Bringing A Bit Of Grassroots Democracy To Our Local Municipalities Through The Internet

By Doug Draper

It has almost become a cliché now to say that the Internet has “democratized” our lives more than any other technology developed on this planet since the invention more than half a millennium ago of the printing press.

Newly elected Thorold, Ontario councillor Becky Day has apparently made the mistake of launching a website for residents she represents.

Democratization in the age of the internet means that anyone who has access to a computer with a server can go online, create their own blog or website, and send their messages out to the larger community that can potentially include a “global village” of thousands,, if possbily including millions.

The Internet can be a powerful force for good or bad or just a cornucopia of useless crap in between, depending on how we choose to use it. And in recent years, growing numbers of political leaders – most notably U.S. President Barack Obama and former U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean – have learned to use it to mobilize large number of people at the grassroots level to learn more about their take on the great issues of the day and their campaigns.

Only more recently have politicians at the municipal level come to realize that the Internet can be a doorway for connecting with their constituents in an open discussion – a virtual town hall – on the issues of concern to our communities today. One Niagara politician who has shot out of the internet gate with a blog site that is working to do this is in Niagara is newly elected Thorold city councillor Becky Day.

Becky Day ran and won one of the eight councillor seats in Thorold after losing her job as a journalist at a weekly piece of crap published by the equally crappy daily papers in Niagara, Ontario. It is called something like ‘Thorold Niagara News’ and Becky was the last columnist that paper had that wrote about the mess Thorold residents had, and may still have, as a local municipal council. Her columns included one account after another of some of what were arguably some of the best staff the city had moving on to other municipal governments, because those who made up a deciding block of the council of the day could not care to listen to their advice, and even sometimes saw it as insubordinance.

Well, apparently Day’s columns were so ‘insubordinate’ that this crappy weekly paper I referred to, which was enjoying ads from the city, decided they no longer needed her on staff. Since then, a good number of the same people who appreciated her vigilance as a columnist have simply taken this rag and thrown it in their ‘gray box’.

But Day’s loss of a journalism job was not enough for those in this rather dictatorial, as in just-keep-your-mouth shut if you don’t agree with the mayor and his posse.

Some of them are trying to argue now that Day shouldn’t be doing a site like this and that she shouldn’t be accepting and posting comments from people in the municipality she now represents as a duly elected member of the council. Some have also had the nerve to say that she expresses her own views as a councillor on the site. One told me it should be more “objective” – like what, Becky Day is now supposed to use her one website as a councillor as dry minutes for meetings?

These people who are making these remarks are living on another planet that is far removed from the more democratized, technology of today.

Becky Day has every right to have her own website as a councillor, just as everyone up to and including the prime minister of Canada and president of the United States, have a right to have theirs. And if her fellow municipal councillors and others don’t like it, then tough!

Let them start their own websites. Let them make their case for where we should go with the issues of the day, and throw it out to the public at large to respond back to them. If they haven’t got the guts to do that, then maybe they shouldn’t be sitting on municipal council.

As for Day, if the people of Thorold decide they don’t like what she is featuring on her website, then you got four years to boot her out of office. And that is democracy.

Thorold councillor Becky Day’s website can be viewed by clicking on http://movingthoroldforward.com/ . Click on this site and offer your own opinions to Niagara At Large on how you feel about our municipal councillors moving in the direction of providing an online venue for debate and discussion.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)