Skills I wish I could list on my job applications
January 23rd, 2010 by Noisy1. Have been madly in love (2001 - 2009, excepting brief sabbatical)
2. Interests in both Buddhism and alt country not entirely faddish; still refuse to wear plaid on principle
3. Once sat a few seats down from Al Pacino in a theatre
4. Starting to get a handle on crippling emotional problems, possibly coming to grips w/ own mortality
5. Doing dishes pretty regularly now
6. No longer attempt to guide every casual conversation back to the intrinsically exploitative nature of capitalism
7. Treat children like real actual people; proven track record of not lying to dogs
8. Established commitment to occasionally making genuine, if ill-fated, attempts at real human connection w/ co-workers (references available upon request)
9. At some point became a real grown up & it’s working out pretty OK, I guess
10. CLEAR ABILITY TO NEED MONEY TO EAT
Cubism goes to war
November 22nd, 2009 by Noisy
The primary object of this scheme was not so much to cause the enemy to miss his shot when actually in firing position, but to mislead him, when the ship was first sighted, as to the correct position to take up.
“Creative Class,” or class (re)creation?
November 5th, 2009 by NoisyMy latest print piece is out today. It’s another, clearer - and, in retrospect, hopefully less negative - piece inspired by the Creative Places and Spaces conference. This one ended up being predominantly about Richard Florida.
When Florida speaks of the need to involve everyone in generating wealth, especially workers, it’s perfectly genuine.
But can’t we do better than “wealth”? He relates a conversation with an executive from Toyota, which was opening factories in the Midwest while the Big Three were shuttering theirs. “’We harness the creativity of each of the workers on our factory floor,’” the exec told Florida, who elaborates: “The workers themselves form teams; they improve the process themselves without an engineer telling them what to do.”
In other words, new responsibility flowed downward. But I’ll bet you clunkers to cash that the new profits still flowed upward. That’s “collaboration?” In my day we called it exploitation. And we said it over the telephone. And the phone had a cord.
I would very much like to like Richard Florida. Honestly. He occupies a somewhat undefined - and therefore potentially powerful - space. I’m just never sure who it is he thinks he’s speaking to; and call me old-school, but I don’t think you get to talk about some vaunted “creative class” until you’ve proven you can actually talk about class, period.
In one way, he reminds me of McLuhan: it seems as though he’d like to be working with activists, yet it’s mostly businesspeople who have any idea what to do with him. (The difference, of course, is no one ever had any idea what to do with McLuhan, even if they thought they did.)
Of collaboration
November 2nd, 2009 by NoisyI spent Thursday and Friday at the Creative Places and Spaces conference, where both imagination and Kool Aid flowed in roughly equal proportion. The theme was “Collaborative Cities.” When I left, I had no more idea of what that meant than when I showed up. Maybe that wasn’t the point.
To me, collaboration implies a coming-together of disparate energies and viewpoints; and, if we’re going to turn it into a capital-letter fetish object, the meausre of a “Collaborative” society would seem to relate to the initial distance between the participants, and the ability to identify and bridge these distances. Otherwise it’s just called “working together,” which is something you can really only avoid if you make an active effort these days.
There was, as expected, a preponderance of “social media” types, and my question for them remains the same as always: how did the telephone, the megaphone, even the soap box, never qualify as “social media?” The term as we use it often just seems to apply to tools used by those of us in certain privileged, technology-enabled social groups, and “collaboration” used in the same context seems, with some exceptions, to mean not so much a dissolving of barriers as an expansion of this particular caste in to government and Non-Profit circles, and them into it.
From where I sit, admittedly on the outside, it appears largely as the already upwardly-mobile strategizing ways to become horizontally mobile. I don’t think it’s even much of a stretch to make a limited analogy to mega-corporations dissolving national barriers in the name of “globalization” but functionally in the service of ecological destruction and class conflict.
Don’t misunderstand - a number of the folks and organizations in this nascent “Open” milieu (open source, open data, open cities, open government) have genuinely progressive goals and ideals, and even occasional designs on wealth-redistribution. But others just want to have fun, make money, and accelerate the process of turning “world cities” in to playgrounds for them and their friends. And unfortunately, the former seems so fare unwilling or unable to coherently call the latter on their limitations.
