Most of us are still far too comfortable. Even those of us who know that the system is evil and doomed don't feel the dagger in our side telling us it's do or die. We feel that we can wait, or that, given the difficulties of the task (revolutions are messy, uncertain affairs) we have to wait, for other necessary conditions to appear.
But the fact of the matter is that we're not doing enough now, and we are certainly doing far too much useless bitching about how flawed the system is and not enough thinking about how, given the reality that Canadians aren't going to revolt, how we are going to devise a non-violent, non-revolutionary revolution.
Alas, alack! So many "progressives" who at least recognize the problems, are STILL, after all this time, willing to waste their energy defending and advancing the Liberal Party of Canada (that destroyed the welfare state during the 1990s, that pillaged the EI program, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti, that is led by men (Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae) and was led by men (Paul Martin, John Manley) who would have taken us into Iraq. Who did take us into Afghanistan. The fact that John Manley went on to become the president of the elitist, anti-democratic, neo-liberal snake-oil peddling Canadian Council of Chief Executives, doesn't seem to register with such people. They'll even join their US-American liberal allies by defending the Wall Street servant, the murderous, psychopathic, lying Barack Obama against his critics.
For a guy who thinks the NDP is the best option of a bad lot, the reality that people who accept the premises of the problem still think the Liberals are even an option is a depressing thing indeed.
I have my own prescriptions, and I've mentioned them before, but I'd be interested to know what other people recommend given the circumstances. Besides bitching about things on the internet, attending a useless rally, and voting for the likeliest left-political option, ... what can we do to effect genuine change?
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I think that we need to make our professional alliances more like lobby groups. I just now happen to be studying Social Policy Analysis, and the writers of the texts are going on about how a social worker has the obligation to make change, and yet....the Cdn Assoc of Soc Workers doesn't even have anyone on staff with the job title of communications. They wrote one letter and had one press conference about the census, when, considering the impact on their profession, and the number of members, they could have also sent a petition, or had their own rallies in every city in Canada. Nothing at all on their site about the gun registry. They're either shell-shocked or just inert. An invigorated group like that should be framing the policy debate in Canada, not the governments of the day. But they're like abused kids, you know? They don't move in case they lose even more funding. There is an underused, potentially strong tool for change. They could take some courses from the nursing associations....
anonymous,
your post made me think about how different groups hold one rally after another, to no real effect.
We get tired of the rallies, and the organizing, all for nothing. And we all are usually fighting our separate battles.
We SHOULD bring everyone together, show how united action is necessary, and then organize to achieve something tangible.
Like a rally that, with rotating participants, stays permanent, until something changes.
After that, it's occupying buildings. General strikes, etc.
Of course, that relies on getting these people to grasp the enormity of the problem. Which is no easy thing.
I think its not about occupying buildings at all. As your post little says, Canadians are not revolutionaries. You need to take actions small and targeted enough to actually change public opinion as well. A lot of the services that are cut are delivered by civil servants. The term "civil servant" has been vilified. Professional groups of civil servants need to illustrate to the public that their concerns are that of the public, not the opposite. (Some people actually understand that they census issue is important.) That's a communication strategy, not a building takeover. You can't move the government to the left until you move the public there.
There is an outcry right now as to the effectiveness of Manitoba's CFS, and yet on CBC this morning, the rep from CFS was not explaining the history of funding and therefore the handcuffing of social workers with reduced resources, she was explaining the procedures that they follow, defending them. So, does the public want to support that person who supports an apparently non-functioning department? No, they think she is incapable of doing her job, and the next political campaign will come in and claim that they are going to get rid of the top management that they pay too much and are ineffective, and the public will vote for it. INSTEAD, the professional social work association should be finding its way into the interview and voicing their concerns. The far right is using the communications strategy extremely well, and the old Hey Hey Ho Ho rally, and sit in look archaic beside the slick and slippery spin that the cons, and the business commununity and the right wing think tanks come up with every day.
anonymous,
You have brought up a large number of important points in your comment and i want to reflect upon them some more.
I'm kinda wondering what you guys do at rallies. Rallies on specific issues are for networking, getting street level intel, building your knowledge base about an issue from the people actually involved in it, and figuring out who among them you think you can trust.
The reason I don't like going to rallies is because it is such friggin hard work but I don't know a better way to build real grassroots support for getting stuff done.
"As your post little says, Canadians are not revolutionaries."
Curious that so many Canadians were involved in aiding revolutionary situations eg Spanish Civil War and were deported, attacked, or machine-gunned by the Canadian government eg Winnipeg General Strike for alleged revolutionary sympathies.
I know what you're getting at when you say that Canadians are not revolutionaries, and unlike Todd just above I don't know that citing the bravery of Canadian lefts long past really contradicts the substance of what you're trying to say. What I think we do, though, if we rush too quickly to nod our heads to that way of describing the relatively demobilized state of movements in this country, is that we risk erasing the fact that many Canadians are in struggle right now. Millions of Canadians resist poverty, racism, homophobia, misogyny, neoliberalism in little, everyday, individual ways all the time, and the work of creating change is to provide people with ways to translate those resistances into more collective expressions. And examples of such collective expressions already exist, even if there aren't as many as we would like at the moment -- workers are striking, right now; women are organizing against male violence, right now; queers are engaging in campaigns to make Canadian schools safer spaces for queer youth, right now; indigenous communities are acting in many different ways (including direct action) in defense of their land, right now; anti-poverty groups from OCAP to ACORN are engaging in campaigns that have made demonstrable, material differences in people's lives, right now.
All of these have limitations, none of them go far enough, and even all added together they are a shadow of what we need. But they are happening, and they and many other examples go beyond ritualistic rallying -- I mean, they may include rallies as a tactic at various points, but they do a lot of other things too.
That's where we need to start: our own everyday experiences of oppression and resistance, and the collective acts of resistance that are already happening.
The majority of Canadians still labour under the delusion that if they only participate enough once every 4 years things will work out in the end. Its a delusion fostered by parties and their politicians and a classic case of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Fortunately growing numbers of us are refusing to participate and by doing so lending the system we see as outdated, self-serving, and undemocratic in any true sense of the word, any credibility -- and with luck, at some point, those numbers may reach the point where we cannot simply be written off as lazy malcontents who can't be bothered to get off the couch and go to the polls, and our concerns addressed by something more than laws threatening jail time for that non-participation.
Scott said:
"many Canadians are in struggle right now."
This is so. How does it contradict what I wrote?
My point (which was directed more at Anonymous anyway) was that, yes, Canadians can be revolutionaries; we've had them in the past, no reason I've run into so far that we can't have them in the future.
Hi Todd...only the first sentence of what I wrote was meant to be in reference to your comment, just as an aside. The rest was in response to the original post. So it doesn't contradict what you wrote at all. Sorry about the confusion!
Oh! I see. Thanks.
Anonymous,
While I agree that it's necessary to get the public on side, to getting over the neo-liberal fostered prejudice that the public sector is inherently inferior to the private sector and that the civil service is a complete waste of time full of selfish time-servers, I think that more than a communication strategy is required.
I also disagree that the public has to be brought on side before the politicians are. Sometimes you can't wait for a misinformed public to be freed from the right-wing propaganda before you try to save some vital services or prevent some policy disaster.
You mentioned the general successes of the nursing profession in winning the public's support, but I would argue that not every public service has the natural visibility and public sympathy as does nursing. Furthermore, for all their successes, the nurses have not been able to begin to roll-back the neo-liberal assault on public health care.
Personally, I don't think building occupations for a specific purpose are all that revolutionary an act, and that's why i specifically mentioned that as a tactic.
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