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Dark yoga money
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@garthmullins joins @duncankinney to discuss what it means for the rest of Canada that a coalition of cops and capitalists have seized control of Vancouver's city council through a campaign of fear.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Preview
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey folks, Duncan Kinney here, host of The Progress Report. I wanted to do a little something different with this intro. So yes, we are still a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. And if you haven't yet, you should go and listen to the latest Alberta Advantage episode on Danielle Smith thought to get very interesting and well done peak inside her very strange brain.
Edmonton's Cop Whistleblower History
00:00:20
Speaker
But I want to take a moment to talk about the rest of 2022.
00:00:25
Speaker
and what the editorial focus of the progress report both online and the podcast should be. And I have to tell you, I am down the rabbit hole on something and it's still very early stages, but I have to tell you about it. I want to preview it. And it is the history of cop whistleblowers in Edmonton. You know, it really is an incredible history of both
00:00:53
Speaker
Edmonton, policing in Edmonton, as well as just the thin blue line in action and just how resistant the institution of policing is to change. We've got crooked photo radar deals, we've got credible allegations of rape and kidnapping of sex workers that we're just not followed up on, and of course we've got the modern case of Detective Dan Beahills with Carmen Provez.
00:01:17
Speaker
which continues to drag on and in nearly every single case the whistleblower was run out of the police and the allegations were ignored and so this was initially going to be an episode or maybe two but now i'm thinking it's got to be a series something like four to six
00:01:35
Speaker
And the reason I'm talking about right now is that I do want to hear from you. And so if this is something that you want to do, sometimes I get on these things, I don't know if there's something real there. But I really do think there's something real. So at the end, I'll have a way to get a hold of me. But please, reach out to me. Is this something you're interested in? Please let me know. The format for these is also going to be a little different. I want to write out a bit of a narrative and essentially have a guest on to react and kind of riff to it. Similar.
00:02:03
Speaker
to say behind the bastards if you've ever listened to that podcast. I do have a couple of guests who are both very good as well as who are interested, but also if you have any ideas for guests, I would love to hear that as well.
Legislative Agenda and Editorial Priorities
00:02:16
Speaker
Aside from that particular kind of like one-off series, I think there should be two other editorial priorities for the rest of 2022 for the progress report.
00:02:27
Speaker
The first one is going to be obvious, Danielle Smith. She is the premier of our province for at least the next six or so months. And I think the editorial focus should prioritize the upcoming legislative session that's running from, at least right now is planned, to run from October 31st to December 1st.
00:02:48
Speaker
At that point, we're going to see if the Alberta Sovereignty Act is actually a thing or not. Smith seems to have a pretty ambitious legislative agenda, and I think the reality of what she wants and what she's going to be able to achieve is going to be a very interesting story to follow.
00:03:08
Speaker
The other priority I was thinking of was going to be the Edmonton municipal budget with a tight focus on the police budget and the effect that, you know, what the commitments of the police budget are going to be doing to the Edmonton municipal budget. So while council did agree to kind of a temporary funding formula and maybe the issue will be quiet for now, I think it's important to keep an eye on it.
00:03:30
Speaker
And I think there are going to be some very good things that are not going to be funded because of how much money is being shunted to the police. So what do you think? Do these editorial priorities matter for you, for the rest of 2022? Do they make sense? Do you have any notes or thoughts or comments on this editorial, on these editorial priorities, broadly speaking? Is there anything else you think we should cover? Please, I do want to know. So please reach out to me on Twitter or via email, DuncanK.at Progress Alberta.ca.
00:03:58
Speaker
And lastly, I gotta ask, if you do like the work we do, if you believe in our editorial vision, please consider becoming a monthly donor. There is a link in the show notes, or just go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons and put in your credit card.
Interview with Garth Mullins
00:04:10
Speaker
Now, onto the show.
00:04:25
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, and we're recording today here in Amiskwitchi, Waskagam, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the mighty Kasiska-Sawanasipi, or the North Saskatchewan River.
