My Presentation to the Ottawa-Carelton District School Board - November 25, 2009

Good evening and thank you for providing the opportunity to speak to you this evening on the matter of the possible closure of Rideau High School. I have been a resident of Overbrook since 1998. I have been an active volunteer in my community, serving on the board of the Overbrook-Forbes Community Resource Centre since 2001. Currently I am the chairperson of the Steering Committee of the No Community Left Behind Project. This is an initiative of the City of Ottawa that strives to develop a collaborative approach to community building. It was first implemented in the Banff-Ledbury community, and its success is well documented. The area of Overbrook West McArthur was subsequently identified through extensive research as one of four neighbourhoods most in need of this new approach.

It is my intention this evening to shine a light on a serious problem, and then redirect that light toward solutions.

Lets review some facts. The statistics are sobering. Rideau High School has by far the highest school age population within its area with almost 8,000 students, yet the lowest number of students in attendance. Conversely, Colonel By, with the lowest school age population of only 1,800 students, is above capacity with over 1,000 students, attracting them from far and wide. Most disturbingly, the median household income of Rideau families, at about $45,000, is less than half the roughly $103,000 median income of Colonel By families. The bottom line is that the richest area has the most attractive school.

It is the saddest thing that the most economically disadvantaged area has, in the eyes of many of its residents, the least attractive school. They are choosing to go elsewhere. If residents consistently choose schools outside their area, I believe the board should be asking “Why?”, and implementing measures to stop the hollowing out of a school. Instead, you are contemplating its closure.

I am particularly concerned that you would take such a decision in advance of your expected review of your very liberal school transfer policy, which I believe is overdue. Given that Rideau has by far the highest number of students in its catchment area, does it make sense to close this school in advance of this important review? I think not.

For a community identified as being most in need of capacity building the closure of its school must not happen. It would be beyond cruel. It is not unreasonable for residents of every community to expect a school board to provide attractive local schools, especially when the population base is there to sustain it. It is inspiring that the 1,800 school age children in the Colonel By catchment area have an attractive school. I was impressed by their presentations. They can be justifiably proud. It begs the question though: “Why can't the almost 8,000 students and their families in the Rideau area have something that is equally attractive to them?” Secondly, and, most importantly, “What do we need to do to make this happen?”

Let’s now refocus this light on solutions. As noted above, the City of Ottawa has identified this community as in need of capacity building. It is targeting resources and developing strong partnerships in this effort. Participants include the Boys & Girls Club, Ottawa Police Service, Ottawa Housing, and many others. They have recognized a problem and are working together to foster a healthy community. To lose our school, which is part of our heartbeat, at this critical juncture, would be devastating. We need the school board to be a part of this collaborative process. As chair of the Steering Committee that is leading this effort to rejuvenate our community I personally will do what it takes to connect you with the decision makers involved in this process.

Find out how you can be a part of creating not only an attractive school for almost 8,000 students and their families in the Rideau area but learn how you can participate in the partnership that is working toward a healthy and vibrant Ottawa where truly, No Community Is Left Behind. Together, we can make it happen. Thank you.

Rideau High School is MY High School

Until about a month ago, I had never visited Rideau High School. It is my local neighbourhood high school, about a 2 kilometer walk from my home. I had never been within its walls because my children had left the public school system by the time I move to this part of Ottawa. School matters, I guess, from my perspective, were for others to be concerned with.

How my views have changed. I owe a debt of gratitude to my neighbour, Chris Ellis, who recently invited my participation in efforts to lobby the school board to not close this local school. If he had not invited me, I would have missed an opportunity to meet some very fine and engaged young people and many others who live near me who are very concerned about the possibility that this local school may close. To learn more about these efforts, visit Chris's website.

Another Disturbing Excerpt from "What We Leave Behind"

This is another lengthy quote from the disturbing book What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay. (Aric lives on a farm near Kingston, Ontario. He was interviewed last spring on CBC TV for a feature on the “doomers”.)

WHAT SHOULD, OR WOULD—or do—any of us do, living in this culture that is alienated from and destroying the earth, if—or when—we realize that this world would be better off had we never been born, if we were to die?

For now, at least, I see several options that many people take.

