A tweet authored by former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart last week continues to get replies stacked up under it, with nearly 1,000 of them telling the man he's wrong for calling last week's Hastings encampment clearing "genocidal," and that he "might want to sit this one out," largely due to his inability to help the homeless population while he was in office.
It's impossible to feel good about marginalized people being forcibly uprooted every couple of years, and what that says about us as a society.
It's similarly impossible to feel good about any of the time Stewart spent as our mayor and as chair of the Vancouver Police Board, during which we saw two similar encampments treated the exact same way the current one is being dealt with.
After his tweet, which referenced "85,732 of you," who "voted to elect a new mayor and council," got lambasted by the vast majority of Twitter users, he issued a follow-up about the "many hateful replies," it received.
Insinuating that the thorough roasting was aimed at encampment residents and not the man himself, he noted that he fears "Vancouver is losing its humanity," then suggested that residents "offer to buy folks in need a warm coffee if you are Downtown this Easter weekend."
Stewart now works as Director of the SFU Centre for Public Policy Research, and it's not clear if his work involves commenting on Vancouver politics, however, he (and the reputation of his employer) might be best served by a time-out on the subject. A cooling off period, as it were.
Former Premier John Horgan offered what might be some inspiration in a recent Globe and Mail interview, stating that he's no longer making policy decisions. He doesn't "have a lot of time anymore, none in fact, for public comment on my worldview,” so he won't be putting any of it out there for people to comment on.
The next time our former mayor decides to stomp the sour grapes he has into an equally sour batch of whine, he might want to make sure his feet are clean. Doing so might elicit a kinder response from what he has coined "Cruel Vancouver."
