Nelson Municipal Election 2011: Charles Jeanes not your conventional municipal politician
By Nelson Daily Editor
By Charles Jeanes
I am from Ontario, which I jokingly call Onterrible. Why “terrible?” It is the picture for me of an over-developed place, too many urban wastes, and too many people too close together.
I am a graduate of Trent and Guelph universities, and I loved the rural lands around those towns. I lived rurally when I could.
I have now been in BC since 1978, more than half my life, and in Nelson since 1987. This place fits me. I am a long suffering refugee from the 1960s youth counterculture and this is the best place I have found — the area and people that seem closest to realizing the idealism of those revolutionary years.
I’m a father and grandfather. My employment here has included care worker for the mentally-challenged, taxi driver and newspaper reporter; now I’m a freelance journalist, teacher-on-call, and tutor.
Community boards I have served:
Nelson University Centre; Nelson Anti-Poverty Action Group; Kootenay Centre for a Sustainable Future; David Thompson Cultural (student) Society; Nelson Library Board; Nelson Peace Coalition; Kootenay Co-op Radio.
I’m an activist with my local union, Nelson District Teachers’ Association, and was previously with CUPE local 339.
I have been a member of the NDP; for one year, 1988, I was a member of the Reform Party.
Political aspirations
Questions from The Nelson Daily
- What made you personally decide to run?
- What did you see happening in the city that made you want to become involved in municipal politics?
- What do you think you bring to the municipal table as a politician?
- List a few characteristics that you feel embody a Nelson municipal politician?
Politics are interesting to me, always have been, and yet I suspect all the old ways we have been doing our politics are part of our problems, not our solutions.
Consensus decision making at City Hall would be a great new beginning to a new order of politics, and a way toward real democracy.
I cannot say in one simple phrase why I want to be a Nelson councilor. I have no issue that I declare is “mine.”
I doubt I would agree with many other more conventional politicians about what City Hall should be doing. I have felt so out of place in the culture of materialism in this world that our economics has built since my childhood, that I lack many of the traits of middle class respectability, such as property ownership and a solid retirement plan. I mis-fit. I feel I have been on the margins, not in the mainstream.
Why would anyone vote for me when I say I am unlike other people? Because I am like lots of other people, too.
Poverty amidst vast private wealth
I feel spiritually impoverished by this culture of money and ownership of things — I hear many others say the same. What our systems have done to our planet, to our habitats, to other species, makes many humans feel angry and alienated.
What we have done to other people in our climb to be one of the most affluent nations on earth, also upsets us. Poverty amidst vast private wealth, injustice to natives and other disadvantaged people, leaves me feeling that democracy has been failing to do its proper work. I am not alone in feeling that.
Now the rich nations of Earth tremble as our banks and corporations seem, as in 2008, on the brink of economic catastrophes that will match, in financial and in job losses, what catastrophes the planet is undergoing from environmental damages humans have wrought upon it.
This is a moment of fear. The Occupy movement has been born in this crisis. I embrace that movement. I feel like 1968 is here again. Hope and Change, not the phony US-election kinds, but the real things, are rising up.
My voice at Nelson City Hall must be a voice not often heard in mainstream politics. I do not fit the usual mold. Do you? Then we understand some things other people in the secular world do not. Our spirits can have an effect. A vote for me is symbolic.
The Corporation of the City of Nelson — to call it by its legal name, and emphasize that it is a corporation — faces a fork in its road. So, if I were a Nelson councilor, how would my values and attitudes make any difference at City Hall?
The wider context of Nelson and its city government
The last time we had an election, in late 2008, our world was poised on a brink by events on Wall Street and then around the globe in the banking capitals of the developed world.
Did you notice any change in your life as a result? Did you wonder if the Great Depression of the 1930s could happen again? We did not have it, but we know also that it might still be possible.
My question to you and the council who has been at City Hall since 2008 is this: What have our political leaders done that shows a deep awareness that now, as never before, leaders cannot try to carry on as if rich economies will go on as usual, our past affluence in Canada is assured in future, and the way to our prosperity is the same as ever – growth?
I put it to you that this is a unique time. I am an historian and I do know something about other times when leaders experienced crises, and their peoples expected some solutions.
But the planetary scale of economies, wars, politics, climate change and environmental degradation is not paralleled by any other time or place. Please believe that. Has Nelson City Hall acted as if it believes how critical things are? No.
We have come to the edge again
The main, perhaps the only, question to ask candidates is: How does Nelson respond to the many challenges around us, using just the authority given us at City Hall by our political masters, our laws, our limitations? Are city hall and municipal government powerful enough to oppose capitalism’s decay and failure? Probably not.
In 2008, the global capitalist economy came to the first edge of a cliff, and avoided breakdown through spending vast amounts of public money, by governments saving private banks and corporations.
We have come to the edge again. Nothing that Nelson council did between 2008 and now has taken notice that the world is in a new era. Its development policies are lucid evidence of that.
Nothing can, nothing should, be as it used to be, in global economics or in local politics.
The “Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon sweeping the planet is a very hopeful sign. The hope is we are waking up to the future. The death of capitalism is still ahead, but the chaotic process of its dying, plus environmental issues caused by capitalist destructiveness, will be all around. The past economy must be seen for what it is, a dead end.
Having choices
As the capitalist corporate order dies, we must employ local politics to insulate us from consequences we do not deserve. Do we continue to dance with the animated corpse, or do we have better choices?
