JOB POSTING: Policy and Communications Specialist
ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY
Seeking a part-time Policy and Communications Specialist for Councillor Christine Boyle to support her council and constituency work in the City of Vancouver. Reporting to Councillor Boyle, this position provides policy, communications, and outreach support.
Primary duties and responsibilities include:
- Supporting the Councillor’s political work through:
- Research on topics of relevance as they arise or as determined in strategic planning
- Outreach to, and organizing with, community organizations and stakeholders on shared issues, as a representative of Cllr Boyle
- Responding to concerns raised by residents, as a representative of Cllr Boyle
- Working with the Cllr on internal and external communications through email, social media, and a periodic newsletter, as well as media relations
- Serving as a strategic advisor to Councillor Christine Boyle, including helping identify and move forward strategic priorities and evaluating progress
- Assuming day-to-day responsibility for projects and tasks, including meeting preparation and follow-up
- Being flexible and willing to perform varying duties as issues arise and depending on shifting needs
THE IDEAL CANDIDATE
We are seeking a collaborative organizer and communications professional with knowledge of governance, political advocacy, communications, and project management.
The successful candidate will have:
- 4+ years of experience in community organizing and political engagement related to social and climate justice efforts
- Media and digital communications skills
- Proven experience working collaboratively, communicating clearly, and engaging respectfully with others
- Experience and comfort taking initiative, being proactive, and creatively and strategically implement directives.
- Strong diplomatic and interpersonal skills.
- Relevant educational experience and a commitment to learning in the role
- Experience as an intermediate or advanced level user of email, MS Office Suite.
- Interest in being part of moving forward a bold agenda at the municipal level
Hourly Wage: $32.00, plus 4% in lieu of benefits
Hours Per Week: 15 hours/week
Term: ASAP until Dec 2019 (to be renewed for 2020 if Cllr discretionary funds are available)
Additional Information:
- Time to be tracked and signed off by Cllr Boyle on a bi-weekly basis
- IT equipment and work space to be supplied by contractor employee
- No City network access or access card will be provided
- Hiring of the contractor employee is to the discretionary of the Councillor
TO APPLY: Email a cover letter and resume to: CLRBoyle@vancouver.ca by April 30th, 2019.
NOTE: OneCity Vancouver is currently hiring for a part-time Director of Organizing. Applicants interested in both positions are encouraged to apply. We will consider the same person for both positions. Applicants should understand that the roles are separate and duties and hours will be tracked separated to ensure that no public funds are going toward distinctly partisan activities.
Councillor Boyle is committed to an inclusive and diverse workforce and encourages all qualified applicants to apply including members of visible minorities, Indigenous persons and people of all gender identities and abilities.
Time to get to work electing OneCity’s candidates on Oct 20th
“Local politics in Vancouver has been dominated for too long by real estate interests and profit motives, trying to normalize our growing wealth gap, continuing with business as usual.
But this housing crisis can’t be normalized. This opioid crisis can’t be normalized. The arts spaces disappearing, the small businesses closing down, the vastly unequal distribution of wealth can’t be normalized.
We have a choice. We can continue to tinker at the edges, and watch this city become more and more of a shiny, empty place. Or we treat these crises like crises, can be bold about addressing them.
I’ve spent my adult life organizing on the ground for justice, for dignity, for community. I’m running for City Council to continue that work.
To bring your voices, the voices of communities and social movements, to City Hall. To ensure that the voices of marginalized and underrepresented communities are heard loud and clear.
I’m running for City Council to ensure that every neighbourhood in this beautiful, abundantly wealthy city of ours, is for everyone.
I’m running for City Council to tackle this tale of two cities. To make Vancouver One City: A city for everyone.”
What an honour to be running as one of OneCity Vancouver‘s candidates for City Council this Fall, alongside Brandon Yan for Vancouver City Council.
We have a lot of work ahead, to get all five of OneCity’s candidates elected on Oct 20th. I’d love to have your help.
Share this video, and then donate, and sign up to volunteer at: https://christineboyle.ca/get-involved.
OneCity candidates are going to be a mighty force on your City Council and School Board in the years to come. We’re ready, I’m ready, to make Vancouver a city for everyone.
Thank you for all of your support so far.
It matters how we do politics
I’ve done a lot of different work in my adult life and the thread through it all has been organizing. Organizing people and strengthening communities, around issues that matter to them, to amplify their power, increase their effectiveness, build social solidarity and create meaningful change.
