Car Culture, the CIA, Pope Francis & more -- The Left Chapter Holiday Reading List December 18 - 25

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of December 18 - 25. It is in order of date of the article's  release. As Christmas fell on a Sunday it comes one day later than usual.

1) Still fighting for our seat at the table: Keep the national inquiry focus on Indigenous women and girls

Cherry Smiley, Feminist Current

Our lives as Indigenous women and girls are severely impacted by male violence, poverty, and other expressions of patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. We should, therefore, be allowed to prioritize issues that directly impact us. But some Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals believe that we should now, at the eleventh hour, rethink and redo decades of focused political strategy and no longer support a national inquiry into disappeared and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Rather, they say we should expand the national inquiry to include disappeared and murdered Indigenous men and boys.

Read the full article.

2) Obama and the Clintons still have no earthly idea why the Democratic Party lost the presidential election 

Shaun King, New York Daily News

Over the past few days, the Obamas and the Clintons have made a series of statements on why the Democratic Party lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. The statements, if anything, reveal what happens when politicians are isolated from the American public for so long. While some nuggets of truth could be found there — by and large they all severely miss the mark on how and why Hillary Clinton lost. Instead of looking internally at mistakes they made, they continue to look outward — casting blame on anybody and everybody but themselves.

Read the full article.

3) ‘Fake News’ in America: Homegrown, and Far From New

Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The media landscape in America is dominated by “fake news.” It has been for decades. This fake news does not emanate from the Kremlin. It is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that is skillfully designed and managed by public relations agencies, publicists and communications departments on behalf of individuals, government and corporations to manipulate public opinion. This propaganda industry stages pseudo-events to shape our perception of reality. The public is so awash in these lies, delivered 24 hours a day through electronic devices and print, that viewers and readers can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction.

Read the full article.

4) Canadians are wrong about Muslims, happiness, and homosexuality

CBC Radio

Canadians think there are way more Muslims in Canada than there really are.
We think a third of Canadians believe homosexuality is immoral, but in reality, only a sliver of the population thinks so.

On average, Canadians believe a quarter of the population think it's wrong to have sex before marriage. In reality, only 15% of us think you should get hitched before hooking up.

Read/hear the full article.

5) Letter to a “comrade” who insists on justifying the unjustifiable

 Julien Salingue, Medium

“Comrade”,

For several weeks now I’ve been saying to myself that I’m going to write to you, and the tragic events of Aleppo and your reaction to them, and sometimes your non-reaction, is what eventually persuaded me that the time had come to address you.

Read the full article.

6) The top 10 most irritating Canadians of 2016 (TV-related)

John Doyle, The Globe and Mail

What a year, my dears. Are we jaded yet?

Trump and Brexit, terrorist attacks and death. The endless deaths. All those celebrities passing away and, well, in case somebody feels like fixating on that, the countless dead in wars, bombings and shootings as the viciousness of human hatred was on full display. A year of hackers, hotheads and liars.

Read the full article.

7) Private car, socialized costs

Yves Engler, Rabble

The second in a four-part series on the "great Toronto toll debate."

When are capitalists in favour of public ownership? When it earns them a profit. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than when looking at car companies.

Read the full article.

8) Michigan Dem Meeting Breaks Into Violence as Clinton Fans Repel Sanders Partisans

Michael Sainato, Observer

On December 3, the Michigan Democratic Party held a committee meeting, open to the public and party members, to vote on delegates to represent Michigan at the Democratic National Committee. Unfortunately, rather than learning from Hillary Clinton’s presidential election loss, and sincerely welcoming Bernie Sanders supporters into the party after scolding them for more than a year, the Democratic establishment has continued treating progressives as second class citizens.

Read the full article. 

9) Car-centric landscape, not tolls, harm the poor

Yves Engler, Rabble

The third in a four-part series on the "great Toronto toll debate."

There's no doubt tolls hurt poor people, but a car-dominated transportation system does far more damage and everyone who wants a more just society should support measures that help rid our over-heating planet of private automobiles.

Read the full article.

9) A black mother told police a white man assaulted her child. They arrested her instead.

