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.
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 :)
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 :)