Across the Canadian left, politics is increasingly reduced to a familiar routine: open Canva, draft a statement on the issue of the day, post, and repeat. Yet these statements share a defining feature: they offer no plausible path to changing the conditions they describe. It feels like meaningful political action, but it isn’t.
Bookmarking this… this speaks directly to the core of the problems I have with the NDP.
Far too much energy and focus spent on messaging, and not enough on making concrete action to bring about what they want. I do believe in the benefit of good messaging, decorum and basic conversational respect to have a healthy discourse. However there’s a cult-like attitude in some echelons of the NDP that was offputting to me, when I’ve observed the whole “reading into the timing and wording of statements and noting presence or absence of particular subjects” the author wrote about.
Avi Lewis can’t change laws directly unless he has a seat in Parliament. But he can advocate for it, as I see him doing. I think he should also use the bit of organizing power the NDP does have, to do more than angle for more seats–the NDP should do things that have a real impact in people’s lives.
For example: They should help fundraise for small-scale non-profit solar and battery initiatives as a political party. They should call for rotating boycotts on oil companies and monopolies that gouge us. They can encourage folks to do one nice thing for their neighbour, or donate if they can to a foodbank. They should put their weight behind tenant union organizing and workplace organizing by physically showing up. Lots they can do.
Correction: we shouldn’t wait for Lewis to do this or that. We should be doing this and that. If anything what Lewis has done is crack open the NDP and invited people to take it up and use it. So when you’re saying “Lewis should use the organizing capacity the NDP has”, turn that around: go join your riding association and use it as the platform to organize to do all the lovely things you’re proposing.
As I wrote in another reply, an effective party inspires people to action. Still, a good point.
I’m definitely close with my neighbours, engage in boycots and encourage others to do so, but movement building is more than just me, it involves amassing power of the collective and directing it to projects: that isn’t totally in my skillset at this moment and I presume there are others in a similar situation.
I’m a BCNDP supporter, have volunteered for them, and subscribed to my local riding association’s newsletter, but I’ve not really attached myself to the federal party for reasons I put in my original comment. I’m actively reconsidering it with Avi at the helm.
It sounds to me you’re already somewhat inspired, and you’re already doing movement building.
I just want to say one thing about what you said about your skillset, because to me it reads like a feeling of disempowerment. Decades of neoliberalism has trained us to believe the way things work is that are some people who are experts and our part is to let them do their thing and we’ll just be good consumers. (I’m not making a personal criticism to you, I’m outlining a cultural norm.) But there is no cavalry. Lewis isn’t going to save anyone, he’s literally just some guy, and the staff that the party is doing admin work. It’s just us.
So if something is not in our skillset, then we’ll just have to be bad at it :)
Exactly, most people who fear socialism can’t actually define what it is in the first place. The really big problem we have is with the lack of education. In my view, that’s what NDP should focus on. Instead of election cycles, they need to start building a socialist base that has a shared vision of the future. If NDP positioned itself as a champion of changing the way the system works, then it’s no longer about trying to get votes by making promises in a particular election campaign, it’s building a long term movement of people who want the country to be run on different principles. I’m not saying they shouldn’t try to win elections, but that it shouldn’t be the sole, or even the primary focus. There needs to be a continuity of vision that’s coupled with a strong grassroots base that will stick with the party for the long haul.
Great ideas. An effective party inspires people to action for a cause. I think there’s a number of issues we disagree on but I do think that coalition building to effect change is more important in the short term than to make a campaign with flashy but unlikely promises.
I’d argue most of the disagreements on the left are purely theoretical. We’re so far from any form of socialist society, that the focus should be on supporting any effort in that direction.
The really big problem we have is with the lack of education.
Nah, education can’t compete with organized propaganda. There are powerful people paying good money to contaminate the public discourse. More education is not enough, because there’s a power imbalance: we’d need to invest a thousand dollars in education to counter each dollar of propaganda; because you need to prepare an average citizen with higher-education-level critical thinking skills and even then it might not be enough. On the other hand, a few bucks of ads on Meta and some astro-turfing can push an otherwise reasonable voter into paranoia.
The really big problem we have is the 0.1% having the budget and leeway to poison the well.
Sure, there is a ton of propaganda, but it’s not hopeless either. People managed to organize in far harsher conditions in the past. While the rich have the media and the propaganda, people have their lived experience. And even starting small, going door to door, and talking to people to build a consensus on what the problems are can go a long way. The big problem of the oligarchs owning everything here cannot be solved until people start to understand how and why things work the way they do here.
Count me in, while I still have the energy I try to get organized as well. I just tend to pushback on the idea that education is the solution to our problem, or the root cause of the state of things; on the contrary I believe that education is a reflection of politics more than politics is a reflection of education. Minor differences in practice come from this though, just a bit of a worldview nitpick I guess.
I mean political education in the context of organizing, not in a general sense. I think organizers have to spend the time to explain the mechanics of our capitalist system, and why we need structural changes. People need to understand what the problems are, and on general approach to solving them. We need a unified labour movement that’s rooted in strong unions, community organizations, and mutual aid. The working majority has to start building its own power structures that answer to the workers.
