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By admin, October 15, 2010 2:14 am

http://linchpin.ca/content/Work-workplace/Farm-workers-%E2%80%9Cdis-not-slavery-just-poverty-speaking-democracy%E2%80%9D

Participants take part in the Pilgrimage to Freedom march, organized by Justicia for Migrant Workers

By Ajamu Nangwaya

i am a H2 worka
pickin apple inna florida
i am a H2 worka
hopin dat tings will be betta
suh don’t tek mi fi granted and pass mi
like is only cane and apple yu si
don’t tek it fi joke and run mi
den sen to mi govament fi more a wi
dis is not slavery
just poverty
talking to democracy

- Excerpt from the poem H2 Worka by Mutabaruka

Mutabaruka, the renowned Jamaican dub poet, accurately captures the lament and pain of migrant farm workers who labour in Ontario and the rest of Canada. These offshore workers come from Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines and other Third World areas.

Over the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada, we enjoyed the bountiful harvest from the farms in this country and the United States in the company of friends and relatives. We probably shared stories of success, challenges and plans for the future.

But did we reflect on the people who made that food possible? No, I am not referring to those mythic and stoic farmers of Canadian legends. I am hinting at the migrant farm workers whose sweat, tears, lives and broken and injured bodies went into producing the cheap food that we all enjoy in the great North that is supposedly fair, strong and free.

I am also referring to the over 25,000 migrant workers in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program (SAWP) from Mexico and the Caribbean who spend up to eight months per year on farms across Canada. Migrant workers from Thailand, Philippines, Guatemala and Honduras are also finding themselves on these same farms and fields through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (TFWP), which is even more exploitive. These off-shore workers contribute to the valuable, but exploited work that makes possible the $10 billion in annual income from the farm sector in Ontario.

When Mutabaruka rhymed: “don’t tek it fi joke and run mi / den sen to mi govament fi more a wi”, he is speaking about a sad and disgraceful reality in Canada. When migrant agricultural workers complain about their condition of work, they may be sent home at their own expense and without an appeal process to contest their expulsion.

Many Third World governments are in cahoots with this system of exploitation. They are dependent on the foreign exchange earned from these migrant workers and the SAWP and TFWP are sources of relief for the unemployment pressure at home. These governments have no interest in vigorously protecting their citizens because strong advocacy could force the Canadian state to go to other countries or regions with surplus labour.

The farmers in Canada know that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean, Mexico and Asia who are willing to do farm labour in Canada. Under plantation slavery in the Americas, the enslavers treated their horses and other materials much better than the enslaved Africans.

The plantation masters did so, because they had a cheap and ready source of labour in Africa. It is not an accident that Mutabaruka protested against seeing migrant workers as mere cane and apple. They are not seen as people, but creatures that help the profit margins of the farm’s operation.

It is not a stretch to see similarities between the systems of slavery and indentureship that were used against enslaved African and indentured South Asian labour in the Caribbean, respectively. The fear of poverty as a constant companion has replaced the whip. It is not the workers who mostly benefit from their backbreaking labour. They are transported across borders to toil in unsafe working conditions, with the connivance of legal authorities or governmental systems.

No wonder Mutabaruka had to admonish the farmers and governments that “dis is not slavery” and the workers are really poor working-class people “hopin dat tings will be betta.”

On the score of “talking to democracy” by resisting migrant workers, I was truly inspired and encouraged by the Justicia for Migrant Workers organized Pilgrimage to Freedom march on October 10th from Leamington (Tomato Capital of Canada), Ontario to city of Windsor, across from Detroit. This march was a 50-kilometre trek.

About 100 migrant workers and their allies carried out this historic march so as to highlight issues such as workers paying in mandatory schemes such as Unemployment Insurance from which they do not get any benefits, exposure to pesticides and farm equipment without adequate training, migrant workers working many years in Canada without the possibility of achieving permanent residency rights, workers being sent home after experiencing serious long-term illness on the job, or not having the right to form or join a union.

We may recall that on September 10, 2010, two Jamaican migrant farm workers, Ralston White, 36, and Paul Roach, 44 died from exposure to gas from an apple cider vat that they were fixing. As Canadians, we need to stand in solidarity with migrant workers and not let governments and private interests exploit them in the name of a cheap food policy and the financial bottom-line.

On the question of marching in solidarity with the migrant workers, it was politically embarrassing to see so few trade union members and trade union organizations as well as members of the various Marxist and anarchist “sects” from Southern Ontario. In my judgment, organized labour and these erstwhile revolutionaries do not like labour initiatives that they cannot colonize and control. I really hope that wasn’t the case in the Pilgrimage to Freedom march.

It is not enough to sing Solidarity Forever or shove revolutionary newspapers or publications in the face of members of the racialized, working-class. The missing in action stunt of these class warriors was worthy of a “Class Solidarity Raspberry Award”. It’s a very deserving and well earned citation given that we’re dealing with issues pertaining to the most exploited section of the working-class in Canada.

Ajamu Nangwaya is a trade union and community activist, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, and a member of Common Cause – an anarchist organization with branches across Ontario. To get further information or provide support to Justicia (Justice) for Migrant Workers, please visit http://justicia4migrantworkers.org

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By admin, September 6, 2010 12:26 pm

http://linchpin.ca/content/Work-workplace/It%E2%80%99s-class-struggle-stupid

Organized labour’s confused response to the McGuinty Liberals’ attack on Ontario’s working-class

By Ajamu Nangwaya and Alex Diceanu

Organized labour in Ontario will continue to put forth a weak and ineffective response to attacks from the ruling class as long as it continues to ignore the reality of class struggle. A perfect example is its current response to a proposed two-year wage-freeze that the Dalton McGuinty-led Ontario government plans on imposing on unionized public sector workers. The provincial Liberals would like to save $750 million per year from a wage-freeze, so as to help manage the $19.3 billion budget deficit. Readers need not be reminded that this deficit is the result of the risky financial speculations of the captains of finance, industry and commerce that created the Great Recession of 2008.

But it is the 710,000 unionized members of the working class and 350,000 non-unionized managers and other employees who draw pay cheques from the government[1] and the users of state-provided services (and private sector workers) who are being asked to bear the burden of paying for the actions of the corporate sector. At the same time as this attempt to take income from the pockets of government workers, the McGuinty Liberals’ have granted a $4.6 billion tax-cut to the business sector.

The leader of the Ontario New Democrats, Andrea Howarth, has signaled her support for public sector workers’ acceptance of a pay cut. She asserts, “I’m quite sure when they get to the bargaining table they will do their part like everyone else does … there is a collective bargaining process that has to be respected.”[2] Wow! Who said that the working-class needs enemies with “friends” like the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader Andrea Horwarth?

However, it is the tame and even puzzling reaction of some of Ontario’s major labour leaders that should be of concern to workers in the public sector. The government called labour leaders and employers from the broader public sector to “consultation” talks on the wage freeze on July 19, 2010. Coming out of the talks, this was what CUPE-Ontario president Fred Hahn had to say, “This is not like the early ’90s, this is not about sharing the pain. That’s all just not true”.[3] He was referring to former NDP premier Bob Rae’s unilateral opening of public sector workers’ contracts and the imposition of public sector wage-cuts accompanied by tax increases for the corporate sector. Was Brother Hahn implying that a wage-freeze would be tolerable, if accompanied by the cancelation of the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cut?

No credible union or union leader should contemplate a zero-wage increase over two years – even if the government rescinds the $4.6 billion tax-cut. There should not have been a tax-cut for the capitalist class. Restoring the tax should not be used as a bargaining chip to escape a wage-freeze on public sector workers.

Not to be outdone was the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, Warren (Smokey) Thomas. We will leave it to you to decipher the implicit message in the following statement by Smokey Thomas. “Just because he [Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan] wants something doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. It’s not a social contract. He can propose (a wage-freeze) but he has to bargain it. He can’t legislate it. He’ll lose.”[4] Is it just us or does that sound like a labour leader who is not really in a fighting spirit and just wants to make a deal?

A simple matter of misguided policy?

However, the critical issue for Ontario’s public sector workers is the extent to which many of our labour leaders seem to be completely unaware of the state and employers’ motives for disciplining labour through wage concessions. Ismael Hossein-zaded of Drake University made the following observation, which is quite applicable to the posturing of labour leaders in Ontario:

Quote:

Viewing the savage class war of the ruling kleptocracy on the people’s living and working conditions simply as “bad” policy, and hoping to somehow—presumably through smart arguments and sage advice—replace it with the “good” Keynesian policy of deficit spending without a fight, without grassroots‟ involvement and/or pressure, stems from the rather naïve supposition that policy making is a simple matter of technical expertise or the benevolence of policy makers, that is, a matter of choice. The presumed choice is said to be between only two alternatives: between the stimulus or Keynesian deficit spending, on the one hand, and the Neoliberal austerity of cutting social spending, on the other.5

Based on some of the statements coming from labour leaders, they may not have gotten the memo that the attack on the working-class (through the slashing of social programme spending, attacks on private sector pensions and wage freezes) is not about good or bad economic policies. Hossein-Zedad must have been inspired to write his paper after reading the following Keynesian-inspired comment by Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan; “From a policy perspective, it makes no economic sense whatsoever. You’ve got a government saying we need to stimulate the economy. The best way of stimulating the economy is through public-sector workers who spend every single penny of their disposable income in their local communities,”[6] But it’s not about the economy, per se. It’s the class struggle, stupid!

Canada’s economic and political elite have clearly given up the ghost of Keynesian economics, which calls on government to either stimulate or restrict the demand for goods and services based on the state of the economy. In the case of the 2008 crisis in capitalism, these neoliberal players felt forced by the magnitude of the impending financial collapse to pump money into the economy. A not-too-insignificant fact was lost on many observers and commentators who gleefully cheered on the capitalist class’ “Road-to-Damascus” moment. The capitalist state in Canada and other imperialist countries will do everything within their power to maintain a business environment that facilitates the accumulation of capital or profit-making, as well as legitimize the system in the eyes of the people. That is all in a day’s work for the state…no surprise here for class conscious trade unionists and other activists!

Labour’s “Response”

We ought to note that the recent crisis in the economy caught organized labour off-guard and ill-prepared to mobilize the working-class against that monumental failure of capitalism. For decades, Western corporations and governments have been force-feeding the public a steady diet of tax-cuts. Lower taxes on businesses, high-income earners and the wealthy, the widespread slashing of social services and income support programmes, a massive reduction in state oversight and regulation of corporations and the enactment of anti-union policies and legislation have been the all rage since corproations and Western governments abandoned their class-collaborationist pact with organized labour in the 1970s. Yet at the very moment when capitalism experienced a crisis of confidence resulting from a set of policies that had been hailed as perfect ingredients for economic and social progress, organized labour was caught with its pants down. Its leaders didn’t have a class struggle alternative to Keynesian economics – an economic tendency that was never intended to be used as a tool to end wage slavery and the minority rule of bankers, industrialists and the managerial and political elite.

