Tag Archives: melissa de genova

Know Your Local Ruling Class

#VanPoli | Kareem Allam

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Know Your Local Ruling Class, Politics, Vancouver Votes 2022, , , , ,

That handsome, despicable fellow you see pictured above is Kareem Allam.

We’re kidding. Honest. Just joshing. Sheesh, no one can take a joke these days.


Afford yourself the pleasure of listening to / watching B.C.’s most accomplished politico, Kareem Allam

Who is Kareem Mahmoud Abbas Allam?

Most political folks will recognize Mr. Allam as the architect of ABC Vancouver’s overwhelming victory at the polls on October 15, 2022, in that year’s decisive municipal election, where every ABC Vancouver candidate was elected to office.

Clearly, Kareem Allam is a master strategist, a superior motivator and a campaign manager par excellence, an individual who means to win, not necessarily at all costs, but still — and, if we might suggest, a man of principle and integrity who fights the good fight, in 2022 on behalf of the beleaguered citizenry of Vancouver.

In 2022, post pandemic, an irritated Vancouver public had become fed up with a do nothing, whiny, Kennedy Stewart-led (if in anyone’s wildest imagination, Mr. Stewart might have the appellation of ‘leader‘ applied to him) administration, where he worked within a disparate and wildly dysfunctional civic administration.  Mr. Stewart is, fortunate for us,  now back at the post from whence he came, as the defrocked and much mocked Simon Fraser University Political Science professor.

If you go to the Fairview Strategy website — where Mr. Allam is employed, Fairview Strategy an integrated public relations company which offers government relations liaison and expertise, communication, media relations, digital communication, Indigenous relations, and market research — you will read this …

With two decades of private and public sector experience in public affairs, Kareem has successfully leveraged his knowledge of people, policy and community into triumphant political campaigns at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

Kareem managed the winning Kevin Falcon for BC Liberal Leader campaign and the ABC Vancouver municipal campaign, electing 19 out of 19 candidates, including Mayor Ken Sim. In 2023, Kareem achieved #9 status on Vancouver Magazine’s annual Power 50 list.

Kareem has served as a member of the Board of the Fraser Health Authority, and as a member of the Translink Screening Panel, among other appointments which serve the community interest.


Sarah Blyth, community advocate and organizer, founding member of the Overdose Prevention Society

Did we mention that Sarah Blyth holds Mr. Allam in the highest possible esteem?

One year ago, Mr. Allam left his post as Chief of Staff to Mayor Ken Sim. Suffice to say that Mr. Allam’s leave-taking — he was very unhappy — was none too pleasant.

Well worth watching and listening to the Hotel Pacifico podcast interview with Kareem Allam that you’ll find above — given that Mr. Allam will continue to be long into the future, a British Columbian of wit, intelligence, perspicacity and accomplishment, who will endure as an individual who will make a difference for the better in each of our lives, in the many, many years to come. Best to get to know Mr. Allam a little better now, to help provide a bit of context for your confounding life, and perhaps even inject a smidgen of hope for a better collective future for all of us.

#SaveOurParkBoard | A Preservation Conversation

#VanPoli Civic Politics, Park Board, Vancouver, , , , , ,

On Monday evening, February 12th, 2024, approximately 100 citizens tried-and-true, almost to a person strong advocates for the preservation of Vancouver’s cherished 135-year-old independent, elected Vancouver Park Board met together.

Why do we say almost to a person?

Because at meeting’s outset, a group of “concerned citizens” were present, who did their best to hijack the meeting, to push their agenda that take our present Park Board to task for failing to “save the trees in Stanley Park.” A righteous cause, for sure (or, perhaps not) but not the reason why the 100, or so, people meeting in the Hillcrest Community Centre gym on Monday evening had gathered together in common cause, which is to say: save Vancouver’s much cherished and beloved 135-year-old independent, elected Board of Parks and Recreation.

