Coronavirus Is a Historic Trigger Event. Now Is the Time for a Social Movement to Rise

We can build a powerful people’s response to provide care in our communities and reshape the limits of what is politically possible.

here are times in history when sudden events — natural disasters, economic collapses, pandemics, wars, famines — change everything. They change politics, they change economics and they change public opinion in drastic ways. Many social movement analysts call these “trigger events.” During a trigger event, things that were previously unimaginable quickly become reality, as the social and political map is remade. On the one hand, major triggers are rare; but on the other, we have seen them regularly in recent decades. Events such as 9/11, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and the financial crash of 2008 have all had major repercussions on national life, leading to political changes that would have been difficult to predict beforehand.

COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic, is by far the biggest trigger event of our generation. It is a combination of natural disaster and economic collapse happening at the same time. Topping it off, this public health crisis is coming right in the middle of one of the most consequential political seasons of our lifetime.

Trigger events can create confusion and unease. But they also present tremendous opportunities for people who have a plan and know how to use the moment to push forward their agendas. These agendas can be reactionary, as when conservatives and fascists pass harsh austerity measures and spread xenophobia — the type of activity documented in Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” Yet, this type of response need not prevail. With a counter-agenda rooted in a commitment to democracy and a deep sense of collective empathy, communities can flourish, even amid a crisis.

In fact, we can find many examples in history of how progressive and solidaristic impulses have come to the fore in response to trigger events. The New Deal’s emergence as a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s is one example, as is the more recent Occupy Sandy’s mobilization in New York City to support hurricane-ravaged communities in 2012. Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell contains myriad more examples of humane, collective efforts that responded to disaster.

Today, as we face the prospect that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States—and millions around the world—may die, the only way we can prevent some of the worst tragedy and destruction is with such a response.

In my writing on social movements, I have argued that triggers create liminal spaces that mass protest movements can use to mobilize the forces of grassroots democracy. In the wake of such an event, organizers often find themselves in a “moment of the whirlwind,” in which the standard rules of how politics works are turned on their head. Many of the great social movements of the past have been born out of these moments. But these moments require skillful navigation, the ability to use “prophetic promotion” to spread a humane vision, and the faith that mass mobilization can open new avenues to change that, at the outset, seem distant and improbable.

To craft a people’s response to the pandemic, we should draw both on the possibilities of new technology that allow for decentralized action and some time-honored lessons from past social movements.

Social movements are the vehicle for mass participation 

Right now, lots of people are formulating action plans and policy demands, focusing on how the government should respond or measures that elected officials might pass by way of emergency response. These include plans by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for an emergency universal basic income, and proposals by groups such as the Working Families Party, National Nurses United and collections of grassroots organizers.

What’s missing is a platform and vision for mass participation—a means through which people can join in and collectively take part in a movement to create the type of just response our society needs. A movement can support, amplify, and fill in the gaps left by government and the health care infrastructure.

Obviously, social distancing and the isolation required to slow the spread of the pandemic present unique challenges. For one thing, people are limited in their ability to physically come together and congregate. Meanwhile, many of the traditional tools and tactics of social movements cannot be deployed under current circumstances. This should not, however, blind us to the things that can be done. From mutual support in local areas to collective responses of protest from home, we can build a powerful people’s response that brings us together and uses our combined effort to provide care in our communities and reshape the limits of what is politically possible.

A social movement response to major trigger events often emerges from unexpected places.

Major structure-based organizations have infrastructure and resources that seem as if they would make them natural candidates for rallying the wider public into a response. However, they also face institutional limitations that prevent them from scaling their efforts to meet the enormity of the challenge. Groups like labor unions are commonly preoccupied with responding to how the crisis is affecting their own membership, making them essential hubs of action for people within their structures but leaving them with little capacity to engage people outside of their ranks or to absorb the energy of others who might want to get involved.

Meanwhile, politicians and leading advocacy organizations are often focused on the details of the inside game—carefully monitoring and attempting to use insider leverage to influence the policies that are being debated at the local, state, and federal levels. This is an important role, but it does not address the vacuum that exists in terms of mobilizing large numbers of people to change what are perceived as needed and possible solutions to the crisis. Therefore, it is often scrappy, decentralized, and sometimes ad hoc groups that play vital roles in shaping a social movement response—which more institutionalized organizations can get behind once underway.