Peter Holley, The Washington Post

A Fort Worth police officer has been placed on “restricted duty status” after a viral video emerged Wednesday showing the officer arresting a mother who called authorities to report that her 7-year-old son has been assaulted.

Read the full article.

10) The CIA Is Not Your Friend

Jordy Cummings, Jacobin

The Central Intelligence Agency used to be the “bad guy.” After the coup in Chile and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam; after spying on and repressing the antiwar movement; after secret mind-control experiments and bizarre assassination plots, the agency became liberals’ ultimate bogeyman.

Read the full article.

11) Trump’s unpopularity threatens to hobble his presidency

Steven Shepard, Politico

President-elect Donald Trump will descend on Washington next month, buoyed by his upset victory and Republican control of Congress to implement his agenda.

But he’s facing a major obstacle: Trump will enter the White House as the least-popular incoming president in the modern era of public-opinion polling.

Read the full article.

12) Unhappy Holidays: Houston Police Force Homeless People to Throw Away Food

Jeremiah Jones, Counter Current News

Local activists attempting to hand out food and gifts were shocked on Thursday afternoon when Houston police forced the homeless to throw away the donations.  Around 1 pm on Thursday,  several individuals met in downtown Houston to distribute plates of hot food, blankets, and other supplies to the city’s growing homeless population. Soon after, Houston police arrived on the scene of two different intersections where the homeless advocates were giving out gifts and food.

Read the full article. 

13) Pope Francis: Christmas has been ‘taken hostage’ by materialism

Reuters

Pope Francis said Christmas has been “taken hostage” by dazzling materialism that puts God in the shadows and blinds many to the needs of the hungry, the migrants and the war-weary.

Read the full article.

14) Germany moves to atone for 'forgotten genocide' in Namibia

Jason Burke, The Guardian

It has become known as the first genocide of the 20th century: tens of thousands of men, women and children shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down rebellious tribes in what is now Namibia. For more than a century the atrocities have been largely forgotten in Europe, and often in much of Africa too.

Read the full article.

See also: Climate Change, Porn Culture, Tolls & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 11 - 18

See also: Last Tango in Paris, the TDSB, Duterte & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 4 - 11

The threat of climate change is immediate and real -- Ending 'car culture' is a key part of combating it

At times it seems that while generally claiming to believe that climate change is an existential threat that we must confront, many social democrats appear to be totally unwilling to accept the reality of what kind of steps need to be taken to do something about it.

Simply look at the air of unreality in many of the online and social media debates about road tolls occurring in Ontario now -- most of the time made completely detached from what we know about the dangers of fossil fuel consumption.

The issue is not Toronto Mayor John Tory's plan (which is a stupid plan, though it matters very much on what basis you oppose it or propose changes to it) or this plan or that plan, it is cars themselves and car culture -- and there is nothing more regressive than car culture.

It is not just that some folks are lining up with Patrick Brown and Ezra Levant to oppose a plan supported by Ontario's awful Liberal government and the mayor -- making this one of the great fights between bad and bad in recent memory -- and it is not just that in doing so they are embracing reactionary anti-tax rhetoric that is totally unnecessary to questioning the wisdom or efficacy of Tory's proposal,  it is that doing this in the way it is being done also inherently embraces the notion that people should be able to continue to drive cars if they "need" or want to to the extent that they do now.

And that is not just reactionary, it is delusional.

Cars and commercial vehicles are, quite literally, playing a key role in destroying the world. They are, and not that slowly either, making sick or killing you, your friends, your family, your neighbours, your co-workers, your children and millions of people you don't know.

They are a plague of fossil fuel consuming locusts and the incredibly  privileged North American car culture where so many tens of millions commute by themselves in cars everyday is simply not sustainable and simply not going to continue no matter what.

According to Statistics Canada on average "74.0% of commuters, or 11.4 million workers drove a vehicle to work" by themselves on any given day in Canada in 2011 (the last year for which there are statistics). Carpooling is still unusual, and why would it not be? The government and municipalities are not doing anything serious, for the most part, to get people to carpool.

