Balancing Listening with Boldness
Throughout the class, one of the central themes has been to listen to community, and to use your role as a policymaker to reflect the community’s interests. However, this week this idea was further complicated as we thought about the ethical implications of representation and leadership. Do you need to reflect community members if they are holding discriminatory or demonstrably wrong ideas? Also, who do you act for — current community members or the community members of the future? When do you simply represent and when do you lead?
In MM’s role as a City Councillor, she supported the relocation of a homeless shelter into her area despite vehement opposition by the homeowners in the area. She decided her own moral compass overrode the neighbourhood’s NIMBYism on this issue. As she put it, “you don’t get to choose your neighbours!” In this case, I think her decision was warranted. Toronto needs more homeless shelters, the shelters needs to go somewhere, and there is wealth of research that shows supportive housing does not negatively impact the surrounding community. Yes, of course we should listen to our community, but also we should recognize when our community is privileged in ways that obscure them from understanding other people’s realities.
The theme of decisive moral action came up again on Monday, when I attended the panel discussion on the Opioid Crisis as part of the Ford + Munk Conference. One of the panelists, Matt Johnson, was involved in the creation of the unsanctioned Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site, and now works as the Coordinator at the Parkdale Queen West Overdose Prevention Site. He spoke about the need to be bold, decisive and trusting that history was on their side when creating a politically unpopular (and illegal) program. They knew they were saving lives, and didn’t care if it made the government or local homeowners angry.
At the end of the day, communities are still made up of people and people can be fearful, uninformed and frankly intolerant in a myriad of ways. As leaders in the policy world we need to also ask:
- Who doesn’t have a seat at the resident association/community meetings?
- Who gets to be included in this community? Who gets to decide?
- How can I be the voice of those not represented here?
and at the end of the day, as MM would put it, “which choice would let me sleep at night?”
More info about the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site can be found here:
