Scandal! At The Disco

Anything fun happen recently? I can’t think of anything interesting that’s occurred…

The plan was to take this week off writing the newsletter. It’s summer, after all, and I’ve been swamped with stuff.

I mean, I have a full schedule over here! Secret cabal meetings in the morning, nefarious socialist plotting in the afternoon, quick break to talk about feelings over a vegan snack, pursuing the homosexual agenda after dinner, and dancing nude around a bonfire lit with nothing but taxpayer money at midnight really takes it out of a guy!

But actually, I spend most of my days on job applications. Since wrapping up my postdoc at Toronto Metropolitan University a while back, I’ve bounced between research contracts that have, as of late, dried up. Indeed, for the past four months, I’ve been living on nothing but small honourariums while trying to do my own research. Even when you don’t have a permanent position in academia, it’s still “publish or perish”, with the latter option taking on entirely too much weight.

The rest of my days are spent at my other job. See, for the past year or so, I’ve served as a “communications advisor” to Ward 1 Councillor Maureen Wilson. After working together in a volunteer capacity during my stint as chair of the Strathcona Community Council, Maureen asked if I would take my skills (graphic design and the ability to write, seemingly forever, and without pause) and help her better engage the residents of Ward 1.

In our initial conversations, Maureen told me she didn’t want me to stop writing my newsletter and would never ask me to avoid critiquing her if I saw the need. My newsletter long predated my relationship with the Ward 1 office and I didn’t want my passion project that I did in my own time to suffer because of my need for employment.

I was upfront when I took on the role: I would still be searching for academic work, would simply help Maureen communicate her positions and the actions of council, wouldn’t “interface” with constituents, wouldn’t “write policy”, and wouldn’t get in the way of Maureen’s political positions.

That last point was important. While we are aligned on many things - the need for walkable communities, better cycling infrastructure, rapid and reliable transit, evidence-based policies, support for the arts, and a commitment to the environment - but we aren’t aligned on everything. But working together shouldn’t mean you agree with someone on 100% of issues. That kind of person would be damn near impossible to find. Even with my partner, my closest friends, and (especially) my family, we don’t align on every single thing.

I always come back to the great American feminist activist Loretta Ross’s conceptualization of “circles of influence”. Ross identifies people as “percenters” - 90, 75, 50, 25, and 0.

90 Percenters are your closest allies. They share your world view and they will work with you on almost everything. Even when you disagree, they usually won’t align themselves with the “other side” and try to undermine your work. There may be advocates for economic justice and advocates for climate change action who will almost always be on the same side, but there are just some things where the other activist takes charge because they’re more knowledgeable, more connected to an issue, or more skilled at breaking through with a particular community.

75 Percenters are, as Ross says, “people who probably share a good portion of our worldview, but not totally.” It’s key to “accept large islands of disagreement in a sea of assent.”¹  

Not to apply crass labels, but that’s a close enough description for Maureen and I. I’m always happy to work with people with whom I share many values, because there’s strength in numbers and, when you get enough people together, everyone’s unique skillsets can be used to make our world a better place. I likely wouldn’t have taken the role if we were more like 50 or 25 percenters, and certainly would not have done so were we at 0 percent.

I’ve never hidden my position. People know I work with Maureen, including community members, other members of council, other council staff, local MPPs, colleagues at TMU, and people with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

It isn’t some big secret. But I’ve also never advertised my role because it never seemed relevant to the newsletter or my general public presence in the community. I don’t get any special insights working for the Ward 1 office that I wouldn’t otherwise get through my usual work. I’ve never had unique access that any other resident would have, never seen “leaked” documents, never had my ears to the wall for confidential conversations that have allowed me to write anything special in this newsletter.

There’s a very strict firewall between the work I do for the Ward 1 office and any of my everyday political work, this newsletter included. Not that anything I do for the Ward 1 office would impact the newsletter in any way. See, my job for Ward 1 is graphic design and newsletter copy. I fire up Adobe Illustrator, make some graphics to explain the new developments in the ward, road closures, street festivals, etc. And, every other week, I write about the same issues for Maureen’s newsletter to residents. All that copy is then sent to the Ward 1 office where things are changed, edited, and packaged for residents. Then, I post on social media that the newsletter is out, and we’re done!

The constant critique of city hall is that it’s an inaccessible black box that never communicates things effectively. I have been hired to take my skills and use them to help inform the residents of Ward 1 as to what’s going on in their community and what city hall is up to on any given week. I think there’s value in that.