Presently, the labour movement is ideologically and operationally ill-prepared to effectively face down the two-year wage-freeze demand from the McGuinty Liberals. Unfortunately, labour’s leaders have, in the main, focused on narrow economic demands rather than seeking to politically develop union activists and their broader membership behind a class struggle labour movement platform. Union members have been politically deskilled and demobilized in favour of a social service model of trade unionism. These labour leaders have failed to use their unions’ courses, workshops, week-long schools, publications and other educational resources to educate members of the fact that they are a part of a distinct class with economic and political interests that are different from that of the rulers of capitalist society.

Even the most casual of observers understand that organized labour’s raison d’être is to champion the material concerns of the working-class. And yet, ideologically-speaking, most labour leaders in Canada have cast their lot in with capitalism – albeit a more Scandinavian version. This is why a coherent critique of capitalism is notably absent from most union-organized workshops and events. It should therefore not come as a surprise that many union members have swallowed the employers and politicians’ message that Canada is a largely middle-class country and that our collective aspiration should be to remain a member of this class. If the labour leaders, academics and the media say that the majority of Canadians are a part of the middle-class, it must be so. The development of a working-class consciousness becomes very difficult (but not impossible) in this kind of political environment.

The great majority of Canadians are members of the working-class. They sell their labour, exercise little to no control over how their work-life is organized, have no say over how the profit from their labour is distributed and are so alienated from work that the aphorism “Thank god it’s Friday” has its own acronym. One should never define middle-class status as one’s ability to purchase consumer trinkets, live in a mortgaged home or even own a summer cottage. Middle-class status ought to be defined by one’s exercise of power and control and/or the possession of high levels of human capital found among administrative/managerial elites in the private and public sectors, academic elites and independent professionals.

Labour’s Credibility Crisis

The narrow economic obsession of labour leaders was on plain display when Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan revealed the March 2010 Budget. When it became known that the McGuinty Liberals would be seeking a two-year wage-freeze from public sector workers, this news was all that consumed the attention of most labour leaders. Many labour functionaries scrambled around in search of external and internal legal opinions, requesting briefs from senior staff on the impact of a wage-freeze on bargaining in specific sectors and sending out correspondence to members assuring them to “just act as if nothing had happened”, because they’re “already covered by a collective agreement”. Many labour union offices’ and unionized workplaces’ anxiety was centred entirely on the desired wage-freeze by the McGuinty Liberals. Nothing else!

But today we hear labour leaders talking about keeping money in workers’ pockets to stimulate the economy and that their primary concern is maintaining public services at adequate levels. Why didn’t organized labour deploy its resources to educate and mobilize the public against the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cuts, slashing of $4 billion in transportation infrastructure spending from Metrolinx’s $9.3 billion budget7] and the scrapping of the special diet allowance that benefitted over 160,000 members of the working-class for the unprincely sum of $250 million per annum and a mere monthly average of $130 per person[8]? The provincial government anticipates that the two-year wage-freeze across the public sector will net a savings of $1.5 billion – yet the previous $8.6 billion effectively stolen from the working class failed to push organized labour into action.

The leaders of organized labour did not have the imagination to energize their members and the broader citizenry in alliance with other social movement organizations over the Budget. They could have exposed the class priorities of the McGuinty Liberals. The government’s main concerns clearly have nothing to do with those of us who are poor, live from pay cheque to pay cheque and do not patronize the golf courses where McGuinty and his friends hang out when they are not screwing the public. Listen up public sector labour leaders: the people will not be fooled by your claims to be advocating for the general interest. The broader working-class just have to simply see where you direct the labour movement’s resources and they will clue into the issues that are being prioritized. Take a look at the poor, working-class and/or racialized areas that are likely to be affected by the $4 billion cut to Metrolinx’s budget:

Quote:

…the austerity moves could affect five planned projects: rapid transit lines for Finch Ave. W., Sheppard Ave. E. and the Scarborough RT, along with the Eglinton Ave. cross-town line and an expansion of York region’s Viva service.[9]

Are we to believe that a class-struggle and anti-oppression informed public education, organizing and mobilization campaign in defense of public services, the social wage and a livable wage would not have had some level of traction with the people of Ontario?

An alternative economic plan or a different labour movement?

In some quarters of the trade union sector, there are talks of presenting an alternative plan to the slash-and-burn neoliberal policies of the provincial government. But, the presentation of Keynesian economic proposals by labour leaders is useless in a climate where the ruling class doesn’t feel threatened by a politically mobilized population, especially without “compelling grassroots pressure on policy makers”.[10] We implied earlier that labour unions have a credibility gap with the broader public if they now assert a desire to “broaden the debate, educate community members and local politicians with a view to engaging in actions that protect public services and build strong communities” as outlined by one union. What would be the purpose of the alternative plans of these labour leaders? The status quo of the 1930s to the 1960s that gave rise to the welfare state is not a transformative option.

There is no such thing as a “contextless” context. Where is the necessary political environment that would force the state to make concessions to the working-class out of fear that they maybe inclined to embrace revolutionary options? When some labour leaders are loosely talking about coming up with an alternative (Keynesian economic plan?) stimulus proposal, they would do well to understand the political implications of the following statement:

Quote:

Keynesian economists seem to be unmindful of this fundamental relationship between economics and politics. Instead, they view economic policies as the outcome of the battle of ideas, not of class forces or interests. And herein lies one of the principal weaknesses of their argument: viewing the Keynesian/New Deal/Social Democratic reforms of the 1930s through the 1960s as the product of Keynes’ or F.D.R.’s genius, or the goodness of their hearts; not of the compelling pressure exerted by the revolutionary movements of that period on the national policy makers to “implement reform in order to prevent revolution,” as F.D.R. famously put it. This explains why economic policy makers of today are not listening to Keynesian arguments—powerful and elegant as they are—because there would be no Keynesian, New Deal, or Social-Democratic economics without revolutionary pressure from the people.[11]

However, when labour leaders shy away from speaking openly about class-struggle and the nature of our economic system, we have a serious problem. It means that they are not in a position to facilitate a class-struggle, democracy-from-below and self-organizing form of trade unionism.

In order fight this attack on the working-class of Ontario, the labour movements’ rank-and-file activists, progressive leaders and principled labour socialists must engage in shop-floor education, organizing and mobilizing that is centred on a class-struggle, anti-racist and anti-oppression campaign. This approach to labour activism must be done in alliance with progressive or radical social movement organizations among women, racialized peoples, indigenous peoples, youth, students, LGBT community, climate/environmental justice, independent and revolutionary labour organizations, anti-authoritarian formations, and radical intellectuals. It must be an alliance based on mutual respect, sharing of approaches to emancipation and resources and a commitment to the value that the oppressed are the architect of and the driving force behind the movement for their emancipation. It is essential that organized labour open up and transform its leadership and decision-making structures to accommodate the full inclusion of its membership, in all their diversity.

In most of our unions and locals, this means starting from the beginning and we can use this current crisis to take those first steps. There is a lot of frustration among union members and community activists over the inaction of labour’s leadership in the face of this attack – and a desire to do something about it. That frustration and desire can be channeled into building cross-union “fight back committees” that bring together trade union and community activists in a city or town, such as members of the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly have already begun to do in that city. The “fight back committees” can give us a capacity to act independently from organized labour’s leadership. And probably our first acts should be to organize general assemblies in our locals and town hall meetings in our communities to promote a working-class view of the economic crisis and to mobilize our fellow workers and neighbours around militant, grassroots resistance to the McGuinty government and all the forces promoting a new round of austerity for the working-class.

Nothing less than a self-organizing, class-struggle approach to trade unionism will put labour in a position to fight in the here-and-now, while building the road we must travel on our way to the classless and stateless society of the future.

Alex Diceanu is a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3906 and a graduate student at McMaster University. Ajamu Nangwaya is a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Locals 3907 and 3902 and a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Both authors are members of the Ontario anarchist organization, Common Cause.

________________________________________
[1] Walkom, T. (2010, March 26). Liberals aim at easy targets. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/ontariobudget/article/785616–walkom…
[2] Brennan, R. J. & Talaga, T. (2010, March 26) Hudak cut wages deeper. Toronto Star. Retrieved fromhttp://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/ontariobudget/article/785343–hudak-cut-wages-deeper
[3] Benzie, R. (2010, July 20). Dwight Duncan’s wage-freeze pitch gets frosty reception. Toronto Star. Retrieved fromhttp://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/837872–dwight-duncan-s-wage-freeze-pitch-gets-frosty-reception
[4] Benzie, July 20
[5] Hossein-zaded, I. (2010, July 23-25). Holes in the Keynesian Arguments against Neoliberal Austerity Policy—Not “Bad” Policy, But Class Policy. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/zadeh07232010.html
[6] Benzie, July 20.
[7] Hume, C. (2010, March 29). Transit still not a priority. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/787317–transit-still-not-a-…
[8] The Canadian Press. (2010 April 1). Ontario asked to restore special diet allowance. Retrieved fromhttp://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/04/01/diet-allowance.html
9] Goddard, J., Rider, D. & Kalinoski, (2010, March 26). Miller outraged as budget sideswiped GTA transit. Toronto Star. Retrieved fromhttp://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/785573–miller-outraged-as-budget-sideswipes-gta-transit
[10] Hossein-zaded, I, Holes in the Keynesian arguments against neoliberal austerity policy.
[11] ibid

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By admin, July 23, 2010 2:21 pm

	The   B u l l e t
	Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 395 July 23, 2010

One Day Longer?

The Vale-Inco Strike Comes to a Close

Scott Neigh

On July 7 and 8, 2010, striking members of United Steel Workers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, voted 75% in favour of a contract that ended a bitter strike against transnational mining giant Vale Inco. The 3300 strikers had been on the picket lines for almost one year (along with members of Local 6200 in Port Colborne, Ontario, who voted in favour by a similar margin).

Despite the immense effort and sacrifices made by workers over the course of the year-long ordeal, the settlement marks a defeat for a local with a reputation for strength in a town with a history of solidarity. It is a hard moment for those who are returning to work – who endured so much and still lost significant ground – but as the world faces the renewed neoliberal assault promised by leaders at the recent G20 summit in Toronto, it is important to ask critical questions that might strengthen all of our struggles in the difficult times ahead.

