Although my own energy is my biggest concern and I’m awful at meetings (I get impatient if people don’t get to their point quickly and I don’t like waiting for my turn to talk), I joined the environmental protection group some friends recently started on our street.
The lawn signs we made, “Vote to Control Climate Change” soon sprang up all over the area and beyond. Because we made it clear we’re strictly non-partisan we were viewed as a critical mass of swing-voters and within months every major political party began to chase after us hoping we’d align ourselves with them. Our riding is considered progressive, though it certainly has its share of reactionaries, notably our Member of British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly, Gordon Campbell, who also happened to be the Premier of the province. He’d been in power for years, though I never heard anyone admit they voted for him.
From media accounts he always seemed to be brainstorming with his cohorts or hosting visiting dignitaries, so we were surprised at how quickly he accepted our invitation, though we were his constituents, to join us at a neighbour’s house. It was at the same time his government was promoting yet another of their highly polluting but highly-profitable-to-corporations energy schemes. This one involved coal, the wave of the past.
Our group’s membership had grown by leaps and bounds, but we accepted his office’s stipulation that only fifteen of us be at the meeting and decided that we’d hear him out as our guest. I didn’t mention to the others that he and I’d already had an encounter a while back. It was just after he’d cut funds to health, education, housing, women’s shelters and the arts. Food banks were becoming a growth industry.
When Campbell caught sight of me at the meeting, there was a flash of recognition, but he couldn’t quite place me. I wanted to give him another piece of my mind. He’d used a huge surplus budget from slashing social programs to bankroll the Olympics and was now slashing even more. But I felt an obligation to our group to remain non-confrontational so I nodded politely at him and he nodded back.
We’d discussed what to do if he brought along a photographer and wanted to use his meeting with us for public relations, but he was accompanied only by a young, awkward aide, as if this were a training session for her. He was all dolled up in a pinstripe suit, maybe he was going somewhere else afterwards or had simply misconstrued who we were though we’d been vetted in advance. Maybe on paper it seemed likely we’d dress formally, but we were in casual clothing and sandals, it was midsummer.
To be hospitable we’d chipped in on cheeses, canapés and other finger foods as well as some good wine, but Campbell headed straight for the bottled water. He’d been in big trouble not long before for drunken driving while on vacation in Hawaii. His mug shot with a foolish grin on his plastered face had appeared in newspapers all over the world.
We sat down in a circle to begin talking, his aide was on one side of him and the only empty chair in the room was on his other side. He said, “No one wants to sit near me?”“It’s because we all want to see you,” I replied. We smiled at each other. He was the consummate politician, making eye contact with whomever he was speaking to, addressing us each personally—we were wearing name tags—peppering his speech with folksy talk such as, “I don’t want to bullshit you.”
From the technical dialogue that ensued, which I stayed out of because I had nothing to contribute, he had done his homework. He also looked more connected than when we’d bumped into each other before—back then his eyes had been empty. They’d since filled in a bit—he was supposedly on the wagon.
Campbell had come up the corporate ladder to first be mayor of our city for several terms. His rigid pro-development stance had helped lay the groundwork for rapidly escalating real estate prices, which is why Vancouver is now called “Vanhattan” and affordable housing is almost non-existent. Under his regime for the past several years, our province had the lowest minimum wage and the highest child poverty rates in the country.
The economists in our group are very smart and they were explaining to Campbell why there’s a lot of money to be made by going green. You could see he hadn’t anticipated their level of thought, and when he realized that we wouldn’t be satisfied with his only concrete suggestion, that we create community gardens, he changed tactics.
In confidential tones he said he was totally on board with us. But that he wanted to be re-elected, and if he showed how pro-environment he really was, he’d be “committing political suicide.” He urged us to “get involved in the public process,” write letters to his party, send petitions, because “they’ll listen if it comes from the ground up.”
Then, as if the devil made him do it, he suddenly boasted, “I just ignored a petition of 20,000 signatures asking me to lower the gas tax.” I took several deep breaths before asking, “Why?” It began to dawn on him what he’d said, and he mumbled something about the petition having been started at a radio station. I asked, “Does your respect for the public process depend on where it comes from?”
Now he was seriously fidgeting, his eyes scanning for the nearest exit and I was on the verge of taking a verbal lunge at him. The chairperson we’d designated for the meeting seized control and steered the conversation off in another direction while I concentrated on breathing.
I’d had a conversation with Noah just before coming to the meeting. Campbell stayed the two hours he’d scheduled for us and shook each of our hands warmly to say goodbye. When he, rather hesitatingly, came over to me, I said, “I promised my son I’d say two words to you. Campbell has quite a pallid complexion but whatever colour he does have drained from his face. Was he thinking, “Fuck you,” or “drop dead?” I said “solar power.” He exhaled and left.
Many of us have lived on our block for decades and we all try to look out for one another. Because we have a block watch, once a year the city gives us a bit of money to have a party and lets us put up road barriers to stop cars—that’s my favourite part of the day. Everyone brings food and we play with the kids. Throwing water-filled balloons to each other until they burst is always the most popular activity. A couple of years ago my ninety-year-old friend next door rode down the block to show us her snazzy new bike.
Last year an old bike got swiped from outside one of our houses and within minutes our telephone tree lit up and everybody was informed. Weeks later when a dozen shots rang out at the corner and several of us watched as the gunman jumped into the car he’d parked on our block no one lifted a phone. It was around midnight and we all thought it was too late to pass on such disturbing news.
The evening we had spent with Campbell, a neighbour, out for a stroll, noticed two strangers sitting in an SUV outside the house where our meeting was being held. They looked suspicious, as if they were casing the joint, so he called the police. The men in the vehicle turned out to be Campbell’s bodyguards.