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.
Category: Events
Socialist Action | Happy May Day 2022!
Good evening, comrades, siblings and friends. International Workers’ Day, unlike Labour Day in September, is the occasion to celebrate not only workers’ solidarity and our past gains, but the struggle for socialism. May Day is rooted in the quest for a world without exploitation and oppression. Socialist Action has been at the forefront of May First actions for decades. Clearly, on May Day 2022, despite big challenges, there are positive signs. Young workers are organizing unions. Witness the breakthrough at Amazon in the US. Witness the successful unionization drives at West Jet, Indigo bookstores, Canada Goose in Winnipeg, various Starbucks locations, at a Vancouver hotel, and a near-win at Staples in Oakville. Celebrate the election of a new progressive president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, and the triumph of Teamsters for a Democratic Union across North America. Note the significant support for Workers’ Action Movement candidates at recent CLC and OFL conventions, and the re-election of revolutionary socialists to leading positions in OPSEU and the Public Service Alliance. The so-called Great Resignation shows that young workers are fed up with low-wage, insecure jobs, and they’re fighting back.
Pride Marches for an End to Police Brutality
On July 26 Toronto Socialist Action participated in the Abolitionist Pride March. Supporters gathered at the south-east corner of Toronto City Hall Square. By 11 a.m. more than 500 people had assembled and occupied Queen Street, at Bay Street, holding banners and placards that called for the disarmament and abolition of the police.
SA at Toronto protest outside Mining Convention, June 13
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.
May Day 2022 — Reds and Labour Take to the Streets En Masse in Toronto
On Sunday, May 1, 2022 Socialist Action spokesperson Daniel Tarade addressed hundreds of workers and allies at Toronto City Hall Square. J.P. Hornick, the newly elected president of OPSEU/SEFPO, along with representatives of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, an Indigenous activist and several socialist organizations also took the microphone.
Palestine Land Day Rally in Toronto on April 2, 2022
Palestine Land Day was marked in Toronto by a rally at Land Back (Yonge-Dundas) Square on April 2, 2022. About eighty participants chanted in English and Arabic, and applauded speakers who demanded an end to Zionist apartheid and the occupation of Indigenous lands, from Turtle Island to Palestine. At the end of the 90 minute gathering a Socialist Action spokesperson addressed the crowd, calling for an end to Canadian state and big business complicity with Zionism. SA's predecessor organizations opposed the creation of the colonial settler state by the United Nations (pushed by the USA, Britain, France, Canada and the USSR) in 1948. SA supports the struggle for a Single Democratic, Secular state. "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!"
Socialist Action Address to the Rally Against the Far-Right, Christie Park, Toronto, March 5, 2022
Responding to the call of Toronto Rise-Up, some seventy people, including members of at least four socialist parties, held a rally at the Toronto intersection of Christie and Bloor Streets to “take back (public) space” from far-right organizations. The latter recently led the anti-vax, anti-Covid-mandate, so-called Freedom Convoy that blockaded border crossings and occupied downtown Ottawa for nearly three weeks.