Pie Palace

The past few weeks have been fairly unpleasant. I was originally supposed to handle IT stuff for the campaign, but before Christmas, we decided that I should try and recruit on campus. The IT stuff was enough work, tossing campus organizing into the mix makes my volunteer load excessive. I’m not one to threaten resignation, but dealing with a particularly abrasive volunteer this week almost pushed me to bail.

This morning, I woke up to hear that CBC’s The Current interviewing Green Party leader Jim Harris. I’ve met Jim a few times, and he hasn’t inspired me. I appreciate that he’s brought the party in from the fringe, and helped make it a nationally recognized party, but I think that it’s time for a new leader. So I was suprised when Jim sounded great: he made good points, he made sense, he sounded well-balanced, and he responded to questions well. He mentioned all the good stuff: how the Green Party supports the ol’ triple bottom line (ie, not running a fiscal, environmental, or social deficit), how we feel that subsidies for polluters should be scrapped, and the shift of taxes off of income and onto resource consumption. On top of that, he did a good job at showing how the other three parties aren’t all that different from each other.

After listening to the piece, I felt much better about volunteering. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day trivia of the campaign, and to forget that we’re doing something of value. So, my volunteer burnout has been postponed. I’d never thought that listening to Jim Harris, of all people, would be enough to keep me in. Good job Jim. Now get yourself elected.