That's all.
I'm not talking to any of you anymore. You can take your NIMBY, me-first, gentrifying, scare-tactic-buying, soulless selves and fold them into corners so sharp they can penetrate your ribs to prove that you literally have no heart. I'm nauseated by having to face the fact that the people in my province think cementing us as the national leader in child poverty and tripling the number people who don't have homes is something to be rewarded with another term in office and six-figure salary - proof positive that we haven't come past about age 10 as a society yet. We want to have our cake and eat it to, without ever facing the consequences. We shirk responsibility like it's math homework when we want to watch cartoons, denying the inevitable cycle of action and reaction. We are the ostrich with it's head so deeply in the sand we won't even blink when the lion creeps up behind us. We are guaranteeing our own demise, one term in office at a time, and seem intent on doing so until the gap between the rich and the poor is a chasm that swallows us all and there's no where to run to because every stream is an economic project, every building is privatized, and centuries of smog that our denial has yet to successfully dissipate suffocate us in our sleep.

My disappointment cannot be parted from my anger. Both sit in my throat like lava or embers, burning and choking.

... and if you're from my side of the tracks, he probably hates you too. Given the past 8 years and the number of ways he's come up with to have an extremely negative impact on my life and on the lives of those around me, I literally can't imagine another 4. I won't. I'm trying to generate faith (I don't have) in my fellow British Columbians so I can believe they won't sentence us to another term of...

- sky-rocketing tuition rates and claw backs of bursary and remissions programs such that the correlation between income and post-secondary education rates has increased sharply. This also directly impacts student debt rates - were it not for Campbell's policies, my own student loan could be nearly $20 K less.

- rental housing shortages and lack of protection for tenants; from his zero-residency requirements for residential property to renovictions to failure to fund social housing, Gordo himself guaranteed our current housing crisis would come to be

- even better, he ensured it would bloom into a homelessness crisis by reducing eligibility for social services and forcing people off of disability. Since I've been teaching, I've watched too many of my students be pushed from the margin literally into the gutter because of Campbell policies. Vancouver, your homeless population has been tripled by this man's policies.

- in the tradition of marginalizing those already facing barriers, Campbell has already done just about all he can to eliminate government services aimed at supporting equality for women, from closing women's centres to reducing avaliability of legal aid. At this rate, we'll be back to the 1890s in no time.

- in the realm of education, students now face more overcrowded classrooms and teachers struggle in "classroom impossible" where the combonation of student needs, special needs, and lack of support creates a ticking time bomb.

This list could go on (and on). I tend to the humanist side, so focus on policies and how they affectt people, but if I were a rocks-and-trees type, I could produce a similar list on environmental issues (all one has to do is look at the annual Squamish eagle count and everything unfolds from there), and then there's the entire realm of privatization, more than enough to warrant a post of its own.

Whatever this election is, it is not one where any person with a still-beating heart can justify apathy.