We have witnessed the beginning of an historic shift. It is a turning point for indigenous rights, for climate change resistance, and for a new generation of fighters for justice. It is a powerful step forward in social protest in Canada for a new generation of militants.
In mid-February, the RCMP, Canada’s federal police force, moved to attack the blockade erected by hereditary chiefs of the Wetsuwet’en people and their supporters who were there to stop the construction of a methane pipeline across their unceded land.
An unprecedented wave of protest broke out across Canada. From Halifax to Victoria, thousands of indigenous people, especially the young, acted in solidarity with their sisters, brothers and siblings in northern BC. The number, size and militancy of the actions caught the federal and British Columbia provincial capitalist governments off guard.
Comrades of Socialist Action attended the Tyendinaga rail blockage near Belleville, Ontario on Saturday, February 29 in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en and Mohawk nations!
WE ARE WITNESSING AN HISTORIC EVENT. It is a turning point for indigenous rights, for climate change resistance, and for a new generation of fighters for justice. It is a powerful step forward in social protest in Canada.
SOCIALIST ACTION has been expecting and preparing for such struggles. We recently published an in-depth booklet on the history and struggle against colonial-settler oppression, occupation, theft and murder of indigenous people of Canada. It explains how our common struggle against capitalism is inextricably bound up in theirs, and how their struggle is interconnected to ours. There can be no reconciliation under capitalism, and there can be no socialism without reconciliation.
SOCIALIST ACTION IS in the process of publishing a new detailed booklet on the life and death struggle against climate change, how it originated in the ceaseless drive of capitalism for capital accumulation through profit. The very survival of capitalism depends on it and drives the rapid expansion of green house gases that may kill us all. Again, socialism, a system of rational and democratic operation of a planned economy is the only way out of the present crisis.
La lutte contre le gazoduc Coastal GasLink (méthane) se poursuit
par Gary Porter
Il s’agit d’une histoire de sauvages blancs canadiens, affrontant des résistants indigènes non armés et pacifiques; l’histoire d’un État capitaliste blanc usant de mensonges, de lois blanches, de tribunaux blancs et une police armée jusqu’aux dents pour servir les intérêts du cartel pétrolier. Leurs «ennemis» sont les défenseurs des terres autochtones de Wet’suwet’en, qui résistent à un pipeline de méthane traversant leur territoire non cédé. Le gazoduc relie une importante opération de fracturation gazeuse à un énorme compresseur à Kitimat sur la côte du Pacifique pour produire du gaz naturel liquéfié. Ce qui resultera en une nouvelle montée des gaz à effet de serre menaçant la vie sur terre. Il s’agit d’une histoire de capitalisme blanc violant sans relâche et sans remords les droits des autochtones au nom du profit.
Le 8,9 et 10 février derniers, la GRC, sous les ordres du premier ministre NPD de Colombie-Britannique a lancé une attaque en règle contre les défenseurs des terres des Wet’suwet’en sous la direction de leurs chefs héréditaires. Ceux-ci font de nombreux efforts pour bloquer l’accès au site de construction du gazoduc Coastal Gaslink sur leurs terres non cédées.
