Still, the city built the Dunsmuir & Georgia viaducts, demolishing the historic Black Hogan’s Alley neighborhood, expecting the freeway would eventually connect to the viaducts.

To this day, Vancouver is the only major North American city without an inner-city freeway.

3/3

The community in Chinatown pushed back, and activists tirelessly organized and worked with sympathetic municipal officials on the inside to make the plan unappealing for the federal government to fund. It worked.

2/3

I think about this image a lot.

Like other cities in North America, Vancouver had a massive freeway project planned that would have wrapped around the waterfront & decimated inner-city neighborhoods.

The difference is that in Vancouver, it never came to full fruition.

1/3🧵

"Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening."
— Chico Mendes

It’s not your fault climate change is happening.

No amount of recycling, biking to work, or eating vegan meals will stop what’s happening.

The 1% treat Earth like their playground, to exploit & amass wealth. This can only be fixed by restructuring & democratizing our economy.

As Canada cheers on Israel’s war, remember that this is what Stephen Harper wrote after Jean Chrétien refused to join the Iraq war.

As usual, Conservatives were on the wrong side of history, and unfortunately Mark Carney seems to be taking more notes from Harper than Chrétien.

After Iraq and Afghanistan, you’d think that Americans would learn that regime change doesn’t work.

If strikes on Iran continue, what will inevitably happen is a rally around the flag effect where hatred of the west and the influence of hardliners and radicals will flourish.

Also, wealth in this sense isn't even a good metric for quality of life - Americans work way more hours for less benefits than Europeans and are thus "richer" in one sense, but are more miserable.

4/4

Most obviously, when you don't take into account inequality in wealthy distribution, while AVERAGE (mean) wealth may be higher in one place, because of a more unequal distribution, MEDIAN wealth could be way lower, as is the case with the U.S.'s insane wealth inequality.

2/4

I keep hearing the claim: "Europe/Canada is poorer than Mississippi - the poorest U.S. state"

This is untrue. GDP per capita is a terrible metric for prosperity that doesn’t take inequality, tax havens, manufacturing/industry, labour regulations, and more into account.

1/4🧵

As the prairies burn, it’s unfortunate to see our PM greenwash & promote “decarbonized” oil pipelines.

You can make production/transport cleaner, but the combustion of oil, the source of 70-80% of emissions, will always emit CO2.

“Decarbonized oil” is about as ridiculous as “deoxygenated water”.

When examining high development charges, underfunded municipal services, housing speculation, & other shortfalls cities face, it becomes apparent that raising property taxes (which here in Vancouver are the lowest in NA) would solve many of our problems.

Graph credit: Sightline Institute

Cities aren’t smoggy - Cars cause smog
Cities aren’t loud - Cars are loud
Busy streets aren’t dangerous - Cars are dangerous

When you plan for less cars, you get cleaner, quieter, safer cities.

This is the reason young people will never own a home.

It may be politically inconvenient, but it’s true: Society has no obligation to protect your overvalued investments.

If you disagree, you can’t honestly say you want housing to be affordable.

Costs need to come down.

First Past the Post in action.

The NDP and the Bloc have the same vote share (which is admittedly abysmal) but the Bloc get over TRIPLE the number of seats of the NDP.

We need Proportional Representation.

These are some of the most disappointing results from the election.

These are all NDP-incumbent seats where enough traditional NDP voters voted Liberal to elect Conservatives due to vote-splitting.

“Strategic voting” wasn’t so strategic after all.

The NDP will be able to have pretty outsized influence and hold the balance of power as ~169+7=Majority of seats.

We also won't be thrown into an election anytime soon: The NDP doesn't have a leader, and Pierre Poilievre is (at least for now) no longer Leader of the Opposition.

Also, if you live in an urban riding (below are examples in BC) & are thinking of voting strategically, there’s a good chance the Conservatives aren’t even a threat.

These races are really NDP vs Liberal, in which case, there's no reason to not vote NDP if you're a progressive.

For my friends on Vancouver Island:

Vote NDP to stop the Conservatives.

These are all seats with NDP incumbents, yet what’s happening is that NDP voters are voting Liberal to try and stop the Conservatives, not know that they are actually helping them by splitting the vote.