The Strike

Though it was rarely framed this way during the dispute, this strike was all about neoliberalism. The components of that agenda that are about reorganizing work, tying people’s lives ever more tightly to the market, and taking gains away from ordinary people to the benefit of elites were reflected in the company’s demands.

Steelworkers at the July 26 anti-G20 rally, Queen’s Park, Toronto.

As has so often been the case with neoliberal demands the world over, ordinary people could have chosen to acquiesce, but instead they chose to fight. Yet as has also happened in many places around the world, elites responded to this resistance by inflicting suffering on the bodies of those who resisted. For thousands of working-class families in Sudbury, this meant a year of doing without in significant ways. Some workers lost their homes. Other workers saw their relationships crumble.

It was also clear that the company intended to mount a serious attack on the union. In the earliest days of the strike, a former executive of Inco (as the company was known before being bought by Brazilian transnational Vale in 2006) was quoted anonymously in the Globe and Mail as saying, “They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labour situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past.” There were occasions later in the strike where articles in the Canadian business press included in their headlines references to Vale trying to break the union, indicating that the business class in Canada did not take seriously the protestations by Vale spokespeople in those same articles that they were doing no such thing.

The company made skillful use of court injunctions in concert with the sophisticated surveillance, harassment, and legal capabilities of strikebreaking firm AFI to limit the possibility for effective, militant picketing. This was the first time since union recognition in the 1940s that a mining company in Sudbury has attempted to use scab labour to restart production during a strike. Though production remained significantly impaired throughout the strike, speculation was that within another two or three months, Vale would have been able to come close to full production using scabs.

The Deal

Nobody on the union side is happy with the contents of the settlement. It represents, according to one community activist I talked to, “a significant defeat.” It contains some improvements over the offer made before the strike in a number of areas, but only very modest ones, and in the overall context of the company winning the substance of all of its major demands.

Though there is a small wage increase over the five-year life of the deal, the nickel price level at which the nickel bonus kicks in has been raised substantially and for the first time there will be a cap on the percentage of a worker’s income that can come from the bonus. One rank-and-file worker that I talked to calculated that the new rules around the nickel bonus could lead to him losing as much as $30,000 per year compared to the height of the boom earlier this decade. The company was also successful in imposing new restrictions on seniority rights, greater freedom to contract out some kinds of work to non-union contractors, and a streamlined grievance procedure that will be less fair to workers. As well, all new hires will now be placed on a defined contribution pension plan, rather than the defined benefit plan in which current workers and retirees are enrolled. Some union activists see this as one step in a larger plan by the company to get all of its current and former employees on the defined contribution scheme.

Beyond the deal itself, the back-to-work protocol has enraged many workers, not the least because it was not made available to them until almost the end of the voting on the deal. The terms include a six week period at the start of the contract in which the union has conceded immense power to the company to restructure the workforce. During this period, most union work can be done by non-union people and the company has great latitude to reassign and transfer workers. Most shockingly, the union has agreed to what one union activist, in only a slight exaggeration, has described as “no grievance procedure whatsoever” for those six weeks.

The company has also persisted in its attempts to weaken mobilizations by the union in future disputes by attacking its ability to protect members who have been active in strike activities. Though the back-to-work protocol called on both sides to drop all legal measures related to the strike, the company appears still to be proceeding with criminal charges against three individual workers and contempt proceedings for alleged violations of the picketing injunction against a number of others, claiming that the protocol only referred to legal actions against the union and its officials. Also, for what appears to be the first time involving a major union in recent Ontario history, nine workers who were fired during the course of the strike were not rehired as part of the deal. While the union has succeeded, with considerable effort, in getting the labour board to hear the cases of these workers and intends to pursue a constitutional case based on freedom of association, the refusal to rehire sets a dangerous precedent for other unions.

Raising Questions

Raising critical questions at such a difficult moment is a risky venture, particularly when they are being raised by someone like myself who is not one of those most directly impacted by the struggle. Yet it is also a moment in which learning from recent victories and defeats is crucial. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney recently predicted a global “age of austerity,” which was confirmed by the elite consensus announced at the G20 meetings in Toronto in June. Workers, communities, indigenous nations, women, queers, people living in poverty, the environment – all will soon be facing reinvigorated neoliberal assault.

Since the acceptance of Vale’s offer I have interviewed a number of (mostly activist) members of Local 6500 as well as community activists who worked in support of the strike – all of the former and some of the latter requested anonymity as a condition of the interviews. I have added this to the observations and informal conversations I had over the course of the strike. The picture that has emerged is of a struggle that was waged with traditional assumptions and tools in an environment and against an enemy that had changed in significant ways. One of the union activists told me, “We went into a gunfight carrying a pencil and they had laser beams.”

At the very least, the loss of this strike at Vale Inco can teach us not to trust old assumptions about resistance in the current environment. And it may also point not just union and community spaces in Sudbury but also those across North America toward some of the questions that we must ask as we brace for what is to come.

Tactics

The dominant tactical orientation of Local 6500 seemed largely drawn from the mainstream traditions of industrial unions, particularly those with a more “business union” orientation, to borrow a label that one long-time community activist applied to the local. The kinds of preparations made by the leadership and their relationship to the other tactics that emerged over the course of the strike imply an assumption of the primacy of picket-line militancy and of a much more marginal role for other kinds of mobilizations.

There are a number of reasons why circumstances today mean that such tactics, which may have worked in decades past, could no longer seal the deal in Sudbury. For one thing, though Inco has long been a corporation with global reach (and a history of atrocious practices in the global South), Vale is simply a much larger company with much deeper pockets. Though the strike did impair production significantly and did cost the company money, the operations in Sudbury (and elsewhere in Canada) are such a small part of the company’s empire that the level of harm that one group of workers can inflict by withdrawing their labour remains quite limited.

As well, the evolution of labour law in Ontario creates conditions that favour companies. While much local attention focused on the lack of legislation preventing the use of scabs – something that was in force in the province briefly in the early 1990s, and has proven effective in other provinces as well – it is far from the only problem. The combination of injunctions restricting picketing with firms like AFI, which specialize in strikebreaking and the harassment of workers, make the possibility of truly effective picketing even more remote.

Unions, including North America’s remaining industrial strongholds, need to recognize that while picket lines are important, they are no longer the one and only site for struggle. As one union activist I talked to put it, “You won’t win a strike on the picket line, but you sure can lose a strike on the picket line.”

The question becomes how to respond to this reality. What tactics will work? What changes in organizational form, practices, and culture would support more effective tactics? Some of the questions in the following sections point toward some possible avenues for discussion by workers and other activists as we move forward.

Ordinary Members

Over the year that the Steel Workers were on the lines, at least two overlapping but distinct networks of rank-and-file activists emerged, as well as networks among the wives and partners of strikers. One of the worker-based networks was catalyzed as a result of some spaces and resources that came from the international level of the union and the other was a more spontaneous local formation.

These networks experimented with a range of tactics. They drew public attention to scabs. They protested at the hotels where AFI strikebreakers were staying. They successfully campaigned to get the city council to call on the province to pass anti-scab legislation. They rallied repeatedly against provincial and federal politicians, both from the city and farther afield. They mounted fast, short blockades of specific work sites at unexpected intervals. They participated in the G20 labour march. They protested businesses that were crossing the picket lines. Some wives and partners of strikers took on increasingly militant roles, both in some of these actions and in a few autonomously organized actions, as they were not vulnerable to the same threat of consequences as workers.

Discussions about what was effective and what was not still need to happen among the activists in question as the strike is debriefed, but what is clear is that ordinary members applying their energy, knowledge, skills, and willingness to take risks in creative, autonomous ways offered a greatly expanded scope for struggle compared to picket lines alone. There was a great hunger to try new things and to find approaches that might shift public opinion, political positions, and consequences for the company.

There are plenty of indications that much more could be done to make the most of this kind of struggle, whatever specifics workers decide are appropriate in a given instance. It was Gary Kinsman, a long-time activist and a scholar who has worked extensively on the history of Canadian social movements, including some work on Sudbury’s labour movement, who described the local historically as a “business union” and also as “top-down” in its organization. One consequence of this is an internal culture that has not always fostered participatory governance or spaces and resources devoted to facilitating social movement-like mobilization of rank-and-file workers, though there have been moments of exception to this.

From the people I talked to, there seems to have been little attention to building this kind of capacity either in general in recent years or specifically in the lead-up to the strike. The international-sponsored training that lead to the formation of one of the networks happened shortly after the beginning of the strike, but from its content appeared to have been designed for use six months to a year before a strike was expected to occur.

During the strike itself, though the union had the information to mount all of the picket lines it needed from the beginning, it did not produce a coordinated means for mobilizing all of its members for other sorts of actions until several months into the strike. As well, at no point does there appear to have been anyone assigned to coordinate the strike-related activities originating from different spaces within the union. Information flow to and among members was another problem that activists identified. Despite the approval and even resources provided by the local leadership for rank-and-file activities at various points, activists I talked to identified a strong and consistent disconnection of the leadership from the activities organized by the rank-and-file networks.

What can be done to build on the experiences of ordinary members who became active in this strike? What can be done to create spaces and resources during non-strike periods that can build an ever-growing base of members with skills, political knowledge, and confidence to engage in the kinds of actions beyond the picket lines that can help unions win? What is the best role for leadership in doing this? What is the best role for rank-and-file networks? For the families of members?

International Links

Another key element in struggles against global companies (or other global institutions) is making links among those who face the same enemy in different places. North American unions are still in the early stages of figuring out how to do that effectively. The international level of the Steel Workers is, by all accounts, deeply involved in trying to make such linkages, and appeared to be doing a lot of that kind of work in relation to this strike. However, the knowledge among both community and union activists I spoke to in Sudbury was often vague on the details of this work. My sense is that a lot of good things were happening, but that, even when a few members of the local were directly involved, most members had little opportunity to learn about what was happening internationally or to get a practical sense of being involved in a global struggle in alliance with sisters and brothers half a world away.

It is also unclear what kind of barriers to effective solidarity might have been created by the choice at the beginning of the strike to politically frame it in strongly nationalist terms – as Canadian workers and a Canadian community fighting a Brazilian enemy. Official statements after the initial period seemed to pull back somewhat from the blatant nationalism of the earliest period, but never completely, and it continued to exert a powerful influence over at least a segment of the membership. This is, of course, deeply connected to the troubling tendency of much of the broader left in North America to respond to neoliberalism in nationalist ways.

How can substantive global links be forged among workers? How should international work be integrated into local struggles? What barriers do nationalist politics present for such work, as well as to developing deeper understandings of what neoliberalism is and how it works?