I think we have choices. I believe that City Hall has some real, effective power and legal authority to do some very useful things for Nelson and area citizens. Not growing Nelson is one thing good for all. There’s nothing in the problems facing us, facing Canada, that we will improve by swelling our population.
We are so fortunate to have a small population on a vast land and resource base. The old way would have us “develop” the land for more homes and industries, and “exploit” resources, all by the investment of people calling themselves “wealth creators” who have power we must reduce.
I have run before and not been successful; I have been described as a candidate who “does not resonate with Nelson voters.” I was labeled the “anti-development” candidate when I ran for mayor.
I admit my chances may seem slim. But an election is a time to open up ideas to debate. If I am elected, my voice and influence will be dedicated to the vision of a future that is socially just and politically democratic.
I am open to ideas that defy past notions of “normal” and that will make new history, not repeat old habits.
Issues
Questions from The Nelson Daily
What one issue has really been ignored in the last years (or years) in Nelson?
- Growth and development.
What do you see as one of the biggest problems Nelson has to deal with next?
- Class conflicts. Poverty and wealth, and the powers that be not wanting to surrender to a new order.
Do you see Nelson as a special case in terms of community, or are we dealing with the same issues as everyone else in B.C.?
- Both. We have some good fortune in being small and having a lot of space around us and some natural resources. But there is no wall protecting us. That bubble is a mirage.
What is one thing you would change in the city or at City Hall?
- Straight up, use consensus decision making in council.
Any other issues you see happening in the city, or at City Hall, that need to be addressed?
- Food security. Aging infrastructure. The collapse of the old order and chaos while the new is born.
Growth and Environment
No more development as we have known it. Council might have acted differently after the 2008 market, debt and banking crisis, but chose the business-as-usual route.
Very disappointing to me and to others too, who expect remarkably progressive initiatives in this community of highly-educated, spiritually-seeking citizens.
Nothing gets better by adding population or infrastructure now. No more Kutenai/Nelson Landings, no more Bay-Graine-Granite Pointe insanity. Council could declare an end to that, grant no more development permits, entrench a no-growth OCP.
The planet groans under growth. Exploitation, extraction and sale of materials ripped from nature to manufacture trash, is the old way. Alberta’s and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative vision brings that hideous hyper-development.
On our patch of the planet, Nelson, let’s be a model of radically different economic vision. Every issue touching growth and quality of environment will have to pass the test of revolution. If it’s old, it’s unacceptable. Think big, bright dreams.
Poverty
Capitalist, corporate, market society is unequal by design. Poverty, environmental degradation, and technological brilliance, feed it. Capitalist science astonishes us. “Our technology outruns our humanity.” (Einstein)
Nelson suffers like most of Canada from the creation over the last 30 years of a new underclass of homeless people, for whom society once cared. Nelson could learn from other cities, e.g. London, how to institute a living wage policy, and address a root cause of poverty, wages that are too low to support families for basic expenses.
Using the online wage calculator, city government works to ensure employers pay living wages. (e.g. the living wage for the lower mainland area is $18.81, for Cranbrook, $14.16). Visit www.livingwages.ca. Free clothing stores can be city enterprises Also, Nelson owns buildings. Some sit empty. Surely we could shelter the homeless in winter.
These are solvable issues in post-capitalist society.
Cars
I love my car. So this is hard. Post-capitalist society is hostile to private vehicular ownership, such as we hyper-independent individualists claim is our right. The experience of car-power — derived from driving alone “wherever I feel like” — is damaging to our ability to feel community with our fellows.
Citizenship flourishes where machines don’t rule public space. Close Baker Street to cars. Those who have cars, fill them up with folks who need buses or taxis. City Hall can make it easy to link drivers with riders; look at how impoverished east-European peoples have shared cars (Indian and Chinese middle-class obsession with car ownership is a truly depressing prospect for the Earth).
Nelson could invest in charging stations for electric vehicles. We could stop paving streets to a high standard; just drive slowly.
Sing, “Imagine no combustion, it’s easy if you try, no pave beneath us, above us the blue sky… ”
My views on …
… the City having its own police force?
- I like it. We can change how policing is done because we are the masters. Change has to happen there. Less cops, more social order.
… Sunday bus service?
- See my comments above, about cars.
… waterfront development and development in general?
- See above, growth.
… the Civic Centre and its (lack of) theatre?
- I do not much care about movie theatres. Live theatre is better. Turn off your TV too, and switch off your connection and monetary support for the vast commercial world of the entertainment, “news” and media empires.
… allowing dogs on Baker Street?
- Yes. Clean up your crap, and keep your pet under control. Be a citizen.
… making Nelson more of a tourist destination?
- No. Horrible idea. Tourism as a capitalist industry is not a positive for Nelson, but people traveling and meeting one another is good for us. We do not need the money of the old tourist industry. We can welcome the world but not on the terms of the old economy.
… water rates for downtown business?
- No opinion yet. Water belongs to all of us. We have no reason to take more if we do not make Nelson grow. I am appalled how we have grown this town and just expected water is there for our taking. Conservation is first. We should have water supplies for different functions, e.g. drinking and garden watering. (“green” water and “brown” and “blue” – research those.)
… eliminating parking on Baker Street?
- Absolutely. And end cars driving on it. It must be a pedestrian public commons. It is what makes Nelson so much better a place to live than many other towns.