00:04:40
Speaker
Joining us today is a friend of the show, Garth Mullins, host of the Crackdown Pod, organizer with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and a resident of Vancouver, where just over the weekend, a bunch of dark yoga money combined with the local cop union has now installed a mayor and city council in Vancouver.
Vancouver's Political Landscape and Safety Narrative
00:05:02
Speaker
Garth, welcome to the pod. I wish we were speaking today under better circumstances.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me, Duncan. So, Garth, I look from across the mountains at what happened in Vancouver and I have a few questions and that's why you're here. What the fuck happened? A guy named Ken Sim? I mean, that's all I really know. Yeah. I mean, part of this is that Vancouver has always liked to think of itself as more progressive than it actually is.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I think it's perfectly encapsulated by probably the richest guy in the city is the founder and former CEO of Lululemon, Chip Wilson. And he had some sort of undeclared election spending involved in this, which I've called dark yoga money. And
00:06:00
Speaker
I think that kind of encapsulates Vancouver. This guy is a big fan of Anne Rand and sort of really muscular free market capitalism. And that's really what Vancouver is. It is free market capitalism in yoga pants.
00:06:15
Speaker
So this guy, Chip Wilson's guy, Ken Sim with a municipal political party, which is like, we just don't have those here. So it's always interesting to say that out loud with the municipal political party called a better city, ABC rolled over now former mayor, that Kennedy Stewart guy, and they've got a majority on city council.
00:06:35
Speaker
They've got the majority on park board. They've got a majority on school board. So what was this election about? And what did this Ken Sim guy run on? And why did he absolutely roll over everyone else? The right in Vancouver has been sort of building this panic and fear around public safety for a few years now, you know, from sort of the middle of the pandemic.
00:07:01
Speaker
Uh, just, it's this, you know, I think we've all seen it before from the right in almost any jurisdiction, just this, uh, uh, crimes getting worse. The streets aren't safe. Everything's dirty. Everything's messy. Oh my God. There's a visible poverty in my field of vision. And I mean.
00:07:20
Speaker
Safety in Vancouver is a real concern, like everyone deserves to feel safe. And if you want to talk about safety, there's been a lot of deaths here from toxic drugs, from the heat dome we had last year, from the pandemic. So a lot of people are dying, but that's not the kind of safety that they're talking about. So yeah, it was framed around safety, but really, I think it's a lot of people feeling very anxious about
00:07:49
Speaker
what they would call street disorder or visible poverty or something. Over the past few years, we've had lots of homelessness because the average rent here is like $2,500 a month.
00:08:01
Speaker
And, and so people have set up 10 cities, which have been expelled and forced around by the cops. And that sort of gives the visuals that, uh, that the right is looking for to say, look at this, this is, uh, you know, our city has fallen
Police Influence in Politics
00:08:14
Speaker
apart. Um, and that framing was really successful. Uh, Ken Sim had the endorsement of the Vancouver police association, which is like the cop union here.
00:08:25
Speaker
Um, led by a pretty right-wing guy named Ralph Kaiser. And, uh, also had a little, little undeclared assist from Chip Wilson's, uh, Pacific Prosperity Institute, uh, which is, uh, you know, a sort of political action committee that he, they got dinged by the election regulator for, for doing undeclared election advertising. Whoops. Just, uh, mistakenly donated a few hundred thousand dollars where I shouldn't have, you know, could have happened to anyone really.
00:08:54
Speaker
So yeah, that's, again, very scary. I mean, I think it really looks like police and business interests kind of have coalesced behind this Ken Sim character and this political party. Police and business interests seem to have kind of coalesced together in this very scary way in Vancouver. Is this, you know, as Dan Beckner described it in a good Twitter joke, is this fascism with, you know, Lululemon characteristics?
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really know. I think the police and the sort of municipal politicians together, we've seen this before in Vancouver, right? We've seen mayors and municipal people get very excited about police crackdowns and kind of run on that and organize it. I've lived through three different occurrences of this myself.