Local Alliances

In the current strike, there were a number of barriers to effective mobilizations in the broader community in support of the strike. The following section examines those related to the community itself. However, a key one was, as far as many of us in the community could tell, that the union was not terribly interested or able to cultivate such support. In the early months, there were a number of instances of social justice groups (and quite a few more of individual activists) calling the union to ask what they could do, and never hearing back. Individual demonstrations of support were certainly encouraged, whether that was donating money or taking coffee to a picket line or putting a supportive sign in your window, but building relationships of alliance with activists and social justice groups in the community did not seem to be a high priority.

Again, this has some basis in history. Local 6500 does not have a strong record of building relationships of solidarity with social justice and community groups outside of the labour movement. For many community activists in Sudbury, this was epitomized by the decision of Local 6500 during the Days of Action campaign which swept across Ontario in the late 1990s in opposition to the right-wing provincial government of Premier Mike Harris to use its dominance at the Sudbury and District Labour Council to prevent that body from sponsoring the Sudbury Days of Action.

Given the importance of action beyond the picket line for winning against the neoliberal agenda, how should unions relate to social justice groups in the community? What does reciprocal solidarity look like?

Beyond the Union

While the lack of attention to facilitating community alliances by the local was a significant factor, there was much less there to facilitate than in decades past. As one long-time community activist who requested anonymity sadly told me, this strike “debunked the myth that Sudbury is a union town.”

According to Kinsman, “There was a lot of support for the strike, but a lot of it remained incredibly passive and inactive.” This may explain why all of the union activists I talked to were moderately positive about the level of support they received in the community, while the community activists were uniformly negative.

Laurie McGauley is another long-time activist in the community, with many years of experience in the feminist movement and other social justice spaces. She said that in January, seven months into the strike, there was still “absolutely no community-lead support initiatives going on. Which is unusual for Sudbury in a big strike like this… It just blew my mind.” So she and a few other people called together old contacts and allies, including many with roots in the women’s movement, and put together a group called CANARYS, short for Community Activists Need Answers Regarding Your Safety. For the balance of the strike they held weekly meetings and regular events and protests, often highly theatrical ones, focusing on opposition to scab labour and the danger that under-trained workers posed to the community given the nature of the facilities they were operating. While community response to the group showed a hunger for ways to be more actively in support, no other centres of activity emerged in the community outside of the labour movement.

Even within the labour movement, the response was less vigorous than it could have been. While traditional forms of strike solidarity, like declarations of support and financial donations, began to arrive from other unions from Sudbury and from across the country soon after the strike began – indeed, many unions were very generous over the course of the year – it was also many months into the strike before a support committee focused on mobilizing people was formed at the local labour council.

The community activists I talked to offered a number of theories as to why the level of activism in support of the strike was so low in the broader community. Certainly the disinterest or inability of the union to engage with activism in the community was one. Another was the changes in the shape of the local economy – once upon a time, the mining workforce involved tens of thousands of people, but the local was only 3300 strong at the start of the strike, so the impact on the community was much less.

McGauley also talked about the loss of a culture of activism in the city, which as recently as ten years ago was very vibrant. She noted that the incredible influence of the company, including its generous funding of many local recreational, cultural, and environmental initiatives, meant that many people were hesitant about coming out publicly against Vale. Other community activists pointed toward the material and cultural impacts of neoliberalism. The former means that more people are having to put more time into making ends meet and so have less time for activism, and the latter tends to push a more atomized and individualistic view of the world that has little space for solidarity, social justice, or social change.

This seems to be consistent with the experience of many other communities across Canada. While there are signs in Canada’s largest cities of the beginnings of a modest uptick in social movement activity, at least in specific sectors, this does not seem to have reached much beyond Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.

What must be done to recompose sites of struggle in Sudbury and across the continent? What can we do to reconstitute a culture of activism? What questions do we need to be asking and what conversations do we need to be having to begin preparing for the renewed push for neoliberalism promised by the G20?

Looking Forward

It is difficult to ask questions arising from a defeat without encouraging pessimism. Some community activists are worried that this defeat for Local 6500 – an organization with a reputation for strength greater than any sort of people’s organization that most of us in North America can dream of belonging to – might discourage others in Sudbury and others in the larger labour movement from actively resisting when neoliberalism comes knocking. This is certainly possible. But it does not have to be.

At the most basic level, the company wanted to break the union, break the workers, and it failed. The union lost, but it remains a powerful tool that the workers can use to fight another day.

Another consequence of this struggle was that it created activists. One union militant that I talked to estimated that there was a core of between 200 and 300 activists who were consistently involved throughout the strike. Some of these will not stay involved, of course, but many will. They will become a nucleus of struggle against the company and, potentially, of struggles against neoliberalism more broadly in the Sudbury community for decades to come. In this way, the strike has left Sudbury stronger.

The strike also presented glimpses of possibility, little moments of anticipation of what might be. One such moment was a mass direct action near the end of the strike. After talks broke down yet again, a segment of the rank-and-file networks put up blockades at the main entrances to two company facilities with several hundred participants that lasted for multiple days. Many members who had not before been active in the strike outside of picket duty saw this as a chance to do something powerful, and they joined in. The company and the police insisted the action was in violation of the picketing injunction, yet the angry strikers, their families, and supporters from the community remained, even with the threat of police intervention. Yet, when senior union leadership intervened to end the action, there was great anger from many of the rank-and-file workers who were participating, and significant demoralization and demobilization afterward. But it was also a taste of the power of ordinary people, of what resistance in a Sudbury of reinvigorated movements might look like.

What if this kind of tactic was begun not in the late days of the strike but early on? What if there was a longstanding culture of activism within the local to draw on, and vibrant, already-existing rank-and-file networks? What if there were strong links to a highly mobilized community? In such circumstances, it is easy to imagine not 300 people but 3000 people willing to be present even in the face of police disapproval, which would have changed the balance of forces significantly. And what if that was coupled to strong bonds with workers overseas? Coordinated action against Vale at multiple sites around the world becomes imaginable.

It is impossible to know in any definitive way what could have turned a defeat into a victory. However, in thinking about the future, it is important to keep in mind that the speculations in the previous paragraph are not just imaginable, but possible. In fact, not only is the capacity to engage in actions like that possible, it may even be necessary as the “age of austerity” descends. The only way to get there is to begin asking questions like those arising from the Vale Inco strike – questions about how to create participatory organizations; about how to build a movement by creating spaces and using resources such that all of us can grow in confidence, knowledge, and skills, to better act autonomously and creatively; about how to recreate an activist culture in smaller centres across the continent; about how to build real alliances around the world and across different sectors and social locations close to home. Wherever we are, we must begin talking about such things, so that we can move forward together. •

Scott Neigh is a writer, activist, and parent who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, visit scottneigh.blogspot.com. An earlier version of this article appeared on Linchpin.ca.

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By admin, July 6, 2010 1:41 am

We need donations to support those arrested at the G20. You can support
the detainees’ legal costs and help alleviate some of the other costs of
navigating the court system, and help us keep organizing. We will be
distributing the funds to those with the most need, prioritizing those
still in custody on serious charges.

From June 25-27, elites from the world’s most powerful economies met in
Huntsville and Toronto to draft policies to further exploit the
environment and people, bolstering the systems that sustain colonialism,
wars and displacement. Tens of thousands of people mobilized in a historic
weeklong convergence in opposition to these policies. Daily demonstrations
highlighted struggles for Indigenous sovereignty; environmental justice;
migrant justice; an end to war and occupation; community control over
resources; gender justice; and queer and disability rights.

Over $1.2 billion was spent on security, the most in G20 summit history,
which paid for a dizzying array of weaponry and nearly 20,000 police—plus
a security fence that turned Toronto into a fortress to host a select few
and a police state to terrorize the rest of us.

Nearly 1,000 people, protesters and bystanders alike, were detained—the
largest mass arrests in Canadian history. They were held for long periods
in makeshift cages in deplorable conditions, most without timely access to
legal counsel. Many had been simply caught up in massive police sweeps of
public areas. Others were woken at gunpoint while sleeping. Others were
picked up at their homes. Some of those arrested are still in custody.
Fifteen face serious charges. Many of these are long-time community
organizers.

We need to support all of those arrested during the G20 summit. We must
continue to mobilize and build greater solidarity among our communities.
An important part of this will be supporting our courageous allies still
in detention.

To transfer funds or write a cheque (with G20 Legal defense on the subject
line) send donations to: OPIRG York, transit number 00646, institution
number 842, account number 3542240

Mail the cheques (written to OPIRG York, with G20 legal defense on the
subject line) to:
Toronto Community Mobilization Network
360A Bloor Street W
PO Box 68557
Toronto, ON
M5S 1X0

To use PayPal go to *g20.torontomobilize.org*

Thank you for your help. Together we will create a just world that places
people and the environment before the profits of corporations and the
political elite.

In solidarity,
Toronto Community Mobilization Network

———————–
No One is Illegal-Toronto
toronto.nooneisillegal.org
nooneisillegal@riseup.net

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By admin, July 6, 2010 1:40 am

Joint Statement of No One Is Illegal Toronto, No One Is Illegal Vancouver,
No One Is Illegal Halifax, No One Is Illegal Montreal and No One Is
Illegal Ottawa, July 3, 2010

From June 22 to June 27, No One is Illegal dared to dream of a world
without fences. As we marched with thousands, we dared to confront the
walls erected daily to separate the rich from the poor, the powerful from
the powerless. We reclaimed power, we shook the fence, and we broke
through the police lines. We challenged the G20’s system of global
apartheid as it manifested on the streets of Toronto. We now stand
alongside all of those currently caught in the walls of the(in)justice
system for daring to envision a world without fences, borders and cages.
The people harassed, detained, arrested and charged over this past weekend
were migrants, indigenous peoples, people of colour, queer and trans
people, feminists, disabled people, anarchists, anti-poverty  activists,
rank and file labour activists, anti-capitalists, ecological justice
activists, and community organizers. They are our allies and our friends;
they are the fabric of our communities.

In particular, we stand in solidarity with those who have faced and are
currently facing the worst excesses of the repressive police state,
including several members of No One is Illegal Toronto, Montreal and
Vancouver. Many of these organizers were targeted not only for their
involvement in opposing the G20, but for their ongoing work struggling for
communities that are rooted in love, justice and self-determination. They
are dedicated, courageous and passionate organizers who continue to be an
inspiration within our communities. The state’s attempt to criminalize
these individuals is a targeted attempt to silence our movements.

But we will not be silenced. We raged on the streets this week in Toronto.
We will rage in the courts and in the prisons. We will continue to rage as
we work daily in our local communities. And we will tear the fences down.

