2017 U.S. Election | Voters Reject The Intolerant Era of Trump

November 8, 2017PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

New York Times headlines signally a rejection of the era of Trump

As results from Tuesday’s U.S. elections rolled in last evening, progressive voters across the United States witnessed history as Democratic party candidates made gains in once-conservative districts and majority GOP state legislatures, turning the tide majority blue in one state after another.
Makes no mistake, the results of Tuesday’s U.S. election do not portend well for President Trump, and the do-nothing Republican party of which he is the nominal head, all but derailing GOP chances in the 2018 mid-terms.
The Democratic Party’s crowning success of the night came in Virginia, where Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, an understated physician and Army veteran, won a commanding victory for governor, overcoming a racially charged campaign by his Republican opponent and cementing Virginia’s transformation into a reliably Democratic state largely immune to Trump-style appeals. The Washington Post called Northam’s victory, a triumph of “decency, civility and moderation over fear, dread” and the barely veiled racist coding of his opponent, in a welcome rebuke to Trump intolerance.

In the most heartening event of the evening, Virginia’s 13th District Democratic candidate Danica Roem smashed a barrier on her way to becoming the first openly transgender person elected to a seat in a U.S. statehouse, defeating her Republican opponent Robert Marshall, who referred to himself as the state’s “chief homophobe” and, earlier this year, introduced a “bathroom bill” referencing transgender individuals. Roem’s victory brought tears to the eyes of seasoned advocates on Tuesday night.

Charles Clymer, a writer who identifies as genderqueer, tweeted that Ms. Roem had

Roem was one of three transgender persons elected to office on Tuesday. As Sarah McBride tweeted out last evening …

Andrea Jenkins won a seat on the Minneapolis City Council, becoming the first out Black trans woman elected to public office in America

And in a three-for-three victory for transgender persons, Tyler Titus, a clinical psychologist and a Democrat, won one of four open seats on the Erie, Pennsylvania School Board Tuesday evening, the first openly transgender person ever elected to public office in the Quaker state.
Virginia now has a Democratic governor, as does New Jersey, where Phil Murphy beat out Chris Christie’s Lieutenant Governor, Kim Guadagno, in what proved to be a comfortable win for the Democrats. And Philadelphia’s new Democratic district attorney, Larry Krasner, has been called the “most progressive, reform-minded District Attorney of any major city in America.”

Anyone who believes in equality among all genders, ethnicities, and social and economic classes, witnessed a great many wins for progressives across the United States on Tuesday evening, where (for instance) two black, Democratic Lieutenant Governors — Virginia’s Justin Fairfax and New Jersey’s Sheila Oliver — were elected. Fairfax is a member of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington’s Board of Directors and has defended women’s reproductive rights in the past. Oliver has vowed to invest more in affordable housing, higher education and new industries. “Democrats are going from zero to two black lieutenant governors tonight,” Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel tweeted out on Tuesday evening.
In other United States Tuesday night election news …