I’m genuinely excited that there are people with access to power and resources talking about making collaboration a guiding principle of urban society. I’m also worried that without addressing some basic questions about who has the privilege to engage in a technologically-mediated, time-intensive paradigm grounded in “social networks” (ie., neutral-sounding, refractory subsets of what we used to just call “class”), it’ll end up as just yet another way to recapitulate old power relations under a new guise. Lipstick on a pig. A green roof on a slaughterhouse.
Collaboration can only happen among equals, and equality these days is at more of a premium than square footage in a waterfront condo. If we’re not addressing this, what’s new? In polite society, we’re not supposed to point out that there is still a class war raging across the globe, and urban regions are becoming its primary theatre. There was at least a flickering, vestigial recognition of this among some attendees - including, surprisingly enough, Mr. 14:59 himself, Richard Florida - but it needs to be articulated more clearly, and it needs to be recognized that many partisans of “collaboration” are placed, not by desire, but by default, by the nature of the economy, within the circle of the agressors. Otherwise, I fear the warm and fuzzy principle of “collaboration” will only come to evoke echoes of its historically more sinister cousin: every ugly conflict, after all, has always had its “collaborators.”
I’m still going through audio from the conference for a piece in the print edition of this week’s NOW Magazine. In the meantime, here are a few exemplary quotes I jotted down during the conference sessions:
THE GOOD
“We have a saying at tamarack: fear not communities that have no leaders, fear communities that need them.” - Paul Born, founder, Tamarack
“Collaboration is a fundamental violation of ‘command and control’… it’s a non-market exchange.” - David Wolfe, U of T
“If this were kindergarten, we’d say [of Toronto government], ‘Doesn’t play well with other people.’” - David Wolfe again
“[Digital society means] we can collaborate with whomever we want to, at any time– we’re also becoming very segregated, in that we get to choose who we can collaborate with… Go find people that you don’t know, who your life doesn’t let you cross paths with. Ask them what it’s like for them.” - Katerina Cizek, NFB’s filmmaker-in-residence at St. Mike’s hospital, director of The Interventionists
THE BAD
“360 degree thinking [is] going to change the world.” - Tom Wujec
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t “360 degree thinking” sound like something that would just naturally lead to “talking in circles?”
“Collaboration is as simple as sex. It’s coming together and becoming more. It is who we are as beings.” - Paul Born
It’s a nice analogy, as far as it goes. We’ll assume he was talking about consensual sex, of course - which, unfortunately, is precisely where the analogy collapses. The majority of people with less power or (class, race, gender, pick a card, any card) privilege don’t get to truly “come together,” despite pretty frequently getting fucked.
“There are some people who [incorrectly] look at service as subservience” - Ken Robinson
We call these people pessimists. Others look at it as a chance to steal Ken Robinson’s chequebook. We call these people optimists.
THE RICHARD FLORIDA
“Neoconservatism isn’t about foreign policy… it’s about an attempt to control the cities.”
He’s right about that, even if The Stranger beat him to it by about five years.
[Farmers in the exodus from rural lands to cities at the end of the 19th century] “came to cities to be themselves.”
Turns out a lot of farmers were, in their heart of hearts, displaced and newly landlesss wage slaves. Some people live their whole lives without ever discovering this about themselves. Thanks, rural displacement!
“People [newly immigrating to cities] will pack themselves in tighter and tighter spaces - for collaboration.”
Rooming-house bedbugs also offer unprecedented opportunities for Parasite-Hemoglobin Synergy.
THE TWEETS
Participants regularly posted thoughts to the #cpands hashtag on Twitter; most of them were streamed live on monitors throughout the conference venues.
“As Pier Giorgio [Di Cicco, Toronto's former Poet Laureate] warned, be wary that govt/Corp world doesn’t just adopt “collaboration” as buzzword without structural change.” - Jowi Taylor of Six String Nation, @SixStringNation
It would be lovely to have an opposing view on this panel. The opinions are valued but the audience has koolaid smiles on. - @jasoneano
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
“Collaboration means giving something up. And it’s the people without the power who usually have to give up the most.” - Jacqueline Gijssen, Senior Cultural Planner with the City of Vancouver, who wasn’t speaking at the conference, but who I (gladly) spoke to near the end
Specific groups of not less than 15
October 16th, 2009 by NoisySeeking defeat in victory
August 6th, 2009 by NoisyRounding out my coverage of the 2009 city workers’ strike, a little screed on right-wing Councillors’ latest organized attempt to shit where they eat. Why? Because, hey, Mayor Miller has to eat there too.
