Friends – how strongly can I possibly urge you to become engaged citizens and strategic voters? I find the current antipathy towards strategic voting completely baffling. Human beings do everything strategically, if it carries risk. Try crossing the street non-strategically, or taking something out of the oven non-strategically, or navigating non-strategically to get to a destination when you’re running late. Work with the world as it is, while continuing to envision the world as it could be.
In two weeks Canada has a chance to strategically say goodbye to Stephen “Neo-con” Harper, and yet the polls say he is heading for another win. Remember that feeling of revulsion and confusion after the 2004 US elections when Bush was re-elected and the entire world had a collective gag reflex like WTF!?! I’m dreading that feeling on October 15th, but I don’t think it’s too late. Stéphane Dion is a very courageous and principled and intelligent politician, and yet Canadians seems to be turning their backs on him, why? Because he looks like a wimp? Are we that shallow and masochistic? I very badly want to have Dion as our next Prime Minister in two weeks, and for those of you who are quibbling between the three parties of the left, you must realize that there are only two choices for Prime Minister. That said, Stéphane Dion has clearly come out in support of electoral reform. That means if he wins, we could soon have a much more fairly representative system for electing MPs in this heavily left-leaning country with its heavily right-leaning current leadership.
And if you are in the Lower Mainland, I can tell you right now that Vancouver Quadra (pretty much everything West of Granville) faces a close race between the Liberal candidate, my mom, and the Conservative candidate, who is a UBC law professor currently salivating at the prospect of putting 14-year-olds in jail for life. If you have free time, my mom’s campaign needs volunteers, people to distribute flyers and knock on doors and make phone calls, and especially people to volunteer on Election Day. If you want to help, please go to her website and follow the links to volunteer: http://www.joycemurray.ca . She won the bi-election in March by only 151 votes, so here is a perfect example of where your individual effort will make the difference between one party and another taking the prize.
Finally, if you haven’t heard it yet, I recently wrote and recorded a rap song about the election, called “Bounce”, which I invite you to listen to now. If nothing else, it’s definitely good for a laugh. Here’s the link to download it: http://www.babasword.com/a
To Arms!
Baba
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