Lots of Action for a Progressive Alberta Political Agenda in November

There are a very interesting series of events all of a sudden that go to the issues of democracy and citizen participation and open government. 

George Lakoff came to town.  “One of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement” according to Howard Dean gave a lecture at Grant MacEwan University Thursday night put on by the Alberta Federation of Labour.  Lakoff wrote the best-selling book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” and told me it has sold over 350,000 copies and is in translation into dozens of languages.  He was so fascinating Thursday night I talked my way into the all day Friday workshop and found.  Thanks to the AFL and President Gil McGowan for the flexibility and hospitality to include me. He gave me a plethora of blog post ideas on and around the Reboot Alberta progressive citizens movement I am passionate about.

Reboot Alberta 3.0 on Taking Progressive Action happens November 5-6 at the Edmonton Delta South.  There will be discussions on what actions progressive Albertans want to see happen to assure a responsible and sustainable development of our oil sands.  We will be looking at the state of progressive politics in the province, some new random research findings on the thinking around progressive political values and number of progressives in the province.  We will look at new measures of well-being and progress from some work done for the Pembina Institute and look at the future direction of Reboot Alberta.  You can see the full agenda and register at www.rebootalberta.org/rsvp

Peter Senge and Marg Wheatley in Calgary  November 11 and 12 “Building a Sustainable Future Conference” at the University of Calgary.  This leadership conference will be about exploring new ways of thinking.  It will look at how individuals and organizations can work together to create a sustainable world.  It will look at collaborative revolutionary change not incremental change in isolation.  It will look at new processes to restore authentic dialogue, good thinking and wise action with perseverance for the long term point of view. 

John Gaventa is next.  The Alberta Climate Dialogue out of the University of Alberta is holding a public lecture on November 15^th from 4:15 – 5:45 pm at the Engineering Teaching and Learning Centre Room E1-007 on the University of Alberta Campus.  Dr. Gaventa will talk about “Deepening Democracy through Citizen Participation” based on ten-years of collaborative work on the subject citizen action, building democracy, strengthening development and realizing human rights.  He works through the Development Research Center on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (www.drc-citizenship.org) a network of over 60 researchers and activitists involved in these issues in over 20 countries.

Ken Chapman (yup that’s me!) speaks at the Max Bell Auditorium at Banff Centre November 16 at 7:30 pm on Citizenship, Stewardship and Leadership.   There is a clear and present danger to democracy when citizen disillusionment and distain for the political culture of their times means that they fail, refuse or neglect to take the duties of informed engaged citizenship seriously.  The oil sands are owned by Albertans.  That make us responsible to assure they are developed in responsible, sustainable and integrated ways that deal with economic, environmental, social and political aspects of this resource.  Political leadership starts in the mirror and the world is run by those who show up.  Disengagement from political participation and citizenship is not an option any more.  In a democracy, you always get the government you deserve, especially if you don’t vote.

Alberta School Boards Association meeting in Edmonton November 23, I present two workshops to School Trustees from all over Alberta.  These will be around the power and processes of social media in meeting the principles and values of community engagement from the Inspiring Action on Education report.

Alberta Urban Municipalities Association meets in Edmonton at the Shaw Convention Centre on November 24 and I share a panel on Open Data for local government with Jas Darrah and Mack Male.  The internet has changed the rules and relationships of government to citizens.  The Open Data movement is a good example of how government is responding, especially local governments.  I will be looking at it from a philosophical; values based approach and the emerging participatory Democracy 2.0 perspective.

All in all it is a pretty full and exciting month…and it has only just begun.

If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org

Threats to Democracy in America: Lessons for Canada?

I don't usually put in "guest blogs" but this article from Robert Reich former Sec of Labour in Clinton administration, and great writer, has information I thought needed to be shared.  The Americans are our largest customers and what happens there impacts Canada.  So here is his blog post I think has serious implication for us domestically and in terms of US-Canada relations.

H/T to Bill Totten for the link 

at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/

by Robert Reich

robertreich.org (October 18 2010)

It's a perfect storm. And I'm not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I'm talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in eighty years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top one percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, they're top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers, and private equity managers. They include the Koch brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year, and who are now funding tea party candidates across the nation.

Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they're doing it completely in secret.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and against candidates -without a trace of where the dollars are coming from. They're laundered through a handful of groups. Fred Malek, whom you may remember as deputy director of Richard Nixon's notorious Committee to Reelect the President (dubbed Creep in the Watergate scandal), is running one of them. Republican operative Karl Rove runs another. The US Chamber of Commerce, a third.

The Supreme Court's Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission made it possible. The Federal Election Commission says only

32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

We're back to the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.

