Next up was Jack Burkman, a member of the Vancouver city council who walked us through the history of the Vancouver waterfront area (did you know there was a huge shipyard there during WW1 that built huge boats for the war effort?) and the plan for the new Vancouver Waterfront. Click here and then click on "View Image Gallery" for some cool renderings and pictures of the current site.
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| Oooh, swanky! |
The plans for this new development look pretty awesome, almost along the lines of some of the pier areas in southern California. With a lot of parks/green space. And very similar to the Spokane Riverfront. Like almost exactly. Apparently they have made a deal with some developers for the construction; the city is providing the infrastructure and some of the planning, and the developers are doing all the rest. Sweet! Of course, one of those fancy buildings with super luxury condos in them will be right where the Red Lion at the Quay is now, so... go stay there!
After Mr. Burkman, we heard from Jim Luce, one of "the Clark County Kennedys" according to Jason. He is leading a group called "Taxpayers for a Responsible Public Port" against "corrupt and self-serving" port commissioners. Apparently the port commissioners keep authorizing port taxes even though they make plenty of money from the tenants of port land and spending the rent money elsewhere. Also they have approved the Tesoro oil lease against major public opposition.
There is also a lot of controversy over the oil trains that run back and forth all day to the port. While we sat there we saw these oil trains go right by the window, back and forth at least 30 times throughout the day.
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| This train had what seemed like a million oil cars. |
The old tanker cars they use are awful; they are leaky and fragile. When they go off the tracks, they get punctured. When they are punctured, they pretty much immediately explode. The oil they transport is light Bakken oil, which is much more explosive than traditional dark crude oil. There is an interesting NPR piece on it here.
So we heard all about it, while seeing the actual volume of oil trains passing through the downtown Vancouver area. Very convincing. I wouldn't want that many oil trains coming through my city. I think Seattle averages 3 oil trains coming through the waterfront area every day. Considering some of these trains have over 100 oil tanker cars on them, that means a lot of super-explosive oil traveling through one of our biggest tourist attraction areas each day. We definitely need to push the oil and rail companies to at least upgrade the tanker cars used to transport this hyper-combustible fuel.
After Jim Luce's presentation, we went out into the world for lunch. Now, for meals we're supposed to split into smaller groups so that restaurants aren't totally overwhelmed. So we thought our group was going to a southern comfort food restaurant, but we ended up following someone who had decided to go to the same restaurant (Low Bar) as everyone else.
More than twenty of us descended on the same small restaurant and all took our time ordering, and the server/cashier put them all on one ticket. So the first order and the last order were put in to the kitchen at the same time. It took over twenty minutes for us to order, so that was like 40 minutes after we got there, and some people in our larger group had already been there for 15 minutes.
Needless to say, most of us were late getting back to the Red Lion, even though we had an hour and 45 minutes for lunch. The food took forever. But wow, that was one of the best burgers I've ever had in a restaurant. It was perfectly sized, particularly juicy, well-seasoned, and had a great crust on the outside. Like, I want a burger right now just thinking about it. I got cornmeal-crusted jojos with it, but those were kind of disappointing after the amazing burger.
In any case, I had just enough time to finish my burger before the last people's food came out (they had just told them to serve them to go as soon as they came out of the kitchen), then we pretty much ran back to the hotel. We were only 7 minutes late and we were the last group, but I felt terrible because the speaker had gotten there really early, and then when we walked in, the loud BING BONG! went off. Which had probably happened every time a group straggled in from lunch. Poor guy.
That guy was Matt Ransom, who was giving us a rundown on the CRC (Columbia River Crossing), a project to build a new bridge since the current I-5 bridge was meant to carry horse and buggy or Model T only. And has not been properly remodeled for the amount of car and truck traffic it has, only retrofitted as best they could. I felt bad because we were all in food coma and exhausted from having to run back from lunch after stuffing our faces so quickly, so nobody was asking quite the level of intelligent questions that we're known for.
And oh lord, I almost forgot about the drunk guy. In the middle of poor Matt Ransom (for whom really no one should feel that bad because he is very attractive, with rippling biceps and a perfectly tousled mop of blond hair) some guy wanders into our room. This man was very intoxicated and proceeded to talk to Chipalo (the one black man in our group) about his big beautiful round bald head. Then he wanted to talk to us about some other nonsense. Mr. Ransom was somehow still trying to give his presentation and then, very annoyed, stopped and asked "do you want me to continue?" because the guys in the back of the room were trying to politely shoo the drunk man out instead of escorting him out.
