I wanna talk about an issue which, at the time of writing, is crippling the live music scene in Toronto. I’m talking about the TTC strike, friends. And I’m gonna be diplomatic because my horoscope recommends I remain empathetic this week. Problem is, empathy done right goes all ways. I feel for the TTC employees, I do, but I also kind of have to empathize with any beautiful ingenue who left the Teenage Head concert a little tipsy only to find the subway doors locked, and not a streetcar in sight. Now the poor girl’s gotta haul ass to a taxicab before she gets raped. TTC strikes are big business for sexual predators.

So where should I direct this benevolent  empathy I’ve cultivated. Maybe the arts/entertainment community? It’s hard enough to get people to come out to the show without your patrons having to jog to the show. You got your starving artists, who already couldn’t make it in time for their shitty wage, non-union day job, trying to cut their losses with their share from the door… and nobody shows. Nobody’s willing to make the mission. Tensions rise and eventually our beloved local indie band named after some sort of woodland creature, or perhaps an ironic information-age allusion collapses under the strain of an estranged, essential [yes “essential”] service.

And I empathize with the TTC workers… maybe even  the Amalgamated Transit Union, although that takes Gandhi-esque understanding. You see, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the union rep, Bob Kinnear, looks like Hannibal Lector. Union reps are sketchy, folks. Look ‘em up. How many of them walk straight from their union positions to cushy commercial jobs, or even government titles? There’s almost always a conflict of interest there, it’s what FLQ leader Pierre Vallieres was so pissed off about… [one of the things]. So understanding Kinnear might be a stretch, but it’s fun to get caught up in the romantic semi-revolutionary idea of a strike. “Solidarity, brothers. Stick it to the man!” Except The Man in this case is the girl fleeing the Teenage Head concert I mentioned.

It’s also self-defeating, this strike, because TTC workers are pretty replaceable. I’m not going to say a monkey could fill a lot of the positions the ATU represents because that would be me failing to empathize with monkey labour rights. But the fact that a lot of those jobs could become automated, when the government realizes that robots don’t need benefits or a salary, and they can’t go on strike until they become self-aware. And we’re all fucked when that happens, so there’s no point worrying about it.

And you’re not required to empathize with robots. You don’t have to feel bad when some coked-up douche starts screaming at the automaton driving the streetcar. What you can empathize with - and this won’t be hard - is the people who used to do the robot’s job. When their own union has bullied itself out of a job. It’s not science fiction, friends, it happens all the time. I will take this moment to empathize with the good people of my hometown, Kenora Ontario, whose union continued to demand more and more of the pulp and paper industry - completely ignorant of the fact that free trade and the technological utopia of a paperless society made their fecund little mill irrelevant. The mill said “fuck with this” and shut down it’s Kenora branch, putting a large majority of folks there out of a job… out of a home. It happens. There will always be a TTC. But there may not always be TTC employees. And empathy for hundreds of laid-off workers isn’t really a stretch… is it?