The G8 and G20 leaders and their corporate villains erect borders,
manufacture weaponry, pillage the earth with industrial projects and
profit from war. They push people from their homes and force people to
migrate across borders and into situations of precarity. Daily, we stand
in solidarity with those who are deemed “illegal” by the colonial state
and are forced to live under the threat of detention and deportation. And
daily, we organize against the racism and xenophobia that defines the
history of colonization and displacement in Canada.

The type of repression seen during the weekend is not only a testament of
Canada being a police state, but a glimpse into the daily reality of
indigenous and racialized communities. When the police state
indiscriminately turns its batons against ‘innocent’ bystanders, members
of the media, and a diverse range of protesters, we see responses of
widespread public shock and anger. Yet we refuse to exceptionalize this
moment, the largest mass-arrest in Canadian history, at the expense of
normalizing the daily violence of police and prisons and the criminal
(in)justice system for Indigenous communities, people of colour, low
income neighborhoods, street-involved youth, and trans people.

We further reject all differentiation between so-called ‘peaceful’ and
‘violent’ protesters, while the violence that compels us to resist, assert
our dignity and struggle for justice – enabled by policies and deals such
as those brokered by the G8 and G20 – is callously ignored. Instead, our
outrage is directed at the policing apparatuses that are a central part of
the militarization of Canada, the criminalization of our communities, and
the brutality that defines the prison-industrial complex and the global
realities of detention and imprisonment.

Those brutalized, harassed, and violated in the fallout of the Toronto G20
protests now join the three community organizers arrested last week in
Ottawa in facing the consequences of a system more interested in
protecting property than people. We must be steadfast in our support for
those who are being targeted, by mobilizing around the upcoming trials and
court battles. We will not allow the courts, the police, or the media to
divide our  solidarity. We demand the immediate release of ALL our friends
and allies who are still being held in detention. We call on everyone to
join us in taking back our city from the hands of the security state that
has turned it into an armed fortress.

No One is Illegal stands with all of those who were on the streets
resisting the G20 and the Toronto police state. They cannot jail our
hearts. No borders, no fences! No one is illegal, Canada is illegal!

www.nooneisillegal.org

Comments (0)

By admin, July 3, 2010 6:34 pm

	The   B u l l e t
	Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 381 July 3, 2010

In the Aftermath of the G20:

Reflections on Strategy, Tactics and Militancy

Ritch Whyman

The events at the Saturday G20 demonstration in Toronto last week have provoked a series of responses already. This article is not meant to review the events of the day itself, but to look at the questions raised by the demonstrations and tactics used for the left.

Suffice to say the reaction of the police, in arresting, detaining, and brutalizing nearly 1,000 people in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, exposes the serious attacks on civil liberties the left faces.

Striking Steelworkers in front of Queen’s Park, June 26.

On the Friday before the demonstration I was having a beer with a comrade in Halifax and, of course, discussion turned to the G20. We both agreed that this would be the perfect demonstration to go off without any property damage. If at the end of the day tens of thousands marched, thousands did sit-ins by the fence, but the tactic of smashing windows was not employed, then the Summit would be a defeat for [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

We drew this analysis based on the fact that everywhere you went there was anger at the billion dollar price tag for security. At a time when thousands are struggling to make ends meet and see the cost of the Summits as exorbitant. Many, consciously or not, recognize that this money is being spent on the architects of the crisis, protecting those who gave billions to the banks while leaving workers and the poor to pay for it. Furthermore, in the lead-up to the Summit, there was a growing polarization of opinion in Canada with many being angry or frustrated with Harper’s attacks on civil liberties, on women’s rights, on the climate, on the economy, and more.

A Protest Pattern

To have had a day of mass demonstrations and militant but non-violent action would have left Harper with egg on his face, and given more confidence to those who want to find ways to challenge Harper and the capitalist market. Instead, the day followed, in many ways, a clock work pattern – much like other summits. First, there’s a mass demonstration. Then a layer of people do a split from that march and, sooner or later, some engage in expressing their rage against the system by smashing windows and other acts. Given the world we live in, it is surprising that more of this doesn’t happen more often.

In response, the police hold back until the main march disperses. They wait for some damage to be done, and then they go on the offensive. They round-up and brutalize everyone left on the streets, including passers-by, peaceful protesters and those engaged in property damage. In Seattle, Québec, Genoa, and others, this script has played out over and over again. The police wait until the mass organizations leave, then go after the rest. This strategy suggests that the police and the state are keenly aware of who they want – and don’t want – to provoke.

Within this context, the “Black Bloc” and their supporters utilize the larger rally and split marches to launch attacks on property and the police. Usually the police wait long enough for damage to be created before they respond. It is one of the few times the police wait to crack down.

Then, when the cops attack, the Bloc usually retreats and tries to merge with others. In Genoa, the Black Bloc ran through a group of nuns engaged in a sit-in which resulted in the police attacking the nuns. In New York City, at a demonstration against WEF (World Economic Forum), the Black Bloc ended up running from the police and trampling down women Steelworkers from Toronto, who were then attacked by the police as the Bloc hid behind the Steelworkers.

Then the media and police trot out the usual line ‘We are ok with protests, but a small minority of criminals can’t be tolerated.’ Those innocents that were arrested were an unfortunate by-product of protecting the city and its inhabitants. The police and politicians then justify the violence against protestors as necessary to stop any further violence.

In the process, hundreds get arrested while the media spends the next several days reducing the estimated numbers of demonstrators, erasing on-site reports of police brutality, critiquing the police as being too passive. Then the police say they weren’t able to protect property at the start because they were committed to facilitating the peaceful protest. Afterward they ‘did everything possible to restore order.’ Throughout all this, stories begin to emerge about undercover officers mingling with crowd, engaging in and trying to stir up ‘action.’ Eventually a handful gets charged with some serious offences and the majority arrested get released with few or no charges.

What Are the Lessons?

Despite the media hype there was nothing new about the events in Toronto. The question for militants is: what are the lessons? How do we interpret events and what do they mean for the left? To answer, we need to look at what the mobilizations can achieve and why they are important. This is the critical starting point. Since the rise of the anti-globalization movement, this has been a point of debate.

The mobilizations around Summits are important, first, because they provide an opportunity to mobilize people beyond the ranks of those already active. It is more possible because the media builds the events far beyond the reach of the left. The fact that the summits raise a broad set of issues, mean that they unite in opposition broad sets of movements. The demonstrations that result can often be greater than the sum of the parts of movements. They unite various movements – labour and environment for example. They provide an opportunity to bring wider layers into the movement.

Some have argued that these demonstrations are pointless one-off events and that those who go to them are “summit-hoppers.” Strangely these critiques are often raised by people who themselves go to the events. But this misses the point that while the mobilizations are one-offs they are important in the sense that they pull struggles together and allow those not plugged into activism to find a space to join the movement.

Secondly the protests show to millions of others that there is mass opposition to the system. The idea that the protests themselves will stop the overall agenda of the rulers is mistaken, while the protests can hinder the implementation of certain policies, they cannot by themselves stop capitalism in its tracks. But the more important point of the protests is their ability to galvanize and mobilize opposition to the system. For the left and the movements, the demonstrations offer a crucial opportunity to grow and sink deeper roots in new areas. These mobilizations also help maintain momentum and break down barriers between struggles that often go on in their own silos. In short, these protests forge new bonds of solidarity.

So it is important to mobilize against these Summits, not because we can directly change the agenda, or that capitalism will grind to a halt if the Summit is shut down. Some thought because of the collapse of the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, or the inability to get a deal at the Free Trade Areas of the Americas meeting at Québec City, that capitalism would be forced into a retreat. But the reality is that these Summits are attempts to overcome divisions between various ruling classes in various nation states. What they can’t get through global agreements, they will try through regional agreements. What isn’t accomplished regionally is taken up bi-laterally. Basically, Summits are where the world’s largest economies jockey with each other for a better deal for their own ruling classes.

This doesn’t mean we can’t wrestle reforms from these leaders, and without the demonstrations it would be even harder to win reforms or prevent even more damaging policies from being implemented. Even NGOs who aren’t committed to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism understand that mobilizing is vital to back their call for reforms. In this context, the object of mobilizing for the Summits should be to try and take advantage of the moment presented to broaden and deepen the left and build the movements.

This is the objective from which our tactics flow. It is not the Summit itself that matters but the ability to draw larger numbers onto the streets and into action. It offers the potential to increase people’s confidence and consciousness.

Strategy Versus Tactics

To establish tactics before determining the larger strategic objectives, raises tactics to a point of principle and robs the working class of the tactical flexibility that will maximize success. Tactics are the tools we implement to bring about a result. Common sense tells us that a desired outcome be discussed first, then the strategy to get there, and, finally, what tactics would best deliver the outcome. To start with tactics is wrongheaded and creates the quixotic adventures we saw on June 26 in Toronto.

So what about “diversity of tactics” and the Black Bloc?

It should be clear that the actions of the Black Bloc reflect their politics. The actions in Toronto mirror the tactics used elsewhere. The tactics and politics regardless of their intent are inherently elitist and counter-productive. In fact they mirror the critique of reformism many on the left have. The NDP says ‘vote for us and we’ll do it for you’; the Black Bloc says in essence the same thing – ‘we will make the revolution for you.’

At best the tactics of the Black Bloc are based on a mistaken idea that the attacks on property and the police will create a spark to encourage others to resist capitalism, at worst they are based on a rampant individualistic sense of rage and entitlement to express that rage regardless of the consequences to others. The anti-authoritarian politic they follow is imposed on others. Very rarely will you see a Black Bloc call its own rally. Instead the tactic is to play hide and seek with the police under the cover of larger mobilizations.

Further, as has been noted in many cases, the tactics and politics of the Black Bloc – and some anarchists and some others on the left – leave them prone to being manipulated by the state. In almost every Summit protest, police and others (in Genoa it was also fascists), infiltrate or form their own blocs to engage in provocations. The politics of secrecy and unannounced plans and a quasi-military (amateur at best) approach to demonstrations leave the door open to this.

The tactics also open the door for the justification of further police repression. This has been debated before, with some arguing that the state doesn’t need justification for repression. The idea that the state doesn’t need justification for further repression exposes the total lack of understanding of both the state and the consciousness of ordinary people. If the state didn’t need justification for repression, then we would all be in jail. Capitalism isn’t a democratic system, but needs the facade of liberal political rights to maintain legitimacy about how free and equal we all are. If the state didn’t need justification for repression, then we accept that people are just automatons who do what they are told.

But the reality is that most people oppose police brutality and most people believe we are living in a democracy. Therefore, when the police go on a rampage, they have to have an excuse. It is highly naive to think that the police and the state won’t and don’t need a justification to repress people. If they didn’t we wouldn’t have a war on drugs – it would have just been called what it most often has been – a war on the poor.

