials.

So, 3 very viable options to address this failure of democracy. None of which can feasibly (or legally, without unprecedented rapid intervention by probably at least 2 levels of our governments) be done in time for this election.

Here’s what I want Albertans to do: Call, and write to, your MLA telling them you want them to ensure that Alberta soldiers who are stationed overseas are never again excluded from the democratic process at any level of our governments. This afternoon I telephoned my MLA’s office, and then sent a more detailed email to him (and Cc’d the four in-Legislature party leaders).

Someone on Twitter asked about trying to lobby the federal Conservative government to improve on the 5+ weeks delivery time so that the soldiers would be able to just use the mail-in ballots that other citizens can use. That would be great, but I don’t see it as realistic. It would require a radical shift in thinking on the part of the feds toward actually supporting our troops instead of just spouting patriotic platitudes.

Politicians threaten public health

2010-09-28T23:50:00.003-06:00

This year, I have been sick twice with bugs presumably caught from shaking hands with politicians (I won’t go into the gory details, but there is a high likelihood of the source, given my hand-shaking activities in the days preceding the development of symptoms). I’ve also heard that a number of candidates in the current election have come down with illness, too.

So, I’m putting a call-out to politicians, political hacks like myself, and the public at large, to try to practice safer politicking. Let’s try to reduce the social pressure to always shake hands and instead accept alternatives that are less likely to spread contagion. A couple I can think of are the “fist-bump” and the Japanese-inspired head-nod.

This is going to need to be led by those of us not running for office since a politician who won’t shake hands in the current social environment could be seen negatively — potentially hurting their campaign. It’s up to us to offer a head-nod or fist for bumping to any politicians we meet on the campaign trail, instead of the usual proffering of a hand to be shaken. The politicians, in turn, can be encouraged to thank the hand-shake-avoiding person for taking public health into consideration.

That doesn’t leave the politicians without responsibility — you can be more pro-active in applying hand-sanitizer, washing your hands frequently, or other measures at your disposal. Braver politicians might also consider being not quite so quick to offer a hand-shake — leaving an opportunity for safer approaches.

(A special note of thanks to candidate Gian-Carlo Carra for taking the initiative to offer me a fist-bump instead of hand-shake at a recent political event.)

Together, we can all curtail the spread of biological contagion!

Airport tunnel? Why have an airport at all?

2010-09-08T13:58:00.003-06:00

I realize what I’m going to say here will likely be disagreed with by at least 99% of people following the municipal election in Calgary, but I believe in openness and honesty, so here goes:

The question of whether to build a tunnel under the new airport runway that is going to be built has turned into one of the biggest focuses of this election. There are now petitions for and against, as well as some unpleasant words being exchanged online and various accusations being made.

I’m neither for nor against the tunnel because I think it shouldn’t even be an issue — I don’t want the airport to expand. In fact, I’d like us to start moving toward shutting down the airport. Granted, relative to the vast majority of people in this city, that’s a very extreme opinion.

For me, it comes down to a very fundamental ethical question: Do we have the right to harm others.

Air travel does harm. It does massive harm. It has been identified as the single-most environmentally damaging form of transportation (short of space travel) per passenger mile. Every plane trip is effectively a form of assault and even murder in that it directly contributes to measurable harm to individual humans (especially asthmatics and others with respiratory issues) and contributes to environmental damage that results in humans dying. That’s not even getting into the massive destruction being wrought against non-human life.

What are the vast majority of plane trips for? “Business or pleasure.” Another ethical question: Does anyone have the right to harm others for their own profit or pleasure? I don’t think so.

When I learned a few years ago just how destructive air travel actually is, I stopped using it. Since then, I haven’t travelled as far, or as often, as I used to. I’ve also turned down offers to have plane tickets bought for me (such as for family events, or political meetings), taking long bus trips instead. I would take passenger trains if they existed here (and I’m contributing to lobbying efforts to get our governments and industries to focus on building rail infrastructure to replace the much more destructive forms of transportation that currently dominate our society).

Am I perfect and without harm in this? Certainly not. But I have managed to significantly reduce (probably by at least an order of magnitude or two) the harm caused by my transportation choices.

But, but, but… What about the economy???

There are many who argue that our economy depends on air travel, so cutting it off is not viable.

Well, I seem to recall another economy that was dependent on an immoral practice: The U.S. slave-based economy. People were so adamant that it was critical to their survival, that there was even a war fought to try to maintain that immoral practice. In the end, it was banned. Look at how ending the immoral practice of slavery completely wrecked the U.S. economy. Oh, wait. They went on to become, for a time, the biggest economic power in the world.

Funny, that.

More online campaigning tips: Your Website

2010-09-02T12:08:00.004-06:00

Here are some more things to expand on yesterday’s list of tips for online campaigning. Most of today’s tips involve tinkering with the HTML or other parts of your website’s code, so you may need to find a suitable geek to help you on these.

Keeping people up to date

Have an RSS feed that includes when you make blog posts, add videos, policy documents, new events, etc. This will allow some of the people interested in your campaign to keep up to date without having to check back with your website (which the vast majority of potentially interested people simply won’t do).

You will also want to post a summary of what’s new to the front page of your website.

Google

There are a number of things you can do to make your website’s listings on Google clearer (and more likely to be found and clicked on).

Your pages’ titles are what Google use to provide links to your website. So, make sure you have clear titles (found in the <title> element in the <head> of your website html). Ideally, each page on your website should have a distinct, clear, title. E.g., “Candidate X Campaign for Ward 15”, “Candidate X Biography”, “Contact Candidate X”, etc.

Use the description meta-tag (“<meta name="description" content="A short description of what this web page is about." />”) to give Google listings a clear and concise summary for each page on your website. (This is the text Google displays right under the link.)

Provide Google (and other search engines) with a Sitemap which helps them know the structure of your website, and find the various pages you have.

See Google’s Webmaster Tools for a bunch more you can do.

Mobile devices

Test how your website looks on common devices such as iPhones and BlackBerries. There are ways to set up your website’s stylesheets (the “.css” files) to do special formatting for those platforms (here’s a ton of info for the Safari web browser used on iPhones, etc.). Given how many people in Calgary are using these devices these days, it’s worth your while to make your website accessible to them.

You can also pick up a bit of attention by having your campaign produce a custom application for these devices. Note that this is only worth doing if you can get a high quality application produced. An ugly, or uninteresting application will reflect poorly.

Make your campaign information computer-readable

Make your calendar of events available as an up-to-date iCalendar (“.ics”) format file. People can then load that into their personal calendar applications (iCal, Outlook, iPhone Calendar, etc.) allowing them to have automatically updated reminders of your events right in their calendars. Having an iCalendar file available for your campaign will also be usable by other websites like Calgary Democracy to keep an up-to-date list of your events.

If your website admin doesn’t have the facility to generate the iCalendar file for your site, you can use something like the Google Calendar tool to generate a calendar people can subscribe to (including the iCalendar format).

Have your campaign contact information available as a vCard (“.vcf”) file. This makes it easy for people to add you to their address books to stay more readily connected to your campaign. Be sure to include at least your phone number, email and website in the vCard file.

If you want to be particularly data-friendly, you can also apply the appropriate microformats right into your existing web pages. There’s a growing range of software that understands microformats, making it easier for users to copy things like events and contact information from your web pages.