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Yesterday I received a form email from Mayor Olivia Chow of Toronto, which started with these lines:
“Over the past months, tens of thousands of residents and community leaders spoke out about what Toronto’s waterfront means to them.
You shared your concerns, organized your communities, told your stories and made it clear that protecting our waterfront matters. Your passion and determination made it impossible for other levels of government to ignore the facts and the stakes of protecting our waterfront.
The federal government has decided not to move forward with the proposed expansion at Billy Bishop Airport. This victory belongs to everyone who stood up for our city.”
This is a huge, important victory and it came about because thousands of ordinary people decided to speak up. Both the federal and provincial government firmly wanted to expand the island airport, but enough people objected to make the federal government back off.
That’s freaking amazing.
(The provincial government, it should be noted, is still throwing a tantrum and saying they aren’t backing down from the project. Ford’s approval rating is now 24% - a new low.)
I know it can feel scary and pointless to speak up about things. A lot of people think it has no effect, but the truth is it really does. People power stopped an airport expansion that would have destroyed beloved green space and waterfront, had significant environmental impacts, and hindered Toronto’s ability to build much-needed housing.
That’s a pretty big win.
I have another, much smaller example. On several side roads near my home, the Roads Crew used a brush cutter to limb hundreds of trees, leaving the branches with jagged, gnarled ends. It looked like they had been through a hurricane. I asked an arborist and he confirmed that the trees would suffer premature decline and die if left in that condition. So I wrote an email to my Mayor, and two of my neighbours also wrote emails. After seeing no action, I wrote one more email to a different Councillor, and brought it all up at our Environment and Climate Committee meeting. The Councillor’s response was “you are not the first person to bring this up, and I’m going to look into it.”
A week later the trees had been properly limbed. It took three people writing emails to make it happen, and one person-to-person conversation that lasted no more than three minutes. That’s all.
If the other two folks hadn’t written their emails, would my solo voice have gotten the job done? I don’t know. But the fact that three people had taken five minutes to write in made an impact.
Literally. Just. Three. Of. Us.
So if you think your one email or one phone call won’t make a difference, I’m here to tell you that’s not true.
As Carsie Blanton sings “they oughta be afraid of us, cuz the whole world is made of us.”
xo
Shannon
Upcoming Shows
I don’t think I’m allowed to announce my September show yet, so I’ll just tell you to save the date for Sept 26. More details to come!
Featured Stuff
Like many creators I’m not great at sharing my work after the initial buzz of a new release. But this year I released a new song and music video, and started a podcast. You should check all of that stuff out!
