1 of 500

We’ve been out campaigning lately, Charlene and I.  We’ve been writing about politics and policy.  We’ve been tweeting and blogging and facebooking.  We’ve been knocking on people’s doors, talking to them and – in a drastic departure from the way things usually work – we’ve been listening to them too.  Here are some things we heard at various doors describing the current crop of politicians at Province House:

Bastards, crooks, criminals, in it for themselves, don’t care about Nova Scotia, screwing us.

Jeesh.  Talk about electoral dysfunction.  No wonder we have such low voter turnout – political cynicism is keeping us away from the voting booths in droves.  And so people were somewhat surprised to hear from me, surprised to meet someone out campaigning but readily acknowledging that there is no way he can win.   And let’s face it – I won’t win.  In fact, I don’t think I’m giving away any state secrets when I say that nobody from the Green Party will be sitting in Province House come June 10.

No, I can’t win – but I can contribute to the political discourse.  I can go knock on doors and talk about the importance of electoral reform and sustainability and the critical need for, but the sad lack of, long term vision from a group of politicians who can only see things through the time span of an election cycle.   When I stand on somebody’s doorstep and talk to them about Nova Scotia, I am not making any promises.  I am not offering to pave their streets with gold and fill their emergency rooms with new beds and keep young hooligans at home at night where they belong.   The only thing I have to offer is a voice, and a small voice at that.   So I ask some people to add their voice to mine, that it might ring a little louder.  So that, even if I cannot sit in the legislative assembly, the folks who do sit in there can hear us anyway.

I’m only looking for 500 votes, and that isn’t a whole lot.  But it’s enough siphoned away from the big three parties (remember when there were just a big two parties, and the NDP championed things like electoral reform and long term visions – those were the days, huh?) that somebody will have to listen.  The more people we can get to vote green, the more the mainstream parties have to notice that Nova Scotians are fed up with standard issue politics.  The more people we can get to vote green, the more the mainstream parties will have to notice that cheap ploys to score short term political advantage are no substitute for clear, long-range planning about the sustainability of our province.

I met a woman yesterday who was out in her garden and jokingly threatened to turn her hose on me if I talked about the election.  She was one of the people who used the word ‘bastards’ in her assessment of the people who currently populate our political landscape.  By the time we finished talking, she offered to put up a Green Party sign for me.  Turns out she doesn’t hate politics the way she thought, she hates politics the way it’s so long been done and she was refreshed to hear it might actually be done a different way.  She agreed to be one of the 500 people I am looking for.

Then I had a friend over last night who told me that if I said the truth to people, they wouldn’t vote for me.  He said that people will only vote for the politician who tells them what they want to hear – and that they will vote for that politician even though they know he’s lying.  I reject that premise.

And as I wander around my riding of Dartmouth South-Portland Valley, I’m looking for 500 other people who reject that premise as well.  Will you be one of them?