Don’t doubt for an instant James Andre — the Tweeter and re-Tweeter of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic Tweets from rural Alberta — wouldn’t still be a Battle River school trustee if people in his own community hadn’t told him to get lost.
Andre was elected as a trustee in the East Central Alberta school district in the Oct. 21 Alberta-wide municipal election. Hours later, the genuinely shocking content of some of the stuff he’d been Tweeting under a variety of identities became public.
The stuff was bad enough that CBC wouldn’t read the tweets on air, although it posted them on its website so that citizens who wanted to make the effort could see for themselves that the story was a legitimate one.
Many of Andre’s Tweets came from a Twitter account he called “The Funny Racist.” Let’s just say here that his unfunny material was so far beyond the pale — making light of the Holocaust, for example — that it would make any reasonable person question his suitability to hold public office.
This should be true wherever one stands on “free speech.” In other words, this wasn’t a free speech issue at all, but a character issue.
After the initial revelation there was a 23-day soap opera during which many of Andre’s new constituents, not to mention plenty of other Albertans, reacted with horror and demanded he resign.
Andre at first to try to blow it all off. Then he told CBC interviewers he would quit if the people who voted him in demanded that he go.
Yesterday, the Battle River School District, headquartered in the East Central Alberta community of Camrose, announced that he had done just that, and pretty well everyone in the province heaved a sigh of relief.
In a letter to the community yesterday, school board Chair Kendall Severson noted that “the experience has provided a vivid demonstration of the value that our local residents, our province and our country places on treating all people with respect, dignity and equality, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, gender or orientation.”
Now, you may count on it that there were reasons Andre got elected, and there were without a doubt people who supported him in his rural community who knew perfectly well what his attitudes were and even thought his jokes were funny.
But, in that, the rural area around Camrose is no different from any other Canadian community, large or small.
In towns, cities and rural areas all across this country there is a mean-spirited minority, and a larger number of people who are tolerant, inclusive and willing to live and let live. Sometimes of late, in large part because of the vagaries of our electoral system and the popular cynicism it breeds, that intolerant faction has been able to enjoy some significant electoral successes.
The short, rather pathetic, story of James Andre illustrates that it’s unfair to label the people of rural Alberta “rednecks” — as lots of Canadians do — when their necks are considerably less red than those in, oh, Calgary or Toronto.
A few years ago, a union I worked for conducted a series of focus groups in several Alberta communities, including Camrose. We learned that on the issues we were asking questions about, all of which were related to health care, people in Camrose and the rural area surrounding it had considerably more enlightened ideas than the average citizen of … Calgary.
Leastways, if you wanted knee-jerk right-wing ideas about health care delivery, Camrose wasn’t the place to go, Calgary was.
Our problem in Canada isn’t rednecks, it’s that our politics today are mostly driven by a small market fundamentalist elite made up of business people and a few highly ideological academics, and most parties are far to the right of most citizens on both social and economic issues.
So if we’re tempted to laugh off rural Albertans as rednecks, we need to remember my fellow blogger Dave Cournoyer’s admonition last night on his Daveberta blog: “…Rob Ford is still the Mayor of Toronto.”
It was the people of Battle River who told the national embarrassment they had unwittingly elected to take a hike the minute they found what really motivated him.
It is the people of Toronto, supposedly the country’s most diverse and enlightened polity, who elected Rob Ford — knowing full well, it is said here, what he stood for.
Not only is the crack-smoking, racist joking, profane Ford still on the job — after a fashion — but he continues to enjoy significant support from Toronto voters.
Ford, who has now risen to be an international embarrassment, also continues to have the backing of Prime Minister Harper, who, I’m sure we don’t need to remind readers, is elected with metronomic regularity by massive majorities by the voters of Calgary Southwest.
Obviously, it’s time for the prime minister and the people of Toronto to smarten up and live up to the tolerant and inclusive standards of Battle River!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