What is Radical?

Some argue that we have to support some of these tactics because they are “radical.” But what, indeed, is so “radical”? Let us put aside the notion of “economic disruption” caused by a few burning cop cars and broken windows, as some use this to justify so called militant actions. Let us take another example. The reality is the Tamil community created much more economic disruption with their non-violent occupation of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, and their sit-ins shutting University Avenue. Further, the workers in Sudbury valiantly fighting Vale Inco are doing much more to disrupt the economy than a thousand Black Bloc actions ever could.

The tactics of the Black Bloc make it clear that, for them, it is more important to smash windows than to try and march with thousands of workers and engage them in arguments about how to move struggles forward or that the problem is capitalism.

So how radical is it to trash a few windows? It depends on what one means by radical.

For us, radical is about workers gaining confidence and consciousness to fight back, not just at work, but in solidarity with others. Radical is about developing a sense of mass power, organising based on moving others into struggle, winning others to challenge the power in their workplace or community collectively, beyond the individualization of our society. Radical is about going to the roots of the system – not trashing its symbols.

So it is much more radical organising a Starbucks, or winning co-workers to fight homophobia, or defending women’s rights, than it is smashing a window.

When the Black Bloc does its thing, does it move struggles forward or backward? Does it in the eyes of those questioning the system, or moving into struggle, or thinking that something is wrong, radicalize them and give them confidence?

The answer is that outside of a small minority, these actions at best can inspire passive support from those who do not like police. But the majority have no confidence to engage in these actions themselves or agree with them. Instead of giving confidence, the tactics generally produce confusion and play into the hands of the state that would prefer it if no one ever protested. They allow the state to justify its repression and expenditures. In essence outside of an already radicalized minority they don’t leave anyone with a deeper sense of confidence about the ability to fight capitalism. Instead at best they leave the impression that the fight against capitalism can only be carried out by a heroic minority, at worst they leave people worrying about going to demonstrations. The tactic is far from radical because it does nothing to challenge capitalism in any way; it does nothing to instil confidence in others to resist.

The debate shouldn’t be about violence, per se, but about tactics and strategy. Of course we defend the right of workers and oppressed communities to self-defence. The response from the left to the riots in Toronto after the Rodney King beating by police in Los Angeles is a good example: many defended the justified outrage at both the racism of the justice system and the beating of King. It was a justifiable rage against a system of racism. But it wasn’t a strategy to defeat racism.

The Black Bloc, however, isn’t even an oppressed community resisting oppression and defending itself. Those on the left who see the problems with the Black Bloc, and the cover given to them by those who elevate “diversity of tactics” to a principle, need to organize coherent responses to this.

Debating Strategy and Moving Forward

We need to join the battle for interpretation without getting distracted by blanket pronouncements of “pro” this or “anti” that. We need to focus on strategy and the tactics that flow from it. This will allow us to regroup those activists who see the centrality of the working class as the key to social change, who recognize that intended or not, “diversity of tactics” is not radical but a cover for self-aggrandisement by some tiny groups who have no faith in the self-activity of the working class.

The need for a bigger stronger socialist movement in Toronto couldn’t be greater than it is now. The role of socialists isn’t to tail gingerly those who support “diversity of tactics,” but to politically debate and expose the bankruptcy of those ideas for moving struggles forward. And it goes without saying that while we do that, we must also be defending those arrested, exposing the brutality of the police and patiently explaining to co-workers and neighbours what really happened and why people protested.

We need this clarity to avoid the sort of splits in the movements that occurred after Québec City and after 9/11. We need this clarity and upfront politics to win those pulled by the anger at the system and its barbarism to a more effective – if less sexy – strategy, based on building a mass struggle against capitalism that can pull the system up by its roots. •

Ritch Whyman is a member of the International Socialists. This essay is part of a series of articles to be published in the upcoming issue of Socialist Worker which can be found at www.socialist.ca and issuu.com/socialistworker/docs.

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By admin, June 13, 2010 1:35 pm

	The   B u l l e t
	Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 368 June 13, 2010

Building Socialism from Below:

The Role of the Communes in Venezuela

An interview with Antenea Jimenez

Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber

Can you tell us about the barrio where you live and the comuna?

I live in a barrio in the north part of Caracas and work in a national network that is building comunas. Currently we operate in seven states; the majority of the comunas are situated outside Caracas.

Antenea Jimenez.

We are working with the comunas to construct a political space in participatory way. It is a new experience in Venezuela. Above all, the comuna is a political space, not like the State or a parish; it is created by the people for the people.

Currently there are many comunas in construction in the rural areas, where they are the strongest. Every comuna has its own reality depending on political culture and the form of production in the specific locale. For example, on the coastal zone the community is dedicated to fishing, while in a rural zone the production is based on the land.

We are working to discover which elements and principles unite these different experiences, which elements are the same despite the fact that the methods of production and cultures may be different. We organize national meetings where the comunas from north, south, east and west can share their experiences and learn from each other – the errors as well as the successes.

What is the main aim of the comunas?

The aims of the comunas are diverse, and take different forms. Before the comuna existed there were all kinds of community organizations where people would participate looking for solutions to their problems, their neighborhood association, the municipal government, etc. The goal of the comunas is to build on these processes and consolidate them by organizing on the basis of territory where people live.

For us the comuna is a territorial space, but also a political space where the aim is to build socialism on a permanent basis, where the people take charge of their own education and political formation. We teach about “convivencia” (living together well) and elaborate a plan for a particular territory. What is new about the process is that the people are also elaborating their own plan of formation.

The people are very creative; the most advanced work with the other neighbors in this process to create a permanent space of formation. Civil servants, working for the state, who went to these spaces, quickly learned that the people were elaborating their own plan by and for themselves.

Obviously some comunas are more advanced than other ones. It is much more difficult to build a comuna in urban areas, for example, because they have no experience with [different forms] of production; for example, they have no experience with [non-capitalist] social relations with the land. There is a dynamic in the city that is very capitalist. But in the rural areas they have conserved many elements of what is “ours,” from our ancestors, the indigenous communities, the Afro-Venezuelan communities. These values are still there. For this reason it is easier in the rural areas than in the urban areas. While there are fewer people in the countryside, the quality of the compañeros is very high. Sometimes there is not one person who did not vote for Chávez; this is less common in the urban areas.

Can you describe your personal political formation? How did you get involved in the comunas?

I was a student activist in University. I was active in political movements before Chávez, but there was no relationship between the social movements and political parties. In 1992, when Chávez was released from prison, things began to change. We have always been involved in the grassroots of the popular movement; there were few political spaces to participate in before [Chávez’s release] so you would get involved instead in your neighborhood, in your popular organization, in your cultural group.

But since Chávez was released [and began to build a political movement for the 1998 elections] things changed. I got involved; it was our responsibility to help build the process and the movement in Caracas. I was involved in the Popular Coordinator of Caracas, and afterwards the initiative to create the comunas. Now we are a group that works on the comunas.

There are a lot of different ideas about the comunas, for example, between our network of activists and what Chávez has suggested. There are various ideas. We are building it from the people, not the government. We have had extraordinary advances; but the strongest advances have come when the people have been convinced that this is the path, when they have become active in their own neighborhood.

How do the comunas work?

Historically there were diverse organizations that came together to resolve the problems of the neighborhoods. Our idea was to bring these organizations together to start to participate with concrete issues. We organize workshops. Let’s say that a community does not have water. We will organize a meeting about water. The people say, “Ah see! We can solve our own problems.”

We look for a socialist solution to the problem. Not just to hire a private company to fix something, but to work with the government and the people to fix the problem. Working first from the basic needs of the people will inspire them to participate. We also work with them to think more about the future, how we can improve things over the long term.

Step by step we work together toward solving simple things, like living together. Things that just require norms, a little bit of effort that helps us live together better. The community might decide that “We can’t drink in the streets,” for example. Other people see these small changes and then join the struggle when they see the results. They see that collective organization is possible.

There is a network of promoters of the comunas that coordinates, but the participation of the people is fundamental. There are people of all kinds that participate in the comuna: people from the left, people from the right, people that don’t care about anything. The people get involved with a problem that touches their family, the school for example because it involves their children.

Not everyone is socialist. Actually, a minority of participants in the comunas are socialists. We have to attend to the issues that matter to them. This can only be done through practice, and this is the way people get involved.

What are some of the main problems that you face trying to build socialism from the neighborhoods up to higher levels?

There is one factor that impedes our work which is the electoral dynamic, which is very exhausting. Constantly being in campaigns does not permit us to consolidate the organic process at the neighborhood level. It is difficult to deal with the problems in the community when we have to focus on issues like the constituent assembly, then the referendum, general elections, then presidential elections, then elections for governor, etc. Currently we are in elections for municipal councilors. This constant electoral dynamic weakens the organic process at the local level because it distracts us from confronting the daily issues that people confront in their neighborhoods.

What are the main demands in the north zone of Caracas where you live?

The main problem in this area is unplanned urbanization. Most of the land is in the hands of a very small bourgeoisie and so the common people have had to build their houses on the hillsides near the canyon, areas that were originally left vacant [because of the precarious conditions]. There are 29 rivers in the area of Caracas, and every time it rains heavily the people who live in these areas are at great risk. Their houses get washed away. Many people die. For example in 1999 there was a disaster in which many people were killed. People want a resolution of this problem.

The other theme is physical security or insecurity. It is difficult to find a place to meet because people are afraid. It is a real problem. But the right-wing opposition and the media has exaggerated the issue, and made it the problem in the barrios. I think that there are more serious problems. Security is the issue of the opposition, the press covers it, so there is debate about this problem.

How has the quality of people’s lives changed since the beginning of the Bolivarian revolution?

One of the main changes is in the area of education with the missions, Mission Sucre, for example. Now anyone who wants to go to university can go. Before only 7% of the students in the UCV were poor people like me. And perhaps only 2% of the students in Simón Bolívar were poor. Now everybody is studying at night. In fact, sometimes it is difficult to find a time to meet because everybody is studying! We can only hold meetings during the weekends.

Another fundamental thing that has changed is that before 1998, there was no political debate in the barrios. I was part of a small vanguard that was resisting this, trying to raise political debate in the university. In the 1980s, it was only the students who would mobilize, come out on the streets. But now people are talking about politics everywhere, on the bus and in the bars. It is rare that two people having beers are not talking about politics.