Running for City Council is one logical progression. I’m not an organizer who aspires to a life-long political career. I am an organizer who knows we need city hall on our side to create a city for everyone.
And as I head deeper into this campaign, it matters to me that I stay true to the values that have guided my work to date. So, as is my habit on many things, I started a list of reminders to myself – something I could turn back to over the coming months and maybe years. It is written with thanks to the folks I’ve seen model these things in their leadership. Its purpose is personal, but I thought that it might be of interest to others, and I think sharing this helps to keep me accountable. So here you go.
An imperfect list of reminders to myself about what matters when campaigning and governing:
1. Prioritize better policies and more participation. The first priority is better lives for all people. This is possible, and it looks like: accessible and affordable housing, strong and compassionate public services, increased and meaningful community participation, diverse representation, real climate action, and more.
Never let ego, or personal grudges, or partisan histories, get in the way of these. Don’t prioritize building profile, or optics for the next election, above these. Give credit to everyone involved. Be open to unusual allies but be curious about their motives. Invite people and communities in. Create opportunities for everyone involved to be the best versions of themselves.
2. Campaign and govern in a way that allows others to see themselves. The second priority is to do this work so that more people from underrepresented communities consider the possibility that they could run one day too. Not just more women, but more racialized women, more Indigenous women, more queer and trans leaders, more leaders with visible and invisible disabilities, more poor people, young people, creative people and gentle people. In the service of this goal, be human. Communicate honestly. Admit mistakes. Ask questions. Learn in private and in public. Be unapologetically feminist. Be willing to be vulnerable for the sake of politics being more human.
3. Always seek to redistribute power to those who have less of it. Open up government. Ask who benefits most. Allow communities to have real input but ensure that processes never allow communities with more social or economic power to exclude or override those with less. Lift up the voices of those most impacted and those least heard from. The point isn’t just to win an election, or win on a couple issues, the point is to challenge and change the whole imbalanced landscape.
4. Be open to critique and try not to take it personally. Not everyone is going to like or agree with you all the time. Get over it, but don’t entirely write them off. Allow people the space to change.
Particularly when people and groups you admire say that a proposal isn’t bold enough, or that not enough is being done, try not to get defensive or disheartened. Remember that social change requires people pushing from the outside, to create space for bolder policies and politicians. Remember that the housing crisis, and climate crisis, and opioid crisis, and massive economic inequality, are creating real devastation in people’s lives, and that can understandably trump civility. Insist on being on the same team as people, even when they want you to do more.
5. Work your ass off. It is an honour and a weighty responsibility to be elected, to get to represent people and communities in halls of government. Don’t feel burdened by the work, and never take the job for granted. It is in the service of people, and it won’t last forever. Be worthy of the role, be humbled by it, and do it well.
6. Set boundaries, turn off twitter, and insist on having a life. No one is well served by elected leaders who are cynical and burned out and defensive. Play on the floor with the kids, go outside, cook real food, make eye contact. Enjoy the things that make life worth living, so that you remember what the work is about.
There’s my unconventional to-do list. It’s my hope to practice politics differently, because in the midst of the overlapping crises we face, what we need is to rebuild social solidarity. To get there, I’m going to need your help.
Our shared work is to rebuilt social solidarity and trust
The social contract between Vancouverites and local government has been fractured – not just in the last decade, but in the decades before that too. The result is very little trust in government, communities weary of change, deep apathy and disengagement. We’re not unique. Trust in politics, and trust in government, is low across the globe, thanks to the control that big money wields over important decisions and the people making them, from mega-developers, to fossil fuel companies, to the NRA.
British Columbia’s campaign finance reform give us a chance to change that, but even with the legislation in place it’s not going to change easily. Political habits die hard, money is used to getting to call the shots, and we’re used to complaining cynically about it all.
Rebuilding Vancouver’s social contract is going to require us to get involved. It will mean expecting more integrity of political leaders, and in exchange allowing them more humanity. To create a political culture where people aren’t considered “worthless” because they don’t agree with you. To create a political culture where we are learning and figuring it out together – elected leaders and communities. And more than anything, to create a political culture where many, many more people participate.
Everyone on twitter seems to have a 10-point plan for how we #fixhousing and get out of this mess, but nearly every other global city is in some form of the same mess, having witnessed reckless global capital run roughshod over communities while the gap between the runaway rich and the rest of us increases exponentially. The reality is that there is no road map.