In the United States the percentage of people driving alone to work is 76.4% and carpooling has declined dramatically since 1980.

Yet, as a friend of mine on Facebook remarked "the problem is the fuel consumption and carbon emissions resulting from private car ownership is unsustainable yet North Americans reject any solution that entails giving up your automobile."

To think the present situation can or will be able to go on as it is now is straight up climate change denial. You literally cannot believe that the present situation can continue with car and commercial vehicle usage as it is now and claim to be in favour of fighting climate change.

These two positions are incompatible.

Cars are not the only aspect of our patterns of consumption that are unsustainable, but they are a major one. Massive changes in meat (especially beef) production and consumption as well as changes to industrial agriculture lie of necessity ahead as well, as do changes to how we produce many consumer items more broadly.

We are past the point by far where individual decisions will make a serious difference. It is not about this or that person doing the wrong or the right thing. It is a much broader issue than that requiring large scale government and societal action.

As always, as the effects of global warming get worse and worse, without serious and systemic reinventions of our economic systems and methods of distribution it is the poor, the marginalized, racialized communities and the peoples of the Third World who will pay the highest price and do so the soonest. Remember that if you see someone talking about what is or isn't 'elitist' or is or isn't 'regressive'.

This is also not an invention of mythical Toronto 'elites', a frankly bizarre talking point for a leftist to use given that it is basically directly lifted from the right.

Climate change is a fact, it is of the greatest concern to scientists and environmental activists around the world, politicians and people in some other parts of the world are doing significantly more about it and it is going to have a massive impact on your life and possibly kill you whether you live on Queen St. or in rural Manitoba or on an isolated potato commune in the most remote place on the planet.

Tolls don't even start to get there, especially not a silly plan like Tory's that is not even about stopping driving anyway. But the opposition to it has exposed just how many think that people driving where they want, when they want is some kind of inalienable right or social necessity.

People have to stop driving in the way and patterns they do now. It is a form of collective suicide if we allow the present situation to keep going. And it really seems we will -- there is no political will out there at all to change it.

When a figure like David Suzuki says "For years, we've been subsidizing [the oil and gas industry] with billions of dollars. Let's claw that back and let's put that into the job creating areas of renewable energies, of bus lines, all of the things that need to be done. Let's invest in that direction." and opposes pipelines, many people on the left will nod their heads in approval without seeming to give any thought to the reality that doing something about this will entail broad and dramatic social changes.

The steps we actually need to start taking will make road tolls look like nothing. Ending the massive public subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and creating serious disincentives to driving will both require and result in far higher gas prices, enforced carpooling, limitations on driving, banning the production and driving of luxury and certain types of other cars, much higher taxes on purchasing cars themselves and a massive shift in public infrastructure spending from a transportation system centered around private vehicles to the creation of extensive public transportation systems both in and outside of municipal areas.

And if we don't begin to take these steps collectively now we will be forced to in desperation shortly.

Almost daily there is news of the mass extinctions coming, the alarming heating of the planet happening far faster than anticipated, the possibility of a methane/temperature feedback loop (which could literally be an extinction level event),  and on-and-on-and-on.

As was noted at the end of an incredibly unnerving article in the Guardian, "Earth is warming 50x faster than when it comes out of an ice age":

The sooner we transition away from fossil fuels and cut our carbon pollution, the better we’ll be able to limit the climate destabilization and associated damages. It’s a sobering thought: our children, grandchildren, and future generations for hundreds, even thousands of years will feel the impacts of the choices we make over the next decade.

It is beyond disturbing. This is what we face and time is running out.

No matter how much people may not want to accept it, this is fact. And if the left is serious about climate change it needs to understand and advocate for the reality that we have to make dramatic changes to the fabric of our way of life so that we don't join the dinosaurs.

Especially as it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how these changes can be made within the context of a capitalist or market economy. They certainly cannot be made in a neo-liberal ideological context in a way that would not be cruel, Malthusian and Social Darwinist.

It is to us to propose, create and advocate for a new vision of society that takes us beyond this in ways that include everyone equitably given the changes to consumption and production that must lie ahead. If we don't, they will happen anyway (they cannot be avoided) but it will be a future that surely will be deeply dystopian.

Outrage about road tolls and waxing poetic about how people should not have to pay more to use their cars and trucks in the ways they do now, no matter what plan we are talking about, is simply out of touch with the environmental issues confronting us.

See also: What is with all the Ontario left ranting about road tolls and Toronto 'elites'?

See also: The TTC 'fare evasion' fraud and Toronto's fiscal chickens coming home to roost

What is with all the Ontario left ranting about road tolls and Toronto 'elites'?

While this trope has been around for a while, with the rather facile lines of debate that have arisen of late given Toronto Mayor John Tory's road toll plan, the bizarre and reactionary notion that Toronto is somehow a city comprised of latte drinking academics, intellectuals, and pompous elitists sneering at the rest of the province has reared its head again among lefties in Ontario.

Personally, as I have written about before, I think that John Tory's toll plan, whatever its alleged theoretical merits, is a distraction that will neither raise anywhere near the revenue required to help finance desperately needed transit expansion in the city nor will it raise any revenue of any kind for anything for many years anyway due to the length of time it will take to actually create the legal framework and infrastructure for the tolls.

Having said that, much of the recent left opposition to road tolls generally that is centered around a narrative that they are, in all cases and circumstances, regressive or an attack on 'poor' car drivers and on non-Torontonian Ontarians is simplistic and deeply problematic.

First, Torontonians generally and Toronto transit users specifically have been subsidizing the infrastructure and fuel usage of car drivers across the province for a very long time. The vast majority of people have no real understanding to what extent the government subsidizes the private use of cars. I wrote about it at some length in the piece "It is time for a war on the car". The notion that it is somehow 'regressive' to take steps to right this imbalance is bizarre.

Further, something has to be done to start to get people out of their cars. The present situation environmentally is simply not sustainable, no matter what people want to believe. There is no progressive, left, environmental or moral case for continuing this subsiding of car use as a society that makes any sense at all. It is literally helping to kill us all, and that can be said without hyperbole unless you are a climate change denier.

But it is surprising the number of people on the left who accept the grim reality of climate change but are unwilling to accept even the most minor consequences of what we need to do to stop it.

Trust me, as climate change gets worse and worse it will not be supposed elitists in Toronto alone who will pay the price.

Also, transit users -- who are statistically more likely to be from lower income groups and marginalized communities and who are doing the environmentally right thing -- are all made to pay 'tolls' and 'user fees' every time they ride in the form of transit fares. So unless you have a plan or are committed to eliminating those, opposing road tolls as a leftist strikes me as rather rank hypocrisy.

As a friend of mine put it on Facebook "Transit users pay $3.25 per ride or $140 a month for a Metropass - yet it's only when road tolls of $2 are proposed do we hear "TO THE BARRICADES!" from Ontario's social democrats." Indeed.

There is little that seems more 'elitist' than watching an endless stream of cars with a single person in them speed by long lines of people waiting to get on overcrowded transit with no understanding of just how much money the public spends to allow these car drivers to do this. As just one example, the many billions of dollars of public money that go into building and maintaining the very roads they drive on, all overwhelmingly used by private cars or commercial vehicles. Our cities are literally centered around them. To imply that asking them to pay a greater share for the privilege is somehow regressive is rather like rolling down your car window and screaming 'I'm all right Jack' on the way by that streetcar or bus stop.

Frankly, for the ONDP to join hands with Brown's Conservatives in some broad attack on tolls and to embrace a paint-by-numbers right wing anti-tax stance is typical of the party now and is grotesque.

While road tolls are certainly not even close to the only tool in these fights, and are not always the best one, sweeping reactionary generalizations about them are not helpful and feed broader anti-tax narratives.

Much of this anti-road toll, anti-tax pseudo-populism is served up with a generous side helping of hating Toronto. Especially all those 'elitists' who apparently live in it.

One would have thought that this inane rhetoric -- embraced by leading lights like Warren Thomas in the last provincial election -- that had such disastrous consequences for the ONDP in 2014 would have been put to bed already.

Apparently not.

It is, simply put, idiotic for leftists in Ontario to mimic the anti-Toronto rhetoric of the right. No left wing or progressive government, even a milquetoast NDP one, will ever be elected in Ontario without carrying Toronto, a fact that the Liberals seem to grasp far better than the ONDP and some others.

Despite all of the silliness, Toronto has a long tack record of supporting the left. In 1990 when the ONDP was actually elected under Rae they won 18 of their 74 seats in Toronto, which represented 24.3% of the total. They could not have achieved a majority without them.

In subsequent years Toronto (by which I mean the 'old' city and all its boroughs, but not Mississauga, Brampton, etc.) came through for the NDP again. When it lost in 1995, 5 of the 17 seats it won were in Toronto, or 29.4%. In 1999 3 of the 9 seats or 33%. In 2003 it was 3 of 7, an even higher percentage. In 2007 4 of 10 and in 2011 5 of 17 again.

A notable exception was the last election when Horwath's ONDP thumbed its nose at the issues that were of greatest concern to Torontonians and they responded by punishing the ONDP in the city where they won only 2 of their 21 seats.

The huge wave of red that swept across Toronto played a key role in giving Wynne her majority government. The lesson of this should have been clear to New Democrats and leftists more broadly.

But they have not learned it.

Toronto is home to many of the most progressive voters in the province. The left is not going to come to power here without them. Period. To think otherwise is not just fantasy but foolhardy.

Beyond that though, to talk of Toronto elites simply ignores what is actually going on in Toronto, which sees some of the most desperate poverty and marginalization in the province. This is a city of terrible income disparities in the midst of a severe housing crisis. For decades now transit infrastructure -- and infrastructure and social policy more broadly -- that would greatly help some of its most marginalized and racialized communities has been forsaken as successive governments prioritized other agendas that left these communities behind.

Toronto is the base as well to a wide array of activist groups and grassroots community organizations that fight day in and day out for social justice. That many both inside and outside the city do not acknowledge or respect this does not change this fact.

Given the reality of life and the struggle faced by so many of its residents the portrayal of Toronto as a bedrock of elitism is offensive.

As for sneering talk of 'academics' are we really going to embrace the anti-intellectualism of the right? The notion that academics and intellectuals all inhabit some 'ivory tower' and are out-of-touch with 'reality' is an essential component of the right wing ideological assault on evidence and fact based policy. Scratch the surface of most people out there ranting about academics and you find someone who denies climate change, thinks "cultural Marxism" is destroying society and who believes that "social justice warriors" are reverse racists and sexists that have made it so it is now men and white people who are really discriminated against and oppressed.

If this is the rhetorical road some folks on the left want to start down, count me out.

It is claptrap that emboldens and aids right wingers and it really has to stop along with the rubbish about feminist or anti-racist 'elites' and 'political correctness'.

The actual, honest-to-god reality is that Toronto is a huge, diverse city with millions of people in it many of whom are a paycheque away from destitution or, sadly, already there. It needs government investment in transit, housing, social programs and infrastructure desperately and, yes, this is important to the province as a whole just as it is that we ensure that these needs are met in every community and that rural roads and infrastructure are maintained as well.

We are, after all, living in a society.

If people see calls to invest government funds in ways that directly improve the lives of millions of people, calls to find ways to combat the deadly scourge of car driving and its environmental impact, and calls to use a variety of means at our disposal to pay for this 'elitist', then they really need to seriously reflect on why they do.

Because they are not.

See also: The myth of the leftist, feminist, anti-racist, elitist

See also: The myth of political correctness -- That last redoubt of the bigot, racist and misogynist

Linda McQuaig states a fact -- Everyone freaks out

Star NDP candidate Linda McQuaig went off message for a brief moment on CBC TV on Friday and did the seemingly unthinkable in mainstream politics these days -- she told the unvarnished truth!



McQuaig stated, completely correctly, that for Canada to hit its climate change targets “a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground" which is, of course, an obvious fact.

But facts and political narratives are not the same thing and all of the mainstream parties, the Greens included, indulge in the fiction of "sustainable" fossil fuel production and usage.

