Communism creeping into Cowichan
There seems to be a slow steady creep of communism in the Cowichan Valley, under the guise of climate change and peak oil. I am referring to the global “Transition Network” movement.
The Transition Network has been in our valley for awhile under the title Transition Cowichan and its assumed affiliate, the One Cowichan Educational Society (One Cowichan) along with the organizations they support or are connected to, for example; Cowichan Green Community and others, as itemized on their website, including Social Planning Cowichan. Their broad affiliations and political intentions should be made privy to the local taxpayer, as many taxpayers in the valley have been perplexed as to the obvious political undercurrents caused by these groups. They appear to be following the techniques as outlined in Dr Marshall Ganz’s book Organizing: People, Power, Change.
They do not say they are communist, but they appear to present as such, and it is not that the ideology is illegal, it is just abhorrent to most hard working self-sufficient people in the western world, and in our community. So, my first question is this: does this mean that if you voted for a One Cowichan candidate, for example, you voted for communism? I don’t know.
The first Transition Town was founded by Rob Hopkins and Nares Giangrande in the UK. Their philosophy; collectivism, is based on the studies of Ben Brangwyn on global relocalization agendas, and it appears to be modeled after the UN’s Agenda 21.
According to the literature, the Transition Network organization seeks to, and almost always succeeds, in paralleling community and governmental services, and infiltrates governmental positions. It is especially disturbing if this is done while advocating for and receiving public funding, as many charities do.
It looks like the Transition Network is dominating municipal governments one by one on a global scale in the guise of, among other things; “reclaiming the economy” from capitalism. Unfortunately, the alleged political agenda is not made transparent to the very public that is being overtaken. One of the guides it uses is the “Transition Initiatives Primer” that outlines among other things, how to insinuate itself into groups and coerce communities into adopting its plan of collectivism through educational initiatives, films, etc.
It appears that one of its manipulation techniques to achieve submission is intimidation through the Delphi Technique, which upon hindsight, some of us in the valley believe we witnessed taking place in recent campaigns for various political candidates in the area as well as on referendum articles. As a taxpayer, and as a concerned citizen looking for answers, I would like to see the Transition Network collectivism made transparent to the wider public.
In addition to all the above, I would also like to see the activities of some local organizations scrutinized. Especially since, the local Transition network, Transition Cowichan, is working closely with, among others, the Cowichan Housing Association, Social Planning Cowichan, and the Cowichan Green Community Foundation (CHA, SPC and CGCF share some common directorship personnel). One of the issues is that the Cowichan Housing Association is now the recipient of large sums of taxpayer cash, as was passed in the CVRD bylaw referendum 4201. This brings me to my second and last question: have affiliated or non-affiliated groups forced their way into local government by putting their people in office, subsequently pressing the vote to support that same group financially or otherwise? Again, I don’t know.
To be clear, these are not accusations, they are observations and questions. I am only looking for clarity and transparency as a taxpayer. I think it is time for our local connected communities to have a conversation about this, all of this.
Diane Moen
North Cowichan