Mastodawn

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

I think this is an important aspect of #bcelxn2024 #bcpoli

In BC today it matters electorally if a politician has gained the confidence of First Nations. Prominent northern BC NDP MLA Nathan Cullen, a former MP and federal NDP leadership candidate (runner up to Jagmeet Singh), lost his race for reelection to the Conservatives. Why?

Apparently one aspect is he ran afoul with many First Nations in that region over the last term.

While I am disappointed in that result, I am glad the First Nations communities are having a real impact on the democratic process they are forced into.

If he had not lost that confidence, perhaps the result would have been 47 to 44 and his party would have a majority government.

Janis La Couvée Oct 20, 2024

@chris this absolutely does not explain North Island, unless you have some skinny that I don't have.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@lacouvee No. In that space I think we see the deep rural divide. The impact of Facebook. The impact of deep loss of support from the forest industry for the NDP as jobs evaporate and blame is put on environmentalists rather than the capitalists who extracted our resources and ran.

@lacouvee @chris This rings truer for me as a reason for the blue/orange-green map. Oganized labour stopped being a force, & loggers morphed into contractors. And NDP hasn’t seemed to have understood how to make the connex. I worked w this “new” logger culture for a number of years. They were/are struggling. Very ltd scope for political action (or imagination) beyond survival (while the majors flourished, as per usual). #Bcpoli #bcelxn2024 #forestry

Janis La Couvée Oct 20, 2024

@chris oh so true - once every last tree is cut, those companies will move on to "greener" pastures in countries with fewer environmental protections. They talk about "fibre supply" as if it didn't mean that the trees they are cutting are getting smaller and smaller. They will never again have the volumes of the 50s 60s 70s

@lacouvee @chris I don’t know how volumes of fibre compare, but there are 100s more stems per acre in today’s industrial forest than there were in the natural forests of 50 or 100 years ago (or today, we’re still cutting old growth stands).
Industry loves standardization. Many small trees are easier & cheaper to process. It really is “fibre industry” today. Not a “forest industry.” BC, and especially VI, grows fibre - fast.
1/2

#bcpoli #forestry

@lacouvee @chris
Forest industry or fibre industry?
Does that matter to a contract logger who’s trying to feed his monthly payments on equipment, before he even gets to feed his family? Hardly.
Does it matter to those of us who value qualities beyond fibre? Absolutely. I know many loggers who love the natural forests they once worked in or heard about working in. Some of them feel this tension. But feeling it, that doesn’t pay the bills.
#bcpoli #forestry

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @lacouvee I have a deep mistrust and suspicion of the Truck Loggers Association as a vessel for everything that is hurting both our forests and the people working within them.

@chris @lacouvee I used to write/photograph for the TLA
Even in my few years around that crew I saw what I thought were good changes. Some good people.
But they were (& imagine still are) squeezed by corporate profiteers. And rather bite the hand that feeds them, they will lobby against progressive policy.
They are a lobby organization with one goal: maximize the short-term business (financial) interests of their members. Much weaker than they once were.

@chris @lacouvee Meanwhile, the ones who squeeze them (used to be repped by lobby org FIR, Forest Industry Council), are quietly mistrusted but publicly allowed to do their business as usual: turning forests into fibre farms, maximizing shareholder profits at truckloggers’, BC communities’, and BC taxpayers’ expense. TLA gets a bad rep, sometimes unearned. The villains are behind the curtain…

#bcpoli #forestry

Janis La Couvée Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris I see the trucks on the highway daily and I come from a logging family. Also - economic markets in Asia are drying up. They can blame the NDP all they want, the market conditions aren't there.

calvin 🛋️ Oct 20, 2024

@chris @lacouvee It is really dissapointing to see. I often struggle to understand how people vote against their interests. Is the left just that bad at propaganda and messaging?

Idealistic Pragmatist

@chris oh wow. I had missed that Cullen was one of the ones turfed. I knew him well, back when I was involved with the federal NDP. I liked him quite a lot. I appreciate your explanation, though.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@IPEdmonton I think he was really good people and even had a shot of being PM, I think. I'm not sure that he deserved his fate last night, but he did wear some mistakes the NDP made up there I think.

@chris What’s your source on this? How did Cullen, a popular pol in his part of the world (& beyond) from what I’ve heard, “run afoul?” And if that’s the case, how does electing a Con (part of a crazy crew, if not one themselves) make things better? Do we now that FN votes were the difference? Or are we just seeing what we’re seeing elsewhere: the rural/urban wedge intensified/amplified as another version of culture warfare? Or simply as an expression of two solitudes?

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer my source is a prominent First Nations community member here who I would trust implicitly with his estimation. I don't have specifics, and the specifics might not be public in any case, or at least not easily googled.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer I do think that the rural/urban divide also played a huge role.

@chris This has long been a divide in BC. And esp as rural resource players (workers as well as business owners) saw largely urban environmentalist movement threatening “their” backyard & God-given (or Crown-given) rights to make a living. IWA had some social conscience & engaged w enviros to some ltd extent during/after the “war in the woods.” That war history needs to be written. It may help us get past the urban/rural divide (which Cons will exploit)
#bcpoli #bcelxn2024

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris I don't know how to deprogram industry folks who believe environmentalists are the reason they are out of jobs when it's the piss poor BC forestry policies & capitalist greed that are the cause. People like me have fought for forestry reform for decades so folks can have sustainable jobs without feeling they need to be a part of large scale ecocide to earn an honest living. It's the swinging door BC governments that has repeatedly failed to change their outdated policies to truly help workers transition to more sustainable & ethically responsible work.

