voxpopulicosmicum
Senior Member
I cite the issues I did because these are the issues I see discussed when watching City Council or reading this forum, Spacing, Torontoist, etc. They are discussed in this city far more than say the loss of the manufacturing base in Scarborough or the difficulty of housing a family on an industrial income or the accessibility of the skilled trades. They are such prominent issues not only because the right uses them as wedge issues but because bike lanes, green roofs, and pride parades represent the change in the city most progressives (including myself, to some degree) would like to see. All I am saying is that many in the working class may understandably have different priorities. Left versus right in this city often seems to trigger on public versus private. Transit versus the automobile, public space versus the backyard. Most established working class people probably drive, and like it that way. The places they work are less accessible by transit (almost every blue collar job I've had in Toronto was in the process of moving further away from dependable transit), as are the neighbourhoods where they can afford to live. Maybe some of them have no need for Nuit Blanche and the designer parks that delight us here, and only want enough money left over from working forty-eight hours for twenty years to have a place with a deck that they can sit on in the summer. Maybe Ford and Mammolitti represent those concerns for them. Above, someone who is awful uninhibited with the bigot label makes the sideways suggestion that blue collar workers may be stupid and bigoted if they don't share his idea of their best interests. This is the sort of person and politics that blue collar folk should welcome as their advocate? Maybe they're smarter about their individual interests than you think.
I don't think I follow the underlined sentence and the ones after it. I don't think anyone has put themselves forward as an advocate or spokesperson for the working class. I don't know what "individual interests" you're referring to. Do you mean "economic interests"? If so, then please explain why you think that to be the case.
The very point of your argument seems to be that it actually is in the interests of the working class to vote for Ford/Mammoliti, contrary to my assertion that they are "tricked" into doing so by wedge issue politics. But the reasons you cite (preference for cars, no use for Nuit Blanche) seem just to repeat wedge issues. It would be helpful if you could explain how Nuit Blanche or Sugar Beach works against the interests of the working class. Because I could certainly explain how cuts to social programs work against the interests of the working class.
The statements before the underlined sentence are very interesting and cut to the heart of the matter. You have, I think, accurately characterized the aspirations of a certain element of the working class. Yes, it is true that the values reflected in magazines like Spacing are different from those of the working class stereotype. But I don't see how that is different from any particular publication being a reflection of its audience, and Spacing doesn't pretend to be written for "everyone with a household income that is less than X dollars" (or whatever measure you use of working class).
Above all, I don't see how your descriptions of "blue collar" folk are different that what the rest of us are describing. For example, I agree 100% with your description of the working class as preferring private automobiles to public transit, largely as a function of the lack of proximity of their homes and workplaces to reliable public transit. As a formerly working class person myself, I recall there also being psychological motivations to driving my car instead of taking the bus or subway, but I will concede that the factors you describe are top of the list.
I also don't think it's an "either or" choice between, for example, Nuit Blanche and an industrial policy aimed at retaining manufacturing jobs (although I think the notion of retaining manufacturing jobs in Toronto is a lost cause, or more accurately a cause that belongs to an era that no longer exists).
Last edited: