Quote:
Originally Posted by thistleclub
I think therein is a bit of the rub. HLR has made some great inroads in its short life, but the economic development angle is arguably what drove the message home.
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I think the lesson here is that
the way to achieve success is not through opposition and conflict but through building relationships and finding common ground with the people you're trying to convince. We decided to make our case on economic development because it's supported by a very strong empirical case and it's an argument everyone can get behind without having to 'lose face' or concede some kind of ideological defeat.
To be honest, the case for light rail practically makes itself. Aside from the physical work of doing the background research, preparing our slides, contacting groups, arranging meetings, showing our presentation, and so on, it hasn't been a difficult 'sell'. Everywhere we've gone, we have been received very enthusiastically.
Again, I think that has a lot more to do with light rail in itself than with our efforts to promote it. You'd have to be pretty spectacularly inept or cleverly diabolical to make light rail look bad.
There's another lesson in here:
if you want to achieve success, start or join a campaign that's concrete and winnable. To put it bluntly, certain elements of Hamilton's activist community seem to have gotten pretty comfortable with losing - with being on the 'morally proper' side of an issue in a hopeless stance of reactive opposition. That may be comforting in an identity politics kind of way, but it doesn't lead to tangible gains.
I don't want to overthrow the system; I want to make it work better. Radical politics may be personally gratifying for radicals but it doesn't help improve people's lives. Build relationships with people across the various divides (urban/exurban, liberal/conservative, business/labour, etc.), try to understand and respect everyone's values and priorities, and look for issues and arguments on which you can all agree.
For example, environmentalists and poverty advocates joined up with the Chamber of Commerce in 2006 in a campaign to stop council from raising fares. It was simple, empirical, broad-based, and successful. (Note: the city dodged a repeat campaign in 2007 by rushing the introduction of the fare increase recommendation to the public works committee on a Monday and ratifying it in council just two days later.)
Better transit, higher quality integrated affordable housing, new investment into poor neighbourhoods, safer streets and pedestrian crossings, continuous bike lanes, tree plantings, community gardens and so on: these are the kinds of issues on which you can make a strong case from evidence, build broad support across socioeconomic and partisan lines, and achieve success.
Environment Hamilton has enjoyed some remarkable successes in such cooperative partnerships, from the Tonnes for Trees campaign a few years ago to the north end transit study (which led to the new Wellington/Victoria bus loop) and the current Kirkendall walkability study. As a result, they have a lot of credibility with city staff and councillors, which you need to have if you want to be taken seriously since they are the very people who prepare recommendations and vote on them, respectively. [Disclosure: I worked for Environment Hamilton part-time for a year as their Transit Users Group coordinator.]
Even the most obstinant councillors will respond to a strong argument backed by strong public support. You
can convince Lloyd Ferguson that light rail is a smart, worthwhile investment in economic development. You
can persuade Terry Whitehead that two-way street conversions help create vibrant neighbourhoods.
But to do so, you need to organize passionate advocates, make your case to the community, attract the attention of the newsmedia, and build relationships with the people who form policies and make decisions.
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