Radical change coming to City Hall?

Local

Park Board approves major step towards reconciliation

The NPA, of course, voted against it but this week Vancouver’s Park Board approved a motion to explore what “co-management” of its lands with local First Nations would look like. Vancouver is located entirely on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. 

Stuart Mackinnon, a long-time Green park commissioner, introduced the motion. He explained to CBC News, "I think it's important as we recognize reconciliation in this country, that the land Vancouver sits on was occupied land. We should have discussions with them on how they see the land, how they view the land use, and what we as settlers can learn from the land." 

In addition to the NPA’s predictable opposition, this important move by the Park Board could provide rhetorical fuel for Ken Sim’s new right-wing party which has called for the Park Board to be abolished. Vancouver’s system of electing park commissioners as part of municipal government is unique among major cities in Canada. 

Housing is a priority for the DSOV municipal platform

Democratic Socialists of Vancouver launch a platform for radical change at City Hall

With four right-of-center candidates in the running so far for Vancouver mayor, the time is ripe for a socialist campaign in the October 2022 municipal election and the DSOV is inviting their membership to step up. As the Vancouver For All platform website states, “Between now and May 1, we are seeking to identify 10,000 supporters for our ten platform priorities, while also crowdsourcing policy proposals from community organizations and residents like you.“ The DSOV is also inviting candidates to step forward. “It’s a fantastic  opportunity for socialist policies to be amplified,” agreed members at a recent Vancouver For All meeting. “Three years ago, over 100,000 people, including many students, rallied in Vancouver to protest climate change and demand action. Those people are now voting adults, and we think they will rally again to vote for social change in Vancouver.”

Over 50 people attended the Vancouver For All launch this month which featured speakers Gabrielle Peters, Vince Tao and Derrick O’Keefe and was advertised as the first in a series of Listening Circles to be hosted by Vancouver For All over the next few months.

The current mayoral candidates are Ken Sim (A Better City), Kennedy Stewart (New party yet unnamed), Mark Marissen (Independant), and John Coupar (NPA). Of interest, Jody Wilson-Raybould has stated, “I don’t have plans to be the next mayor of Vancouver.” An announcement that likely brought relief to the four candidates, but Wilson-Raybould could still have a big influence on the race and its outcome.

Scaling up mutual aid efforts 

As the B.C. government fails to adequately follow the science of airborne transmission of COVID and offer proper protective equipment to marginalised people and frontline workers, the DSOV is expanding its mutual aid efforts to include distribution of PPE. This month’s free fridge and pantry stock will include delivery of N95 or N99 masks, thanks to an anonymous donor. This effort is coordinated with this Saturday’s food stock action. Volunteers meet the last Saturday of every month to stock up the growing network of free fridges and pantries across the city with healthy food. 

Reel Causes presents #Indigeneity at VIFF Centre

Reel Causes, a society that partners with filmmakers and Canadian causes dedicated to addressing global social justice issues, is pleased to present its third #Indigeneity event, in partnership with Indian Residential School Survivors Society, in-person on January 27th at VIFF Centre and virtually from January 29th to February 8th.

The event features four stories of survival and resilience in the face of colonial oppression. Post-film discussion will include Trevor Mack, Graham Constant, Joe Buffalo, Courtney Montour, Indian Resident School Survivors Society Executive Director Angela White, and will be moderated by Chris Reed (aka Continental Breakfast). 

In creating this event, Indigenous Curator, Rylan Friday, said: "My goal is to showcase various narratives that hold a universal truth and to showcase that, as Indigenous people, we’re more than our trauma and tragedies. We’re also our songs, our humour, our stories, our traditions. We are medicine."

Provincial

It’s still illegal to protest logging of old growth in Fairy Creek

An injunction against old-growth logging protests has been extended until September by a BC Appeals Court. Insisting it’s all about the rule of law, a written decision cited, “The public interest in upholding the rule of law continues to be the dominant public interest in cases involving civil disobedience against a private entity.” 

In defence, protesters and their lawyers pointed out that while a company has the right to defend it’s business interests, people have a right to lawful protest and freedom of expression and movement. And in fact, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson agreed when he refused to extend the injunction last September, stating police enforcement had led to serious infringements of civil liberties including freedom of the press. 

The fight to stop loggers from cutting down old-growth trees in Fairy Creek near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island has been going on for more than a year and to date over 1,100 people have been arrested. Protesters vow to stay in the woods in spite of bad weather and the injunction.