This of course was the opportunity for which drunk man had been waiting: now he had the floor! All eyes were on him, so he decided to go off on a rant about being an Indian, and how he was here first. This of course made us all really sad, but we didn't want to insult Mr. Ransom more than we already had (by being late back from lunch), so a couple of the bigger guys got up and moved the man out the door. He wandered around the hall yelling and then out in the parking lot, yelling and doing a weird drunk dance while we all feigned interest in what Mr. Ransom was saying. It was both hilarious and heartbreaking; a shared awkward cultural moment that I think brought us a little closer together. So the CRC presentation continued on and drew to a close with none of us having any interesting questions to ask. Which was really all the better since we were now running about 15 minutes behind schedule.
The next presentation was from Jim Mains and Temple Lantz, two of the freeholders from the charter process we learned about earlier from Nan. They were supposed to tell us all about the charter process, but since Nan had already done that, they kind of were out of material. We ended up getting kind of a weird sales-pitch presentation about the in-house polling methods they use in their media production/consulting business, High Five Media. The business had actually made a really beautiful and effective informational flyer about the charter that Nan had handed out earlier.
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| The man on the front of the flyer is the county sheriff, a man trusted and respected by liberals AND conservatives. |
Overall, Jim and Temple were interesting and very nice, but seemed at a bit of a loss since we already knew the things they were planning on telling us. I would have been more interested hearing about what it's like to run a small boutique communications company in a non-urban area. Obviously I should have asked, because no one else asked about that. And they probably would have been really excited to talk about that since it's what they do. I need to get better at asking questions.
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| Look at those beautiful infographics! |
After that, Nash Jones from the Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Resource Center gave one of the most amazing awareness workshops I've ever attended. Not that I've attended that many, but wow. I have always seen myself as an advocate and ally for people of all genders and sexual orientations, and since I'm more connected to LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans* [used to be transgender, now is just Trans*], Queer) issues and activities than many people I know, I always assumed I knew how to be a good ally. Of course, being a good ally is subjective, and the main qualifications are usually keeping an open mind, asking questions if you are confused, and supporting the people that you love. It's not hard. But if you want to delve deeper into that, there's a whole world of things you don't know.
Discrimination inside the LGBTQ community is something I never thought much about - it's one community, so everybody is supportive and supportive, right? Wrong. Even in the acronym, there is discrimination. Who decided that lesbians were first and trans and queer were last? I mean, in a jumble of consonants that are all awkward to begin with, who determines what order they go in? Nash introduced us to the layers of discrimination, the importance of pronouns, what is and isn't someone else's business. It is hard to describe the level of delving we did into LGBTQ issues in such a short time. We ran late because we were all so enthralled.
I feel like I learned (some things for the first time, some just more in depth/better background) more about Trans* issues from Nash.
- Trans* issues are tricky but very important.
- Trans, for most people, has been "transgender" for a long time. (In the acronym LGBTQ, it has never meant transsexual, even though many have perceived it as such.) It has been shortened to trans*. The asterisk is to denote man, woman, person, people, etc.
- Someone might identify as a trans man, which means they feel like they are a man, and they may not have been sexed as a male at birth. This has NOTHING to do with who they're attracted to, only how they identify their gender. There are gay trans men, bisexual trans men, asexual trans men, hetero trans men, etc.
- Which of course is interesting because if you look at the acronym usually assigned to this community, it is based on sexuality (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer) and then trans*, a gender, is just thrown in there.
- Trans women (people born with non-female parts who identify as female, whether or not they go through any transitional surgeries), especially trans women of color, are some of the most victimized and abused people on the planet.
- Because the term transgender promotes "otherness", there is a term for people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth: cisgender. Trans=change/cis=same.
- Inclusion is for real, people!
After a long and very positive debrief, we all took off for our hotel across the bridge. I had to get my car from the back of the lot and ended up being the last to leave, and saw something crazy on my way to Portland; an accident in which two cars smashed into the side of the road, and a big raised truck spun around 180 degrees avoiding them, just barely missing me as I sailed past in the left lane. I would have stopped to help but by the time I processed what was going on, I was quite some way down the road. I could see flashing lights in the distance behind me so I knew someone was on the way. The stretch of road between Olympia and Portland is apparently super dangerous.
Stay tuned for Portland adventures. Jeez, this weekend is taking FOREVER to finish. Sorry.