Of course, OneCity Vancouver is developing a detailed policy platform. We’ve spent the past few years hosting listening sessions with experts and people with lived experience in affordable housing, arts & culture, addictions and harm reduction, climate justice and more. We’re doing our homework to come up with the best plan we can, informed by many of you. And we’re doing it rooted in a strong set of values.
But as I’ve said before, and will say again, we can’t do it alone. We’d love your help, your input, your door knocking and your donations, between now and the Oct 20th election. And we’ll need it after, showing up and pushing whomever forms government to put the needs of the most vulnerable first, and to do it with integrity and courage.
Politics isn’t just about elections. The city is political, and our lives within it are too. Let’s create a city for everyone.
—
Christine Boyle is a local community organizer and parent. She is seeking the OneCity Vancouver nomination to run for Vancouver City Council this Fall. Get Involved.
A shortened version of this article appeared April 13th in the Georgia Straight.
We can’t let Vancouver lose its soul
“We don’t need a study to tell us what gives a city soul. We know it within our own lives. The soul of any place is made up of its people and, beyond that, of its neighbourhoods, its culture, its local businesses. The soul of any place is in its history, and the way its residents—not reckless global capital—shape and transform that history over time. And it will require all of those people to shift the direction that Vancouver is headed.”
We can’t let Vancouver lose it’s soul
Two weeks ago, the Red Gate Arts Society, a nonprofit that provides affordable working space for artists and musicians, announced that they were being evicted from their Strathcona space. They are just one of many cultural institutions whose existence has made this city that I love a better place. And their disappearance is one more sign of a city that is rapidly losing its soul.
In my conversations with friends, we mourn for the parts of this city we have loved. Favourite small businesses and the stories of what they meant to us: study groups at Calhoun’s Bakery, a meaningful job, lunches at Little Nest, a good book from Duthies.
We mourn the loss of already rare local arts spaces and the memories of how they shaped us: films at the Ridge Theatre, live music at Richard’s on Richards, events at W2. And we lament news of long-time Vancouverites who’ve been evicted, priced out, or departed in search of a home and a life with more financial breathing room than was possible here.
Each one of these stories is compelling because of the individual personal details. But the truth is that these stories represent a massive collective loss.
I don’t need to be an artist to want to live in a city that has a thriving arts-and-culture scene. I don’t need to own a small business to feel passionate about living in a city full of them. I don’t need any more reminders that I want to live in a city that people of all ages and incomes can call home, that protects tenants and prioritizes safe housing for vulnerable populations, that nurtures community.
Fortunately, we don’t need a study to tell us what gives a city soul. We know it within our own lives. The soul of any place is made up of its people and, beyond that, of its neighbourhoods, its culture, its local businesses. The soul of any place is in its history, and the way its residents—not reckless global capital—shape and transform that history over time. And it will require all of those people to shift the direction that Vancouver is headed.
In Vancouver, we have an abundance of good people working to do just that. Against enormous pressure, and usually requiring enormous amounts of unpaid labour, communities across Vancouver have been organizing to resist unaffordable developments that don’t meet neighbourhood needs.
In Chinatown, the community came together across generations to say “No” to a for-profit development at 105 Keefer Street that didn’t meet the community’s cultural, historical, and socioeconomic needs. In North East False Creek, the Hogan’s Alley Working Group came together to ensure that cultural redress formed a significant portion of the neighbourhood plan. And despite their eviction, the Red Gate Arts Society says they are in better shape than ever before, providing space for hundreds of artists and musicians, exposing them to thousands of fans and supporters, and putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the economy.
But as these folks will tell you, all of that work is exhausting, and we are still losing too often. Communities shouldn’t have to be fighting against the city to protect the soul of this place. The city should be on their side. We need government to radically shift the way that civic engagement and consultation happens, to create processes of deep democracy that invite these community groups in. Processes that don’t nurture NIMBYism but that foster connection, strengthen local culture, and prioritize providing for the most vulnerable among us.
The “free market” that got us into this crisis—the relentless drive for private-real-estate profits at the expense of actual places for people to live—isn’t going to fix it. Instead, we need to put people first by putting more land trusts, cultural land reserves, co-op housing, commercial-tenancy protections, heritage-business designations, and other nonmarket solutions squarely on the table.