00:09:50
Speaker
Uh, and this is, this is probably the, the boldest one because the police union has not endorsed candidates before and candidates have not said, I promised to hire a hundred cops as soon as I get elected. That's what Ken Sim is doing. He says he's going to hire a hundred cops. And so this is like a very, um,
00:10:09
Speaker
You know, a tight little relationship there, but there's, there's really, that's, that's all he ran on. There's essentially no housing policy. So this is, this is a campaign that just appeals straight to people's fears. Uh, you know, and, and even, um, even the campaign itself was full of, well, how do you feel not what are the crime statistics? You know, Vancouver, like a lot of other places has seen a slow decades long decline of, you know, all, all sorts of serious crime.
00:10:40
Speaker
Of course, not white collar crime, but the campaign was about people's feelings and a lot of players on the right participated in sort of whipping up that fear. You know, there's a film created by
00:10:58
Speaker
you know, a whole bunch of people on the right called Vancouver is Dying, which has been this, you know, blame, blame harm reduction, blame progressive policies for the state of the city. This is something that's become popular in the U.S., kind of up and down the West Coast. Everyone's trying it on.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, Michael Schellinger, Seattle is dying. Like this whole like it's, you know, visible poverty is the reason why things are bad. And if we just like, if we just lock everyone up, we'll sort it all out. And I think that it's funny because this relies on you not paying attention to what's going on in any other city but your own, or at least in the political discussion in any other city because so many cities have this discussion.
00:11:42
Speaker
And including cities, by the way, with no record of any sort of little tiny incremental progressive policy reforms. And they all say other things like, oh, our city is so gentle and coddles, houseless people, so much that we attract homelessness from other parts of the country.
00:12:05
Speaker
But if every city is saying a version of this, where do people come from? This is a myth. They've actually asked people, done surveys and asked people. And so it's not true. But it's sort of a right wing talking point that's really been brewing over the
Challenges of Right-wing Narratives
00:12:19
Speaker
last few years. We watched it start a couple of years ago with just little online efforts by
00:12:27
Speaker
Citizens groups align with the right sort of filming, taking video of people using drugs in public or just being without a house in public and putting them online and saying, oh, look at this. Isn't this outrageous? And it's quite humiliating and kind of ruinous to the dignity of the person who's just trying to survive. But it's also like their little propaganda effort. And it's slowly caught fire. But I got to say, the political center here, which is Kennedy Stewart and
00:12:56
Speaker
people like that, the former mayor, they didn't really do a very good job of defending themselves, of framing the election, of saying, okay, if you're worried about safety, we should look at sort of systemic explanations for the things you're thinking about, or we should think about, well, safety for who? He did say, you know, police aren't going to solve this. He was probably the only candidate who said more cops aren't going to solve this. And so
00:13:25
Speaker
I give kudos to him for that because you don't often see a Vancouver mayor break away from the police, but we've seen the center cannot hold, and I worry that we're going to see a replay of this when
00:13:43
Speaker
The next provincial election comes around when we have the BC NDP facing a new right. And when we see Trudeau and Poliev face off in 2025 or whatever, I think the the hollowness of the political center is just not up to a real fear-based insurgent challenge from the right.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think what we are seeing here in Vancouver is a harbinger of what's to come at the provincial level, at the federal level. I'm really curious about the involvement of the COP union in the election. What was the extent and scale of their involvement in this thing? Well, I don't know for sure. We've heard journalists in Vancouver who have contacts in the police department saying that
00:14:33
Speaker
Um, police officers were telling each other from the summer, uh, Ken Sims, our guy. Um, we know that the police union endorsed him and, uh, that there was a, you know, a, uh, you know, a screening of that Vancouver is dying and a little debate and stuff, um, that really centrally involved them. So the police union becoming a player in this, uh, is, is, is definitely a new, I think a new thing for Vancouver.