The video above pretty much presents the highlights of Monday night’s phenomenally moving meeting of a sterling group of Vancouver’s finest, most activist citizens, persons possessed of uncommon wit and intelligence, heart and conscience, committed to a social democracy that champions the community, the hope of our present and our future, folks who could just as easily stayed at home, but instead gathered in common cause to work together to preserve our elected Park Board.

Terri Clark, in charge of Park Board communications from 1973-2008, was present, as was Erin Shum, a past Park Board Commissioner (and one of our very favourites), in the city, traveling from her home in the Okanagan, and Jerry Fast, the President of the Kitsilano Community Centre — to whom we owe a thousand apologies — as well as former Killarney Community Centre President Ainslee Kwan (another one of our very favourites), and someone who we’ve been asked not to write about — cuz she’s in the employ of the City, and no one, we mean no one (except maybe a dastardly few in the administration and employ of Mayor Ken Sim … hey, it’s politics, and the current folks at City Hall, like many folks in past civic administrations, play hard ball) wants to see this fine woman of character, intelligence and passion for our city have her employment with the City jeopardized.

Of course, Scott Jensen — current Vice-Chair of Park Board — was present.

One wonders if Mr. Jensen ever thought for a moment — when a couple of years back, then ABC Vancouver candidate for Mayor Ken Sim asked him to run for Vancouver Park Board on his party’s slate — whether a couple of years on he’d find himself in the midst of a trying political maelstrom that rather than lead to an enhanced quality of life instead has changed his focus, such that too much of his energy is being directed away from his family, his satisfying career of contribution as an educator, and his very important work as a Park Board Commissioner.

Still, as a nascent #SaveOurParkBoard movement begins to burgeon, how can one not take heart that we are together a small but sturdy group of activists working collectively in common cause, part of a salutary movement for the ages in our little burgh by the sea, destined to be recorded in the history books as a grassroots democratic movement the likes of which we’ve not seen in Vancouver in decades.

Fills one with hope for a better, more democratic and more community-minded city.

#SaveOurParkBoard | Vancouver | Grassroots Democracy at Its Best

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Environment, Food & Health, Park Board, Vancouver, , , ,


Erin Shum | community centre advocate | One of Vancouver’s best ever Park Board Commissioners

In Mayor Ken Sim’s mad dash to eliminate the independent, elected and very much esteemed Vancouver Park Board,  over the past weeks there have been many issues that have been shunted to the side in the current debate surrounding the efficacy of an elected Park Board or, most egregiously, not considered at all.

As an overreaching, autocratic ABC Vancouver civic administration seeks to move inexorably forward in their shameful quest to eliminate an elected Park Board, Mayor Ken Sim seems intent on creating the conditions that will give an already overworked gaggle of Vancouver City Councillors even more work to do than is the already the case, respecting Vancouver City Council’s overstuffed civic agenda, such that no reasonable human being could possibly give the necessary consideration of the critically important issues that would come to the fore were our elected Vancouver City Councillors —  in addition to all of their other time consuming work — to take sole authority over Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation.

There simply ain’t enough hours in the day.

Today on VanRamblings, we will set about to elucidate one threat to civic democracy in Vancouver that has, to date, been overlooked by the media, and most certainly not considered nor addressed by a contumacious Vancouver City Council.


Vancouver’s Killarney Community Centre, with a community pool and ice rink available to members

One of the important responsibilities of an elected Vancouver Park Board Commissioner is to fulfill their elected duty to act as liaisons to various Community Centres across the city — as assigned by the Park Board Chair — to attend the monthly meetings of the community centre Board of Directors, listen to what the elected directors have to say, and once back at the Park Board table advocate for each of the community centres to which they have been assigned responsibility.


Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Erin Shum, re-election bid, 2018 Vancouver municipal election

In all the years of VanRamblings’ coverage of Vancouver Park Board we are aware of no finer, no harder working, no more well-respected liaison to the community centres to which she had been assigned than was the case with Park Board Commissioner Erin Shum, a shining star in Vancouver’s political firmament.