That’s very different than this newsletter project of mine. With this, I get to focus on things I care about or things that bother me. Sometimes, things happen in this city that need a little more scrutiny. I am (not to toot my own horn or anything) a pretty good researcher. I put pieces together, dig into things, and try to present them in a compelling way. You may not agree with my perspective or you may be here only for the history side of things, but that’s okay; in a vibrant and fully-formed democracy, people should have different opinions and should feel free to share them.

When former Ward 8 councillor JP Danko and Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls opposed the safe-supply Healthbox program on the mountain last November, I sat through hours of council recordings to transcribe what they said, put it in context, and offered my own commentary. When Ward 5 councillor Matt Francis and Ward 9 councillor Brad Clark tussled over the Red Hill Valley Expressway and the Joint Stewardship Board in April, I did the same thing. I went through all the candidates who have stood for local office since 1960 in the “Sage Council” edition, mapped every federal riding in Hamilton’s history before this year’s federal election, and went through the debate around online voting that failed earlier this summer (once again watching council recordings to ensure I got everyone’s phrasing right).

***

One of the main figures in that last one there was Ward 3’s Andrew Selman. I’ve written about him three times since March (first in the context of Danko’s posting about people experiencing homelessness, second in reference to his attempt to turn Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch’s participation in a softball league into a political scandal, and third, the above post discussing his delegation to council to oppose online voting).

He’s a very interesting figure in the community, having very quickly and skillfully built a political profile over the space of a few years, becoming one of the most recognizable non-elected political figures in Hamilton. He’s professionalizing his online presence, attending council meetings as a delegating participant, and is laying the groundwork for a very strong council campaign in Ward 3.

The story gets convoluted here, but the simplified version is that, after meeting some other councillors’ staff for the very first time on Wednesday (I work from home and as needed, so I don’t see many other staff members), Selman and other community activists were quickly made aware of my contract with Maureen Wilson.

Damn near close to exactly 24 hours after meeting those staffers, Selman posted a teaser to social media, claiming he had a “barn burner of a #HamOnt municipal political scandal story.”

I was alerted to this by…just so, so many people. Dozens of friends and colleagues texted, DMed, and called to tell me that it looked like Selman was talking about me. Even though I’m not a “journalist” and the characterization of my work as “hit pieces” is patently unfair, it was clear who he was talking about.

So I took to Bluesky to let the community know that the barn that was being burned was, indeed, mine. I was later informed that Selman also posted similar things to the rather extreme social media site Twitter/X, but my account on there hasn’t been active in years (you know, because of it becoming a safe haven for white supremacists, bigots, and far-right extremists of all kinds) and I didn’t see any value in posting a response there since current reporting indicates Twitter/X is now 75% bots.

Shortly after I published my thread, Selman responded, opening his post with “Appreciate that Chris”. Keen observers will note that, in the “Together in Electric Democracy” edition, I pointed out how, during his delegations, Selman says “Appreciate that” after the chair scolds him for talking over or debating members of council. Notes, it would seem, are being taken.

I had originally wanted to go through his response point-by-point, as it is equal parts spin and extrapolation due to a lack of knowledge on the situation. But that would be exhausting for everyone. There are some points deserving clarification, though.

He gets the former name of the newsletter wrong, seemingly to imply that I was the “Sewer Socialist”. I got tired of explaining that the sewer socialists were turn-of-the-century social democrats in Milwaukee and explained in “Therefore, be it resolved” that I needed a rebrand after a particularly dark time for me politically.

He claims Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch and I are teammates “on a taxpayer subsidized softball team”, once again seeking to drag the Steel City Inclusive Softball Association through the mud because the league earned two Ward 2 Community Grants since 2023 (grants that have also been awarded to, among others, Supercrawl, the Hammer City Roller Derby, Theatre Aquarius, local churches, downtown outreach groups, and Italian cultural festivals - and the North End Breezes, the lovely monthly community paper in the North End to which Selman has contributed). Cameron and I aren’t on the same team and, metaphorically speaking, not even in the same league (he’s a very good softball player and I am…not).

He tries to make a scandal of Terry Cooke’s promotion of my newsletter (though he calls him “former Councillor”; since Selman seems focused on American-style honourifics, it should be noted that the proper phrasing would be “former Regional Chair Terry Cooke”). But Terry is more than capable of holding his own and trying to make a scandal of two politically involved people knowing each other in Hamilton is like trying to make a scandal of it being sunny and hot in summer.