00:15:01
Speaker
I've never seen a police union get involved in municipal politics in Edmonton or Calgary. I'm 40 years old in the time I've been paying attention to politics in Edmonton in Calgary in that time. They usually stick to their own knitting. They're not content to simply getting massive pay increases every time they ask and their budget increasing every time they ask. They also have to have their guys run the city, I guess.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's it, you know, um, I think it's also worth saying, like I'm a trade unionist myself. I believe that unions should vote, uh, should, you know, back candidates and that sort of thing. But, uh, the police are, the police union is not a union police are not workers. Uh, I don't know whether it needs to be said, but.
00:15:50
Speaker
It's a different thing. You know, one of the reasons that police were formed, modern policing was formed, was to break strikes, was to break the capacity of the working class to organize. So I really think we should remember that. And that DNA lives on in police unions. So to me, the fact that cops have a monopoly on the use of force or I guess a monopoly on the legitimized use of force under capitalism.
00:16:15
Speaker
means that if they're picking leaders, uh, we're really in a dodgy, a dodgy place. Absolutely. And yes, uh, cops are not workers. Copy unions are not real unions. They're not a part of the labor movement. And, and, uh, if you're in a union with cops in it, you should be working to get them out. Um, so, oh, just one last question on Kensim. Is it true that he's like a landmark forum guy? I saw that somewhere. Have you, have you heard of this? That is what I've heard. Yeah.
00:16:42
Speaker
Okay. Well, I don't want to talk too much about landmark forum because they're very litigious, but, uh, Google them. They're very interesting. Definitely not a cult group. Um, so police budget, I think it's safe to assume that the Vancouver police budget is going up. You can't just hire a hundred cops out of thin air and not expect Vancouver's already considerable police budget. I think 21% of its total budget to not go up. Is that fair to say?
00:17:11
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, that's gonna, that's gonna, I don't know, at least 10% increase to just to cover that, but, uh, just to cover salary, I should say, but it's gotta be, you know, you gotta think considerably more. Um, and I, worryingly, I just don't know what they're going to do, uh, with, with the cops either. So are we going to see like a concentrated effort of police, uh, on the downtown East side?
00:17:39
Speaker
Like I remember April of, I think it was 2003 when 44 new cops were poured onto the downtown East side. And, um, it felt like, uh, an occupying army, you know, and, and this is, this is more, and that didn't, didn't prove to be useful at all. This, uh, election has been so much about this poor little 12 square blocks, the last 12 12 square blocks in Vancouver, where there's really low income housing in any concentration.
Housing Issues and Budget Priorities
00:18:08
Speaker
And it's just been a, a symbol to be, to be kicked around a lot of the people running and spoke about the downtown East side. Like it was a contagion that was, uh, infecting or leaking to other parts of the city and this sort of thing. So, um, people are willing to do a real intellectual gymnastics to not just blame, uh, capitalism, the commodification of the housing market, like all the forces that
00:18:35
Speaker
we know are causing huge inequality in the society. Um, so I, I worry about the police budget expanding even more. It's been on the March for a long time, up and up and up. Um, and, uh, you know, the, the mayor who the outgoing mayor Kennedy Stewart did actually, uh, support a freeze of the police budget, uh, during the time when, um, our defund the police movements were calling for a 50% reduction.
00:19:01
Speaker
Uh, and so I, I do, uh, applaud him for that, you know, because it may not sound like much, but it's unheard of really for mayors in Vancouver to go against the cops. The cops usually just say what kind of money they want and the mayors and the council say, Oh yes, here you go. And so when they, uh, wanted to increase and the mayor said it, no, uh, freeze and, and, and other councilors did too. Um, they didn't like that. And in fact, they went over the council's head to.
00:19:28
Speaker
the director of police services, who's an appointee in the province, who's a former RCMP, who said, oh, no, no, this is wrong. They must have their sought after increase and overruled. An appointed official in the provincial government overruled the elected people who were responsible for the city's budget and gave them the increase. More of that, I bet. I remember when that story came out, yeah, of this unelected, appointed somebody who fucking knows who this guy, no one had ever heard of him before.