In our many conversations over the years, Ainslee Kwan, President of the Killarney Community Centre’s Board of Directors, had nothing but praise for the work ethic, the integrity for all that she did, and most especially for Erin Shum’s commitment to community engagement, as well as her steadfast advocacy for Vancouver citizens living in every neighbourhood across our city, to create an environmentally sustainable and more livable city in which all of us might live, where we might raise our children with adequate green space and vibrant community centres.

From its founding in 1887 through 1955, Vancouver’s elected parks advocacy board was called the Board of Park Commissioners, for that was what they were, Commissioners responsible only for oversight of Vancouver’s lush, verdant parks.

In 1955, the Vancouver Board of Park Commissioners became the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, which it remains to this day.

Prior to 1955, neighbourhood associations built and ran neighbourhood-owned and operated community centres, in most neighbourhoods across our city. From the early 1950s through 1955, the Board of Park Commissioners engaged in a negotiation with the neighbourhood associations across Vancouver to cede jurisdiction to what would become the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.


The Kitsilano War Memorial Community Centre, a facility for all ages and abilities, offering childcare, special needs activities, a youth centre, seniors’ lounge, ice rink, fitness centre, and outdoor pool.

Central to the final negotiation which led to the creation of the new Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation was the commitment of the Park Board Commissioners to involve the community centre associations as partners in the decision-making that impacted their community centres. In addition, the new body would assume fiscal responsibility for the operation of community centres, committing as well to a greatly expanded number of community centres, such that every neighbourhood would be well-served with vigorous community centres.

Now, imagine if you will, each of the 10 Vancouver City Councillors pictured above taking on a liaison position with two or more of Vancouver’s 24 community centres, committing to attending the monthly meetings of the community centre boards of directors, and advocating for the community centres for which they have been assigned liaison responsibility. At present, community centre association boards have regular, direct, in-person liaison with elected Park Board Commissioners.

Lemme tell ya: it ain’t gonna happen. The more likely circumstance …

Vancouver City Council’s autocratic, anti-democratic ABC Vancouver majority Council contingent, should they succeed in their quest to eliminate Vancouver’s cherished, 133 -year-old elected Park Board, will also more than likely dissolve the Boards of Directors of  each of Vancouver’s 24 community centres, making it all the easier to sell off Vancouver’s community centres to private developer interests, which developers will then seek to build unaffordable condominium or rental housing on the lush green space adjacent to our existing community centres.

Bad enough that ABC Vancouver wants to destroy the Vancouver Park Board, Metro Vancouver’s last bastion of grassroots civic democracy — even worse, perhaps, that ABC Vancouver will, in all probability, remove the voices of neighbourhood residents entirely in the decisions that impact not only on the recreational needs of those living in each of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods, but from the decision-making that impacts on the livability of the neighbourhood they call their home.

These are sad, desperate days for the citizens of Vancouver, all across our city.

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#VanPoli | Melissa De Genova | Fighting for You on Vancouver City Council

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblings,

In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to a second term of office, finishing a solid third place in the polls with 53,251 votes, support for her re-election coming from across the city, in every one of the 23 neighbourhoods comprising our piece of paradise by the sea.

More than any other current Vancouver City Councillor, in the years since Ms. De Genova first assumed elected office in 2011, as a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Melissa De Genova emerged from the outset and continues thru until this day as a champion and a fighter for the interests of working people.

Now, it is true that Ms. De Genova has a long and glorious, ought-to-be celebrated history of driving the members of Vancouver’s partisan and arrogantly self-righteous, so-called “left” just nuts, driving them around the bend at every turn, as often as she is able — which in her first seven years of elected office was often.

Melissa has no time for “politics” when there’s a job to be done, a seniors facility to be built, a senior level of government to finagle into doing her bidding to ensure the delivery of programmes and affordable housing to the residents of Vancouver.

