On November 15th, our Vancouver civic election came to a close with a landslide win for Gregor Robertson and the Vision Vancouver party. Gregor won the mayor’s seat by a 14 point margin, while the party sent 15 of 16 candidates to City Council, School Board and Park Board. The NPA, the traditional ruling party of Vancouver politics, was handed a devastating defeat, electing only a single candidate elected to council.
Like the presidential election, the theme of our campaign was change. However, the change we are seeing recently goes well beyond a simple swing in political leanings from left vs right or from one candidate to the next. The new change represents the leading edge of a new emergent consciousness. It is not coincidental that Barack Obama’s personage, and transparent, participative campaign emerged hand in hand with a massive global economic downturn, a sharpening environmental crisis, and wars of scarcity that have not been experienced in our generation. The traditional systems of supply side economics, oil based economies, closed door politics, and a singular focus on bottom line deliverables are the cause of the frightening and emerging challenges we’re now facing, and it will take nothing less than a complete remaking of our economy, media, culture, and politics to meet those challenges.
As American philosopher Ken Wilber says, new modes of consciousness arise, and are supported by, new economic and informational systems. You can’t support an industrial economy with papyrus scrolls. Likewise, you can’t support the emerging post modern and integral consciousness with the strict empirical measure of short term bottom line gain.
Obama has seemingly embraced this emerging world fully. After running the most participative and publicly engaged campaign in history, he’s carrying that forward as President Elect. Change.gov is the first hint of a new style of world politics and democracy that people will be demanding in the decades to come, and as the National Post reported, he has committed the White House to the continuation of this approach by establishing a new cabinet position with a mandate for transparency and the ongoing engagement of the American public.
Gregor Robertson has the potential to create similar change on a civic level. Time will tell if he chooses to do so. For now, my work with Vision is complete and I’m grateful for having been able to contribute in a small way to the betterment of the city, and with luck, to the first steps in reshaping the way government works.
PS – special thanks to Jason & Jordan of Communicopia; Christine, Catherine, Emily, Darko and Phillip of Agentic; and Tim and Nicholas at Biro Creative. You kept me going throughout the campaign.