00:19:56
Speaker
had just, could just be like, actually, you democratically elected leaders, you representatives of municipal government. I know you've set the police budget at this level, you know, which again, it was, and it was a freeze, right? Like it wasn't like, I mean, these motherfuckers act like a freeze is a 50% cut. A freeze is a freeze. Government budgets get frozen all the time. A freeze was proposed and this guy kicked upstairs to this unelected whoever.
00:20:24
Speaker
And it was like, oh yeah, no, actually they get what they want. And it's like, I mean, in Alberta, it probably would just be the minister who would just fiddle directly with the budget as opposed to kind of mediating it through this appointed whomever, but like, I mean, the police truly, the rules do not apply to them. The rules apply to everyone else, they do not apply to them. And because I've become obsessed with like police budgets kind of since 2020,
00:20:51
Speaker
I just did a quick bit of research, just compare both Edmonton to Calgary, as well as just see how much it's grown since 2019, the last year before the continent-wide protest movement in 2020 post-George Floyd. So in 2019, the VPD budget was $317 million.
00:21:13
Speaker
In 2022, it's $367 million. That is a 15% increase. And if anyone's good at math, I think that's 50, a $50 million increase, five zero total in four years, 2019 to 2022.
00:21:32
Speaker
That's a lot. And I thought we had it bad in Edmonton and we do have a bad in Edmonton. And honestly, the number I'm about to quote to you could go higher. But in EPS in Edmonton, the EPS budget was 378 million in 2019. And now in 2022, it's 418 and a half million.
00:21:49
Speaker
That's an 11% increase, but there's a bit of wiggle room in that number. The year isn't over yet. And there's still a bunch of stuff that could get added to it. And it's kind of too complex to explain in a podcast. I'm still writing that story, but it's very, that number is very likely to go up. And so it does not appear as if the police have been defunded, Garth. No, no, this place have not been defunded.
00:22:15
Speaker
And so, I mean, anytime you hear people worried about the police not having enough resources, uh, don't worry. Uh, the police are doing just fine. Police have won the defund the police battle conclusively and they, uh, have a pile of cash that only gets bigger every year. Yeah, that's very true.
00:22:41
Speaker
There's a couple other Vancouver Edmonton police comparisons that I have to make too as well, which is that Vancouver is home to the highest paid municipal police chief in Canada. Any guesses on what VPD chief Adam Palmers makes? Oh, I don't know. $378,000 a year.
00:23:02
Speaker
followed closely in second place by EPS chief Dale McPhee at $340,000 a year, making both of these people the highest paid civil servants within the kind of municipal firmament at either city. The other thing I got to bring up, because your cop union was getting involved in politics, I think our cop union
00:23:30
Speaker
I mean our copy union here in Edmonton has its own quirks and particularities, but maybe they felt left out. Maybe they felt they had to, you know, to jump in.
00:23:40
Speaker
But recently, a letter was written by Michael Elliott, the president of the Edmonton Police Association, to Mayor Amerjit Sohi. And it is so incredibly catty and pathetic that I'm just going to read it aloud to you. And I did request that you not read this in advance because I didn't. It's very funny. And I'm just going to read it out loud because reading it out loud, I think, really brings to light how absurd it is. So this is dated September 28.
00:24:08
Speaker
You know, dear Mayor Hersohi, on September 26, 2022, the Police and Peace Officer Memorial Ceremony occurred at the Alberta Legislature grounds. This event occurs annually to pay respects and honor those members who have sacrificed their lives protecting and serving their communities. As you may know, Edmonton has witnessed too many officers who have fallen. Most recently, Constable Daniel Woodall in 2015, who was attempting to arrest an individual for hate-related crimes. Representatives from all levels of government, including the Honorable Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, Salma Lakhani, attended to pay their respects.
