Rose Henry is our first official candidate interview!
Rose has been a poverty activist in Victoria and abroad for many years, and has run in both the by-electon and previous general municipal election, both times garnering between 2 and 3 thousand votes.
You can view Rose's website here.
You can view a recent Monday Magazine feature about Rose here.
And here are her answers to our three questions:
Q: Why are you running and why should
I vote for you?
A: I still believe that the municipal
leaders are just as important as the provincial and federal elections
and that all citizens should have an active role in this democratic
system; and that our elected leaders need to hear from the people who
have lived in the inner city core for the past two decades. What I
have to offer the city as well as the council is a lot in tapped and
written wealth. I believe that the voices of the most marginalized
residents of the downtown core have been silenced for too long.
Because I have lived in the inner city for the most of the
twenty-seven years here in Victoria I believe I have a lot to offer
as a resident from a First person perspective. My age and experience
are an asset as is my tenacity to stick to being a part of the
solution to many of the social problems that are very costly to
everyone.
Q: What issue is most important to you and why?
A: Most people would expect that I
would say Homelessness: to me no one issue is greater or lesser then
the other. But homelessness is solvable and it is in everyone's best
interest to get this social problem under control. Why this is
important to me is that this issue is costing everyone far too much.
The tax payers pay with higher taxes, longer waits in community
services like health care services, judicial system and multiple
community services. The poor and the homeless also pay... they pay
with the loss of their lives in addition to paying the sames taxes
and other services as their counter-parts (the housed).
Q: What's something people don't know about you?
A: There is only one thing that I have
regretted not finishing this year. That is not finishing my
constitutional charter challenge (Bill C--31). This is the voter
identification bill. I had been working on this case for three and a
half years. Right now there is not a lot that the communities of
Victoria don't know about me personally; but what I do want to let
people know is that if I succeed this time at getting in that it will
be a historical event that will start to bridge to gab between the
First Nations and the rest of the world. Victoria will be 150 years
old in 2012 and not once have they ever had a Coast Salish
Representative on their city council. People need to hear that when I
speak I speak from my heart and only want the best for everyone, and
that I am more than capable of speaking out about just one issue and
can give more than five minutes of my time to really listen to the
issues of co-inhabitants of this community.
1 comments:
Well put Rose I will vote for you and I will encourage others to vote for you as well.
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