The people have responded before

The good news is that we have seen clear historical examples in which social movements have been able to step into the vacuum of a crisis, and several of these have been in the past decade and a half. After Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012, the mutual support operation Occupy Sandy—which drew on networks and infrastructure built during Occupy Wall Street—coordinated thousands of people into a fast and efficient response, providing food and medical attention to those in need. It also opened a collection and distribution center for needed supplies, kept track of individuals who might otherwise have been isolated and abandoned, and moved debris from homes and streets. Likewise, Common Ground—one of the most significant relief organizations to quickly form and respond after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans—served some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, set up temporary medical clinics, and repaired damaged homes. Meanwhile, in recent years, the DREAM movement, which works in communities of undocumented immigrants, has provided services such as scholarships, job opportunities, and legal support for immigrants denied services from state and federal governments.

Volunteers inspect boxes of donated food and supplies at an Occupy Sandy distribution center in the Staten Island borough of New York City on November 22, 2012. Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images.

 

Looking back at another public health emergency, we can remember that, during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the LGBTQ community came together to respond to the sickness and death of thousands of individuals—even as society ostracized people who were HIV-positive, and the medical establishment often turned a blind eye to their suffering. Groups such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City organized the community to raise money for research, distribute information about prevention and care, and provide counseling and social workers for thousands who needed it. At a time when the doctors and hospitals were either overwhelmed, indifferent, or antagonistic, they stepped up to fill the gap and meet basic human needs.

Meanwhile, the decentralized affinity groups of the more militant ACT UP worked tirelessly to raise public awareness about the crisis, rallying under the motto “Silence Equals Death.” They quickly became on-the-ground experts in the community impact of the disease—publicly confronting leaders who spread misinformation or were hesitant to adequately fund public health efforts, calling out drug companies more fixated on profits than humane treatment, and brashly insisting that health professionals be in dialogue with patients themselves. Ultimately, ACT UP fundamentally changed the country’s response to AIDS.

“They helped revolutionize the American practice of medicine,” The New Yorker’s Michael Specter wrote in 2002. “The average approval time for some critical drugs fell from a decade to a year, and the character of placebo-controlled trials was altered for good. … Soon changes in the way AIDS drugs were approved were adopted for other diseases, ranging from breast cancer to Alzheimer’s.” In 1990, the The New York Times paid reluctant tribute to the group with a headline reading, “Rude, Rash, Effective, Act Up Shifts AIDS Policy.”

In response to the current coronavirus epidemic, the only thing that most people have been given to do is to participate in social distancing and join preemptive measures to slow the spread of disease. But if people really believed they could participate meaningfully in a mass campaign to care for others and pressure public officials to adopt humane emergency policies, we can be confident that hundreds of thousands would quickly join in.

How to make it happen

If we know that we need a mass social movement response, how do we make it happen—especially in times of social distancing?

Millions of people are stuck in their homes, unable to go to work. But they can still pursue action on two tracks: one focused on mutual aid and the other building political pressure around a platform of people’s demands.

At the level of local communities, an army of volunteers should be enlisted in mutual aid efforts to care for one another and meet basic human needs. The possibilities for this type of action are manifold, but some immediate priorities include assisting the elderly with obtaining food and prescription medications, creating hubs (online or otherwise) to facilitate the sharing of information in local areas about households in need of help, and creating community solutions to the child care needs that emerge as schools and day care centers close. As the pandemic spreads—and particularly if hospitals and formal systems are overwhelmed—the need for and potential of this type of activity will grow tremendously. Grassroots initiatives to collect information about the spread of the disease, help those who need to be quarantined, distribute information and supplies to promote public hygiene, and assist with the dissemination and proper use of testing supplies will become urgent.

Already, this type of activity is bubbling up. Communities around the country are creating Facebook Groups and Google Docs—many of them listed here—to coordinate mutual aid. At the same time, countless religious congregations, unions, community organizations, and neighborhood associations are beginning to mobilize responses for people in their areas. These activities have tremendous promise, but for them to take on the character of a movement they need what former United Farmworkers organizer and current movement trainer Marshall Ganz would call a unified “story, strategy, and structure.”

Organizers should be looking to create means for local groups to share information and best practices. And they should encourage common vision and messaging. In each of the historical examples mentioned here, it was crucial that participants had a sense that they were part of something larger than the sum of individual efforts. Intentional moves toward unity and coordination help build that collective understanding.

Beyond mutual aid, a common story, strategy, and structure can allow a mass movement to legitimate political demands that might otherwise be deemed impractical or undesirable, and to compel public officials to adopt them. The function of mass movements is not to hash out the instrumental details of proposals currently being debated in the U.S. Congress or at more local levels of government. Rather, it is to build momentum for popular, symbolically resonant demands that would form the backbone of a progressive national response—ideas such as emergency universal basic income, free testing and treatment for all, and suspension of rent and mortgage payments for those unable to pay during the crisis.