The victory of Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey will bring an end to Republican gerrymandering in those two states;
Maine voters approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to allow many more low-income residents to qualify for Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The vote was a rebuke of Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican who has repeatedly vetoed legislation to expand Medicaid. At least 80,000 additional Maine residents will become eligible for Medicaid as a result of the referendum;
In the highest-profile Washington state legislative race in years, Democrat Manka Dhingra held a 10-point lead over Republican Jinyoung Lee Englund Tuesday night for the 45th District state Senate seat. Ballot counting will continue throughout the week, with the next update coming Wednesday afternoon. At present, a Republican-led coalition holds a one-vote majority in the Senate, while Democrats control the House and the governor’s office. Tina Podlodowski, chairwoman of the Washington State Democratic Party, told the Seattle Times that a victory by Dhingra will flip the state of Washington completely blue, becoming the last brick in the big blue wall up and down the West Coast;
And then there are the small victories such as the one that occurred nearly 10 months after New Jersey Republican legislator John Carman shared a meme on Facebook asking if the historic Women’s March would be “over in time” for its participants to “cook dinner,” the response of newfound Democratic candidate Ashley Bennett to the “social media mocking and belittling people who are expressing their concerns about their community and the nation” resulting in Bennett soundly defeating and taking Carman’s seat on the Atlantic County Board of Freeholders, a nine-member governing body that oversees politics in the South Jersey county. Bennett was one of thousands of women across the United States to dive into politics after Trump’s victory last year. Hallelujah;
On Tuesday evening, two powerful, veteran House Republicans announced they would not seek re-election next year, the latest conservative lawmakers to commit to leaving office under President Trump. Representatives, Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey and Ted Poe of Texas, made their announcements within hours of each other and added their names to a growing list of Republicans bowing out before the mid-term elections. The rush of retirements — 29 House Republicans have left office or announced plans to leave within the past year, compared to only 7 House Democrats — has led some, particularly eager Democrats, to believe that the House of Representatives could look very different in 2019.

Though it’s true Americans elected Trump just one endlessly long year ago, 2017 Election Night might be proof that politics and ideologies are shifting — and that those who want change are acting on the desire by voting.

Arts Friday | VIFF’s Magnificent Vancity Theatre

November 3, 2017Cinema, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Every year in late September thru mid-October, for 36 years now dating back to 1981, for 16 magnificent days the Vancouver International Film Festival brings the best of world cinema to our shores, offering as it has for so very long a humane, engaging window on our often troubled world.
But what of the remainder of the year?
Where will cinéastes find the best in world cinema over the remaining 50 weeks of the year? The answer is simple: the comfy-as-all-get-out 175-seat Vancity Theatre located at 1181 Seymour Street at Davie, designed by Hewitt and Kwasnicky Architects, and opened in September 2005 just in time for that year’s tremendous-as-always annual Vancouver film festival.
Yes, the year-round venue of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is a warmly inviting not-for-profit cinema, operated by the film festival society on a site leased to VIFF at a nominal rate by the City of Vancouver, the City extracting from the developer, the Amacon & Onni Group (in exchange for greater height of their two Brava condominiums), a community amenity contribution that led to the construction of one of Vancouver’s most important year-round cultural resources, The Vancity Theatre — for which construction contribution you would have to think the late, celebrated Vancouver City Councillor Jim Green played a pivotal role.

The comfy year-round VIFF venue, the 175-seat Vancity Theatre on Seymour, at Davie

Unlike the Toronto equivalent of The Vancity Theatre —&#32The Bell Lightbox Cinema —&#32which is losing money and contributing to the many woes of the Toronto International Film Festival, our Vancity Theatre is doing just fine.
Globe & Mail Arts Editor Barry Hertz and Molly Hayes have reported …

Audiences aren’t showing up for screenings at the Lightbox building on King Street West, designed to provide a headquarters for TIFF year-round and serve as a draw for both local film lovers and tourists.

Conversations with more than 40 current and former TIFF employees, and two dozen other individuals close to the organization, present a picture of an institution whose vision is unarticulated and whose current business model appears to diverge with industry and audience trends.

Why is the Vancity Theatre doing so well in the era of streaming sites such as Netflix & Amazon Prime, which has viewers shifting their focus towards Dolby 7.1 surround-sound all-the-bells-&-whistles QLED home theatres?

Vancity Theatre’s Tom Charity, left, with the Italian Cultural Centre’s Giulio Reccchioni

Two words: Tom Charity, who then VIFF Director Alan Franey (currently VIFF’s Director of International Programming) identified as a potential saviour of a Vancity Theatre which had fallen on hard times audience-wise. Since 2012, the utterly calm and phenomenally astute Mr. Charity has tapped into the unconscious consciousness of every demographic of film lover who resides across the Metro Vancouver region, and programmed The Vancity Theatre to a dizzyingly captivating and undreamed of success.