In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, author and activist Jane Jacobs wrote that “cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” That’s how we protect and revitalize the soul of this place we love: deep engagement, deep democracy.
Vancouver should be a place for people to live, to make lives, and to experience a sense of belonging. It’s time we really tend to the soul of this city.
Part of the Community
Why I’m Running
This feels like a critical moment in Vancouver. This place we love is becoming more and more of a shiny, empty place. So I’ve made a decision to seek the OneCity Vancouver nomination to run for City Council this Fall.
I have been involved with OneCity since the beginning, and am so proud of the organization’s thoughtfulness, its diversity, its bold policies, and its supportive and respectful culture.
As many of you know, this isn’t a decision I’ve made casually. I love the dynamic and lively church congregation I’m serving, and the national climate justice work I’ve been doing. But I’ve also always been passionate about local government, and particularly about this city I was born and raised in. This OneCity op-ed says it well: “A city designed only for the rich is a city that’s lost its soul.”
To be honest, I’m nervous about running, I’m nervous about the toxic tone of politics online and off-line these days, and I’m nervous about making mistakes and letting people down. But I’m also passionate about tackling the deepening wealth gap here, about ensuring that homes are for housing people rather than profits, and about deepening community engagement and community-level planning to build a better city together.
With a strong progressive City Council, with the contributions of community groups, social movements and working people, and with a provincial government that appears willing to work with the city, together we can change the direction Vancouver is headed, and make it a city where people can live and belong for generations to come.
I certainly can’t do it on my own. I’d love your support in getting the OneCity nomination. And then the whole OneCity team will need your help leading up to October 20th, to elect a progressive Council and School Board. And after that it will take all of our voices, inside and outside City Hall, to bring about the inclusive, vibrant and affordable city we believe is possible. A Vancouver for everyone.
Thank you.
Photo: Christine and Seth and the kids. Header Image: CUPE & The Leap Rally at Jack Pool Plaza, 2015
About Christine
Christine is a United Church Minister, community organizer and communications specialist, born and raised on unceded Coast Salish territory in Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about tackling inequality, contributing to climate justice, and deepening democratic engagement.
Christine spent four years supporting progressive local governance and leading strategic communications at the Columbia Institute’s Centre for Civic Governance. She organized training conferences for progressive local leaders in BC, Saskatchewan and Ontario, and supported the research and development of innovative municipal policy solutions. During that time she also supported the development of GreenJobs BC, bringing together environmental, labour, and community leaders to advocate for a just transition.
Prior to that work, Christine was on staff at First United Church in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, doing programming and community outreach. She also spend five years at Grandview/ ?Uuqinak’uuh Elementary School, directing the Afterschool Program, coordinating the School and Community Garden, and supporting children and families.
As a high school and university student in Vancouver she worked at Moores Bakery in Kerrisdale, coached and refereed youth soccer, taught cycling with Pedalheads, was elected to UBC’s AMS student government, campaigned to protect the UBC Farm, and organized events around Amnesty International’s Stolen Sisters report. As an adult she’s volunteered with California’s Prop-8 Marriage Equality campaign, coordinated SFU’s Interfaith Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements, sat on the board of the First United Housing Society, helped launch the Heartwood Community Café, co-chaired the board of the InterSpiritual Centre, and volunteered on numerous local, provincial and federal election campaigns. She is a founding member of OneCity Vancouver.
Christine also created Spirited Social Change, an initiative aimed at engaging people across generations to explore the intersections between faith, spirituality, and our work for a better world. Through that work she was part of initiating and leading The Self Care Project, and Fossil Free Faith.
Christine spearheaded national efforts within the United Church to divest the church’s funds from fossil fuels. In 2015 she traveled to the Vatican for events around the release of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change and the economy, and later that year was a civil society delegate to the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris.
Christine joined the team at Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre for Peace as Minister of Community Life in January 2016, and was ordained a Minister in the United Church in 2017.
She has an BSc in Urban Agriculture and First Nations Studies from UBC, and an MA in Religious Leadership for Social Change from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
Christine has lived in Vancouver nearly all her life. She graduated from Point Grey Mini School and has lived in neighbourhoods across the city. She moved to Grandview-Woodlands 13 years ago and lives with her partner and two kids.
Recent Article:
Recent Talk: Risky Apologies: On Reconciliation and Canada 150+ at Canadian Memorial United Church
Photo Credit: Gerald Deo