On Friday, January 27, Memphis, Tennessee city officials released over an hour of video showing the murder of Tyre Nichols, a black resident beaten to death by police. Recorded earlier by three body cameras and one stationary surveillance camera, the videos were made available to family members, lawyers, and various public officials, who universally described the contents as disturbing and inhumane.
As the city’s Budget Committee wrapped up for the year, hundreds of demonstrators, including Socialist Action Canada and members of the Municipal Socialist Alliance, rallied outside of Toronto City Hall, demanding that the Toronto city council divest from the Toronto police budget and invest in Toronto communities. Socialist Action member Sean Ihn spoke at the rally, representing Students Mobilizing Against Systemic Hardship at U of T (SMASH U of T)
On the first Monday of 2023, Jan. 9, the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) held a special meeting to discuss and vote upon a proposed $48.3 million CAD increase to the Toronto Police Services (TPS) operating budget in 2023, which represents a 4.3% increase over the bloated 2022 operating budget.
Danny Drew is a non-binary activist running to be mayor of Guelph. Born and raised in Oshawa, they moved to attend the University of Guelph in 2009, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Danny worked in a wide range of jobs, always encouraging co-workers to exercise their rights and push for unionization. Currently seeking to win rights for thousands of workers via reclassification, they’ve supported many striking workers on picket lines.
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.
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!"
Expand Public Services. Defer or reduce Taxes and Fees for Small Businesses and Primary Residence Homeowners. Provide Free Wi-Fi for Low Income Neighbourhoods. Tax big business and banks!
The British Columbia New Democratic Party (BC NDP) Convention, held online December 11-12, met against a backdrop of capitalist catastrophes that are more frequent, more severe and cause greater waves of devastation in their wake. The convention of the labour-based party, originally scheduled for November 17-19, was postponed due to the torrential, record-breaking deluge that swept southern BC.
The downpours tore up roads, railway tracks, took out bridges, caused the collapse of buildings and mountainsides, overflowed dykes, flooded the best agricultural land in Canada, destroyed homes, killed tens of thousands of farm animals, and killed countless wild animals. The agricultural destruction is causing continued food shortages in BC.
A heat wave in June set a global record in which parts of BC were hotter than Death Valley.
In this episode of The Red Review, brought to you by Socialist Action, Emily and Daniel discuss major developments across the Canadian State and provide an important update on the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Featuring catastrophic flooding in BC, RCMP invasion of Wet'suwet'en (again), COP26, Climate Action Tracker, 'Facebook' for Palestinians, criminalization of Palestinian human rights groups, Fairy Creek blockade, and striking CUPE workers in New Brunswick.
Socialist Action members in Toronto joined about 150 people who rallied outside the Israeli Consulate at Yonge and Bloor Streets on Saturday, November 27 to demand freedom now for thousands of illegally detained and tortured Palestinian political prisoners, an end to the Occupation of Palestinian land, and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Zionist Apartheid state.
Across the country, on November 19, people took to the streets to express solidarity with Wet'suwet'en Land Defenders, over a dozen of whom were arrested by RCMP outfitted in combat gear. In Toronto, Socialist Action joined hundreds in a march down University Avenue and along Front Street that led to the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada. Speeches, ceremonial songs and dance brought Indigenous cultures, likely for the first time, to the lobby of the giant bank that is heavily invested in the extraction and transmission of fossil fuels.
In this September 2021 edition of The Red Review, brought to you by Socialist Action, we magnify demands that weren’t on offer during the 2021 federal election.
Featuring (vote) Palestine, defunding the RCMP and police, encampment evictions, the fight for abortion rights, the collapse of the Green Party, Western University students walk out of class, Albertain Superstore employees vote for strike mandate, and the release of Meng Wanzhou.
It's impossible to maintain the capitalist system of exploitation without force. Police violence has escalated across the country, as cop funding is increased. Public pressure has pushed the state to slow down evictions, but they have continued throughout the pandemic by order of the city and province through the Landlord and Tenant Board, and enforced by Toronto Police Services. Tenants’ groups like Acorn, People’s Defense and Parkdale Organize demonstrate that collective action protects vulnerable people from repression. They continue to support and organize communities via food banks, child care and events, while the City of Toronto works to shut them down and enforce the for-profit system.
On Sept. 16, 2021, for the umpteenth time, protestors gathered outside Mayor John Tory's luxury condominium at 1 Bedford Road. This episode of the "The Mayor Tory Gong Show" was brought to you by the Toronto Police Service. On July 21, cops stormed an encampment at Lamport Stadium. With considerable violence, Toronto police and private security staff evicted the people living there. Police dished out the same violence to those who defended their house-less neighbours from eviction. Twenty-six encampment defenders were charged, including Socialist Action member Corey David. The charges are standard cop nonsense: "resist arrest", "obstruct a peace officer", "assault officer", "trespassing", etc..
Le 20 septembre, les électeurs se rendront aux urnes dans lecadre de l'une des campagnes électorales fédérales les pluscourtes de l'histoire du Canada. Alors que l'écart se resserreentre les libéraux et les conservateurs, les médias grand publicspéculent que Justin Trudeau…
L'élection fédérale ne devrait pas porter sur la popularité personnelle de Trudeau,O'Toole, Singh et Paul ; elle devrait se concentrer sur la calamité à laquelle font faceles travailleurs, et sur la cause première de cette calamité : le système capitaliste. Lecapitalisme…
Read More CE À QUOI RESSEMBLERAIT UNE PLATEFORMEÉLECTORALE SOCIALISTE DU NPD
On September 6, over one hundred people rallied to mark Labour Day in Toronto at Christie Pits Park. Chair of the event, Elizabeth Byce, welcomed them with these words: "The real Workers’ Day, International Workers’ Day is on May First, but we intend to seize this occasion to advance a Workers’ Agenda. Labour makes the country run. Labour should run the country. In the midst of the current federal election campaign, we urge a critical vote for the only mass labour party in North America, the New Democratic Party. At the same time we strive for a Workers’ Government to expropriate Capital and establish a cooperative commonwealth, in harmony with nature."
Over two hundred people rallied at Toronto City Hall on July 26 to protest police violence and the arrest of more than two dozen people a week earlier. The brutal cop assault on defenders of an encampment of homeless folks involved the wanton use of truncheons, pepper spray, charges on horseback, punches and choke holds. Among the arrested at 14 Division police station was Corey David, the Socialist Action candidate in the city by-election in Scarborough-Agincourt in January.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appointment of Inuk leader Mary Simon as Canada’s 30th Governor General, the first Indigenous person to hold the office, says much about Trudeau and present times.
The PM has always been more about style than substance. From his claim to being a ‘feminist’, while ditching national childcare and proportional representation, to his distant goal of carbon gas emissions reduction as he invests billions in oil and gas pipelines in the here and now, Trudeau tries to camouflage his commitment to the profit system with ‘positive’ symbolism.
Socialist Action joined about 200 people at the No Pride in Police rally, Toronto City Hall Square on Sunday, June 27, marking the conclusion of LGBTQI+ Pride month. Indigenous, Black, feminist and other speakers highlighted ongoing struggles for social justice, with particular attention to the victims of church-run Residential Schools across the country where unmarked graves continue to be discovered.