Another important success is that people talk about socialism. Maybe they do not talk about socialism in a “scientific” way, like about what Marx or Lenin said. But they talk about socialism with familiarity. There is still some fear, but way less than before. For example, once we showed a film about socialism in a barrio in the 1980s or 1990s. People just repeated what they heard from the press, that the socialists will torture you and that all socialists are dictators. Now people associate socialism with democracy. Indeed, the very concept of democracy has changed. If Chávez was assassinated, which is a real possibility because there have been many plans to assassinate him, there would be a civil war.

But no matter what happens, the advance of participatory democracy is irreversible. We cannot go back to representative democracy. There could be another kind of left, but now the people always have to participate; participatory democracy is a fundamental part of this revolution. The people understand the importance of it, demand it, and want to do it.

And they notice the difference in how politics works. Before the political reality was centered on what happened in “Miraflores” (the presidential palace). Now there is a lot of political activity, there are important social movements. There is possibility, there is hope. Now people do more than just wait every five years to participate in elections. We have seven million people who are militants in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). There are millions of people participating in the communal councils.

This does not mean that everybody has a developed political consciousness or political experience; it is still a process in transition. There can be no revolutionary party without revolutionary militants. And the commitment to forming revolutionaries remains underdeveloped.

There are still problems in the Bolivarian process. There have been important economic improvements, for example, less unemployment, higher minimum salary, better pensions, but there is still a low level of political consciousness. People have to be able to handle political and economic theories if we are to advance further, like in Cuba, where the average person on the street has an analysis of what is going on in the country, in the world. In Cuba there is a high level of political consciousness. This level of [revolutionary] consciousness is still lacking in Venezuela. It is dangerous for the revolution. We have come a long way but we can still do more.

What does participatory democracy mean in the comunas?

There is a saying here that suggests that participatory democracy is not about what we are doing but about how we are going to do it. It means that we all build together that which we want to do, we decide what we want to contribute, our projects for improving our lives.

Participation has to be for everyone whether they are with the government, against the government, from the left, from the right. The only one who has authority is the assembly of citizens. It is the assembly, not an elected group… no, it is the assembly that decides on the development plan in each comuna.

When there are debates we try to reach a consensus, and if we don’t, we keep debating. When there is no agreement we break the issue down bit by bit to reach agreement on smaller parts. Participation for us is in the formulation of politics; we also participate in the execution of the project. For example, a community wants an aqueduct. The state says, “Ok. Here is the money. Now build it, execute the funds.”

But we do not participate in the formulation of national policy, not directly. The policy of the ministers is not decided by a participatory process. We have said, “But we should participate!” We participate at the local level, but socialism is not something that happens only at the local level. We need to weave together a web that brings together the local spaces, the territories, and the comunas, because the national and international levels have an impact on what’s happening at the local level. We can’t just be a socialist comuna, a little island in a sea of capitalism. After all, who are we going to exchange with?

There is a Ministry of Popular Power for the Comunas and Social Protection but there are no participatory mechanisms to set its policy. Right now this is happening with the indigenous communities. There is a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and the communities are participating, they decide. They have a national council that makes policy. We have put forward a proposal to have more control over the Ministry for the Comunas, but it has not yet been approved. There is a lot of resistance.

You have to understand one thing. The comunas are a space of power. There are comunas that have executed more resources than some municipal governments. So, the comunas are constituted spaces of power; a majority of the comunas are formally part of the PSUV, but often Chavista officials at the local levels do not really want to share power. Instead, there is a confrontation between the comunas and the Chavista mayors and governors. Although we all stand with our arms together in the photo with Chávez, in practice there is a real confrontation. The governors do not understand this dynamic because the governors do not want to lose power.

The governors and mayors think that they are going to build socialism from their municipality, from their leadership. But we say, if a communal state is not born, socialism will not be possible. At the moment there is no perfect socialist comuna, where everything is debated, where there is an alternative, socialist, economic plan, where the teachers are also from the comuna, giving classes to the youth. This might be possible one day, but not now when there is another level of government that is deciding the overall budget. The project is to connect all these comunas at the national level; at the moment this is not viable because in most places we do not even participate in deciding the budget of the municipality. We participate in small projects, and the local government continues independently as if we were not in a socialist transition.

I only know of two isolated cases where this [participatory budgeting with the involvement of the comuna] takes place in reality: in the city of Torres in the state of Lara, and in Bolívar city in the state of Falcón. This is the case because in these municipalities the comrades [the mayors] are really from the left. The majority of the governors are not from the left. In most cases, the state is a bourgeois state and taking apart this state is the focus of continual conflict. This is taking a lot of political energy. The president is aware of these contradictions but I don’t think that he has found a way to overcome the problem. It is not simple. On the one hand you have people who are organized and making proposals and on the other hand people from the same party who are consolidating the bourgeois state.

What is the role of women in the comunas?

The majority of the people who participate in the comunas are women. I think that when we are talking about the advances of the process, this is a very important one. Right now there is a lot of participation by women and the grassroots level. But it ends there. When it is time to hold elections for positions with more responsibility, then it is men who are the candidates.

The president has put forward a number of initiatives to counter this tendency, and there have been many advances. In the party, for example, 50% of the candidates must be women. And when you go to the communities, the majority of those who are participating are women, and the majority of people who are studying in the missions are women. Historically in Venezuela and in Latin America, the societies have been very sexist and it has often been difficult for women to even leave the house. Before Chávez came to office, women’s participation was really rare. Women from the Left – from the vanguard – have always participated in social and political life. But now it is more widespread. I think that in the higher levels of the process, there are a number of valuable women doing incredible things.

There are some things that still need to change. Like the laws. For example, if I get pregnant I have six months of rest but my husband does not even get a day. One of the things that we have asked for is equality on this issue. I think that we will win on this issue.

Another limitation is that women are responsible for the children in Venezuela. It is difficult for women to participate, in the communal council, for example, because they have to leave their kids somewhere. This influences women’s decisions not to take political positions with more responsibility, especially if the position involves travel. This is a real barrier, although the level of participation in the communities is really high.

What is the long term vision for promoting participatory democracy from below through the comunas?

Here I have a different vision from the government. The vision of the government is that I show up in a community, starting from zero, and within half a week give workshops on politics. As I mentioned above, the level of political consciousness in Venezuela is still weak.

The process of building political consciousness, formation, can not be instantaneous. It is not like you can go to a school for a week and get a certificate. It has to be permanent. If you have a team constituted by the same people from the communal council raising the consciousness of people in their community, this is the way to create facilitators. It is a long process to learn about all of the different categories: anarchism, socialism and its various currents. It takes at least fifteen years. It is not just theory; it is also learned in practice. You learn in practice, but also through reading and reflecting. It takes a long time to figure out that certain social and political practices belong to socialism, while other ones are capitalist.

Some communal councils have higher levels of political formation than others. These organizations understand that the communal council is not just a space to receive resources. They understand that the council is a new “civil association.” It is a political space and a political exercise. Honestly, the majority of the councils do not understand it this way. We are still working with the councils to work on the idea that “hey, we can solve this problem in a capitalist way or a socialist way.” We want to solve the problems, but do so in a new way. But it is difficult when the companies that provide the services, for example, produce the materials for a house, are still capitalist. Housing is a good example because the problem of housing continues to be serious. Maybe we are making the blocks, but we have to buy the cement from a capitalist company. And then hiring the person to lay the blocks… It is not just solving the problem, but how we solve the problem… to build socialism rather than strengthen capitalism. We have 500 years of colonialism and exploitation, so this is a big challenge, to rebuild all of the socio-economic system. Building a new state is a big challenge.

For example, in some cases we have increased agricultural production. But the rice has been sent to a company that processes and packages the rice and sells it back at ten times the price. It makes me laugh, it doesn’t make sense. We have to take over the plants, take over the companies. But it is not easy to do. And the communal councils are not necessarily ready to take on all these tasks.

We find ourselves in a bit of a vicious circle. The only way to overcome this is to create relations between the communal councils, public institutions and the state. The councils are in the process of becoming stronger but it will take a lot to move to the next step.

What is the idea over the long term? Will the comunas continue to exist alongside the bourgeois state, or will they eventually replace it with new forms of self-governance?

This question makes me think because the revolutionary process has taken place through many kinds of organizations that got stuck on the path. The president mentioned once that the nucleus of endogenous development did not function well. The people often ask, “What kind of organization do we need, which is the adequate tool to help bring us what we want… a comuna, a cooperative?” And I explain what a cooperative is, a company of social property. The comuna is something else. We are doing everything to try to make sure that the comuna becomes the main instrument of social change because we are Marxists… it is the only way to build socialism, from below. In addition, in Venezuela there are historical experiences with comunas. This is our original form of organization. It is not strange for us. Of course, because of colonialism all of this changed. But the original form in “Our America” was this one. This is the political form through which people collectively governed their lives.

We have also seen other forms of socialism that were constructed by the state, like the Soviet Union. When that state collapsed, everything was destroyed. So, something happened there. Did the people really feel like they were a part of this process? There were some successes but people did not really feel part of it. The experience of all the revolutions of the past, in Russia, in Cuba, in the other countries of the South, show that if the people do not really participate, the bourgeois state simply continues. Such a conception of socialism is not viable, because the bourgeois state is not of the people. We are working now to build alternative systems, of solidarity exchange and barter. The idea is that the comuna also starts to run the community radio stations, the TV stations.

We are discussing how the comunas will be structured. What will be the relations of forces, which powers will the comunas be in charge of – judicial, executive, etc. All that exists now is the assembly for debate. But authentically socialist comuna does not yet exist; we are still constructing the comunas. We are in comuna when we govern ourselves, when we do not need a judge to tell us, “This house is not yours.” Or let’s say you live in a neighborhood and you need a letter that proves your place of residence. You have to go to an institution that says this. The comuna could do this. Your neighbor can verify where you live.

Capitalism created a layer of people who are the owners of peoples’ lives. If you do not have a residence card, there are many things that you can’t do. Why do we need resident cards? The bourgeois state has created this class of administrators that we do not need, who pretend they know things. The popular layers of community at the bottom have to wait until they solve the problems. But the comuna can do all of these things, decide all of these things. Before the Spanish came, this is how we lived. But it is a long process to raise the consciousness of the people so that they can take charge of their lives. It is also not an “anarchist thing” where anyone can do whatever they want. There are norms of living together that one has to respect. There are norms that regulate working life that also have to be respected. People have to respect these laws out of consciousness rather than because there is a law that represses them.

Ultimately, whether President Chávez is here or not, the process depends on the people. At the moment, the process as a whole is too dependent on the president. He is seen as the guarantee that this process will go forward, and for this reason the reactionaries want to get rid of him.

