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Socialist Action Canada

Socialist Action Canada | Ligue pour L'Action Socialiste

Year: 2022

Alternative to Pandemic-Era Housing Crisis

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Whether a couple is planning to settle down or a family is seeking a place to raise kids in the province, they are sure to feel the heat in the Canadian housing market. The question:  'How did we get here?' often leads to inconclusive answers and simply pointing a finger at the easiest target. The predatory nature of housing market big players means they have no interest in addressing the needs of the people.  For them, housing is a commodity designed to make shareholders happy.  Actually, the housing market is doing very well to meet its mandates - funneling wealth upwards.

BC Govt Workers Strike for Wage Catch-Up

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Some 1,000 British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) workers went on strike chiefly to obtain a cost of living allowance (COLA) to match inflation. More than 86,000 members of the BCGEU work in both the public and private sectors across the west coast province. The bargaining committee for the public sector component, representing 33,000 members, gave a 72 hour strike notice on August 15 after months of unsuccessful bargaining.

No to religious terrorism! No to state terrorism! Only the overthrow of the world capitalist system would make peace possible

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The President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, announced that on July 31, 2022, through an airstrike, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, was killed in Kabul.  On the basis of this ‘historic feat’, he spoke about the delivery of “peace and justice". The American government, which itself is the producer and supporter of terrorism around the world, can never be the hero of the fight against terrorism. Didn't Hillary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State, admit that "The people we are fighting today, we funded twenty years ago"? Didn't John Bolton, former National Security Adviser of the US, admit that he organized coups in various countries, including in Latin America?

New Brunswick NDP Goes Forward

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Efforts to rebuild the New Brunswick New Democratic Party as a socialist, labour-based, working class party made considerable progress at a convention held at the Lions Club Community Centre in Moncton, July 22-24, 2022. It was the first NB NDP convention in five years.  It attracted over thirty delegates, both in-person and online, plus several observers.  In the struggle to organize and convene the gathering, the NDP Socialist Caucus played a leading role, spear-heading efforts to overcome resistance by the provincial NDP leader who resigned rather than comply with the party’s decision to proceed.

Canadian Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action socialiste statement on sexual assault and gender discrimination

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Socialist Action Canada / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste has become aware of a troubling wave of incidents of sexual assault and gender violence within leftist organizations across the Canadian state, and abroad. The SA/LAS leadership body, its Central Committee, is united in condemning in the strongest possible terms the occurrence and apparent mishandling of these situations where leaders routinely failed to protect, address, or even inform comrades within their ranks. Patterns that have emerged include a mere slap on the wrist as discipline for the perpetrator despite repeated allegations against the same individuals, while persons under investigation were placed in the same settings with those they abused while survivors were denied requests for reasonable accommodation and non-biased investigation. Consequently, needless re-traumatizing occurred while a failure to inform local comrades continued to put other folks at risk. We take no pleasure in reporting such horrendous incidents.  Indeed, we are pained by the evident suffering and trauma experienced by the victims of predators, by all others negatively affected, and by the failings of certain leaders.

Joseph Ryan, Revolutionary Socialist, 1944-2022

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Joseph Ryan, – his friends usually called him Joe, – called me in late May from his home in Denver offering to resume his editorship of our COVID-interrupted print edition of our monthly newspaper, Socialist Action. I heartedly agreed and at Joe’s request sent him a dozen articles for inclusion in what we planned to be our summer issue. Joe was especially motivated to return to editing our newspaper by our website articles on the war in Ukraine. As was Joe’s lifelong habit, he insisted on letting us know where he stood, in this case, mercilessly pillorying those on the left who ignored the central role of U.S. imperialism in instigating the 2014 fascist-led coup and the coup government’s subsequent murderous attacks on the Russian-speaking people of the Donbas that set into motion today’s war and its associated horrors.

Marxism and the National Question

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National oppression and racism are fundamental features of capitalist states in the world today. In few of them does the national question play such a central role as in Canada. This is most clearly demonstrated in the case of Quebec, where national resentment periodically erupts to take centre stage in political life. It is seen in the rising national consciousness and demands of Indigenous peoples in Canada and Quebec. French-speaking communities outside Quebec which have survived Anglo-assimilation, notably the Acadians in Atlantic Canada, also claim nationhood. And it applies, arguably, to Newfoundland, where a separate society existed for three hundred years before its incorporation, by a fraudulent set of referenda, into the Canadian state in 1949.

OFL brass allow no discussion on what’s next for Ontario’s labour movement

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It was a mockery of workers' democracy. 

The zoom conference hosted by the labour bureaucracy on June 20, it's so-called review of the June 2 Ontario election, along with a look at the future of the unions, allowed no grassroots workers to speak. Only a panel of NDP cheerleaders and labour hacks offered versions of the same opinion -- that it is necessary to work harder in order to win the next provincial election.  If any further proof was needed, this echo chamber exercise demonstrated that there will be little progress until the conservative bureaucrats are replaced by class struggle militants, from the bottom up. The urgency of building a chapter of WAM in every union and allied workers' mass organization is very clear.

The Red Review: Through the Looking Glass — Comparing Canadian and Australian Politics with Isabelle Moreton

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In this episode of The Red Review, brought to you by Socialist Action, Emily and Daniel talk with Isabelle Moreton of Brisbane, Australia. Isabelle provides analysis and commentary on various political struggles, including disability justice, queer and trans liberation. With the Labor Party winning the majority of seats in the recent election, who better to speak to about what this actually means for the exploited and oppressed masses in Australia and for the international labour and socialist movement. Expect a more banter-y conversation with striking similarities drawn between the Canadian and Australian political context.

SA at Toronto protest outside Mining Convention, June 13

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Socialist Action members joined about one hundred opponents of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada which held a publicity gathering at the Metro Convention Centre in downtown Toronto on June 13.

For over two hours, the protest against the PDAC occupied two blocks of Front Street West, adjacent to the CBC headquarters.  Indigenous speakers and dancers, along with environmental activists from northern Canada, Central America and as far away as Tigray (Ethiopia) denounced the harmful labour and natural resource practices of major Canadian mining corporations operating around the world.

Municipal Socialist Alliance Convention on May 28

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The Municipal Socialist Alliance (MSA) is a democratic, grassroots organization that includes union members, anti-poverty activists, tenant organizers, disability and housing justice advocates, socialists, and other progressive anti-capitalists fighting together for the following demands... The MSA, embodying the united front concept, launches its election campaign on Saturday, May 28 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time at a convention where members will democratically discuss and adopt Principles of Unity, a detailed platform and policies, and endorse candidates.