A Letter to Occupy Newfoundland from a Current Ex-Patriot

Hey folks,

I’m currently not in the province – I’m doing graduate work in Toronto – but I’ve got a mild request, or rather a hope, for this particular variant of the Occupy Movement.

Friends, we’ve recently had an election, one which has had one of the lowest turnouts in the history of our province. Yet, we have another four years till we can gather and rectify that fact. However, our government has once again decided to shut its doors and act as mere managers, rather than as true leaders. I say this not to dispute the results of an election, but to address a more fundamental sickness in our provincial democracy.

This is a province and government now beholden to corporate interest from Big Oil to other resource based plunderers, not even counting the growing burden the state will place on its citizens through Muskrat Falls – much of whose benefit is outside this province. This state of affairs, my friends, is simply not good enough on the home front. We cannot be silent anymore. 

Friends, what we cannot allow – even if we have lost hope in our democracy or do not believe in the system as it stands – is for those mechanism to be shuttered and left unaccountable. The 99% who have not benefited from this province’s supposed growth in wealth now stand at a tipping point where history and a robust global movement could well be at their side.

Demand that your government, which again hides from its people, open its doors to you and demand that the corporations which – like bandits – have taken hold of our collective wealth and means of prosperity be held to account. 

Hand those in power, with your dissent, a back to work order.
Tell those who benefit from our collective wealth, we want a fair share.

I wish you all the best in these things and hope success shall be yours in your General Assemblies, Committees and Occupation. 

All the best and Solidarity.

OPEN THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY? NO DICE. – A Dunderfail for Democracy.

Yes, once again following an Election in Newfoundland and Labrador, the ruling PCs have decided not to open the House of Assembly for a Fall Sitting.

In addition to the huge flaws in our electoral system, it seems that there is also an equally large void in the resultant governance of our fair province… but it’s not like I have to preach such things. This has been an ongoing issue for the past several years in the province.

So what should you do? Well firstly, if you want real change in these regards, my fellow Newfoundland and Labradorians, lets be real here and address the fact that such changes are not about to come from within our non-sitting House of Assembly.

It is high time for the people of this province, no matter their political stripe, to reshape the political and electoral systems under which we live. But to do this, we have to organize. If I were on the ground, in province, I’d be launching this idea off myself… but seeing as I’m not, I’d hope the ideas I lay out here will be of help in setting out issues for such an organization to tackle.

• First, the province needs to move away from First-Past-the-Post voting. As one can note from the popular vote during this past election, the Opposition should be – by all means – much larger than it currently it, large enough between the Liberals and NDP to present a much more apt opposition to the kind of tactics being used here by the Dunderdale Government. But what’s important here is not what could be done, rather, there is the simple fact that the will of the people of the province is not being accurately represented.
• We need to deal with the mess created by fixed election dates, particularly how the system deals with advanced polling. This would, of course, be dependent on whatever voting system was in use, but there are others who have commented sufficiently on how to fix this for current system. 
• There must be a required minimum sitting days for our House of Assembly. By no means can we continue to have government act – as the Dunderdale government will now – on matters of governance without the input of an opposition force to bring questions and due diligence.
• We must revive the notion, in our democracy, that one can run and act as an independant within our system. As has been pointed out over the last election, the number of indepdent candidates in this province has dipped to extremely low levels, which is deeply concerning and counter to an openly democratic state which has increasingly become entirely beholden to party politic.

Anyways, it’s not like any of this is new – NL politicos have raised each of these a thousand times – but now is the time to act on these matters. If we don’t begin to organize now to make these reforms, how will we ever be truly ready for 2015?

All the best, 

– Brad.

PS: Do you have any further ideas?

(Source: http://memegenerator.net/instance/10594744)