If another government replaces Chávez it may no longer be possible to meet politically in the streets. With the right-wing governments of the past, you only had to have a single book by Marx, Che Guevara, or Fidel Castro, to be persecuted. •

Susan Spronk teaches in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is a research associate with Municipal Services Project and has published several articles on class formation and water politics in Bolivia.

Jeffery R. Webber teaches politics at the University of Regina. He is the author of Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill, 2010), and Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales (Haymarket, 2011).

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By admin, June 10, 2010 8:13 am

Join CUPE at the G8/G20 People’s Summit

Jun 9, 2010 05:20 PM
G8/G20 Actions, June 18 – 27

The Group of Eight world leaders and the Group of Twenty world leaders are meeting in Toronto, Ontario from June 25-27, 2010. We need to get organized and send a message that privatization, trade liberalization and this economic system of greed is not working. This meeting provides a unique opportunity for the community and labour to come together to educate, empower and ignite positive change to achieve a kind of world that we want and desperately need.

Events

Here are a few of many events that CUPE members can attend during the G8/G20 Summit. Additional information about these events is available on the People’s Summit 2010 website.

June 18 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
2010 People’s Summit Launch Event!
Hosted by Mary Walsh with musical performances by Sara Marlowe and Eternia.
Location: The Carlu, 444 Younge Street
Tickets: pay what you can

June 18 – 20
2010 People’s Summit Workshops
Location: Ryerson University and area in Toronto
Workshops offered by over 100 civil society groups from around Canada and the world, as well as skill-shares, panels, plenaries, strategy sessions, art and performance.

June 19 9:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Canadian Labour Congress – G8 & G20 Open Forum
Location:  University of Toronto, 1 King’s College Circle, Medical Sciences Building, Room 2158
Free of charge
Morning Panel: The Economic Crisis – How we got there? Who Pays?
Afternoon Panel: Labour’s Response – Decent Work and the ILO Jobs Pact

June 20 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (registration at 8:30 a.m.)
Workshop: Building Solidarity with the Democratic Labour Movement in Mexico
Location: Chestnut Residence Hotel, 89 Chestnut Road, Toronto
Free of charge

June 25 7 p.m.
Shout Out for Global Justice!
Location: Massey Hall, Toronto
Tickets: $14 for Council of Canadians members and $20 for non-members. Tickets available at Massey Hall, the Council of Canadians website or by calling 1-800-387-7177 ext. 239

• Watch live streaming video of Shout Out for Global Justice by rabble.ca.

June 26
People First! We deserve better: Public Rally and March
Starting at 1 p.m. in Queen’s Park, Toronto
For more information visit the Canadian Labour Congress website.

Share our messages

Follow CUPE on Twitter @cupenat to receive updates everyday leading up to and during the summit!

With our labour partners, we’ll be tweeting live from events and re-tweeting messages all weekend. Help us share G8/G20 Summit news by re-tweeting messages to your own followers on Twitter. Please use the hashtags #G8 and #G20.

Other Twitter accounts you should follow include:

• The Canadian Labour Council: @CanadianLabour
• CUPE Ontario: @CUPEOnt
• The Council of Canadians: @ CouncilofCDNs
• Canada International, the Government of Canada official source of information for the Muskoka 2010 G8 Summit and the Toronto G20 Summit: @ CanadaIntl
• The Government of Canada G8-G20 Integrated Security Unit @ G8G20ISUca
• The Toronto Community Mobilization Network: @g20mobilize

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By admin, June 6, 2010 8:33 pm

	The   B u l l e t
	Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 359 May 25, 2010

Canada’s New Dissenting Academy

Matthew Brett

As the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences prepares for its annual Congress this May in Montreal, now is the time to create a new dissenting academy. A radical, anti-capitalist reorientation of academia – created for the explicit purpose of addressing urgent issues that stand before us – is necessary.

Theodore Roszak wrote in a collection of essays titled The Dissenting Academy (1967) that the university is rarely “anything better than the handmaiden of official society: the social club of ruling elites, the training school of whatever functionaries the status quo required.”

In the same collection of essays, Marshall Windmiller wrote a remarkable piece on political scientists in the U.S. and their direct involvement in the CIA and the war in Vietnam. Noam Chomsky’s infamous The Responsibility of Intellectuals closed the essay collection.

All authors agreed that the line between universities, the corporate world and government has blurred to irrelevancy. Social scientists were likewise active in planning some of the worst atrocities in recent history, and dissent within the academic community was shunned. The parallels with today are compelling.

Corporatization and the University

Concordia University will be hosting the 2010 Humanities and Social Science Congress this May, so parallels with the 1960s can be drawn with Concordia. However, most universities in Canada share similar characteristics, and this critique should be applied in equal measure to all post-secondary institutions.

Concordia President Judith Woodsworth recently returned from a mission to India with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and a number of business leaders. There can be no doubt that some of the 130 trade delegation members that joined the trade mission are part of Canada’s massive mining and finance sectors that trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and are busy exploiting India’s natural resources while gross human rights violations take place. This is representative of the intertwining of universities and Canadian imperialism.

Woodsworth is a strong university president, and a breath of fresh air after the untimely and costly departure of the unpopular Claude Lajeunesse, but it is a shame that the president can praise India’s “flourishing economy, [and] rise of the middle class” without documenting the mass state violence and suppression of the rural poor taking place at this very moment in the name of “development.”

India’s “flourishing economy” also comes with a state military apparatus that is busy “burning villages, raping women, [and] burning food crops,” according to Arhundati Roy, whose recently-published Field Notes on Democracy is a must read.

Just this Tuesday, May 18, Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty was in India stating that trade between the two countries has increased 70 per cent since 2007.

It is in this vein that all Canadian university trade missions to developing economies, such as China, should be regarded. It would not be at all surprising to see Canadian institutions go on a mission to Colombia once the Canadian free trade agreement is ratified this year in Ottawa!

Research interests also align very closely with prevailing government policy. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade recently offered 10 fellowships of $5,000 each to graduate researchers who submit a paper on “Canada’s Role in the Circumpolar World.”

Research must focus on “the Arctic Council as a mechanism to advance Canada’s foreign policy objectives.” Just one month prior to this call for submissions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was taking part in Operation Nanook, a military exercise demonstrating Canada’s “unyielding resolve” to protect the north from those nasty Norwegians. State leaders never stop for a moment to reflect on the madness of militarizing/colonizing the indigenous north precisely to exploit the very resources – namely fossil fuels – that helped cause the melting of these ice sheets in the first place.

Universities for the Status-Quo

University’s communications, journalism, business, engineering, geography and urban planning departments all sustain the status-quo with remarkable efficiency. Students can take advanced courses in derivatives, a primary driver of the financial crisis, but the business school pats itself on the back for adding a course or two on business ethics or “sustainable development.” Lecture halls are named after banks, breweries and investors. Moreover, political science graduate programs across Canada are most often designed explicitly to train the new mandarins of Ottawa, with the largest growth in studies related to the security and international apparatuses of the state, rather than educating students as citizens for democracy and the building of social movements.

Yet there are urgent issues that require critical attention. The World Bank predicts an increase of 200,000 to 400,000 infant deaths as a result of the financial crisis, and bloody wars continue in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan (thanks Obama) and Israel-Palestine, with women and children as the primary victims. Iran finds itself at a critical juncture. Global chronic malnutrition has reached historic levels, affecting one sixth of all humanity, according to a recent UN report.

The deteriorating environment is also a grave concern for the world’s leading scientists and humanity at large, and the global economy needs a radical rethink. There will be another financial crisis unless we make deep and fundamental changes to governance and finance. This must necessarily be a political and revolutionary project.

Yet intellectual responses to these crises have yet to coalesce around a broad national and international dissident movement, so the question begs itself: along what lines will this new dissenting academy be drawn? Geographer David Harvey offered a compelling framework during his 2010 World Social Forum speech, “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition.”

“The current knowledge structure,” Harvey said, “is clearly dysfunctional and equally clearly illegitimate. The only hope is that a new generation of perceptive students (in the broad sense of all those who seek to know the world) will clearly see it so and insist upon changing it.”

The time seems more than right to insist upon changing not only the illegitimate structure of our education system but also the illegitimate cultural, economic and governmental structures that perpetuate this perilous trajectory.

Seeds of Dissent

There are seeds of dissent at Concordia as at other university campuses, but not nearly enough for a sustained movement. This winter’s well attended Study in Action Conference should serve as a springboard for a broader dissident movement, and there are clear signs of organizing within the Association pour une Solidarité Syndical Étudiante and Free Education Montreal.

A Concordia graduate union meeting last week drew over 130 students, and there is clearly a swelling of dissent within the academy following notice of tuition hikes, 30 per cent pay cuts to teaching assistants and a condensing of payment schemes that will adversely affect low income students.

Fortunately, hundreds of Concordia students have developed a highly-functional network of dissent. But like at other campuses, Canada’s student movement needs some unifying purpose, a galvanizing point, increased organizational coherence, and connection to the wider struggles against the deepening of neoliberalism from the financial crisis.

At Concordia, to use as an illustrative example of what could be paralleled at other campuses, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group at Concordia (QPIRG Concordia), the Red School, the Community University Research Exchange (CURE), Free Education Montreal – are all key student organizations that are slowly coming together.

That said, the main representative organizations of students – the Concordia Student Union and the Arts and Science Federation of Association and most student organizations – have been painfully silent on the upcoming tuition hikes.

In Quebec, a movement toward a student strike should also be on the table, and this can only be achieved by deepening the organizational linkages of student activists and connecting to wider political struggles.

An anti-capitalist student movement must also necessarily be international in scope. Canadian internationalists must develop strong links not only between provinces but between states and continents. Campus occupations in Puerto Rico and California must receive direct material and social support from a Canada-wide student movement.

More broadly, teach-ins like the “Anti-capitalist Teach-in Against the G8/G20” being held in Montreal must become regular affairs. New educational systems must flourish, along with educational cooperatives and a well organized communications strategy to facilitate this process. Student-run organizations must come together to form a unified movement with pan-Canadian and international links. This is merely a sketch of what must emerge in the face of local and global injustice and the evident way that the financial crisis is now playing out in public sector austerity and further attacks on public institutions. As the Congress of academic associations meets this month, such discussions must be put on the agenda of faculty as much as students. As Canadian programs spending promises to reach lows not seen since World War II, these anti-capitalist and indeed revolutionary ideas do have a window of opportunity to take material form. •

Matthew Brett is a master’s student in political science at Concordia University and a regular columnist with The Link, Concordia’s student newspaper. He also coordinates a reading group of Marx’s Capital based on David Harvey’s online lectures. Those wishing to contact members of Montreal’s student movement are encouraged to contact Matthew. E-mail him at brett.matthew@yahoo.ca.