News and views from SA Canada

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of anti-capitalists website: http://socialistaction.ca of questions, including “What should be the basis of unity of this movement?”, the Take Back assembly chair reconvened the plenary and called for reports. A group of Socialist Action union members and other workers made the following proposals:

Establish a cross-union, class-struggle caucus that is anti-capitalist, anti-concessions, anti-austerity, and pro-union democracy.

Our movement or caucus strives for change based on policies, not personalities. It seeks to replace cur­ rent union mis-leaders on political grounds and union democratic principles, from the bottom up.

Instead of giving political support to one or another wing of the labour bureaucracy, we strive to build an independent, class-struggle movement from below; we seek to change the overall direction of the unions; we support union activists who battle concessions and anti-democratic practices in the labour move­ ment, and engage with social justice movements.

Subsequent speakers at the mics endorsed these proposals, and made additional ones, mostly of a pro­ grammatic nature, such as by indicating a commit­ ment to aboriginal rights, anti-racism, anti-sexism, for climate justice, etc. When a postal worker asked for support for the current campaign to keep home mail delivery and expand services by adding postal bank­ ing, the meeting erupted in loud applause.

Later, the chair indicated that a steering commit­ tee, comprised of some 24 volunteers from across the country, would soon be convened via teleconference or skype to take the next steps to establish an active body of labour radicals and commence its work. This was widely seen as the way to confront and to replace labour officials who condone the spreading cancer of two-tier wages and benefits—a pernicious assault on young workers—and to remove bureaucrats who concede pension, work-safety, and job-security losses.

Unfortunately, at the final gathering of the Social Fo­ rum on Sunday morning, which heard reports from over 20 assemblies, the Take Back Labour summary did not mention any of the above points. It called vaguely for rank-and-file leadership of the unions, and proposed the creation of networks of activists. It ended with the exclamation “See you in the streets!”

Even more disappointing was the conference-con­ cluding “Call to Action—Social Movements Conver­ gence.” The unsigned statement, cobbled together by labour officials and PSP organizers, is a broad decla­ ration of disenchantment with the status quo. It con­ demns “the disparities between the rich and the poor, men and women, whites and people of colour” and called for the defense of “public services and social programs.” “We must propel the social movements’ current convergence towards an active, non-partisan role and lead a combative campaign against the Con­ servatives.”

While it is reasonable to target the Conservatives for Socialist Action (Above) People’s Social Forum: Rally in front of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.

defeat in 2015, it is important to remember that Lib­ erals are Tories too. They represent the same ruling business class. In fact, the Liberal federal government under Paul Martin made bigger cuts to social expen­ ditures and corporate taxes than the Harper Conser­ vatives have done. The Liberal provincial government in Ontario suspended the right to strike and imposed austerity cuts on education workers, schools, cit­ ies, and hospitals. Kathleen Wynne is now known by welfare and social housing advocates as the “Poverty Premier.”

If the People’s Social Forum represents a new politi­ cal moment, it signified, at least at its inception, that the chief problem facing humanity, the environment, and all species is capitalism—not simply capitalist austerity. To that degree, the PSF not only fell short of its projected attendance figures, but more impor­ tantly, of its vision for fundamental change.

At the PSF, significant numbers of people argued for defeat of the capitalist parties and in favour of a work­ ing-class government that would expropriate capital and express the power of the vast majority. Many ex­ plicitly demanded that the NDP and the unions fight for socialist policies, defend the people of Gaza and Palestine, and oppose colonial occupation and impe­ rial wars of intervention from Mali to Afghanistan, from Libya to Iraq. They called for heavy taxation of big business and the super-rich, conversion from car­ bon fuel consumption to green energy use, and the funding of human needs, not private profit.

Socialist organizations joined antiwar coalitions, pension lobbyists, electoral reformers, Jewish op­ ponents of Zionism, supporters of Cuba, anti-mining groups, and all kinds of crafts vendors at display ta­ bles set up on a central campus pedestrian mall.

Socialist Action presented one of the most promi­ nent and busy displays at “People’s Square.” The SA table was staffed four to eight hours a day, sold over $475 in books, buttons, and newspapers, and collect­ ed contact information from 45 people who want to keep in touch. Members distributed hundreds of leaf­ lets promoting the Toronto September 20 mass picket in defense of postal services, the Sept. 6 Ontario NDP Socialist Caucus conference in Toronto, and the SA/ LAS workshop held on Aug. 22 at the PSF.

Titled “Fighting Capitalist Austerity means chal­ lenging both the corporate bosses and the labour -NDP bureaucracy”, the Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action socialiste workshop, with this writer speak­ ing, attracted 24 participants. During the four days, SA members sold over 100 copies of the August edi­ tion of Socialist Action newspaper—a sure sign of the growing interest in socialist ideas evident at this memorable event. n SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 9

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Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Left) Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic cooks food on charcoal stove.

actually hindered more effective community-initiated and community-controlled efforts to protect the en­ vironment, giving political cover to gross neglect of women’s health and independence, and performing ideological work that minimized the role of both co­ lonialism and current imperialist intervention to cre­ ate situations friendly to corporate profit in creating ecological havoc. At minimum, the coercive aspects of PE projects, which offer some reproductive health aid in return for peasants giving up land, are immoral and make new solidarities in the interest of the climate impossible.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose lit­ erature stresses their interest in women’s health and universal access to voluntary family planning with­ out “coercion or discrimination,” in fact, has targeted Sub-Saharan Africa as the site of a massive distribu­ tion of the dangerous long-acting contraceptive, De­ po-Provera. Depo-Provera is a contraceptive used on female U.S. prisoners because it is injected once and its effect lasts two years.

This particular contraceptive has been chosen by the Gates Foundation, because, combined with a new syringe-less device they are developing, it can be ad­ ministered without any medical personnel on hand. That is, it will reduce poor rural populations without