Yesterday, I wrote a commentary suggesting that COPE is treating Vision Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson with kid gloves on a $260,000 office renovation.
I suggested it was because COPE's elected politicians want their senior partners in Vision Vancouver to help them get reelected in 2011.
For that, I was condemned by some readers.
That prompted me to do a little investigating. I read every COPE news release on its Web site since the 2008 election regarding a matter before Vancouver city council.
Here's what I discovered:
- COPE never used the words "Vision Vancouver" in any news release offering alternative policies to those espoused by Vision Vancouver.
- COPE never criticized Robertson in any news release. Robertson was only mentioned on two occasions, both very positively. Once was in connection with an attack on the B.C. Liberal government's handling of the Little Mountain housing project. The other was in a news release praising the "COPE-Vision" city council for making homelessness its top priority.
- COPE has not criticized a single Vision Vancouver councillor by name in any of its news releases. The only one who got mentioned was Vision Vancouver councillor Raymond Louie, who was praised after amending a motion by COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth on provincial arts cutbacks. In fact, Louie watered down the effect of Woodsworth's motion and took away any credit she might have received from the arts community by expanding it to include B.C. Liberal cuts to childcare, education, and libraries.
So what do I conclude from all of this? It's that COPE is not a true opposition party at Vancouver City Hall. It's clearly not interested in criticizing the party in power, Vision Vancouver, even when when COPE advances policies that are diametrically opposed to the wishes of the mayor.
COPE is also not interested in publicly linking any Vision politicians to policies opposed by COPE. This is tremendously helpful to Vision councillors, who only have to worry about swatting away attacks from the lone NPA councillor, Suzanne Anton.
The mayor's popularity is helped by COPE politicians' refusal to link him personally in any news releases to his party's less popular policies. This stands in sharp contrast to efforts to link former NPA mayor Sam Sullivan to the civic workers strike in 2007.
It also differs considerably with statements COPE issued before the 2008 election. Here's one example from Cadman in connection with the NPA's approach to the Little Mountain housing issue: "Peter Ladner and the NPA are blind to the solutions before us. While Little Mountain Housing is boarded up, they want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on portables in empty lots,” said Cadman. “The answer is right in front of us but the NPA prefer election gimmicks."
Based on the evidence on the COPE Web site, it's fair to refer to the left-wing civic party as the junior partner to Vision Vancouver. I reserve the right to change my mind if COPE starts criticizing the governing party's politicians by name, like any other real opposition party in this country.
Update (August 31): Two days after this article was written and posted on Straight.com, COPE issued a news release with the following headline: "Mayor Robertson’s plan for West End consultation not good enough".
Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.
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Comments
Really? Half the time I see COPE in the media, they're criticizing Vision policies. So, maybe their media releases are about policies, not personalities. Maybe it's about reframing it to what COPE would do as opposed to what the other guys won't. We're going to judge this by counting names?
COPE, under the direction of David Chudnovsky - with outgoing Executive Director Rachel Marcuse acting as his handmaiden - has come to exist only as an entity dedicated to electing candidates to the Vancouver Board of Education, so that the Vancouver BoE can act as a 'front' espousing the policies of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation. For the current crew running COPE, municipal politics are an afterthought.
All of the above is moot, though, as COPE is surely on the road to self-destruction. Why would any thoughtful citizen cast a vote for the current incarnation of COPE when the party is little more than a pale imitation of Vision Vancouver?
What a sorry state of affairs.
COPE has been a pathetic, weak-kneed opposition to Vision, who are clearly willing to stifle criticism and relinquish their independence all in the name of Getting Re-Elected. I know for a fact that many people who voted for COPE, mostly Union workers, are very disappointed in the way COPE and Vision have treated them over the past 2+ years. COPE has been alienating their core supporters due to their willingness to do exactly what Vision tells them to do. The spending at City Hall is out of control, and Ellen and David just sit by mostly silent.
