Ken Westhues

Local Democracy as Response to Specific Situations

Ken Westhues December 2, 2005

The biggest challenge for an educational program in local democracy is how to avoid contradicting the topic in how the program is organized. One cannot learn about small-scale democracy except by practicing it. An authoritarian structure for the program would subvert its purpose. We would not be smarter by the end, but stupider. Fortunately, the twenty participants in this inaugural offering of the Working Centre’s Diploma Program in Local Democracy bring such rich and diverse backgrounds of democratic thought and action that they would not tolerate anauthoritarian program structure anyway.

The Individual and the Group

Ken Westhues September 1, 2001

Among the groups scheduled to visit the Working Centre this fall is the Arts first-year seminar at the University of Waterloo on “Cliques, Crowds, and Individuals.” Last year the seminar spent an evening with Jean Steckle at the Heritage Homestead on Bleams Road. This year the trek off-campus is to 43 Queen.

Mobbing, Bullying, and Workplace Nastiness

Ken Westhues September 1, 1999

The books featured on this page concern the most important advance in the study of work in the past twenty years. The advance consists in putting a name on and beginning to make sense of the most terrifying kind of injury a worker can experience, an injury that has until now gone largely unrecognized.

Producerism: A Real-Life Example (1999)

Ken Westhues March 1, 1999

The Working Centre’s economic and social vision enjoys wide support. The donations it receives of money and work are proof. So are the approving comments commonly heard about the soup kitchen, the help centre, and other projects.

Building Relationships Where People Are Real (1998)

Ken Westhues September 1, 1998

Frederick Douglass had a feeling something was wrong. The Maryland economy of the early nineteenth century was humming along smoothly enough. There were plantations like the one where he spent his first eight years. There was Baltimore, the city where he grew into a teenager. Like any of us, Douglass encountered his society as a given, an established, pre-existing order into which he was expected to fit.

Producerism: a Real-life Example (1998)

Ken Westhues March 1, 1998

Glasgow is no utopia. It has its share of rifts and rivalries, gossip and grudges. On top of that, global capitalism has not treated the town well. Livestock and grain prices are down. Local factories survive by keeping wages low. In the absence of public health insurance, many residents are terrified of getting sick. Teenagers have trouble seeing a future for themselves unless they move away.

Still, what strength of community, what wealth was apparent in that festival! The dinner committee served 1,600 meals. Think of it: a hundred parties of four people each times four.

The Capitalism of Edmonds Meyers

Ken Westhues September 1, 1997

Early in the summer. Joe Mancini asked me to write comments for Good Work News on the 1996 paperback by Edmond Meyers, From Slavery to Social Partnership. A Kitchener resident, Meyers had published the book through his consulting company, EM Research Associates.

Quick-Fix Accounting or Democratic Reform?

Ken Westhues March 1, 1997

Every age is burdened by belief in some cure-all touted to relieve all real and imagined social ills. Every age also has a smattering of citizens able to recognize the cure-all as quackery and courageous enough to say so.

Spirits of Christmas Past

Ken Westhues December 1, 1996

Christmas is a time of remembering not only a prophet but those of our ancestors who, by word and example, passed the prophet’s two great commandments down to us. It is the season for celebrating a legacy with which our generation now tries to keep faith.

Cartown, Walktown

Ken Westhues June 1, 1995

There are two cities in Kitchener-Waterloo, but not the ones you’re probably thinking of. The boundary near Union Street is not irrelevant, of course. It makes a difference in tax-rates and which city council you help elect. But another boundary matters more. The routine of your daily life depends on it. This crucial boundary cutting across both municipalities deserves to be thought about. If nothing else, it helps clarify the issues surrounding the impending overhaul of Kitchener’s downtown.

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