00:24:38
Speaker
Your presence, however, was noticeably absent. Although I appreciate the importance of your attendance at the Electric and Hydrogen Vehicle Expo on September 25th, it was disappointing to not have our mayor in attendance on behalf of the citizens of Edmonton. A quick review of your social media pages has indicated the following. And then he's just like, mayor, so he like shout out the firefighters at their Memorial Day. You have proclaimed International Nurses Day in Edmonton. You thanked and acknowledged the transit operators.
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, he does he does this scan of kind of like the mayor social media page. I thank you for acknowledging select first responders and city of Edmonton staff for their service, as they are important within our community, and we too have great relationships and respect for all our essential service employees. However, it is becoming increasingly evident through your actions, or lack thereof, you do not support your police officers who sacrifice so much to keep the city of Edmonton safe.
00:25:34
Speaker
As far as I am aware, no one from your office attended, recognized, or connected with the Edmonton Police Service on this important day. Moreover, it does not appear you even acknowledged the Police and Peace Officer Memorial, which is held in our national capital, our provincial capital, and across the country every year.
00:25:48
Speaker
Our fallen officers and past and current members deserve better. They work diligently and professionally in our city every day to help and protect citizens, and we are extremely disappointed and expect more from our mayor. You may not support us, but your office should at least pretend to respect our members and give the appearance you care as mayor who represents the people of this city. They have earned it.
00:26:10
Speaker
Uh, and then he CC this to minister, justice minister, Tyler, the chief of police and the police commission chair. So there you go. How did this become public? I was leaked to me and I reported on it. I wrote the story and, um, I, I mean, that is.
00:26:31
Speaker
I mean, it's very funny that it was leaked to me. Like, I don't know. Um, it was leaked to me anonymously. Like, I don't know who sent it to me. Uh, but I mean, for a group of people who are, for a group of people who are known to be actively aggressive, there's a lot of passive aggressive writing.
00:26:47
Speaker
You can at least pretend to care. It's so overwrought. It's so wild. And then I reached out to the mayor's office, of course, for a comment on this. They were not pleased that I had it, by the way. They would have preferred that this had not become public. How bad it looks.
00:27:10
Speaker
And they were like, oh yeah, we weren't invited and we looked into this actually. And, um, we looked back six years and we weren't able to find an invitation the past six years. And, um, yeah, so, and then he was like, but then I went to the memorial that exists and I went and had a private moment and it was, I was moved and that was kind of mayor. So he's statement. And, uh, right. So these guys have enough time to be combing the mayor's social media account, but not enough to just put a stamp on the envelope and send them an invitation. I.
00:27:39
Speaker
No, or yeah, not enough time to just say, Hey, could you come to the one next year? You know?
Police Power Dynamics in Canadian Cities
00:27:46
Speaker
I do think that, that mayors, uh, especially of big cities are under a lot of pressure from their police departments. And I've long thought that the chief of police of Vancouver is actually the most powerful politician in the city, not the mayor, you know, that's the shot caller here anyway, you know?
00:28:08
Speaker
It is the same case in the city of Edmonton. Chief Dale McPhee is not only the highest paid civil servant in Edmonton, he is the most powerful person in the city of Edmonton by a wide, wide, wide margin. He's able to go to the city council and get whatever he wants. Who else can say that? Not even the mayor. The mayor has been on the wrong side of a lot of this stuff. Our outgoing mayor, Kennedy Stewart,
00:28:33
Speaker
Like I, I have had disagreements with him in meetings and stuff before, uh, representing van do and we've had friction, but, um, you know, he has been willing to be offside with the cops, which it's not, doesn't really happen very much. You know, the police are really powerful and they've just shown they can kind of make or break you. And, um, so I like he's out now and I, I got to say a Kennedy Stewart city would be easier for
00:29:04
Speaker
for us to kind of try and make our way and, and, and the overdose crisis. And then at Ken Sim city, um, with just enhanced policing, this guy, uh, the Kennedy Stewart, the former mayor was willing to consider a freeze of the police budget did have serious discussions about what decriminalization would look like in Vancouver, um, before that kind of went up to the fed. So there were some, there were some initiatives that he was willing to show some movement on that we were interested in, you know,
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll say the same thing for Mayor emergency. So he I mean, he's he's he just won an election last year, 2021. So he's still around for a little more while, for a little while longer that the police can't get rid of him quite yet. But he has tried. He has tried. I mean, not he hasn't expended all of his political capital or gone balls to the wall to try and rein in the police budget. But he he has been on the right side of a couple of votes. He has tried to rein in the police budget and he has failed because because the police are able to bring so much
00:30:03
Speaker
power and pressure to bear on city council and on his colleagues that like, there's just nothing you can do. They have rolled over council on four separate occasions. Really since the summer, this budget has just increased massively and it's set to go up even more.