If COPE wants to run in partnership with Vision in the next election, then they should ALL be considered Vision candidates because they use that partnership to gang up with Vision and attack any opposition, yet want to still be considered a separate, independent political party, of which they are certainly not anymore. This "partnership" always gives them twice the amount of speaking time at any public candidate forum, which they only use to bash and personally attack those running with other parties, and that is not only unfair, but incredibly dishonest to Vancouver voters.
I'm with Montyvan, Jamie Lee and City Observer above. The COPEsters who defy reality with their representation of their party as somehow different from Vision are like the Obama-ites down south who are able to see a progressive edge to that failed president. Liberals everywhere want to relax in the safety of their own delusions. You have to decide whether you are for change at a fundamental level, or if, like Vision, Cope, the NDP, the Democrats, you feel that while their are corrections to be made, the system itself is fundamentally fair. People like Roberts, Bass, Louis, Rankin etc wanted fundamental change they did not pretend that the system could be patched together by enlightened political technicians tightening this bolt here or there.
It is not sexist to make this inference. To call someone a handmaiden in this way is a descriptive use of language. Tony Blair was often called the 'lap-dog' of Clinton and then Bush Jr. This was not 'animalist', it was a descriptive use of language that characterized Blair's fawning subservience to US power. Obama serves the interests of Wall Street. If you called Obama a 'slave' to Wall Street, you would be making a political point, not a racist statement.
Marcuse, besides being an ineffective leader, with little grasp of even the recent past of the COPE party was part of the coup engineered by NDP insiders to ensure that COPE would not rock the boat for Vision as they fought the last municipal election.
Though Bennett doesn't appear to understand the difference between sexism and description, she does know how to avoid the topic. By fixating on a relatively minor adjective, she doesn't address the article, or Observer's points at all.
They understand that they have a better chance realizing on what they want to achieve with Gregor Robertson than say yy uhh Bruce Allen.
Firstly, it appears that it might be you who has a fundamental misunderstanding of the use and abuse of language (as even your incorrect usage of the word "inference" when I assume you mean "implication" and "adjective when I think you mean "noun" indicates). Without a doubt, words are used descriptively and connotively, and are not empty vessels but include cultural understandings about the way we see the world and often, especially in the case of loaded terms like "handmaiden" or "slave", speak directly to issues of power, gender and race (or a multitude of other contructs). It is precisely because you are able to use a gendered word such as "handmaiden" as a derogatory descriptor in order to devalue the person you are describing that it is a powerful and, yes, sexist use of language. Language is how a culture constructs and perpetuates notions of power, and "city observer"'s use of handmaiden was, without a doubt, whether intentional or not, an ad hominen attack on Marcuse that used her gender as a dismissal, and therefore, as I said before, a clear expression of the author's misogyny, whether or not he (you?) is (are?) conscious of it or not.
Now in response to his (your) points on the municipal politics front, I honestly can't understand how anyone who has been paying attention could say that Marcuse has been ineffective or that they didn't rock the boat for Vision. Marcuse has been at the forefront of holding Vision accountable and fighting for truly equitable and just municipal policy while trying to keep a fragile coalition together. Her work and commitment to social justice (and the values that COPE has always held dear) has been remarkable. I don't want to rattle off a list of all the policy and causes COPE under Marcuse has championed, and a quick google search would do the trick if you genuinely want to inform yourself, but off the top of my head - fighting for housing at Little Mountain, fighting for campaign finance reform, speaking out against the horribly repressive Olympic security measures, opposing the municipal tax shift from business to residents, on and on.
I for one, as someone who has been paying attention, am sorry to see Marcuse go. I wish Singh all the best in his new position, but am acutely aware that he has giant shoes to fill.
Maybe Language Policeperson Bennett could provide us with a list of language okayed by herself (is 'herself' okay?). I was looking at a book with the "Mistress and Maid" in it by Jan Vermeer. Perhaps we should remove all gendered words and words referring to power differentials from the title. What would we have. "Employer and Employee", no even that refers to a relationship of power. "Two acquaintances" that's it!
Your whining suggests you are protecting a friend, it sure doesn't relate to politics.