Seven candidates, four parties, two ridings.
This is what faced me on stage Sept. 26 at an all-candidates-meeting I helped organize, which hosted candidates from the West and North Vancouver electoral districts and catered specifically to the Iranian community.
As a newly 19-year-old female, immigrant, first-time voter and student (of political science), I represented many marginalized demographics, which would theoretically galvanize me to vote.
However, much like most of my age group, I was indifferent, both to the election, and even more to the all-candidates meeting. In fact, I was practically dragged to it.
My reluctance was rooted in my experience with previous meetings and debates, wherein I had witnessed high-profile community members altruistically surrendering their weekends to set up chairs, tables, microphones and cups of water, banners and posters, only to be met with rooms filled at a fraction of capacity. Apathy, indifference, and civic aversion seemed to always prevail. But the optimism and commitment of these community organizers were unperturbed. This annoyed me even more.
Meeting after meeting, in assorted constituencies, at varied times of day and different days of the week, turnout was disappointing – how could anyone not become disillusioned? This disillusionment happened long before I reached voting age. I had actively volunteered, canvassing, making calls and organizing events since I was 12. I loved politics, the observable phenomena, but not politics, the activity.
On Sept. 26, insufficiently caffeinated and visibly irritated, I showed up to this particular meeting.
The ritual began: unstacking chairs, moving tables and erecting banners. The only highlight of that day seemed to be my evening, which I had set aside to write a bitter harangue on electoral apathy. Much to my surprise, the meeting quickly filled up, with not a single seat left empty. Great news for democracy. Bad news for me.
I was selfishly disappointed that I had lost the empirical basis for my intended critique of the Iranian-Canadian community – although a heterogeneous group, all of whom, despite having left an undemocratic regime for a democratic one, had distanced themselves from civic responsibility.
Our community had long been characterized by skepticism of government efficacy. But with every seat filled, and each seat rabidly filling out comment cards with their questions, it was hard to accuse my community of apathy. I had no choice but to re-evaluate the situation. Which meant re-evaluating the assumptions I held about my own community.
It was only until this past Wednesday when I was on a CBC radio panel discussing low youth voter turnout when I pieced my views back together. On the panel, I expressed my resentment of political parties addressing youth with bright pamphlets and unintimidating diction. I was appalled that “youthfulness” was conflated with “ignorance,” necessitating that political platforms be dumbed down and essentialized before being communicated to my demographic.
I was particularly distressed by an email I had received earlier that day from the Liberal Party of Canada titled “Electoral Reform. Youth Jobs. Education. Marijuana. Transit.” It read to me: “Hey, you unemployed, pot-smoking, bus-riding kiddo with the short attention span! Vote for us.”
I didn’t find fault with any of the specific policies outlined in the email. I found fault with the demographic factionalization that the email contributed to. And I realized it had done exactly what I had tried to do merely days ago with my community.
Obviously, political issues affect certain demographics disparately – I don’t care about my pension just yet, and I don’t think my grandmother cares how much tuition I’m paying – but a party that intends to lead a country should be able to speak to the whole country without factionalizing us into caricatures of our demographics.
Parmida Esmaeilpour is a political science honours student at the University of British Columbia, where she is editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Political Studies, research supervisor on the Canadian Election Study, and editor of the national journal of political science, published by the Canadian Political Science Student Association.
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