Picking the Right Battles to Fight During Alberta Independence Petitioning feat. Kathy Flett
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
177.96162
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with our good friends and supporters of the Idle No More movement to discuss the pushback against the movement and what we can do to counter it. We talk about the dangers of separatists and how to deal with them, and what to do when you find yourself in a situation where you ve been demonized and demonized.
Transcript
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and as the alberta independence movement grows and there's more and more pushback i don't think
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the east is realizing they are becoming the villain in a story that is essentially going
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to glue albertans together the harder they push the more they demonize and it's happening more
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and i feel like as they realize that there's more of a potential for independence uh the more the
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anger comes out because they have to deal with these two competing ideas in their head like well
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these are bad people and oh they're traitors but there's a legal pathway and they're doing it
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peacefully and they are being positive and they're like these things don't coexist and what comes out
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is anger but that is gluing albertans together well and i think what hap what's happening now
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that the petition has started is that we thought we knew how many people want to explore this idea
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or might even be full-on convinced now we're finding out now we're finding out because there's not one
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location that there's not a lineup that goes all the way out and around the building even the one
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in edmonton that first one right all the way out and around the building down down the street through
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the parking lot and then the one on this last saturday at rundle park that was wild for edmonton
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i mean i was watching this i didn't get anything done i couldn't go because i had some zoom meetings
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and whatnot here but i'm on whenever i could i'm on my phone on twitter like wanting to find where's
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all the pictures who's doing what what's going on where and then everybody was posting pictures from
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all of these different events and i finally just threw on there like i'm sorry edmonton i need to
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apologize i was ready to build a wall around you but i take that back i guess i do i take that back
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i i will eat my humble pie i'm i was wrong and i've never i don't think i've ever been so happy
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to be wrong but we're and that's that strength in numbers which is giving people permission to talk
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about it which is giving people permission to explore the idea and go well wait a minute
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what about this and that but it's also as you said james it's causing that the people against
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us to get a little louder and a little meaner and a little more crass and uh and i just tell people
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just ignore them i get in trouble for that because people want to fight back but it's it's really not
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worth our time that's not worth it yeah there's there's uh there's certainly a balance to to
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strike there because it's you know i and and we you know we're not innocent of this either because
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we like to defend the movement and i'm i'm on there on our twitter and listen here yeah you know i try
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to try to reel her in as much as i can but yeah i i have that impulse too and i and i that's what sort
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of makes me empathize a little bit with people who who have a strong impulse the other way because if
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you if you truly have this notion in your head that these you know filthy separatists are trying
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to break up the country because they're greedy and they only want you know they want to um poison
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the environment with the oil and they don't care about you know all the good things that canada does
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around the world and they just want to be selfish and insular like i i get it if that was your if
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that's what you truly believed that would make a person angry sure what do you what do you say to a
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person like that like what is a what are some of the tools that you use to kind of uh lower the
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temperature a little bit and with these types of individuals because i gotta i gotta say i was on
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i saw in a in a group chat um a link to uh one of the posts about how long that lineup was at
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rundle park and james was there actually we have a couple videos on our channel about it yeah it was
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awesome to see but i i i made the mistake of clicking on this reddit link and and looking at what the
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slash r slash edmonton reddit was talking about it and they truly are uh discussing this movement
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in terms of in like apocalyptic terms of like you know we gotta we gotta do something about this like
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this is you know we gotta stop them we gotta counter their like as if it's like a you know
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they're strategizing in a military campaign like what what do you how do you even begin with somebody
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like that well i think there's two camps that belong that are they're part of that that group
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there's the ones that they're the paid the paid problem right they're being paid to create this
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and to to stoke the fires and to make people angry and upset and what are you going to do about that
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like you can't fire them because somebody else is paying them to do it the paid literally paid
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opposition nothing you can do about that the ones unfortunately that they're able to kind of loop
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into their argument if if those folks are so far gone that they just don't want to see it
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the uh maybe there's a we'll we'll see if mike agrees with my my my strategy i've been stress
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testing this i've been engaging with the trolls um not to convince them not feeding them in the sense
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of like i guess feeding the trolls is normally described as like you get sucked in and you get
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emotional and you call them a bad person or something um and then they feel like you've met
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them at their same level of emotion they feel like now they're totally justified yeah um but what i
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treat is a lot of these discussions let it be online or with somebody i realize that i'm not going to
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convince them but if there's other people usually it's the silent ones that you don't know their
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position you don't know how many like ifs or maybes or what about this evidence or that and you can go
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a couple ways but one way is like if you're the more reasonable side if in that discussion somebody
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comes off as very emotional and they come off as insane you don't have to do much to keep a measured
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like they are doing the work for you to make you look like the well-adjusted normal person so that's
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like rule number one don't feed into that and you can just let them shout off all this crazy stuff
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but also just take a step back like ask them well what's your evidence for this or somebody's like
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you're a traitor i'm like well what's the legal definition of a traitor or is it uh does it make
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you a traitor going through the democratic process of a citizen-led petition for referendum and what
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about the 1998 supreme court reference case um and you point to these little like you can drop these
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little these little learning moments for anybody else watching and and this could be something as
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like oh you have a family chat with somebody and like you've got a group chat and there's some family
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members and somebody says some crazy thing about these alberta separatists and you can like you
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don't have to get into a full-blown argument just to start like subtly correcting some of these things
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or pushing back or asking these questions that will help convince somebody in the middle