Raise the Hammer

Great link and some compelling statements from you Guildford. This idea of course is very knee jerk and obviously there are so many things at stake but then again, how does a movement such as this, bring us together as we talk about what this all means and what we have to be better at going forward with supporting local, Canadian business. Should we start our own 'Buy Canadian' policy? Can we even do that with how dominated we are by American investment.

Maybe rather than a boycott, council supports a new local startup that is dedicated to a buy local, buy Canadian mindset - inspired by these recent brutal US Steel/Caterpillar realities.

How we can alter our lives to be better at this. The importance, the easy every day things we can do to stop the viscous cycle. How planning our shopping days better will help enable us the 'luxury' of shopping at the farmer's markets and Ottawa Streets of our cities so that our need to go to one place to save time and money, becomes less and less of a need and desire.

To promote the costs of saving money on a piece of Caterpillar equipment made by low wage, dispensable workers, or Made in China 'it may be cheap but it won't last 5 minutes' junk.

A site that teaches us how to walk into a grocery store or a retail outlet and feel good about what we know about what we are supporting. To walk out rewarded with the pleasure of knowing exactly to the penny, where our money just went and how that one shopping experience, just made the world a better place and maybe I can't afford to go for Steak and Lobster at a 5 start restaurant after paying a couple of extra bucks on my grocery bill, but I'll go home knowing the farmer who raised the meat and vegetables I am going to enjoy and the baker who made the bread and and conversed with the person who hand picked the grapes, and will have shaken the hand of the owner of the vineyard where the wine we will enjoy with dinner, was made.

The music we'll listen to over dinner was sung by someone I met at a little James Street Art Crawl gig and the studio it was produced in, my band had had the pleasure of cutting a track or two in ourselves to have something as a keepsake for my own children one day.

Maybe even the record player the 'made in the new hot spot for record manufacturing' record is spinning on is made in this city that suddenly became a place where many such creative/niche things are being made.

The movie we end our evening curled up on the couch with later on was made in one of many new studios that have moved here in all the old abandoned factories. Maybe US Steel leaves and breaks our hearts and scares us and alters our lives but suddenly these places become niche purchases for movie filmhouses as perfect sound studios and we cover our waterfront with old trees to create pollution and site barriers between these new startups, maybe even waterfront hotela and condos, and existing factories that are becoming a dying bread.

Maybe the television the movie is watched on was made in China but we better understand where in China it came from and that the wages and work environments meet our own standards and we didn't buy it because it was the cheapest because we could make it for around the same or even less here in Canada but we bought it because they simply are the best at making these items and we have good relationships with them.

We suddenly become a very big city but we care enough about nature and people that we also finally set some urban boundaries in place so subdivisions can never come within two km's of our Binbrook's and Valen's and because our biggest asset we finally realize, is that we are a highly attractive place to live most importantly, because we can drive 10 or 15 minutes from our cities core and be amongst nature and smells of manure. We finally realize that that is what sets us aside from Toronto not as a better place, but as a different place. Aerotropolis and escarpment highways are trashed and we realize if people want proximately to airports and easy access out of here, get out of here. We finally have an identity and people are happier and healthier and we no longer have to fight like dogs to preserve and save the things we know are our biggest selling features because the leaders of our city, finally get it too.

This 500,000 person city, gets smaller and smaller and I can hardly walk any city street, without running into someone I know because of the way our community has come together to get to know one another and fight to make sure all of our needs - basic and dreams, are met in some way shape or form.

Maybe it's knee jerk, but if it brings us together as fighting for something we believe in does, than if council decides this is something worth fighting, I am behind them but yes, even more so let's create jobs ourselves and stop needing the big guys coming in to save us only to cut our throats and walk away in the next breath.

Don't all the inspirationalist motivators tell us that we hold our destiny's in our own hands? To be the change we want to see? It's not enough to just boycott. We have to go out and create some jobs ourselves so when possibly the fall-out of this boycott means the Stoney Creek and other shops fall as a result of a chain reaction, more families aren't hurt by even more jobs leaving this city we are trying to rebuild.

Comment edited by lawrence on 2012-02-10 10:48:20