Every election, pollsters struggle with the eternal question: what does it take to get the majority of young people out to vote? In the US, they hit upon the solution several years ago: Rock the Vote, get celebrities to rally their most strident followers into an electoral frenzy and stuff those ballot boxes on Election Day. Well it wasn’t quite of Rock the Vote, but Hawksley Workman is doing his share to get out the vote by touring university campuses across Southern Ontario.
Last Thursday, he made a stop at the University of Guelph and did a live-to-air townhall style open forum on campus radio, CFRU 93.3 FM. At times it was standing room only as students and others gathered in the University Centre courtyard to hear from not just Workman (real name Ryan Corrigan), but from singer/songwriter/activist James Gordon, local music promoter andrea bennett and Cailey Campbell, a member of the student government at the U of G.
 | But chances are its Workman that drew the crowd and he began his comments by making a political confession: he hasn’t voted in a long, long time. He says that he voted once for the novelty of it in high school, but went on to add that in the decade since, he’s been largely apathetic about politics and generally disappointed. “I don’t know if that’s changed quite yet, but I sort of feel that a massive disappointment is on the horizon,” he said. The “disappointment” Workman refers to is the potentiality of a Harper majority government being elected on October 14th. Like a lot of other artists and musicians, Workman’s against the some $50 million in funding cuts to the arts that were made in the month leading up to the election. “I realized that I can no longer stay in my little world of getting on planes and going to play in rock ‘n’ roll shows.” Travelling is part of the musician’s life, and Workman said that he’s felt blessed to be able to travel the way he has and take temperature of the places he goes. “You get sense of how these strange architectures that we’ve created for ourselves work,” he explains. “I feel in Canada we’ve always taken for granted that we’re the smarter ones, we’re the ones moving forward and we’ve been corrupted by this testimony of fear and loathing.” |
Workman feels that we’re on the cusp of “sharing the embarrassment” of being seen as American. That is not the national identity of our neighbours to the south, but rather certain political policies of the Harper government that share much in common with the administration of George W. Bush. What he’s come to realize, Workman says, is that the peacemakers and nature lovers image of Canada old is getting hard and harder to believe
“I want to feel proud of that identity, not to the point of dangerously nationalistic, but to the point where it’s clear that Canadians have built a humble society on humane and loving and caring platforms,” explains Workman. “This is who we are. We may not win every gold medal but we have a society that I think champions ideas and champions the people who are forgotten.”
Instead, Workman fears that Canada is headed for a situation where we’re all going to be disappointed; a government that’s ambivalent to culture, women, and the lower classes. And while he says that he doesn’t know who to vote for, he does know who not to vote for. “I think it’s important to recognize a certain pervasive, very hateful sensibility that’s come out of a lot of the proposed changes to the way we operate our country,” he says. “This notion that we need to stay the course because any change could bring about some disaster were not already on a direct collision course for.”
So what do we do? What Workman proposes is that Canada, with its power and resources, can be a source of great focus to take leadership role in the world; having an impact in how we create wealth and changing the focus from greed to “all the beautiful things that made us who we are.”
As for the arts, the singer says that we’re already at the point where, artistically, Canadians are more likely to be consumers than producers, and we should help turn that around. He points out that Margaret Atwood was serving coffee when she applied for and won a government bursary to write her first book; without the help of government funds, there would have been no ‘Margaret Atwood: Famous Canadian Author.’ “Canada is open-minded, the geography adds to our intensity of character,” which trickles down to all our singers, songwriters, poets. But that voice needs help to be heard, it’s an investment, says Workman. “There’s a lot of passion. […] We need you to be able to take that risk, but that risk comes at a bit of a price.”
But the primary message of the day was to end the apathetic streak, or continue to wallow in it at your own peril. “The first thing that people with an agenda do is disable those who are thinking, who are writing, who are singing, dreaming, hoping; they’re the first ones to be taken away from the picture because that’s dangerous,” says Workman. “I reckon that it’s time to ruffle some feathers. Politics has typically been a taboo subject at dinner tables and with your neighbours and I think it might be time to revisit that.”
He wrapped by saying, “For the first time in 10 years I’ll be voting and I hope everyone else will too.”
To hear the whole dialogue visit www.cfru.ca, and go to the archives section to download.