@chris @PhoenixSerenity Thanks for your efforts. I really do think it has a lot to do with a rural get-away-from-complexity impulse. Many of us are here in small towns & rural areas b/c we want life simplified. And generally it is. The rethink required from “resource extraction” to “rural stewardship” is NOT about simplifying-at least in the short term. And it costs. 1/2

@PhoenixSerenity @chris And rural businesses & families are paying the (short term) cost. A real rural strategy will be a long-term thing. Who can afford that? Not small businesses. Not families. Not rural & small town local govts. Not provincial govts on a 3-5 year election cycle. And the sowers of discontent (fascists & fellow-travellers) reap the whirlwind (and esp their funders & cronies). 2/2

#bcpoli #bcelxn2024 #forestry #rural #smalltowns #community

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris The provincial government has had many opportunities to help workers dependent on resource extraction industries & they have chosen not to. There's still billions going to corporate welfare for industry screw ups & that's money that could be spent on helping workers move to sustainable jobs. The biggest problem is lack of political will to make any progressive changes & both swinging door governments have that in common.

@chris @PhoenixSerenity Political will, yes. Political opportunity? Not so much. Recall the Harcourt NDP govt of the 90s, to my mind the most visionary &pragmatic of recent BC govts. Big steps forward in forestry policy/ practices. This may have precipitated the “war in the woods,” or maybe led the way to post-war pragmatism? Govt leadership: rarely appreciated except in crisis or hindsight. Timing is everything. In the meantime…
##bcpoli #bcelxn2024 #forestry

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris I remember it well - I was part of that blockade. It was my first.
I also remember when BC Liberals changed BC Forestry policies & we are still stuck with those shit clauses with cutblocks/TFL. Horgan never tried to change them when he had majority powers & it's because he's an ecocidal profiteer.
There has been no political will exercised since I became eligible to vote, decades ago - except when it benefits corporate lobbyists & politicians who take lobbyist monies instead of actually serving citizens.

@chris @PhoenixSerenity Thank you for that.
But I can tell you, as a logger from late 1970s, a treeplanter from 1990s, a researcher/writer/photographer of the forest industry in the 2000s, the BC Liberals didn’t undo all the good work you & your fellow travellers inspired. Much has changed for the better & coastal communities (& forests) are better for it.
As for Horgan, I’m no fan. Now we press Eby (w Green leverage) to make BC better.

#bcpoli #bcelxn2024 🌲

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris No, they did not but they definitely hampered progress with the forestry policy changes & that resulted in more clearcuts, not less. People felt some hope when BC NDP came in with their promises & then folks felt betrayed when promises weren't delivered. More deforestation occurred. I'm friends with several retired loggers & they now believe the ecocide won't stop because big money is too deep in our government. I can't blame them for losing hope in change. They're almost on their death beds.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @PhoenixSerenity it gives me hope that there are resource folks (alot!) that get it.

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@chris @hanspetermeyer Most resource extraction folks I've talked to really want progressive changes to happen but don't feel supported. That needs to change if we are to move forward & not keep spinning same wheels in same ruts.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Oct 20, 2024

@PhoenixSerenity @hanspetermeyer agreed

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris I hope Eby will do better. I'm not holding my breath.

@chris @PhoenixSerenity Long, deep breathing. Sitting in the forest —usually an old second growth stand of Douglas Firs and Broadleaf Maple. Listening to the ravens. That’s what I do.
We —I!— need a lot of calm going forward. (Fascists hate calm.)
🌲🌲🌲🙏

ps. If you know any written material on the 1990s BC “war in the woods,” please send it my way. There is much to understand, much to learn that *may* bear fruit today.

#bcpoli #forestry #fascism #yoga

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris Like science papers or other written materials?

@chris @PhoenixSerenity No. A social history of that moment when crisis (huge layoffs in the industry with powerful effects on coastal communities and industry-alignments/organization, federal prov policy) &labour &environmentalists &industry &govt &rogue elements (yellow ribbon precursors to convoy etc) were a thing in Island resource communities.

I thought about writing it years ago, when I knew many industry players.

#bcpoli #forestry #warinthewoods

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris I actually have respect for Harcourt. Same as with Glen Clark. I think if scandal hadn't pushed G Clark out, we may have experienced different political landscapes. However, we are now in 2024 & hopefully we can try to keep our government accountable to constituents. I'm holding out some hope for some cooperative changes.

@PhoenixSerenity @chris To my mind, Harcourt was “BC politics as NOT usual” in the province’s polarized atmosphere & history. He offered another way. I did not like how he was undone by his own party. A way uprooted. It was a retreat into “BC politics as usual.” Horgan was the fruit of that tree. The crowning of Eby another fruit. Let’s see if a minority govt w BC Greens can yield something new.

#bcpoli #bcelxn2024 #bcndp #bcgreens

Ms. Que Banh Oct 20, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris This is how I felt about Harcourt being stabbed by his own party. Horgan was always a scumbucket, waiting in wings to take power.
I met that scumbucket when he was pulling backdoor sleazy moves as a casino lobbyist. I never trusted him & always knew he was a crooked capitalist. I refused to shake his hand, twice. I don't shake hands with scummy politicians.

Dana McFarland 🍁 🔥🐎Oct 21, 2024

@hanspetermeyer @chris for a public source, see https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/10/21/Cullen-Controversy-Political-Divisions-Northwest-BC/

@danamcfarland @chris Thank you. Seems the NDP has some problems with grassroots candidates. Not only this Cullen-related fiasco, but the coronation of Eby.
I’m glad we have a minority govt outcome here. I just wish we had Furstenau & Olsen to lead the Greens as the ones who hold this new govt accountable.

#bcpoli #bcelxn2024 #bcndp #bcgreens