A fiction it remains, however.

Fossil fuel usage is literally destroying the world. Car culture may yet kill us all.

But in North America where this culture is deeply ingrained it is essentially forbidden to admit that we cannot tackle the looming catastrophe of climate change without ending car culture and without profound changes to fossil usage and production.

After her comments were reported all over the media as some type of fundamental heresy, Stephen Harper, of course, pounced on the comments claiming they showed the NDP has a "hidden agenda".

Sadly, this is not at all the case.

The NDP  not only immediately distanced itself from her statement, but the NDP also, as much as any other party, perpetuates the fantasy that "economic growth" as it has been understood since the dawn of industrial civilization, and averting environmental disaster are compatible -- which they are not.

For the record, though -- and in the interests of reality -- here is what McQuaig was talking about:

British researchers have concluded that most of Canada’s oilsands will have to be left in the ground, if the world gets serious about climate change.
The report, published in the journal Nature, says three-quarters of all Canada’s oil reserves and 85 per cent of its oilsands can’t be burned if the world wants to limit global warming. The report also concludes that no country’s Arctic energy resources can be developed if global temperature increases are to be kept manageable.
It adds that about one-quarter of Canada’s natural gas reserves and four-fifths of its coal would also have to be left in the ground.

Now we can pretend that this is not true, which is what our "leaders" and our society is doing, or we can grow up.

Either way, if we continue to fiddle with political fantasies while the planet burns, who was right about this will become very clear soon enough anyway.

We can only hope that at that point it is not too late.

Free transit: Three reasons it is an idea whose time has come

Originally published in April 2014 at rabble.ca & the Socialist Project Bullet

On January 1, 2013, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became the largest city in the world to make mass transit free for its residents. While the effects of having done this are, of course, specific to the context of the city itself, it has shown that a major city can do it and that it has been widely popular with its residents. It has also focused attention on a growing international movement of groups, activists and parties who feel that free mass transit in major urban areas is an important social and environmental goal to be worked towards in the near future.

In a culture such as ours, where cars are very deeply entwined with notions of personal identity and freedom, and where the right has convinced people (falsely) that government can afford to do nothing of any significance, free transit seems at first, no doubt, like utopian nonsense to many. But given the enormous amount government invests in subsidizing the infrastructure and gas that cars rely on, and given the environmental and social equality issues involved, this is not the case at all.

Free transit is an idea whose time has come and there are three truly significant reasons it needs to be front and centre as an ultimate objective in any left municipal agenda in Canada.

1) The environment and fighting car culture

It is impossible to overstate the devastating and ongoing effects that cars and fossil fuels have on the environment. A United Nations report released on March 31, 2014, painted a dire picture of the predicament we have gotten ourselves into globally and without immediate and drastic action it is only going to get worse.

Even setting future climate change aside for a moment, air pollution caused by cars is killing people in very large numbers right now. A University of British Columbia study in October, 2013 showed that car pollution causes the premature deaths of 21,000 Canadians annually; nine times as many as are killed in car accidents.

Writing yesterday in The Guardian, Desmond Tutu went so far as to call for an Apartheid-style boycott of the companies responsible for climate change and of the fossil fuel industry. He directly called for the ending of the massive government subsidies of fossil fuels that occur globally.

In Canada these subsidies to gas and energy consumption amount to $26 billion annually, which means that 4 per cent of all government revenues were spent on them. This is a staggering fact. It also clearly shows that claims that government lacks the money to finance expanded, adequate and free transit in major urban centres are simply not true.

When one factors in possible dedicated revenue streams like tolls, gas taxes or taxes on luxury vehicles, or the possibility of a dedicated income tax increase on people with incomes over a certain level, there is absolutely no reason that free transit is not a quickly achievable goal.

Our governments and parties lack the political will and have prioritized energy consumption, including fossil fuel consumption, as well as catering to the perceived needs of car driving voters, ahead of transit.

Car culture, admittedly, is deeply engrained in Canada. It is also clear that steps have to be taken now to change that. Free transit would play a direct and obvious role in getting people out of cars and onto transit and in changing our collective perceptions of how to get to work, schools, the grocery store and recreation.

