An Occupy Reading of the Posters for Kevin O'Leary's Redemption

Look at the background of the image. Kevin stands behind bars but with bank buildings behind him.

There he is, trapped behind bars in the Financial District. This begs the question: is Kevin, himself, trapped and seeking his redemption? Does he feel guilt at his life of luxury borne of selling shareware computer games? Is he sorry?

Kevin O'Leary is the prisoner. Desperately seeking his own salvation by castigating those who slipped through the cracks not to freedom, but to a new kind of jail.

Broken Escalators

I really want to be a liberal in all things. Liberals are young and attractive and fun (well, for the most part). I like to think of myself as a pretty ‘with it’ guy, and I support things like ‘rights.’

But the escalator in St. Clair West station has been broken for more than a week now, and everytime I walk past it, there’s no body working on it.

I rarely make it through a week and the subway stations that week takes me to, without encountering a broken escalator. Rarely is there anyone working on it.

When was the last time you saw a broken escalator at a shopping mall? I want to be a liberal, but I can’t get around the fact that in the private sector, when something breaks, it gets fixed immediately.

Unions, I really want to support you, but you have to stop being such goddamn assholes all the time.

Pro-Life? Abortion saved mine. Why I owe my existence to the existence of Choice

I haven’t thought about abortion in a long time and this story would have would have been better told three years ago, when we last even considered the possibility of a woman’s uteran (uteral?) rights being called into question in Canada. It would have been better for me to make this case then, but it doesn’t matter; the good guys won and a woman can abort if she needs to, and she is the person who can decide she needs to. It's not an issue people talk about that much here.

But they’re still talking about this in America. There’s this guy named Rick Santorum who says that under no circumstances should a woman be allowed to abort a child, not even in situations where her life, and even the baby’s life would are in jeopardy. People supporting this position say that abortion is murder, and that all life is sacred and to be protected. Anecdotally, I can’t bear this argument because I owe my life to abortion.

Abortion saved my life, or more accurately, I am alive because abortion was an option for my mother.

I have old parents; old enough that when they were thinking of trying to have a child, my mom was already at an age where attempting to have a child would have been risky to both of us, but specifically to me. (I won’t tell you exactly how old, of course, because she raised a gentleman.)

I only did the math recently, and only at that point, being old enough to recognize the risk of birth defects and pre-natal problems my mother opened me up to, did I confront her and ask, jokingly, about the irresponsibility of her decision.

She said she knew, at the time, about what she was getting into, and that she had undergone regular and thorough screenings at every stage of her pregnancy. “We knew that there were risks,” she said “but we kept a watch on it and everything turned out alright.”

“But what if there was something wrong? Would you have terminated me?” I asked

“We never talked about it. We figured we would make that decision if something came up, and it never did.”

“But knowing that abortion was on the table - that you had a way out – would you have started trying if that wasn’t an option?”

My mom says probably not. After that conversation, the debate took on a new light for me. I wouldn’t be alive if my mom didn’t have the option of not having me. Granted, this is anecdotal and a bit of an outlier at that, but there you go. If you claim to be pro-life, you’re actually anti-my life.

Abortion is a choice and choices, controversial or not, allow people the room to make decisions that are best for them. By constraining people to a rigid set of morals that may very well work for you, you bar those people from finding what works for them; sometimes with the exact same results. Abortion kills children? Abortion, or at least its existence and availability, gave my parents a child.

An Open Letter to Cllr. Josh Colle Re: Transit City

I sent this to my Councillor this morning. I'd encourage anyone who feels that Mayor Ford is screwing up transit in this city to not stop at tweeting hashtags, or posting to blogs, or talking about it in bars, but to actually call or email their councillor. Tell your friends to talk to theirs, especially those residents who live in wards either represented by centrist councillors (Bailão, Colle, Luby, Lee, Matlow, McMahon, Moeser and Robinson) or those who live in areas most affected by the change of plans (residents on Finch, Sheppard, Jane, etc).

Dear Councillor Colle,

As a resident of your Ward, I would ask that you lend your support to improving transit in this city.

Transit is not just a class issue. While many of your residents who rely on transit, such as myself, cannot afford the costs associated with car ownership, our individual and collective need for transit is not based on any ‘war’ on cars or those who drive them, but a desire to contribute to the economy of our city; a need for access to good jobs, wherever they are in the city. Furthermore, it is not an issue solely carried by the poor. The city’s business establishment has been quite vocal in warning of the effects our city’s gridlock has on lost productivity.

Our city’s poor transit system is an embarrassment for a city of our size, and a missed opportunity that hurts all of us, not just those who directly rely on it. Aside from the economic benefits of a strong transit system, I’m sure I need not remind you of the environmental benefits as well.

So again, please support the development of transit in Toronto.

I feel that the best way for you to do this, if given a choice between the original Transit City plan, and Mayor Ford’s current plan limited only to Eglinton and Sheppard lines, would be to support the revival of the original plan.

Now that we know the facts about the true costs of cancelling Transit City, as well as what we’ve known all along, that Transit City connects more Torontonians with good jobs, activities and each other, than Mayor Ford’s current plan, we are left with one clear conclusion: Mayor Ford’s plan costs more, gives us less, and will take longer to implement, for purely ideological reasons. Please, listen to the renewed calls to revive a good plan. I know that you never got a chance to vote on its demise, and I would suggest that as a respected, non-partisan member of Council, you are uniquely positioned to work towards a compromise that would revive the dream of effective, modern transit in this city, while finding a way to save face for Mayor Ford.

Thank you for your time,

Adam Owen

In the cyborg future, we'll all be conservatives

I often wonder what social changes will occur in my adult life that I will object to. I'm a liberal in most things, but I can accept the world I was born into; the world that changes as I change. Invariably, though, I will stop changing, having codified and accepted a world I'm comfortable with. What will my children and theirs think me an asshole for, though? An aversion to robot/human intermarriage maybe? A lack of willingness to extend voting rights to each one of a person's online avatars maybe? I suspect that my twitter self would vote differently than my facebook self, but all should be equal maybe.
I think that the trend I'm most likely to object to will be everyone else.
Why can't everyone see the world the way I do? is a question we make fun of conservatives for hypothetically asking themselves. Well one day that will be a real question I ask.
We are already seeing the diasporic effects of digital life, as we leave our community newspapers, opting instead for interest based message boards. And with near infinite options for media and social interaction will come near infinite options for facts and perpective. I choose what I want to read so in a way I cultivate my own world view. There's no guarantee that my view will even be based on the same input as my neighbor. This starts with news but extends to literature and eventually, in the future, even into the physical world. With technologies like occular implants and targeted communications we will interact with the physical world in completely unique ways.
I've come to frame the right vs left debate as a battle between individuality and collectivism; both good things and defendable in and of them selves. But how will we be able to have faith in our neighbors when they literally grow up and live in a different world than us?
I feel like in the future, we'll all be perfect individuals, conservative out of neccessity.