The first option, taken by nearly everyone within this culture, is to do everything we can in increasingly frantic, desperate attempts to keep this realization at the unconscious and not conscious level. Thus jetskis and off-road vehicles, thus Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags over Everywhere. Thus scuba diving and whitewater rafting. Thus the existence of hundreds upon hundreds of television channels, with movies and movies and movies and Deal or No Deal and Dancing with the Stars and basketball game after basketball game after football game after football game after baseball game after baseball game. More and more. Faster and faster. Thus the internet, with its ever-increasing ways—spectacular ways—to kill time. Thus Doom 1, 2, and 3. Thus Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life episodes 1 and 2. Thus Second Life, MySpace, and YouTube. Thus the tidal wave of pornography, sports, and financial news, all with their simulacrum of diversity, all with titillation, all with excitement, all promising to transport us somewhere, somehow. Thus the obsessions with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt. Anyone but those in front of us. Thus the abuse of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines. Thus so many other addictions, like the stock market, the economy, politics. Thus the frantic-happy, frantic-smiling faces—all of them just alike—on the evening distraction—I mean, spectacle—I mean, news. Thus toys and more toys and more toys. Thus the obsession with playtime by adults who work at jobs they hate. Thus diversions to divert us from the diversions that divert us from the diversions that divert us from the myriad realizations we must never have if we are to maintain this way of living and to maintain our role in the ongoing destruction of all that is real. And beneath these myriad realizations are more diversions, and more. There is phony meaningless optimism and phony meaningless hope and phony meaningless actions like putting plants on truck factories, all keeping us from staring into the abyss of destructiveness that is right now staring straight at us. And all of these phony meaningless diversions divert us from the understanding that our failure to stare at this abyss will not stop it from swallowing us, as well as everyone and everything else. Beneath these diversions there are phony fears of despair, phony fears of hate, phony fears of rage, phony fears of sorrow, phony fears of love and loves: real loves, fierce loves of self and others that cause us to at all costs—and I mean all costs—defend our beloved. And beneath all these fears? A dreadful fear of responsibility, a fear that if we get to this point, if we survive the annihilation of the self that is so meticulously, so violently, so repetitively, so mercilessly, so relentlessly, so abusively, so obviously forced upon each of us in order to allow us to continue to breath, to work, to labor, to produce, then we will need to take responsibility for our actions and for the wonderful and beautiful and stunningly extravagant gift of our life that this planet has given us. Indeed, we will need to act and to act in such a way that the world is better off because of our actions, because of our life, because we were born. And as with sustainability itself, what was at one point as easy as eating, shitting, living, and dying, is now more and more difficult.

We fear death. And not just the death that all experience, but another that scares us far more than the real death that comes at the end of our phony lives. This other death that we fear even more comes before the real death—sometimes long before—if it comes at all. This is the death of our socially constructed self. Once that self dies, then who will we be? We cannot face the possibility of actually living, of actually becoming who we really are and who we would be had we not been so violently deformed by this culture. We cannot face the possibility of being alive, of living so we turn, to return to the beginning of discussion, to jetskis and off-road vehicles, to Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags over Everywhere. Most of us would prefer our real, physical selves die, and indeed the world die, rather than face the realization that, given our socialization, the world would be better off without all of us who allow our socially created selves to continue to breath, to work, to labor, to produce—and that, of course is the real point.

That is the most popular option for members of this culture.

Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay on "What We Leave Behind"

I am currently reading a very important and disturbing book by Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay titled What We Leave Behind, published in 2009. I have just finished Part I. Its conclusion speaks eloquently (and, for many of us I am sure, harshly) of the reality of the type of lifestyle we humans have been taking for granted. It is not so much that this must not continue, but that it cannot. It is a physical impossibility. If humanity is incapable of taking corrective action, we ultimately need not worry, for the planet will do what is necessary for its survival, whether humanity continues to exist or not. Here is a lengthy excerpt from the last chapter of part I that is currently touching me.

Reciprocity is the key to survival. Reciprocity is the essence of life. It is life. It is what we do. It is what we all do.

We are told, more or less incessantly, that survival is based on being the meanest, strongest, most selfish, best able to exploit.

But those who say that are wrong. They have forgotten—or do not care to remember—that nature loves a community. This is true on every scale, from the largest to the most personal. It's simply true that nature loves a community more than nature loves you or me. Nature loves a community more than nature loves a community-destroying culture. Nature loves a community more than nature loves industrial civilization.

I'm sorry to report that it is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans will exist. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that for a short time a relatively few (fiscally) rich humans can look at computers, watch televisions, and buy (and throw away) cell phones. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans can create industrial civilization. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that industrial civilization can deform humans to fit the needs of industrial civilization. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans can destroy life on this planet in the service of industrial civilization.

I'm sorry to have to be the one to deliver that news.

This culture is extraordinary, but not so much for the reasons so many people like to pretend; its vast military capabilities, its art, literature, music science, philosophy, (such as it is). Instead, it is extraordinary in that it does not give back to the land, the water, the air, the nonhumans, the vast majority of humans.

