Derrick O’Keefe standing with his partner (and son’s mom), Andrea Pinochet-Escudero
Derrick O’Keefe’s emergence as a COPE candidate for Vancouver City Council redefines the 2018 race for civic office, and outlines in the starkest terms possible the core issue on which he, and most other of the progressive candidates seeking office will run: working people, immigrants, refugees, seniors living on fixed incomes, the homeless and persons living on the Downtown Eastside, and everyday folks like you and me vs the heartless, monied elites intent only on gathering more wealth for themselves, and who could give a good goddamn about the one in five children who live in poverty in our city, or as one person of my acquaintance who lives in a Shaughnessy mansion told me yesterday …
“Why should I care about people who can’t care for themselves and lift themselves out of poverty, who don’t help themselves? I pay enough in taxes as it is; I’m not going to pay one more red cent to the ungrateful, to those who can’t and won’t help themselves. Enough is enough!“
And wouldn’t you know that Derrick O’Keefe is running on a civic platform of Enough is enough!, where in a March 1st opinion piece that ran in The Georgia Straight, Mr. O’Keefe said exactly that, writing …
“Enough is enough. It’s time to treat Vancouver’s housing crisis as an emergency. The Straight reported on the fact that the City of Vancouver now defines a new three-bedroom unit renting at $3,702 per month as “affordable housing”. We’ve reached a level of absurdity in Vancouver where Orwellian political spin has given way to straight-up trolling.
The BC NDP’s renter’s rebate was lousy policy, when what we needed and what we still need is a rent freeze, as Jean Swanson campaigned for in last year’s by-election, and will campaign for again in 2018.
Cynical, complacent local politicians redefined “affordable housing,” draining the term of meaning, using it as a pretext to offer more tax breaks to their developer friends. Renters, who make up over half the population of our city, have been left almost entirely out of the discussion.
But, things are finally starting to change. You can only decouple local incomes from housing costs for so long before the pitchforks come out.
In 2018, renters’ issues will be front and centre in Vancouver, and it’s time to evict the politicians and parties responsible for the mess we’re in.”
Make no mistake, Derrick O’Keefe is a truth-teller, who will be loathe at any given point in his day to allow the elites to get away with their whiny, destructive and egregiously uncaring politics of privilege, who in the coming weeks and months will emerge as the single most important revolutionary political candidate in point of fact and intent, a voice speaking on behalf of not just the dispossessed in our city, but for each and every one of us who are not members of the monied elite of our city, the callous one percent.
Not possible that Derrick O’Keefe will get elected to Vancouver City Council late in the evening of Saturday, October 20th? Think again.
In 2013, Seattle economics professor Kshama Sawant — who ran on a platform advocating for LGBTQ+ issues, women’s issues, people of colour issues and reversal of the cuts to education and other social programmes, implementation of a “millionaire’s tax” that came to be known to wealthy Seattleites as the “Mansion Tax”, running on a platform of rent control, about which she said, “rent control is something everyone supports, except real estate developers …” ran as a socialist Council candidate, and won!
Ms. Sawant also advocated for an expansion of public transit and bikeways throughout the Metro Seattle region, ending corporate welfare, ending racial profiling, protecting public sector unions from layoffs, reducing taxes on small business and homeowners, living wage union jobs, and the expansion of social services. And, Kshama Sawant was the first political figure to advocate for a $15 an hour minimum wage — which we now see being implemented across Canadian jurisdictions, and in the United States.
By 2015, Seattle and Washington state politicians who thought her crazy and revolutionary when she ran for Council had implemented every single one of the platform items that Ms. Sawant had run on, and advocated for.
Why?
Because, unsurprisingly, when citizens see a political figure and hear a voice who speaks for them, as did Kshama Sawant, such a political figure almost inevitably emerges as a popular political figure, as did Ms. Sawant, who not only became Seattle’s most popular elected official, but the most popular elected representative across Washington state, as remains the case to this day. What other option was open to Ms. Sawant’s former detractors, now Council colleagues than to get on board with her, and pass the legislation the newly-engaged Seattle residents were clamouring for.
Kshama Sawant would not be refused. Derrick O’Keefe will not be refused.
And make no mistake, Mr. O’Keefe’s fellow COPE candidates for Council, Vancouver’s hope of our time, Jean Swanson, and her revolutionary companion and 2018 COPE Vancouver City Council candidate Anne Roberts — who’s already been in government as an elected COPE City Council member from 2002 to 2005, and knows how to get things done — will not be refused, will work on your behalf every single day of their elected lives.
Mr. O’Keefe’s COPE running mate, Jean Swanson, is the truth-telling McLuhanesque “cool” candidate in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election for City Council, espousing an awakening of political consciousness, and running on a social justice platform of principle, integrity, wry wit and an intellectualism that is easily understood by the vast majority of the public.
Derrick O’Keefe is most decidedly the “hot” candidate in the current Vancouver civic election, the fearless difference maker who tells it like it is in the starkest terms possible so there is no misunderstanding as to what he means, who is soulfully committed to doing the right thing, to addressing homelessness, wont, poverty & need, to addressing the issues that daily discriminate and limit the opportunity of our immigrant and refugee population, but also of the working people, persons of colour and the LGBTQ communities in our city struggling to provide for their families.
Young, charismatic, bright, articulate, passionate, and a populist in the finest tradition of Tommy Douglas, who speaks in words of one syllable in a compelling message not just of hope for our future, but change, and change now, in the coming days, weeks and months, Derrick O’Keefe will emerge as the candidate in the coming Vancouver civic election around whom other political figures running in the current Vancouver civic election will turn to and rally around, for Derrick O’Keefe’s, Jean Swanson’s and Anne Roberts’ demand for change, and change now, will become so undeniable, so popular with the voting public, so clarion and inspiring that come the evening of Saturday, October 20th, Anne, Jean and Derrick will have emerged as the top vote-getters at the polls in this 2018 Vancouver municipal election — after which celebration, they will get to work for you!
