By Evon Reid

STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

The trouble with change is how difficult it is to articulate; frustration, however, is easy to express – especially at the polls.  Torontonians went to the polls recently and the result, though not unexpected, was still surprising.  Of particular significance was the support for Rob Ford in the inner suburbs – the immigrant-rich, relatively economically challenged former cities that ring “Toronto-proper”.

Whether this was an expression of frustration or an endorsement of change is the subject of ongoing speculation and there is no consensus in sight.  Either of these could be correct, but what is definitely not true is that their votes were an endorsement of Rob Ford’s agenda.

When I was first approached about writing this column, I quickly sketched out my first entry – it was pretty good. It was mostly good because it started off talking about us having narrowly averted a Rob Ford mayoralty, relegating the blowhard back to the ranks of the radio show callers and message board commenters who love him so much.

Oops!

Another major component of that article was my warning to Mayor Smitherman, as he would have been, not to misinterpret Ford’s popularity among the traditional Liberal voters of the inner-suburbs as support for his ideas.  Rather, it was largely due to one of Ford’s characteristics that he could do little to control.

Being an individualist with little understanding of immigrants as a group, Ford offered these voters relief from the burden of the artificial label they have been forced to wear; a label to which many feel little affinity.  He did not indulge them in the traditional campaign rhetoric of endless praise for the abstract idea of multiculturalism, which has been ineffective in growing youth jobs in Malvern, curtailing youth violence in the west-end, or making it easier for foreign trained professionals to earn decent wages and live in dignity in this city.

What he did do was listen to the problems of each man and woman and offered sympathy.  He responds to phone calls personally and by all accounts, he does make an effort to help those who call him, whether or not drugs is what they seek.

These voters did not go to the polls to elect someone to bring them change.  They went to the polls changed.  No longer willing to vote as “immigrants” for boilerplate slogans in praise of diversity and multiculturalism, they have articulated change in a most profound way.

Now if only someone would listen, someone besides Rob.

Evon Reid is a first year student at Osgoode Hall Law School. Besides the intersection of popular culture and politics, his interests include roots, dub and film.

The opinions in Speak on It are the writers’ and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies, opinions, or beliefs of Swaymag.ca.