Shortly after the current council was elected in August 2004 we had an in-person meeting in Toronto.  At the start of the meeting each councillor was asked about why we were involved with the Green Party.  Some of the stories were very interesting and inspiring and I think this discussion was a great way for councillors to get to know one another.  

I wanted to do the same same thing with my blog and my story is below.  If you are a member or volunteer with the GPC I'd like to hear the story about why you're involved.  I think hearing these stories help us to realize that despite the differences of opinion that occur from time to time we are all working towards the same goal.  I'll open up comments for this post so they will show up on the blog below this post after they are moderated. I don't necessarily go online to check emails every day so just a head's up - if you send something in it may take some time to show up in comments.

Click the "more" link for my story ...

I started voting for the GPC in the early 1990s. If I remember correctly this was after a couple of canvassers came to my door in downtown Ottawa and I liked what I heard and read. I was also involved with an environmental group at my work and I thought increasing vote totals for the party would help raise awareness of environmental issues (even if I didn't think the Greens were going to win).

Over the next few years I continued to vote for the party but didn't get more actively involved. Then in 2001 I was living in British Columbia and read the election platform of the Green Party of BC. It was a very professional and comprehensive document and I was more impressed than ever with how the party was maturing. I started looking into getting more involved but still didn't take any active steps to do so.

Then the tipping point for me came after 9-11. For the first month or so I was cautiously optimistic about how the US was responding to the attacks. By coincidence I ended up getting a contract in Omaha, Nebraska in October (I'm a software developer).  On the drive down there I heard George Bush on the radio in one of his first major addresses about what was becoming the "War on Terror".  He said that a key problem that led to the 9-11 attacks was that people around the world didn't understand how good the US really was. I felt my heart sink with the realization that there were going to be no major changes to what I believe were some of the root causes of terrorism: foreign policy, global poverty, and so on.

Bush enjoyed around 90% popular support in the US after the attacks. At the time I think he could have said or done almost anything and had the support of the American people. It was a rare opportunity to instititute worldwide changes that could help to transform how other nations thought about the US. A relatively small percentage of the ongoing cost of the War on Terror would have gone a long way to help poorer nations in a multitude of ways: by providing clean water, good food and education, slowing the spread of disease and so on. I think that if even modest steps were taken in these areas terrorists would not have the support of the populations in which they operate because the average person would understand that a genuine effort was being made to help solve the everyday problems they faced.  Unfortunately, due to the actions that were actually taken that understanding does not exist today and it seems that the US has lost the goodwill that existed around the world after the attacks.

In any case after the speech by Bush I wanted to stop complaining about how things were and start volunteering some of my time to elect people who would not only take better care of our planet but would also respond more constructively if something like 9-11 happened again. So when I arrived in Omaha I looked up the Nebraska Green Party and started going to their meetings and eventually did volunteer work for the Green Party candidate in the 2002 congressional campaign.  Then when I moved back to Canada I started volunteering with the Green Party of BC, then later with the GPC as outlined in my Green Party bio.