Bookmarking this… this speaks directly to the core of the problems I have with the NDP.
Far too much energy and focus spent on messaging, and not enough on making concrete action to bring about what they want. I do believe in the benefit of good messaging, decorum and basic conversational respect to have a healthy discourse. However there’s a cult-like attitude in some echelons of the NDP that was offputting to me, when I’ve observed the whole “reading into the timing and wording of statements and noting presence or absence of particular subjects” the author wrote about.
Avi Lewis can’t change laws directly unless he has a seat in Parliament. But he can advocate for it, as I see him doing. I think he should also use the bit of organizing power the NDP does have, to do more than angle for more seats–the NDP should do things that have a real impact in people’s lives.
For example: They should help fundraise for small-scale non-profit solar and battery initiatives as a political party. They should call for rotating boycotts on oil companies and monopolies that gouge us. They can encourage folks to do one nice thing for their neighbour, or donate if they can to a foodbank. They should put their weight behind tenant union organizing and workplace organizing by physically showing up. Lots they can do.
Correction: we shouldn’t wait for Lewis to do this or that. We should be doing this and that. If anything what Lewis has done is crack open the NDP and invited people to take it up and use it. So when you’re saying “Lewis should use the organizing capacity the NDP has”, turn that around: go join your riding association and use it as the platform to organize to do all the lovely things you’re proposing.
As I wrote in another reply, an effective party inspires people to action. Still, a good point.
I’m definitely close with my neighbours, engage in boycots and encourage others to do so, but movement building is more than just me, it involves amassing power of the collective and directing it to projects: that isn’t totally in my skillset at this moment and I presume there are others in a similar situation.
I’m a BCNDP supporter, have volunteered for them, and subscribed to my local riding association’s newsletter, but I’ve not really attached myself to the federal party for reasons I put in my original comment. I’m actively reconsidering it with Avi at the helm.
It sounds to me you’re already somewhat inspired, and you’re already doing movement building.
I just want to say one thing about what you said about your skillset, because to me it reads like a feeling of disempowerment. Decades of neoliberalism has trained us to believe the way things work is that are some people who are experts and our part is to let them do their thing and we’ll just be good consumers. (I’m not making a personal criticism to you, I’m outlining a cultural norm.) But there is no cavalry. Lewis isn’t going to save anyone, he’s literally just some guy, and the staff that the party is doing admin work. It’s just us.
So if something is not in our skillset, then we’ll just have to be bad at it :)
Exactly, most people who fear socialism can’t actually define what it is in the first place. The really big problem we have is with the lack of education. In my view, that’s what NDP should focus on. Instead of election cycles, they need to start building a socialist base that has a shared vision of the future. If NDP positioned itself as a champion of changing the way the system works, then it’s no longer about trying to get votes by making promises in a particular election campaign, it’s building a long term movement of people who want the country to be run on different principles. I’m not saying they shouldn’t try to win elections, but that it shouldn’t be the sole, or even the primary focus. There needs to be a continuity of vision that’s coupled with a strong grassroots base that will stick with the party for the long haul.
Great ideas. An effective party inspires people to action for a cause. I think there’s a number of issues we disagree on but I do think that coalition building to effect change is more important in the short term than to make a campaign with flashy but unlikely promises.
I’d argue most of the disagreements on the left are purely theoretical. We’re so far from any form of socialist society, that the focus should be on supporting any effort in that direction.
Nah, education can’t compete with organized propaganda. There are powerful people paying good money to contaminate the public discourse. More education is not enough, because there’s a power imbalance: we’d need to invest a thousand dollars in education to counter each dollar of propaganda; because you need to prepare an average citizen with higher-education-level critical thinking skills and even then it might not be enough. On the other hand, a few bucks of ads on Meta and some astro-turfing can push an otherwise reasonable voter into paranoia.
The really big problem we have is the 0.1% having the budget and leeway to poison the well.
Sure, there is a ton of propaganda, but it’s not hopeless either. People managed to organize in far harsher conditions in the past. While the rich have the media and the propaganda, people have their lived experience. And even starting small, going door to door, and talking to people to build a consensus on what the problems are can go a long way. The big problem of the oligarchs owning everything here cannot be solved until people start to understand how and why things work the way they do here.
Count me in, while I still have the energy I try to get organized as well. I just tend to pushback on the idea that education is the solution to our problem, or the root cause of the state of things; on the contrary I believe that education is a reflection of politics more than politics is a reflection of education. Minor differences in practice come from this though, just a bit of a worldview nitpick I guess.
I mean political education in the context of organizing, not in a general sense. I think organizers have to spend the time to explain the mechanics of our capitalist system, and why we need structural changes. People need to understand what the problems are, and on general approach to solving them. We need a unified labour movement that’s rooted in strong unions, community organizations, and mutual aid. The working majority has to start building its own power structures that answer to the workers.
Ah I see, makes sense.