Melissa De Genova is always ready to engage with the electorate, be it on social media or one-to-one in person (there’s not been much opportunity for the latter in these pandemic times). When Melissa is challenged on social media — which is often — she readily engages, setting out the rationale for a decision she has taken around the Council table, engaging with whatever miscreant, unnamed person who is hiding behind a faux identity on, say, Twitter, thoughtfully and methodically laying out why she has taken the decision she has.

Inevitably, these online tête-à-têtes devolve, with Ms. De Genova’s “challenger” resorting to invective and name-calling. But still, Melissa hangs in, always respectful. With a current Council rightfully afraid of the pit of despair that is Twitter in 2021, only OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle is Ms. De Genova’s equal when it comes to dialogue and informed response to the too often egregious and ferociously vicious nature of the engagement extant on the Twitter platform.

One of the great joys of VanRamblings life in recent years was observing Melissa go after Aaron Jasper and Niki Sharma — and much to her chagrin, Sarah Blyth — when the four sat on Vancouver Park Board. Aaron Jasper’s conduct towards Ms. De Genova was supercilious and condescending at all times, as if she was somehow “below” him, and undeserving of even one iota of humanity that might emerge from him during his time as Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board.

At the time, during the course of Park Board meetings, Melissa remained respectful of the Chair and her Vision Vancouver colleagues around the Park Board table — but when the meetings ended, Melissa De Genova lit into her Vision colleagues with a vigour that was something (of a great delight) to behold, calling them out for their wrong-headed “in the pocket of (then, ruthless and none-too-stable City Manager), Dr. Penny Ballem,” and their utter failure to represent the interests of the citizens who voted to elect them as Vancouver Park Board Commissioners.

In 2014, Melissa De Genova ran for office under the Non-Partisan Association banner — all but bereft of support from the members of the 2014 NPA campaign team, and party President at the time, Peter Armstrong — and willed herself onto Council with a vitality, urgency and strength of purpose that so enraptured Vancouver’s voting electorate that she garnered an amazing 63,134 votes, placing a high fourth place at the polls, in her first run for elected office as a Vancouver City Councillor.

Never one to hide her light under a bushel, it wasn’t very long into her first term of office at Vancouver City Hall that Ms. De Genova came head-to-head with the seven-headed monster that was — back in the day, only 7 short years ago — Vision Vancouver, identifying early on the challenge with which she was confronted, most particularly in the form of Vision Councillor Andrea Reimer, whose every utterance directed towards Councillor De Genova dripped with a contemptuous condescension  that all but demanded a response from Council novice Melissa De Genova.

To say that Melissa gave as good as she got is to understate the matter.

Alas, that was then, and this is now.

During the current term of office Councillor De Genova has transformed from a fighter into a pussy cat, a ‘can barely stand on her legs’ kitten.

These past three years, what has happened to Vancouver resident champion and fighter for all that is right and good, challenger of her opposition colleagues, and ruthless yet still humane Council combatant, a woman who takes no truck nor holds any prisoners, the Melissa De Genova who calls out dissembling, self-righteous virtue signaling nonsense when one opposition Councillor or other makes a statement so ludicrous and offside that it all but demands a response from Vancouver’s warrior City Councillor.

“Melissa, Melissa, come out, come out from wherever you’ve been hiding! We need you! Please, be our champion once again.”

VanRamblings wrote yesterday that only two current City Councillors are assured re-election in 2022. We’d like to add Melissa De Genova to that list — but first she’s going to have to rekindle the fire in her belly that was once her electoral raison d’être, and re-emerge as the fighter for all that is right and good, and be seen to do so, if she is to emerge victorious in the 2022 election.

And, yes, VanRamblings is well aware of that damnable Code of Conduct that has stifled debate around the Council table this term of office at City Hall, with Green Councillor Adriane Carr the chief enforcer of this “we must play nice, never give the appearance of impugning the integrity of a staff person, presenter to Council, or woebegone citizen, because nicey-nicey is the order of the day on this current term Vancouver City Council — and, quite simply, I won’t have it any other way!”

What does VanRamblings hope wlll be Councillor Melissa De Genova’s response?