The public never knew who was bribing whom.

Just before it recessed the House passed a bill that would require that the names of all such donors be publicly disclosed. But it couldn't get through the Senate. Every Republican voted against it. (To see how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)

Here's the third part of the perfect storm. Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings, and even homes are on the line.

They need a government that's working for them, not for the privileged and the powerful.

Yet their state and local taxes are rising. And their services are being cut. Teachers and firefighters are being laid off. The roads and bridges they count on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and public libraries are being shut.

There's no jobs bill to speak of. No WPA to hire those who can't find jobs in the private sector. Unemployment insurance doesn't reach half of the unemployed.

Washington says nothing can be done. There's no money left.

No money? The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it's been in more than eighty years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower (who no one would have accused of being a radical) it was 91 percent.

Now it's 36 percent. Congress is even fighting over whether to end the temporary Bush tax cut for the rich and return them to the Clinton top tax of 39 percent.

Much of the income of the highest earners is treated as capital gains, anyway - subject to a fifteen percent tax. The typical hedge-fund and private-equity manager paid only seventeen percent last year. Their earnings were not exactly modest. The top fifteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion.

Congress won't even return to the estate tax in place during the Clinton administration - which applied only to those in the top two percent of incomes.

It won't limit the tax deductions of the very rich, which include interest payments on multi-million dollar mortgages. (Yet Wall Street refuses to allow homeowners who can't meet mortgage payments to include their primary residence in personal bankruptcy.)

There's plenty of money to help stranded Americans, just not the political will to raise it. And at the rate secret money is flooding our political system, even less political will in the future.

The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy.

http://robertreich.org/post/1344561814

If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org

Dogmatism Explained! Thank You Facebook

I really LOVE social media.  I get to meet so many interesting people - virtually and IRL. I run across them by happenstance, introductions or even recommendations from Twitter and Facebook.  Dr. Judy J. Johnson is just such a discovery coming to me as a recommendation while confirming a new Friend request via Facebook.

We have a number of mutual Friends and I visited her page and clicked on the link she provided.  That lead me to a piece on her new book: What's So Wrong With Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief 


Go to the link and read the Q&A section but think about the kind of right-wing reactionary commentary we see from the Harper government, the Fox News commentators and the Tea Party movement.  It will clarify and chill but it will also help you understand just what is going on at a deeper level in the minds of these dogmatic political sources and operatives.


I will be making an effort next time I am in Calgary to meet her, encourage her to be part of the Reboot Alberta progressive citizens movement and invite her to Reboot3.0. 


The democratic deficit, like in Canada and Alberta, will not be fixed by inertia or ennui.  It will only be fixed by a re-energized progressive voice from activists citizens speaking up, showing up and demanding a change in political culture.  Progressives want a governing philosophy that aligns with the moderate and inclusive values of diversity, fairness, equity accountability, honesty, transparency and most of all - integrity.  


We have veered so very far off that course in our federal government especially.  We are in danger of doing the same kind of damage to our society in Alberta without a significant course correction away from the reactionary and retrograde retreat from the culture wars we see happening on the right side of the political spectrum between the aggressive Wildrose Alliance and the tired and timid Progressive Conservatives.    


If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org

Owning a Canadian | Words You Dont Know

Owning a Canadian | Words You Dont Know

I enjoyed this website because I love words and exposing ignorance. It's Friday night. Not a segment in such a day to take entirely seriously. We have the rest of the week for that.

Have a good weekend everyone.

If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org

Hancock Shows the Path Forward for Public Education in Alberta

I highly recommend that every Albertan read this blog post by Dave Hancock, Alberta's Minister of Public Education.  It presents a great compilation of what he and his department is doing to rethink, revise and retool our public education system in anticipation of the needs of the next Alberta. This is all being done under the banner of Inspiring Education.

Dave puts a challenge to all the new and returning School Board Trustees to pick up their game and assume their responsibility to ensure Alberta continues to have one of the leading public education systems on the planet.  Ensuring a quality, relevant and effective Public Education is a place were every citizen can and should become engaged - even if you don't has kids in school.   A quality public education system is one of the best legacies one generation can leave for the next.  We sure could use some serious examples of positive legacies that we are leaving for the next generation in Alberta these days.

We have such an amazing public education system now.  It has its flaws and failures like any human endeavour but that is a challenge not a detraction. The Inspiring Education process has given Albertans some insight and a  serious sense of how we can make it even better.

Public education is (and ought to be) a source of pride for all Albertans.  Hancock knows and believes this.  His blog post shows that pride and that sense of challenge.  Definitely worth a read and reflection.

If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org/rsvp