2) Social inclusion

Since Tallinn introduced its experiment in free transit one of the most pronounced benefits of the first year has been a large increase in ridership in an outlying neighbourhood with high population density and poverty rates.

This makes sense. Free transit would be an obvious way to incorporate neighbourhoods with high poverty rates or population densities that are detached from the overall economic and cultural life of the city into the fabric of city life as a whole.

Museums, art galleries, cultural or political events, parks and waterfronts and so many other essential parts of the urban experience would be there to visit at no cost in fares. Fares can add up. A family of two parents with three kids in Toronto, for example, wanting to go to its iconic High Park on a weeknight or to the Art Gallery of Ontario (which unlike the park is not free) would pay $16.80 for the round trip by TTC. That is a substantial addition to any outing.

For workers whose incomes are already stretched to the breaking point by substandard and poverty level minimum wages, these kinds of fare levels are directly and demonstrably a contributing factor in social exclusion.

Beyond opening up the city to neighbourhoods excluded from full participation in it, the reverse is also true. It would open up neighbourhoods that few visit to new possibilities to host cultural or artistic events and to become destinations. This has profound potential economic benefits.

This is especially true when free transit is made a central component of transit expansion overall so that not only are fares free, but the routes are there to make the free fares effective and worthwhile.

3) Income inequality and economic justice

Free transit has a real role to play in issues of economic justice and income inequality.

As we have already seen, our government spends vast sums of money to subsidize fossil fuels and car usage. This does not even include the money that must be spent by municipalities and governments on the infrastructure cars require.

These subsidies are made at the expense of those on lower incomes and those living in poverty. Directly. They use government funds that could be utilized by transit and any number of other programs to fund and facilitate a lifestyle choice that is of far greater benefit to the middle class, the upper middle class and the wealthy. In this sense they represent a redistribution of government revenue from those of lower incomes to those of higher ones.

Even the International Monetary Fund noted that "subsidies were expensive for governments, and that, instead of helping consumers, they detracted from increased investment  in infrastructure, education and health care, which would help the poor  more directly."

One way that those on lower incomes and living in poverty can be more directly helped is free transit!

As one Tallinn resident put it, "I live on a tight budget since I don't have too much work right now. I need to save money wherever I can, so I'm very happy with the free public transit scheme. This is a good thing for the common person."

Transit fares, for those who have work, cut into these often substandard, poverty wages themselves in the daily commute to work. Free transit would facilitate the search for better jobs (or a job at all) outside of local neighbourhoods and would allow all of those using public transit to keep more of their income by choosing free public transit as opposed to driving or having to pay daily or monthly fares. It would be especially beneficial for those on fixed incomes or relying on social assistance.

We should not underestimate the impact that this can have on the daily lives of millions of people.

It is also an issue of basic fairness. For many decades urban residents who could not afford to or who chose not to commute by car have been subsidizing those who did. They have been made to pay higher and higher fares on in many cases inadequate and overcrowded transit infrastructure while the priority has been given to cars, even in spite of the environmental repercussions of this. Most Canadian governments and municipalities have shied away from the use of tolls or the imposition of car pooling lanes, essentially facilitating the singularly destructive act of driving wherever one wants, whenever one wants, on one's own.

This has to change.

There are other reasons free transit makes sense. It would end the need to police fares and the daily confrontations between transit workers doing their jobs and some transit riders. It would signal a shift in our society's priorities. It would also, like free health care, be inspiring and transformative of how many look at the role of government and it would be very hard for even reactionaries to fully reverse once put in place in major cities.

Very recently the Coalition of Progressive Electors in Vancouver, one the country's largest municipal political formations, voted at a policy conference to make free transit a plank of their upcoming municipal campaigns. By doing so they have taken an important idea out of the "fringes" and put it into the civic discourse of the country's third largest city.

Hopefully this indicates a shift in thinking that will ripple through left-wing and progressive parties and municipal candidates from Calgary to Toronto to Montreal and to Halifax. A shift that will help to begin to make free transit the priority for our movements that it needs to be.

Photo: wikipedia commons