Thread by @terraloire

Ok so I went deep into the archives for personal examples of “Privileged Politicians and Pundits Can’t Comprehend Community Organizing Existing”. A #TOpoli 🧵:

https://twitter.com/terraloire/status/1637515608978800642

In early May of 2016, Women in Toronto Politics was still active, a small by-law change from Denzil Minnan-Wong landed on the radar of myself, @ClaireMcWatt, and other activists.

We spent an evening on the floor of an empty office after hours eating cold pizza, while Claire wrote an op-ed and I phoned allies and proof-read. torontoist.com/2016/05/dear-c…

The proposal opened the door to widen the definition of lobbyists to include community activist groups, essentially putting them on the same playing field as paid lobbyists.

“But non-profits and grassroots community advocacy groups are not corporations. At the end of the day, lobbyists get paid. They sell the service of elbow-rubbing for a considerable fee.”

We understood the implications this by-law amendment could have on community groups, who already face significant barriers in advocacy at city hall.

It is also really important to note that these amendments came during a months-long demonstration from Black Lives Matter that John Tory was mishandling. toronto.citynews.ca/2016/03/22/bla…

We were brainstorming how to be persuasive in our argument, and included the following quote “This coming from Tory, former chair of CivicAction, is bewildering. Has this one-time fellow advocate now turned his back on the same engagement he fought to inspire?”

I think it was this line that ended up showing me just how thin skinned and out of touch the former mayor is.

Again, so Claire and I are eating cold pizza with papers all over the floor multi-tasking because we 1) care 2) have an equity lens 3) like pizza. I was calling other community advocates, from Toronto Youth Council to Cycle Toronto, and emailing councillors.

We got in touch with Paul Ainslie about our concerns and he put forward a motion at city council to address our concerns.

Flash forward to me at my day job and I get texts asking if I’m watching council feed… Tory got very defensive about the question at all. He and Minnan-Wong got grilled by progressive councillors like Perks and Fletcher; the Torontoist column had made its rounds.

Tory accused councillors of “getting people all whipped up”. And that it was all a misunderstanding, and that ‘people’ (aka, myself, Claire, the folks we were calling) were overreacting. His comments start at around 8:27:

This is a trend that dominates centrist and right wing politicians. That “people” are just being “whipped up” (side note, I hate that phrase), by their political opponents and unions. It is unimaginable that constituents would care about their own democracy.

A few years later in 2018, Doug Ford announced plans to cut city council. Myself and Riley Peterson organized a rally the next day that was covered by news outlets. I was acting as media liaison and CTV News asked to interview me for a statement....blogto.com/city/2018/07/d…

However, they queued me up behind political analyst Jim Warren. I got to hear about 15 seconds of audio while live on the ground with the rally going on (also, I had not slept) and was being set up with the same “who funds them” narrative.

The 15 seconds leading into my questions were generalizations about how the rally was run by unions and not representative of how most people felt. Then I got an “over to you Terra”...

I know that they were trying to catch me off guard and set me up with this narrative. Jim was in the comfort of a studio and his well paid gig. I was running on coffee and adrenaline but I still managed to stick to my media training and flip their script.

They asked me “how did you get so many people to show up?” as their first question, immediately after that implication about unions.

I responded: “Well I wouldn’t say I got people to show up, this is what I love about Toronto, people show up when it matters. Politicians underestimate how invested everyday folks are in their local democracy, and I think the energy and attendance here today is proof of that."

I was not paid for that rally (except someone bought me a drink after if that counts), I had not yet worked a partisan role, or a unionized role. But the go-to narrative has always been that community organizers are puppets controlled by liberal elite.

If that narrative were true, I would have paid my student debt off faster and wouldn’t be living paycheque to paycheque.

People can care about things other than themselves and money! This is somehow unimaginable to many!