Colliery Dam Park is
the best park in Harewood, a working class neighborhood of Nanaimo
BC. The park has two small lakes, the result of a coal company dam a
hundred years ago. People too poor to afford the swimming pool, or
those who prefer non-chlorinated water swim there in the summer.
Others go there to fish or just laze by the water. It is also a place
of exquisite beauty.
For reasons we can
only guess, the City bureaucrats and the Council majority wish to
destroy this park by tearing out the dams. Many people fear that
sleazy developers are behind the scheme, wishing to plant their
crummy condos on the flood plain. (The stated reason is "safety"
– there is a fear of earthquakes destroying the old dams) A mass
movement, with probably 90% support has arisen to challenge this
action.
This Save
the Colliery Dams coalition, with almost 2300 members, has been
very flexible dealing with the City, accepting their claim that the
dams might need repair or replacement. The difference between the
people and the City is how this is done. The people want the dams to
be removed, replaced or repaired in a staged, organized fashion. They
want something solid on paper. The City on the other hand just wants
to tear the dams down this summer and makes vague promises of
rebuilding next year. Given the history of governments and promises,
you cannot blame the people for finding this unacceptable.
Furthermore,
the bureaucracy and Council majority actions have done nothing to alleviate this suspicion – meetings behind closed doors, motions
rammed through without debate and a whole catalogue of political
trickery. These include stone-walling, denial, ridicule, strawman
arguments and spin. These tactics are dishonest and treat the people
as the enemy. (It should be added that while the city trots out its
experts, the Coalition also has its engineers, geologists etc, but
the counter-information is dismissed out of hand by the City.)
This
is an obvious failure of the governmental system. Rather than
democracy, we have an elected dictatorship. Once elected, many (most?) officials think
they can do whatever they want and the people be damned. (Pardon the
pun.) Furthermore, we have a permanent, unelected government in the
shape of the bureaucracy. They should be working for us, not the other
way around.
If
the situation wasn't ugly enough, count on our City council majority
to make matters worse. Let's put out that camp fire with a bucket of
gasoline! They are seeking a preemptive injunction against us in
case we engage in civil disobedience to stop the destruction. I have
never, in my long career as an activist, pamphleteer and organizer,
heard of such a thing. Generally, the injunction is granted AFTER you
do something. A preemptive injunction smacks of 1984. When you think
about it, such an action negates your basic democratic rights.
It
is really amazing what is happening here. I could spend 50 years
handing out pamphlets on how the system is authoritarian and how we
need real democracy – people's power – and never do as much to
educate people of the nature of the system as one bullying action on
the part of the City. I ought to thank the Council majority and the bureaucracy for making this old radicals task so easy!
I
have never seen so much anger in my life as the residents of this
neighborhood are expressing. This is going to be a long hot summer!