The new film from acclaimed Australian director Benedict Andrews, Una (just click on the preceding link for dates and times) — which given the current, righteously angry #MeToo furore couldn’t be more timely, given the film’s sexual trangression subject matter, stars Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn and Ruby Stokes in what can only be described as a challenging, transgressive film — opens today at The Vancity Theatre. There are only 7 screenings between this evening & Una’s final screening, Saturday, Nov. 11th, so you’ll want to purchase your tickets soon.

The Divine Order, one of VanRamblings’ 5 favourite films at VIFF 2017, and Switzerland’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee, opens two weeks from today, on Friday, November 17th. The Divine Order is simply a knockout, providing a gentle, humane, slice-of-real-life insight into the plight of Swiss women prior to 1971, when women were not allowed to vote, and were little more than chattel. The Divine Order, though, is as far as you could get from dour, this suffragette feminist film embracing hope, with a good deal of warmth and humour in the mix. We’ll write more about Petra Volpe’s The Divine Order on its opening day at The Vancity Theatre.

Click on this link for a full listing of all the films Tom has booked into The Vancity Theatre between now and December 3rd. Tom always books a rockin’ holiday season programme (one could almost live at The Vancity Theatre from early December through early in the new year, and be all the better for it). The Vancity Theatre. Make a commitment to yourself: attend VIFF’s year-round venue this month or next. You’ll be mighty glad you did.

Thursday Potpurri: Celebrations of All Kinds and Description

November 2, 2017VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Newly-elected leader of the federal NPD speaks to the party’s enthusiastic Vancouver supporters, in a speech given at The Imperial on Main, Wednesday night, November 1st

Young, energetic, articulate and clearly very bright, self-assured yet humble, charismatic, caring, Canada’s first non-white federal leader, representing generational change, fearless, embraced by NDP party activists across the land, hopeful, thoughtful and decidedly not halting in his speech, necessarily possessed of a clear sense of social-justice goals based on egalitarian principles, a dapper young politician who currently represents an urban, ethnically mixed riding in the Ontario legislature and — maybe, just maybe — Canada’s next Prime Minister, Jagmeet (pronounced Jugmeet) Singh made his way to Vancouver on Wednesday evening, introduced by NDP stalwart Constance Barnes, for a meet-and-greet at The Imperial on Main with a cross-section of party supporters.
Celebration. Good cheer. Singh = much-need change for the better, for all.
More Celebration

My friends, neighbours and NDP compatriots Bill Tieleman and Shirley Ross celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this week, for which event VanRamblings wishes them a heartfelt congratulations on lives well-lived, and loved, and the respect, admiration and love of your many friends.

Shirley Ross and Bill Tieleman celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary at Bishops

More Cause for Celebration (on a somewhat less salutary note)

What did we do before the advent of streaming video on Netflix? Were we actually truly living life without the ready access Netflix affords to 5600 movies of quality and 3500 TV shows, all for as little as $10 a month?

Dee Rees’ Sundance winner, starring Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell & Carey Mulligan

One of the best reviewed films of the year, a smash hit at the Sundance Film Festival way back in January, and fortuitous for ye, me and thee, as it is set for a day-and-date release — which is to say, Mudbound will be available both at your local multiplex and on Netflix — on Friday, Nov. 17th.
Otherwise, there’s Godless — a 7-episode oater from Oscar winning director Steven Soderbergh, set in 1880s La Belle, New Mexico, a town mysteriously made up entirely of women. Stars Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery, Jeff Daniels, Jack O’Connell, Scott McNairy and a cast of hundreds.
Or, how about the fifth and final season of the peerlessly involving Longmire television series. Or, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñàrritu’s 2015 multiple Oscar winner. Or, Logan — another in the Marvel Wolverine series, which sees Hugh Jackman reprising his signature role. Or Gold, starring a less than hirsute Matthew McConaughey, which proves to be a surprisingly involving watch.
Then there’s the début of Spike Lee’s update of 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It. Should you watch the New to Netflix in November video above, you’ll find much, much more on offer from Netflix in the month of November.