National

‘Freedom Convoy’ to arrive in Ottawa Saturday with ‘dangerous and divisive rhetoric’

Freedom Convoy, a protest organized, and filmed, by Canada Unity, a group that opposes COVID-19-related measures, will arrive in Ottawa on Saturday. The campaign was launched by Tamara Lich (secretary of the fledgling Western separatist Maverick Party) and challenges Ottawa's mandatory vaccination policies for truckers which went into effect earlier this month. Almost 5 million dollars was raised to support the campaign, but the money is being held by GoFundMe until “we have a clear plan for how those funds will be spent,” as stated by a spokesperson for the crowdfunding platform. Among the people donating to the cause was federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s brother-in-law, Jodhveer Singh Dhaliwal, who apparently didn’t realize what the money would be used for and has applied for a refund. Singh himself has denounced the convoy. “I am against this convoy and against the dangerous and divisive rhetoric we're seeing coming from it," Singh said.

There’s increasing concern over the rhetoric which supports the protest convoy and the threat that extremists could wreak havoc on Parliament Hill. Lich stated in a video on the convoy’s facebook page, “Nobody in this convoy will be inciting violence or uttering threats. That is not what we’re here to do.”

Organizations that oversee Ontario and Canadian truckers have come out against the protest and Prime Minister Trudeau described participants as a ‘fringe minority’ with ‘unacceptable views that don’t represent Canadians,’ claiming that more than 90% of truckers are fully vaccinated.

2021’s Scumbags of the Year Announced

The people have voted! In a victory for democracy, Rankandfile.ca has revealed the 2021 Scumbags of the Year: Gilbert Le Dressay, Vice President Refinery Operations for Federated Co-operatives Ltd; and Robert Haché, President and Vice Chancellor of Laurentian University.

Le Dressay earned the honour of Private Sector Scumbag of the Year by “wag[ing] a continuous war [. . .] against the members of Unifor Local 594 and the residents of Regina.” Laying off workers, breaking contracts, and hiring scabs are just a few of his dishonourable tactics, designed to line the pockets of those at the top.

Public Sector Scumbag of the Year goes to Robert Haché, who fired hundreds of Laurentian University faculty and staff and shuttered 69 academic programs. Through years of deliberate mismanagement, Haché’s actions have led the once-storied university to declare bankruptcy, allowing for the destruction of public sector unions and privatization of public infrastructure, technology, and unions. 

International

A Plan to Save the Planet

“We are facing a crisis of capitalism in general,” write the authors of the Triconintental Institute’s latest dossier, A Plan To Save the Planet. “By calling it the ‘coronavirus crisis’, the managers of capitalism are suggesting that the pandemic is to blame for global economic decay and not the social order itself.” Once again, the capitalist class has manipulated the levers of propaganda to hide the true culprit of the numerous crises facing people all over the world: capitalism.

The dossier takes two major aims: undoing the myth that an “inclusive capitalism” can save the planet and offering a prescription for what can. To the first end, the dossier identifies the structural decay that capital has caused through increased inequality and the destabilizing of democracy. Capitalists themselves recognize that this decay threatens capitalism as a system. Class struggle increases in intensity around the globe, seen in the Indian farmers’ struggle, Amazon unionization efforts, and the struggles of health care workers throughout the world. Instead of responding to these issues, however, capital deflects the blame onto fabricated targets like China, which it blames for the pandemic. Hence, what has been labelled the “coronavirus crisis.” 

In response to the capitalism crisis, the Tricontinental offers A Plan to Save the Planet. This document is “a contribution to the ongoing battle of ideas that is a key part of the global class struggle,” writes the Tricontinental, “It is out of the great struggles of our time – which lift up these ideas and make them material – that we will grow our confidence and our power to build a system that will allow us to be human and will allow nature to thrive. It asks to be read and discussed, to be criticised and developed further. This is a first draft of many drafts to come. Please contact us at plan@thetricontinental.org with your criticisms and your suggestions, since this is a living document.”

The Tricontinental also offers a weekly newsletter “that will offer a window into some of the struggles and conflicts of our time.”. You can subscribe here.

Upcoming Events

Solidarity Fridge Stock
Jan 29, Noon. 1890 Spyglass Place, on 1st Avenue under the Cambie Bridge, near Olympic Village Skytrain station.

DSOV General Membership Assembly
Jan 30. 4:00 pm. Zoom.
Elections, Resolutions, and updates.

Listening Circle: How to win free, expanded, and accessible transit
Feb 3, 7:00 pm Online.
Participants and supporters of Vancouver For All are invited to learn from transit advocates and users.

Vacancy Control Day of Action
Feb 3 2022 - BC Acorn Provincial Day of Action - Vacancy Control

SUA Monthly Assembly
Feb 6. Online.
Hosted by Socialist Action. Check in - hear what other socialist groups are up to. 

An evening with social justice poet, El Jones
Presented by Courage Coalition
February 15, 4:30 pm.

Media Roundup

Necrosecurity, Immunosupremacy, and Survivorship in the Political Imagination of COVID-19. Research article, Martha Lincoln

Why Mutual Aid? Solidarity not Charity. Matthew Whitley, Open Democracy

Russia doesn’t count  - When it comes to our treatment of Russia and Russian people, identity-based demonization apparently still has its outlets. Adam J Sacks, Canadian Dimension.