In his screenshotted post, Selman writes: “It’s worth nothing that when a political staffer is actively shaping public narratives-commenting on private citizens and elected officials alike-while drawing a City salary. Voters deserve transparency about who is driving the message and why.” Some of Selman’s associates on social media have also raised this, asking if I’m “writing my newsletter on city time”.

I, of course, don’t “draw a salary”. I’m an overeducated millennial; I have never once, in all my 35 years, ever earned a salary. I earn a wage for work done. When copy is needed or graphic design is requested, I do it, and log hours. I am paid based on the hours I work and no more. There are no perks, there are no extras, and, if there’s no work, there’s no paycheque. That’s how wage work goes. Just like when I worked at Fortinos, at the McMaster campus bookstore, and as a contract professor.

Without getting into the specifics, I would need to work without a break, nonstop, for around six years, to even come close to costing “taxpayers” one single Canadian dollar per household. I’m so far away from the Sunshine List, I may as well be in the Mines of Moria. I do my newsletter on my own time, in my own way, with my own skills. Any assertion to the contrary is not just false, but comes close to defamatory.

I get that people might want transparency. But I don’t hear calls for John Best’s Bay Observer to stop writing things critical of Cameron and council’s “left wing” because they host advertisements for Mike Spadafora and Esther Pauls.

And I certainly don’t hear anyone raising a stink around the fact that Hamilton’s single most notorious and pointed Twitter troll, who has spent years trying to “shape public narratives”, earned over $500,000 over the course of 5 years as a “special advisor” to a former mayor. For context, I’d need to work every day of every week without break or vacation until I was over 80 in this job to earn the same amount - an amount that troll earned after having worked for the city for decades.

***

I have been deeply, deeply critical of Selman in the past. Using the same “circles of influence” as before, I’d say we’re somewhere on the lower end of the scale between 25 and 0 percenters. Indeed, I’ll be the first to admit that my critiques of Selman have been excessively biting as of late. Trying to draw a local inclusive softball league into a political fight against an openly gay councillor during Pride Month was something with which I took issue. I was animated, I was hurt, and I was sticking up for my community - a community that has seen more than its fair share of attacks over the course of my entire lifetime. I did not like his behaviour at council, talking over and debating certain councillors and disparaging city staff because he’s already a declared candidate for council.

Citizens, in their own time, are free to express their opinions and involve themselves in the day-to-day life of a democracy. When a candidate for council expresses an opinion that I do not agree with, I will write about it. It doesn’t matter if that candidate is Andrew Selman or Maureen Wilson.

Because that’s what public participation in a democracy is all about. Sometimes, people will disagree with you. Sometimes, they’ll write about how they disagree with you. Sometimes, they’ll start a newsletter to talk about local politics and history and silly stuff because they want to make a difference with limited resources and excessive enthusiasm.

People will get involved in the way that makes the most sense for them. For Selman, it means running for city council in Ward 3, and that’s great; we need more serious candidates for public office with a variety of different views who can help increase voter turnout and engage new segments of the population.

But a key skill in a democracy is learning how to navigate disagreements.

***

There is a segment of Hamilton’s “political class” - former and current elected officials, strategists, editors, staffers from all major parties - who see alternative viewpoints as a threat. When someone has the audacity to question them, they strike back with varying levels of intensity. It appears, more and more, that this is merely about them not being shown the respect they believe they are entitled to by virtue of their connections and status. But deference to people in positions of authority isn’t democratic; it’s aristocratic. And I can’t abide by that. I will not be pushed around or silenced by people who believe it is their divine right to rule this city, either directly or through their outsized influence.

Evidently, my writing about them has ruffled some feathers. And so, when they saw an opportunity to both come after me and try to besmirch the reputation of Maureen Wilson, they jumped at the chance.

I’m not going to apologize for doing the work I do, either at city hall or in this newsletter. All I will do is ensure to you, dear reader, that the two things are distinct and that no one at city hall that I agree with or not influences what I write. I am my own man. Every time you see a graphic on Maureen’s website or the Ward 1 print newsletter, rest assured that those things, in no way, impacted The Incline.

I will continue to provide commentary and critique of what council does, as is my right in a free and open democracy. I will provide my insights and do so, free of charge, as I always do.

I look forward to more spirited debates over policy, the direction of the city, and politics in general with everyone, including Selman and his allies. That’s what democracy is about.

As I wrote on Bluesky a few days back, my final comment on this matter is simple:

I'm Chris Erl, I'm a communications advisor for Maureen Wilson, I write The Incline, and I love this city. You can quote me on it.

1  Anand Giridharadas. 2022. The Persuaders : At the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 48 - 49.