Final tip: if you haven’t watched Kornél Mundruczó’s 2014 Cannes’ Un Certain Regard award-winning masterpiece, White God (VanRamblings’ favourite film this decade), you oughta. The Los Angeles Times says …

This small, touching fable about a girl and her dog becomes an adrenaline-pumping thriller about animals against humans in Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó’s exhilarating radicalization allegory White God. By turns Dickensian, Marxist and dystopian, it’s a movie as deliriously unclassifiable as it is expertly focused in its desire to provoke and entertain.

The films opens with beautifully dreamlike shots of 13-year-old Lili bicycling down the empty streets of Budapest until scores of dogs careen around a corner, their bodies in full, magnificent motion. Are they following her? Or chasing her? By the time Mundruczó returns to that scene as something literal, it’s a powerful, pure-cinema reminder that the iconography of freedom and uprising needn’t only belong to humans.

And, yes, White God is on Netflix — you’ll want to add it to your list now.

Vision Vancouver | Rumours of Demise Greatly Exaggerated

November 1, 2017BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Bike lanes are a big vote-getter for Vision Vancouver with their cyclist coalition

Following a fifth place showing for Vision Vancouver by-election Council candidate Diego Cardona — not to mention a by-election loss of one seat (now down to 3 trustees) at School Board, with Vision finding themselves all-but-wiped-out at Park Board in the 2014 municipal, hanging on to only one seat — much has been written about the pending demise of the now 12-year-old municipal party that has held power at City Hall since 2008.
Veteran reporter and longtime Vancouver Courier municipal affairs columnist, Allen Garr, has even speculated about a possible, informal left-of-centre alliance involving OneCity Vancouver, the Greens and COPE …

… with a Vision Vancouver 2018 Council ballot that would give room to the other parties. And that would likely mean at least one slot for OneCity, Judy Graves, for example; possibly Jean Swanson with COPE’s blessing; and two slots for the Greens, including incumbent Carr. As well, Vision has apparently (in early negotiations) already promised a slot for their by-election sacrificial lamb, Diego Cardona.

Yawn. As if OneCity has any intention of forming an alliance with a “developer party like Vision,” with much the same refrain commonly heard from most members of COPE and the Vancouver Greens. Could happen, but at this point in time such a left-of-centre alliance seems highly unlikely.

Even with the recently-announced provincial imposition of new municipal electoral finance reform limiting donations to $1200 per person, Vision Vancouver still maintains a distinct advantage as we head into next year’s municipal election — by a wide margin, VanRamblings would suggest.
Why? Coalition and identity politics, the latter defined as “voters going to the polls in their own self-interest, based on issues such as Union membership, gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues, and generational issues” — think bike lanes, loved by the young, and the health conscious.

Unions. The new provincial legislation will not prevent Unions from across Metro Vancouver from operating dozens of phone rooms to get the vote out for Vision, with literature provided to the 45,000 Union members who reside in Vancouver reminding them that the last NPA administration locked workers out at City Hall for three months, as the Sam Sullivan administration attempted to gut CUPE’s contract.
Union members will be reminded that for the past decade Vision Vancouver has signed a series of Union contracts at 4% a year (including benefits), setting the standard for municipal bargaining across the province, and during the years of the Campbell-Clark Con-Liberal provincial government that had set a zero-zero-zero mandate, had moved the government off of that so-called mandate, the provincial government eventually signing Union contracts at 2% annual wage increases (plus increased benefits), all of which had a salutary effect on the non-unionized sector of the population, as well.

