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Last night, at the Ralph Thorton Centre, a depressing but quite possibly real future was presented for our community:

• empty (more) storefronts on Danforth, Gerrard, Queen St.E.
• the vibrancy of our community hitting all new lows.
• the average wage in the retail sector falling. Local entrepreneurs of all ethnic groups forced out of business. More pressure on government for social assistance.
• growing numbers of working-poor people who can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart.
• we can’t see them but exploited children and adults, in far corners of the world, work for pennies fabricating the items for sale at “everyday low prices”. We can’t see it, but tonnes of carbon are emitted to bring these items here.
• thousands of cars, bringing their carbon and noxious emissions, to our lovely waterfront in the Portlands.

see www.waltown.com

If you dispute the above, then please explain how ‘is our community different from many hundreds of others in North America and thousands around the world?’

One answer is that together we will force politicians at all levels of government to hear our voices, to see the big picture, say “no thank you”

When I told them I may be the Green Party candidate for the next federal election, they explained what Greeks say about politics: “the pig stinks from the nose”. This artfully expresses the near universal distrust of politicians by regular people.

We have the power to make politics serve us.

I see this web-blog as a “Green Town Square”. So I propose to use it to consult with people as to what they wish my platform to be!

So many problems of our time are related to misuse of resources and one-dimensional thinking about human potential, the meaning of “success”, of community and society, and the foolish imagining that we are separate from nature. In particular, vested interests have created doubt about global warming this last decade to extend their way of life, their jobs, their non-sustainable mode of producing goods and of making their profits. We should have been taking decisive action. The Green Party knows that we can have good jobs, clean energy AND treat other people and other species ethically.

We have so much more to lose by asking “what’s in it for me?” or “how will what I take for granted be changed?” We in the rich countries assume just because we can pay for x, y and z, that we are entitled to it. We assume that our lives are worth more than those of people on the other side of the city and the planet, those who also indirectly bear the costs of our entitlement-based behaviours. It’s human nature to be threatened by change. But if we don’t see the bigger picture — yesterday — the changes we’ve unleashed will accelerate and could overwhelm us.

Many issues come up in talking with people in Toronto-Danforth. In this space I’ll begin to share a few ideas so we can think together about what is so important that we, the people, will force the political and economic elites into taking sensible action now!