Jack Layton's Legacy

You may remember my mentioning Lib Gibson, a TED friend,  several times.  Lib is the highly respected business leader who had a marvelous career as a big-shot at Bell Canada Enterprises (though she would be appalled at that term) and now teaches in the MBA program at the University of Toronto.  She's teaching an intensive course there entitled Managing Innovation and she's the right person for the task, given her deep experience in and appreciation for cutting-edge technology and her innovative turn of mind.

Lib wrote me the other day about the outpouring of emotion in Canada over the death of Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada and leader of the official opposition as of the recent election (which, though seriously ill, he campaigned in at a furious pace).  Layton died a week ago and left behind a letter that has not only made the rounds in the media but is being discussed in homes, at restaurants, on the street. 

Layton was a proud citizen of Canada, which he called "a great country, one of the hopes of the world."  He talked in his letter about the challenge to become a better country--"a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity."  He ultimately made the case for political civility,   Apparently, Canadians--like many Americans--have had it up to the teeth with the strident, mean-spirited turn that politics seems to have taken in our part of the world.  He argued hat the current Canadian government was not committed to fairness, to making sure that all citizens share in the benefits of its economy engine. 

Hmm.  Sounds familiar, no?  He ends his letter with these words:  "Love is better than anger.  Hope is better than fear.  Optimism is better than despair.  So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.  And we'll change the world."

Apparently his funeral was the occasion of a major gathering of people from both ends of the political spectrum and all types in between.  Margaret Wente, a relatively conservative writer for the Globe and Mail, reported on the funeral and opined that "Canadians of every political stripe yearn deeply for a political culture that's more civil and constructive, and that can engage ordinary citizens in building a better country.  Young Canadians yearn most of all.  Over at City Hall, one of the chalk scrawls said, "Thank you, Jack, for taking out the cynicism.''

Ah, cynicism.  The scourge of America right now.  We are drowning in it.   The mean spiritedness which surrounded even the selection of the date for President Obama to give his much-awaited speech on jobs next week is sickening. 

So I believe Jack Layton would have smiled at seeing Canada's close neighbors to the South--the Vermonters and upstate New Yorkers struggling to recover from Hurricane Irene's devastation--as they've pitched in together as a community to get things started again after destruction of houses and roads and basic services.  They are acting with the civility that is in short supply elsewhere in our country.  Apparently in Canada, too.

Jack Layton apparently knew how to initiate the kinds of communal conversation that is the basis for democratic governance.  Let's hope that effort continues without him..and that it spills over the border to the U.S.  We need all the inspiration we can get.