Pocketbook politics. What are the chances that any Union member voting in Vancouver will cast their ballot for a return to the hoary old days of the NPA, particularly when there’s a far-right-of-centre movement afoot to take over the NPA (as if the party wasn’t right wing enough), with an eye to trashing workers rights on every possible level?
Cyclists. If the Union vote for Vision Vancouver is a lock, you know for certain that the 20,000+ strong cyclists’ coalition will make their way to the polls in droves to support the only civic party in Vancouver in favour of active transportation, and bikes and bike lanes in particular.
The more the right-of-centre folks whine about the “imposition” of bike lanes, or start thoughtlessly stupid anti-bike lane petitions, the more gregarious the voting cyclist population in Vancouver becomes, as they work to ensure their families get to the polls to cast a ballot for Vision Vancouver. Good on the NPA supporters for coming out against bike lanes — you may consider every whiny social media post against bike lanes as another sure vote for Vision Vancouver come October 20, 2018.
LGBTQ+ community. In the 2014 Vancouver municipal election the West End vote for Vision Vancouver was 73%. If Unions are working overtime to ensure their members cast a ballot for Vision Vancouver, and the cyclist coalition in our city are doing the same thing, neither of the groups can hold a candle to the power of the LGBTQ+ community to get the vote out for Vision Vancouver — who will turn out in droves for their favoured civic party, in each and every neighbourhood across the city.

The 2017 Vancouver by-election — for the most part — was an outlier vote, and in the greater scheme of things Vancouver-municipal-vote-wise means absolutely nothing as any kind of vote predictor for the next civic election.
Vision Vancouver — and the Union, cyclist and LGBTQ+ coalition — all-but-sat-out the 2017 Vancouver by-election, realizing there’s a fair bit of voter hubris for the reigning municipal party, as is generally true in by-election voting when it comes to a political party that’s been in power for 10 years.

The Trudeau government, John Horgan’s provincial government and Vision Vancouver will announce thousands of new housing co-op homes under construction in 2018

And let us not forget, either, that with three progressive governments in power at the federal, provincial and municipal levels — for the first time in 45 years — Vision Vancouver finds itself in the catbird seat in the lead-up to the next civic election.

Housing? You can bet with recent Vision Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs in place as Premier John Horgan’s Chief of Staff, and Vision Vancouver supporter / Vancouver-Point Grey MLA David Eby sitting as a key member of the NDP government’s Housing Cabinet Committee that a big time housing announcement involving the construction of thousands of genuinely affordable (mostly housing co-operative) homes will be announced either late next spring, or in early September — that pending announcement, at least in part, meant to bolster Vision’s chances for re-election. The Trudeau government will also want to get into the housing announcement as a major funder, in order that by the time the 2019 federal election is underway, Mr. Trudeau can point to thousands of homes under construction thanks to funding from his government.
Transportation / Broadway Corridor. As much as VanRamblings would like to see light rail down the Broadway corridor, all three levels of government are wedded to the idea of a high-speed subway down the Broadway corridor, with all the preparatory work now complete. You can bet dollars to donuts that Prime Minister Trudeau, Premier John Horgan and Mayor Gregor Robertson will make a joint announcement in the lead-up to the October 20th, 2018 election confirming that funding is in place, and construction of the Broadway corridor high-speed, underground transportation line / subway will be underway by mid-year 2018.

Hallelujah, and save the day. Thousands of new affordable homes under construction in Vancouver, and a rapid transit line down Broadway also under construction — all due to the fine negotiating skills, don’tcha know, of our perspicacious and once-and-forever Mayor, Gregor Robertson!

The October 20th, 2018 Vancouver municipal election will be a whole other kettle of fish: Vision will put all the resources at their command into getting out the vote, their bike lane and cyclist supporter coalition will get out to the polls in droves, and Unions will be working overtime to ensure that the 45,000 Vision Vancouver Union-vote remains rock solid. And since attack politics worked so well for the BC NDP in the May 19th provincial election, you can bet that Vision Vancouver will pull out all the stops to ensure their progressive voter coalition sweeps them back into power a year from now.