Post-2020 Political Trends and Predictions
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, I could talk about police budgeting for a long time, especially this one in Edmonton, but I won't bore you. I know you don't have the details and the story isn't done yet, so I still have to do some reporting on it. I'm not some super smart political science theorist, but it certainly seems to me that what we're seeing here in Edmonton with the police budget rising by so much with the takeover by this pro-cop, pro-capitalism
00:30:47
Speaker
anti-poverty coalition here with dark yoga money behind it in Vancouver, that this certainly seems to be a reaction by police and business interests to what happened in 2020. Would you would you agree that like this is a force, this is the force of reaction at work? Yeah, I think police across North America anyway are pissed and have been engaging in these kind of political tactics and also just work slowdowns and expressing their frustration, you know, just
00:31:16
Speaker
like people not being on board with them, you know, like it's, it's hard to remember, but it wasn't so long ago that it was really very difficult in mainstream context to question police or police budgets or police truthfulness or, or anything like that, you know, and the shine has kind of come off now. And a lot of people have been able to see, uh, the other, uh, you know, the stories that we tell that, that we experience of, of cops. And there's, there's room for that now.
00:31:47
Speaker
There's a competing narrative to the propaganda that's out there. I think they don't like it. I think they're pretty pissed off about that. Yeah, they got, I think they got scared by that, the popular movement with a clear demand that sprung up after George Floyd, right? It was, it was a, it was a popular movement. It was supported by the vast majority of the population.
00:32:08
Speaker
And it had a clear demand and they realized that that clear demand posed a mortal threat to their existence and to their budget. And they went as hard as they could in the opposite direction and have jacked up police budgets as fast and as hard as they could ever since. And not only that, but they are starting, now they're starting to get involved in politics as well.
00:32:33
Speaker
And, and you know, I know you said this on Twitter, but I think it's worth repeating here. What you said, right? Like you think a crackdown is coming and that the center is hollow. What, what is coming and what is to be done about it? Well, uh, in Vancouver, this, uh, municipal government just got elected with a mandate just to do one thing, you know, clean up the streets like that is by far and away what they were campaigning on, what they framed the whole thing about.
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean that's what they're going to do with 100 new cops. They can really do that, and I think they're going to want to show some big moves. They've got a majority on all of the boards and counsel that they ran for, so it's just things are going to change. I expect that's what we're going to see.
00:33:24
Speaker
And like having seen these before, uh, I kind of feel on the one hand, like I know a little bit what to expect, but also this is like, you're right. This is part of a bigger backlash. This is part of, um, you know, the police and, and, uh, this new city council kind of being politically connected. So there's, there's more to worry about there. Um, I don't, I don't know where it ends, you know?
00:33:52
Speaker
And the point that you were making, I think is worth, you made it a bit earlier in the pod too, is worth repeating that like, you know, the hollow centrism of like trying to appease, you know, the police trying to appease Capitol, like you just get run over to them, run over by them in the end, if they don't get what they want. And so you actually do have to build a political movement that can stand up to them.
