{"id":45025,"date":"2024-09-20T01:58:12","date_gmt":"2024-09-20T08:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=45025"},"modified":"2024-09-18T11:16:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T18:16:24","slug":"greens-seek-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2024\/09\/20\/greens-seek-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Greens seek breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"

BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau wants to \u201cmake sure we have a province that is centred around well-being, that is centred around everybody\u2019s basic needs being met and is centred around creating communities where everybody can thrive.\u201d (photo from facebook.com\/SoniaBCGreens<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Sonia Furstenau is hearing from Jewish voters that they feel abandoned. The BC Green Party leader wants to rebuild trust between the Jewish community and the province\u2019s elected officials, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust comes from relationships, it comes from understanding and it comes from people really being reliable,\u201d Furstenau told the Jewish Independent<\/i>. \u201cI think we have shown that we are committed to approaching the work we do from a place of building relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Green leader, who hopes to exponentially expand her two-member caucus in the legislature in the Oct. 19 election, reflected on what she has heard from Jewish British Columbians recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had many conversations in the past month with members of the Jewish community who have expressed to me \u2026 that people feel abandoned, that people are concerned about growing incidences of antisemitism,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a recognition of the need to continue conversations and stay connected.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, at a provincial policy level, it\u2019s education, education, education,\u201d Furstenau said. \u201cI know that the premier has made a commitment to [mandatory] Holocaust education and I think that is important and necessary. I want to expand that. We need every student in BC to graduate with a very firm and reliable fact-based understanding of 20th-century history. We need people to be able to withstand the disinformation that is now becoming so dominant in discourse, political and otherwise.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To address the challenges, Furstenau said students need to be equipped against disinformation so that they can navigate the contemporary world with a solid grounding in history and what it means to be an engaged citizen in a democracy. That means understanding the Holocaust in the context of the 20th century, she said, but also in the context of the antisemitism that has existed for centuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key piece is that we are building an informed and inclusive community here in BC that does not tolerate hatred or discrimination or racism of any kind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As much as she wants voters to consider policies or issues, Furstenau is urging British Columbians to think first and foremost about representation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we go into the ballot box, we\u2019re not voting for a party or a premier,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re voting for the person who is going to be our voice in the legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is asking people to take seriously \u201cthe question of who is going to be the best representative for me in my community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a first-past-the-post system,\u201d she said. \u201cWe elect, in this case, 93 representatives to the legislature and, in the best-case scenario, we have a diversity of voices and viewpoints and ideas and we have a legislature where people can find the capacity to work together and across party lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to a number of independent candidates, likely including a few incumbents made politically homeless by the suspension of the BC United party\u2019s campaign, Furstenau hopes voters will consider Green candidates and elect enough members who do not belong to either of the two largest parties to result in a minority government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think would be an ideal outcome in this election is [a scenario where] no single party has all of the power,\u201d she said, \u201cthat we have a legislature with a diversity of voices and representation and we are seeding the conditions where we\u2019re working collaboratively, finding common ground and focusing on solutions for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furstenau is knocking on doors and the issue she hears about most from voters are affordable housing, cost-of-living, access to reliable health care and climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people talk about housing, of course they talk about the fact that we have a growing homelessness crisis in this province,\u201d she said. \u201cThe vast majority of people that I talk to about this want to see solutions so that we don\u2019t have people who are living without homes in our communities. That\u2019s a really key piece and some of the politicization and rhetoric that we are already hearing in this election misses the mark, as far as I\u2019m concerned. We can solve this. We can make sure that nobody in our community is living without housing, and we should. For us, the key thing is that British Columbia could be the best place on earth to live. It\u2019s a beautiful place, it\u2019s full of extraordinary people, it\u2019s got an enormous amount of richness and diversity and what we want \u2026 is to ensure that everybody here has the best chance to have a good life in British Columbia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coalescence of right and centre-right candidates is not a positive development for democracy, in Furstenau\u2019s view.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that having fewer choices on the ballot is a good thing,\u201d she said. \u201cI think, in a democracy, more choice is better. I think this was an unfortunate loss for the people of BC and I think that suggesting that we should have concentration of political parties and fewer political parties is the wrong direction. We just have to look south of the border to see where that leads us. I was disappointed by the decision that Kevin Falcon and a small number of people apparently made to fold an entire political party. That\u2019s not the kind of leadership that we need right now and it\u2019s not an approach to democracy that we need right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barring unforeseen developments, there are three main parties to choose from, and Furstenau hopes for a Green electoral breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are determined to elect the biggest Green caucus in history,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have six or seven key ridings where we see that possibility.\u201d In addition to her own riding of Cowichan Valley, she cites other Vancouver Island ridings as possible pickups, including Saanich, Courtenay-Comox, Esquimault and Victoria-Beacon Hill, as well as West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, which the party narrowly lost last election, and opportunities in the Kootenays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve built our platform around the idea of well-being, that when we have a society that is rooted in the well-being of its citizens, of its communities and its natural world, we get to a place where we don\u2019t have the kind of conditions to create more hatred and more discrimination,\u201d Furstenau said. \u201cWe know that political parties will scapegoat groups of people, including Jewish people. We know that, when people don\u2019t feel safe and secure, we get into political discourse that is dangerous and so our response to that is let\u2019s make sure we have a province that is centred around well-being, that is centred around everybody\u2019s basic needs being met and is centred around creating communities where everybody can thrive and we have to be focused on that and that\u2019s what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau wants to \u201cmake sure we have a province that is centred around well-being, that is centred around everybody\u2019s basic needs being met and is centred around creating communities where everybody can thrive.\u201d (photo from facebook.com\/SoniaBCGreens) Sonia Furstenau is hearing from Jewish voters that they feel abandoned. The BC Green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,23432,23056,3203,4304,3076,3225,3597,23054],"class_list":["post-45025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-bc-election","tag-bc-greens","tag-climate-change","tag-democracy","tag-education","tag-health-care","tag-politics","tag-sonia-furstenau"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}