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Category Archives: Statements
The 2019 Socialist Action ‘Year in Review’
The 2019 SA ‘Year in Review’ by Barry Weisleder (presented on December 7, 2019.)
Socialist Action is a small but fast growing revolutionary party that puts a great emphasis on political education. At the same time, SA is an activist organization that has many practical accomplishments to its credit. From Chile to Lebanon to Hong Kong, from Ecuador to Catalonia to Iraq, 2019 has been a year of revolt against austerity, authoritarianism and repression worldwide. Today the working class of France is confronting the reactionary agenda of President Emmanuel Macron with an unlimited general strike. 2019 was also a year brimming with activism in this region, in this country, in which we have proven our ability to make a positive difference. This is a chronology of the activities of Socialist Action, primarily in the Toronto region, during the past 12 months.
SOME KEY LESSONS OF THE INSPIRING STRUGGLE FOR INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY AND CLIMATE SANITY
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.
Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people against Coastal GasLink, the courts, cops, Trudeau and Horgan
Socialist Action condemns the outright violation by Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and BC’s NDP Premier John Horgan, of the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) rules in dealing with the indigenous peoples on resource development projects on Indigenous lands in BC. Those rules establish:
1. Self determination for indigenous peoples, including the absolute right to say NO to capitalist resource projects.
2. The right to Indigenous traditional forms of governance.
3. Control over their own lands and resources.
4. Control over waterways, railways, highways and pipelines on indigenous lands.
5. Freedom from state coercion, violence or invasion.
6. Freedom from the removal by force or otherwise of indigenous children.
In spite of their declared support for UNDRIP, Trudeau and Horgan have violated, or threatened to violate every single one of those provisions. Their policies continue the historic policy of intimidation, force, economic deprivation and imprisonment, to rob the wealth of indigenous lands for wealthy white capitalists at the expense of indigenous men, women and children. It is a vicious and utterly dishonourable history and it must stop NOW.
Socialist Action Calls for Immediate Release of Bolivian activists
Socialist Action/Ligue pour l’Action Socialiste joins with Bolivian former president Evo Morales, recently ousted in a military coup, and a broad section of public opinion to call for the immediate release of journalist Carlos Conjeo and artist Leonel Jurado, detained by the Bolivian military. Conjeo and Jurado were postering to publicize an event of solidarity with workers at the Senkata oil refinery, nine of whom were killed by the military as they were striking to protest the coup against the legitimate MAS government.
Both Conjeo and Jurado have been charged with sedition. These bogus charges are being used as part of the massive repression unleashed by the coup plotters against the workers and indigenous people of Bolivia, a coup backed by the Trudeau government, in alliance with the dictators and right wing authoritarian governments of the so -called Lima Group.
Socialist Action/LAS demands the immediate release of Conjeo, Jurado and all the other political prisoners illegally detained by the police and military agents of the illegitimate coup government. Further, SA/LAS refuses to recognize impunity for the crimes committed by the Bolivian coup government, the military and the police, and will fight for the trial and imprisonment of all those who have participated in the killing, torture and unlawful detention of the Bolivian people. Justice will be done.
SA/LAS calls upon all citizens, and the international left, to raise their voices against the imprisonment of Conjeo and Jurado, and further asks that the embassy and consular staff of Bolivia be contacted demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners, the ending of the repression, and the abrogation of the illegally decreed law of impunity.
Free the Political Prisoners. Stop the Repression. No Impunity for crimes against Bolivian workers, indigenous people and young people fighting for their democratic rights.