00:34:17
Speaker
You definitely do. And if people are making these incremental policy moves that don't really show much movement, you know, if there's like a little pilot project for safe supply that only serves a couple hundred people and it doesn't affect the thousands that die in a year because it's too small and doesn't have the reach.
00:34:39
Speaker
People in Alberta and on the right in BC will point to it and go, see, safe supply doesn't work. We tried it and it doesn't work. And this is true of all the other kinds of incremental progressive policy. It just acts like a bait for the right to say it didn't work. And of course, it's never what we asked for anyway. We were demanding real fundamental changes. And you know, on the federal level, you have, uh,
00:35:04
Speaker
the center also being hollow. And you have someone on the right, Pierre Poliev saying, well, what about affordability? And if the right is the only person that's going to consistently talk about the material, like improving the material circumstances of regular people, even if, of course, they don't mean it, even if, of course, Pierre Poliev has a record as being a union buster and wanting to set back the cause of trade unions, which is actually where decent wages come from.
Rebuilding Political Movements
00:35:32
Speaker
We're in trouble, right? People are going to not know the details of that. They're going to be attracted by a message that resonates instead of an incremental policy tinkering from the center message that it doesn't. Yeah.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Right. Like what happened when Vancouver police are, sorry, what happened when Vancouver city council tried to implement a little penny anti-freeze, they got fucking run over. And I'm not saying that the result maybe would have been different if they had dropped the police budget by $50 million. But if they had dropped the police budget by $50 million, maybe they could have gotten enough money out the door in the meantime to actually help some people, you know? And
00:36:15
Speaker
you know, this scale, what I don't think people get about police budgets is this scale of the money that goes out the door. You know, the Edmonton police budget, you know, it's $418.5 million of, that's just the envelope of money they get from the city of Edmonton. Their real budget is going to, this in 2022 is going to be closer to half a billion dollars. Edmonton is the sixth largest city in Canada.
00:36:41
Speaker
And their police budget is half a billion dollars. Like the scale of money that goes out the door that we spend on policing that could be going to actually building houses, actually like letting people ride transit for free, giving people the mental health supports they need.
00:37:03
Speaker
All of those would do far more to reduce crime and to actually make people feel safe rather than just giving the cops whatever they want come budget time. I mean, the police have figured out that they need to be part of a movement, part of a movement from the right. And if you look at that Vancouver is dying video,
00:37:23
Speaker
it shows you a dozen of the leading lights of that movement. In the credits, it shows you where the money comes from. And Chip Wilson and powerful and very wealthy people in the city are understanding that they have to form a social movement, not just leave it to a few people in office, but they need a big movement that connects all the dots. And that's actually how things change, is social movements do it.
00:37:53
Speaker
Unfortunately, uh, social movements on the right over the past five or 10 years across North America, well, and Europe have been, uh, ascendant have been mobilizing and, uh, on the March. And we need to rebuild the left in a way that can really confront and challenge them.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:38:11
Speaker
Or we're going to wind up in a very, very bleak place pretty quick.
00:38:16
Speaker
I hear that. Garth, thanks for coming on the pod. I really do appreciate it. Folks, if you're not listening to Crackdown Pod, if you're not following Garth on Twitter, please do so. Garth, is there any other specific stuff you want to plug to the folks who are listening? If you're in Vancouver, come and see my band, Low Dead Space Play at Black Lab on November the 4th. We're like all the bleakness and sadness I've expressed here, but in musical form.
00:38:44
Speaker
Sick, I love it. If I could go, I would. Folks, if you like this podcast, if you like the work we do, there's a very simple, easy way to support us. Join the 500 others, so folks who help keep this little independent media project going, go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card. Sign up for a monthly contribution. There are other ways to donate, too. There'll be more information in the show notes. There's also a link in the show notes if you don't want to go back and rewind and listen to me say the URL.
00:39:14
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, I am very easy to get a hold of on Twitter at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at Duncan K at progressupboarder.ca. Thank you to Jim Story for editing. Thank you to Cosmic Family Communist for our theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.