The right lost yet another battle on Friday, July 31, when it failed to defeat the Miller-sponsored settlement with TCEU 416 and CUPE 79. But to the sink-the-mayor faction, the war is one of attrition.
The space for rational discourse shrank. The leftmost border of the reasonable shuffled right. And lefty columnists are now in the awkward position of having to defend the strike deal as progressive.
He sure looks pretty tired for a “do nothing” Mayor
August 4th, 2009 by NoisyI can’t be the only one watching a growing concordance between Toronto’s corporate press and right-wing politicians over the last months.
The strategy seems to be: ignore or obfuscate the initiatives of Mayor Miller’s administration in one gesture, then drum up populist outrage over the “do nothing Mayor” in the next. He must be a “do-nothing!” I mean, have we told you about anything he’s doing?
A Mayor is one person, with one vote on Council and some influence over the decision-making process. In other words, a Mayor can really only be as good as her or his Council, and by that metric, sure, I guess Miller has been pretty useless, given a strong minority on Council who believe their entire job is to delay and dilute anything that comes from the Miller camp. In a war of attrition, it’s not whether you win, it’s how slow you lose, and who you drag down with you.
This puts lefties in an awkward position. There’s a lot about Miller’s administration that’s been problematic, but with no viable challenger from the left, progressives are required to put too much time in to defending one man, when we’d really much rather be building a constituency that could push the general drift of Toronto politics out in to a less constrictive space.
If I thought Council’s privateers were co-ordinated enough (there are intelligent right-wingers, operating from principled positions, who one feels obliged to engage with respectfully - this lot doesn’t qualify), I’d call it a masterful strategy - but they aren’t, so let’s just call it a morbidly fascinating side-effect: through constant and judicious application of what in political circles is called “so much fucking noise,” the common denominator of political discourse is kept as low as possible (that would be 2: the binary of black and white, left and right, Abbot and Costello), and people who could be engaged in building that progressive (dare I say radical) constituency are otherwise engaged in keeping the giant zorb of what’s considered reasonable from rolling downhill and rightward.
It’s not long before the “do-nothing Mayor” starts becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet even a cursory overview makes the the “useless” accusation baffling.
Miller was instrumental in opening up new revenue streams for a city saddled by ancient fiscal rules, and negotiating a provincial upload. He oversaw the first freezing of police spending (outside of wages and benefits, which are linked to arbitrated settlements) in memory. He is helping bring new rapid transit to Toronto. He’s prioritized some very promising climate-related initiatives. He’s championed an imaginative and concrete (if controversial) housing plan. He’s empowered staff to actually make progress on the Bike Plan. Among other things.
Just because these things aren’t useful to you personally doesn’t mean they’re useless.
I find the way in which he’s done some of these things (specifically rushing through the Streets to Homes plan) problematic. There are things I wish he hadn’t done. There are plenty of things I wish he would do. There are ways in which he could seriously improve his communications strategy. He could check in with the grassroots sat least, say, once every year or so.
And there were plenty of reasons to find the position the City took up against its employees during the strike really troubling.
Yet, judging the strike deal from the frame of city finances - which, after all, the dailies and news stations seemed to decide, was all we were supposed to talk about anyway - the negotiating position which Miller championed did just save the City a whole titload of money.
But then, those savings won’t happen all at once. Nothing constructive ever does. And that’s the major weakness of any progressive politician, anyone who wants to engage in city-building, as opposed to simple maintenance of the status-quo: it takes time, it consists in details, and requires some imagination - not to mention hope - to understand.
And there is a real, oddly enthusiastic undercurrent of hopelessness running beneath this town. For a particularly loud, slow-to-rouse but hard-to-placate minority, it’s a de-facto civic identity. Maybe that’s endemic to any big city. Maybe it’s just that short-term issues facilitate a whole lot of complaining, which is cathartic, and doesn’t imply the responsibility of optimism.
In any case, it’s the right wing’s bread and butter: bitch and moan about potholes. The taxes you pay are being spent on things. Music was better when you were young. Toast gets burnt more often now that homosexuals are parking hybrids under condos. That sort of thing. Keep discourse as simple as possible. That’s how you’ll keep getting elected.