This culture is even more extraordinary in that many of its members seem to think they can continue to not give back, and survive.

Or maybe they can survive, all the while keeping their jetskis and RVs, their gold and brass rings, their interstate highways and disposable diapers, their aircraft carriers and superdomes. They can keep this culture until they die.

Personally.

Only if they are already very old.

The planet is collapsing. Now. This culture is causing this collapse.

I'll say it again, since not enough people seem to be listening: this culture is killing the planet.

This culture is killing the planet.

Don't listen to me. Listen to the planet.

But a refusal to listen is part of the problem. We're taught (some explicitly, all implicitly) to become masterful at refusing to listen, and then to become just as masterful at refusing to acknowledge--to others, but most especially to ourselves--that not only are we not listening but that there is even anything to hear in the first place.

Many members of this culture--evidently an overwhelming majority, given the relatively small number of people actually doing anything to stop the destruction--simply don't care. Many of them were taught (once again, some explicitly, some implicitly) that if they ignore (in fact, foreclose) all possibility of relationship, and if they don't mind harming those around them...and if it doesn't bother them that they're destroying the land and air and water that those who come after them will need to survive, then they can take advantage of the short-term competitive advantage that not giving back gives them, and thus they can more effectively dominate, enslave, exploit, or simply kill all those who do give back (and who therefore must be inferior), and who have the misfortune to come into contact with them. Then when they reach to every part of the earth-meaning that more or less everyone has the misfortune of coming into contact with them-as this narcissistic nonreciprocal culture now does, they will kill the planet that (or rather, who) supports them. But many of these individual narcissists will die before then. And so they can say, and mean, that statement most famously said by King Louis XV's mistress Madame de Pompadour; when the king's ministers complained that her extravagance (and the extraordinarily expensive wars her advice helped cause) was going to lead to their own destruction, she laughed them off with the phrase, “Après nous le deluge,” literally translated as, “after us, the deluge,” more loosely translated as , “When we are dead the deluge may come for aught I care.” And she was right. She died in 1764, some fifteen years before the deluge of the French Revolution and nineteen years before the Reign of Terror, with its deluge of blood-both royal and otherwise-flowing from the guillotine.

Après nous le deluge.

I guarantee this statement will be far more accurate and deadly for those who say it now than for those who said it before. This time, as the entire world collapses, it is not just the French but everyone who pays. Everyone.

For those who are willing to have their view of the world, and their place in it, shook up, read this book.

Taking a Look at the GPO results in St. Paul's - Without the Rose Coloured Glasses

Irrespective of the actual results in any election, it is always expected that supporters of a particular party will do their best to put a favourable spin on the results. That is part of the political game. Congratulations are offered on a "great effort" and all the "hard work". Having been involved in the electoral process as both a campaign manager at the municipal level and later running as a provincial candidate I appreciate the immense amount of energy and commitment required. ANYONE who chooses to become involved in a campaign deserves our thanks and admiration. They are participating in a democratic process and encouraging debate.

However, there also is a time for supporters to take off the rose coloured glasses when they review the results. This is of particular importance for members of the Green Party of Ontario as they analyze the figures in the recent provincial by-election in St. Paul's. Yes, I suppose it is appropriate for Jim Harris to post warmly on Facebook his "Congratulations to Chris Chopik who ran a fantastic campaign in the St Paul's by-election!" However, if the campaign was so "fantastic", why are the numbers down so much? Comparing the results to the 2007 general election the Green share of the total vote dropped by more than a third from 8.3% to 5.4%. The total vote count for Greens in St. Paul's was cut by more than half from 3744 to 1514. Where did those 2200+ voters go?

Does anyone know? More importantly, does anyone care?

If the GPO is to ever elect members to the provincial legislature, it must start finding answers to these, and many other difficult questions.

Basij as Mercenaries

According to a report posted at the Guardian, (scroll down to 3:32PM on the blog), the baton wielding Basij who have been wantonly bashing heads for several days now in Iran, are well paid mercenaries.

3.32pm:
Newspaper Roozonline has an interview (in Persian) with one of the young plainclothes militiamen who have been beating protesters.

UPDATE: Robert says the man is paid 2m rial per day, which would be about £1220 for ten days of work. A hefty fee, even by UK standards. A reader writes: "You can imagine what that kind of money means to a villager from Khorasan".

The Guardian's Robert Tait sends this synopsis:

The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protestors with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as "Hajji", who has instructed his men to "beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won't be able to stand up". The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly-paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.

How Our Communication Has Changed

The Internet allows the receiver of information to also be the producer of information. We have the power, like never before. How shall we use it?