On Nov 29, 2021, at 4:23 PM, lavellcampbell <plavell(a)gmail.com> wrote: ? All things considered: I am not sure that an attempt at a demonstration at this time is the right course of action. First and foremost, I do not see a large number of people committing themselves to it. I count 7, of whom, 2 may not even be in town on the date. Even if all of the remaining 5 were to show up, one has to admit that it is not much of a showing. I think that a poor showing is worse than not doing it at all from a public relations standpoint. I also think that there is a lot of baggage being attached to this issue. Many of the people in this neighbourhood and on this mailing list have spent the last 30 or so years trying to exercise their democratic right to effective input at city hall. In fact, in those 30 or so years we have not only suffered repeated failures in our attempts to participate, we have seen the erosion of our ability to participate at all. In my opinion, in a general sense, the enormous outrage that we are feeling relative to dangerous and unsightly premises at the Bloomfield site is partially an expression of our growing realization of and concern about that loss of democracy. In a particular sense, the Bloomfield site resonates with us. It borders our community. Neighbours involved in the Imagine Bloomfield initiative worked for years to establish a development on the site that would have provided affordable housing as well as other real amenities. They would also have had some claim to participation “by the people”. It was torpedoed by all levels of government. Now the continued lack of proper maintenance at the site is particularly galling. All of this baggage is different from “Dangerous and Unsightly Premises” which was the starting point of all of this. It has been noted that the city (or someone) seems to have started at least a partial cleanup at the site. This alone would give them ammunition in the countering of any claims we might make to the media. In the meanwhile, we might follow Ron’s example: head up to the site, notice the things that have not been dealt with, call 311 and register a complaint. Some people have already done so. I complained on November 18. That reference number is 7750214. The items in my complaint were: broken windows, graffiti, garbage, lack of proper fencing and poorly maintained, overgrown green spaces. At least 3 other people have written letters to Lindell and staff. If you call to complain, have the civic numbers on hand because the complaints are registered under the civic numbers. In the meanwhile, I haven’t seen any extra names being added to the 7 people who initially said they would participate. Pete