So the cycle continues. And, with the exception of certain writers, the papers would appear to be eating it up and shitting it back out. You can almost hear publishers across the spectrum popping a collective chubby for the image of Miller swinging in the garbage-tinted breeze. The editorials take an ostensibly populist tone: We’re on your side, Average Toronto Citizen. Nevermind that the folks behind the big desks are all a sufficient number of tax brackets above you to piss down your chimney.
It’s a recession. In some ways, the only bones with any profitable meat left on them right now belong to the state. Miller’s made it pretty clear he’s not interested in privatizing. And let’s not forget that Land Transfer Tax. In a town being built on property speculation, that was tantamount to wealth redistribution. The post-Lastman honeymoon is well over, and I wonder if the decision hasn’t been made: Miller has to go. Because he’s a “do-nothing Mayor.” Facts notwithstanding.
News Triage Mashup - Week of June 29 09
June 29th, 2009 by NoisyI often wish my weekly columns could just be mashups of all my potential weekly columns. If they could, this week’s (sub)headline might be:
Are Tories dumping streetcar funding in neighbourhood parks because Richard Florida is embarrassed by striking garbage workers?
…And part of me almost wants to say, Maybe. Maybe they are.
I’m not with the union, but I’ll take them over the alternative
June 18th, 2009 by NoisyIn my column this week I try out the idea that in the middle of theglobaleconomiccrisis (has anyone named their band Global Economic Crisis yet? Is that still up for grabs?), protecting workers’ collective agreements becomes more important. Because apparently that’s become just so nutty that we need 900 words to make a case for it - considerably more than the current accepted wisdom, “ARGLE BARGLE GREEDY BASTARDS!!!!!”
“I’m not sure I buy into the idea that these times require concessions,” says Ferguson. “This is a crisis largely driven by the banks and bad credit, and I find it disingenuous that the city would ask its employees to bear the brunt of an economic situation not of their making.”
Certainly, a lot of other employees out there are thinking the same thing. One has to wonder: are complaints about civic workers expressions of outrage or just jealousy of workers who still have the power to stand up for themselves?
In today’s news: There was no news yesterday
June 11th, 2009 by NoisyHere’s a partial list of people who swore on Monday.
- Me.
- Your best friend
- A garbage collector
- Zach Galifiniakis (twice)
- Most of the rest of the planet
- John Baird
But you only heard about Baird doing it: he’s Minister of Infrastructure, and so… I don’t have an end for that sentence. I don’t know why it was news.
Well, alright, not news. Scandal? No - too grave, too weighty. Just call it a sugary jolt through the pituitary– just enough to get some eyeballs flitting across a paper. ‘Cause, guess what, gentle reader? John Baird just told you to fuck off. How does that make you feel? (Note: the editors do not intend for this question to imply an assumption that you are necessarily capable of feeling anything).
Sure, it’s vaguely satisfying that a Google search for John Baird’s name will now turn up, first of all, the fact that he dropped “the Fuck bomb” (am I doing that right?) at a news conference. And I guess there’s something to be said for the news media occasionally checking in to keep us aware of the character of public representawhat do you mean, front page? Like, the page on the front?
That’s from Wednesday’s Toronto Star, two days after Baird used everyone’s favourite nounverb.
These things make it above the fold (oh good lord, they put it above the fold) for a reason. It seeds the discourse– it gives reporters something they can milk if they hit a patch of slow news days. And, let’s face it, with corporate outlets expanding coverage to Constant and Everything just to stay relevant, ’slow news day’ has pretty much become a business model.
So, for instance, Royson James gets another chance to riff on mayoral strategy (but between you and me, internet, I think wonks and columnists - myself included - too often see complex strategy existing after the fact in what could have also, really, just been a bunch of stuff that happened. It comes from thinking our jobs are more important than they are).
Hold on, what’s that off to the side?
You… really? Seriously?
Torstar’s new thing is burning up inches to let you know they put out a paper yesterday as well. Look, you can trust us! Shit, we do this, like, every day, dawg. Heavy hustlin. You should probably pick up an issue every day, too, and think about the products offered by our fine sponsors. That’d totally work for you.
So, the story there is essentially: today is a slow news day - so slow, in fact, that we are writing not just about how yesterday was also a slow news day, but about how we pretty much straight up told you it was slow news day.
The desperation in the biz is starting to get pungent. Worrying, and exciting. But more on that later.
« Older Entries
