Christine Boyle is a climate-activist-turned-city-councillor with OneCity Vancouver, a progressive political party she co-founded in 2014. She may be the party’s only member in city hall, but in her two and a half years in office, she’s pushed Vancouver to declare a climate emergency and helped lead the charge to adopt a climate-emergency action plan. Here’s how she gets it done.
As someone who has worked outside the system for a long time, I see how much it matters to have people at the table who are working on the same issues in collaboration with social movements.
I worked closely with a whole network of climate-justice activists and advocates—particularly young climate activists from a group in Vancouver called Sustainabiliteens—to bring people to city hall to speak. That made visible how widespread public support was for this ambitious plan. The first motion passed unanimously at a pretty politically mixed council.
I was working alongside folks from the beginning, rather than just trying to rally them down the road. I think that matters, so that people feel involved.
Connecting the dots for people matters. If you care about access to public transit, that’s connected to climate decisions made by the city. If you care about housing, that’s connected to climate policy. Racial justice and climate justice are connected. [Those] mean we’re not building movements in silos.
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