A movement can advance such demands with campaigns of distributed actions. While the realities of social distancing limit some of the tactics that grassroots groups might typically employ, organizer David Solnit, for one, has proposed a range of protest methods that can be viable during the coronavirus pandemic, including many that can be joined at home. Among those he lists are livestream rallies, the proliferation of window and door signs, call-ins, online teach-ins, social media barrages, and cacerolazo—the mass banging or pots and pans, commonly used by movements abroad.

Given the activity now percolating, we cannot know what efforts will gain traction or what overarching frameworks for unity might take hold. But we can assess the possibilities that have presented themselves. One of the most potent is the prospect that the Bernie Sanders campaign could pivot to become a movement focused on pandemic response. The Sanders campaign has built one of the largest and most sophisticated grassroots organizing campaigns in American history. They have tens of thousands of volunteers who know how to run phone banks and talk to their neighbors. They also have more than 1 million donors who are willing to contribute funds to help support a people’s movement advancing justice and democracy. If Sanders decided to transform his campaign from a political, presidential electoral campaign into a mass movement against the pandemic and its impacts, a drive with massive infrastructure would emerge overnight.

Whether the Sanders campaign seizes this opportunity, or an alternate framework for collective action arises, a mass movement response to the coronavirus pandemic cannot come too soon. For our own sake, and that of our society as a whole, let us help the drive toward solidarity emerge. SOURCE

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PAUL ENGLER is the director of the Center for the Working Poor in Los Angeles, movement director at the Ayni Institute, and co-author, with Mark Engler, of “This Is An Uprising.”
 

Did free cash drive people to quit work? Not according to a new study of Ontario’s basic income experiment

Three-quarters of people who were employed before joining Ontario’s ill-fated basic income pilot project continued to work while receiving the no-strings-attached monthly stipend, according to a new study.

And more than one-third of those low-wage workers were able to move to higher paying and more secure jobs, according to the study by McMaster University researchers being released Wednesday.

The findings shatter the belief among skeptics that basic income discourages people from working. It also appears to contradict the Ford government’s charge that the experiment was “failing” before it was cancelled in July 2018, the report argues.

Based on a survey of 217 former participants in the Hamilton-Brantford area and 40 in-depth interviews, the report also found those receiving basic income had better mental and physical health, fewer hospital emergency visits, more stable housing and an improved sense of well-being.

“These findings show that despite its premature cancellation by an incoming government that reneged on its electoral promise to see the pilot through to its end, basic income recipients in the Hamilton-Brantford pilot site benefited in a range of ways,” the report says. “In this sense, the pilot was nothing short of successful.”

The findings are “particularly surprising” since most respondents received basic income for less than 17 months, including nearly one-third who got it for less than 13 months, it adds. The $150 million provincial experiment was expected to last three years.

The report, funded by the Hamilton Community Foundation, McMaster University and the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, acknowledges it can’t fill the research gap created when the project was cancelled.

“The results do, however, dispel some of the fears of the opponents of basic income including that it will lead to a wholesale abandonment of paid employment,” it says.

For those who were working before the pilot project, the basic income meant they could take chances on a new job or career, according to the researchers, who conducted a 70-question online survey from January to August last year.

Several respondents became self-employed. Others were able to leave a bad job and search for something better or upgrade their skills. And some used their basic income benefits to spend more time with family members or children who may have special needs, the report says.

Respondent James Collura says his $900 monthly basic income benefit gave him the courage to ditch a “dead-end,” part-time job as a bank teller in Hamilton for more “fulfilling” employment at a float-therapy business.

“With basic income, taking a leap from a secure job suddenly became something I was more comfortable with,” he says.

Although Collura, 29, took a slight pay cut and lost his benefit package when he left the bank, he says his new job has enriched him in other ways.

“It has given me the space and the freedom to explore who I am and what I would like to contribute to the world,” he says.

In addition to sparking a new “entrepreneurial spirit,” Collura says the change has also spurred an interest in volunteering.

“I was more willing to give to my community because I felt that my community was giving to me,” he says.

McMaster economics professor Wayne Lewchuk, who led the research, says respondents’ motivation to find better jobs seemed to come from improved self-confidence as well as their better state of physical and mental health.

“It would be interesting to know if in the long-term, these people actually ended up better,” Lewchuk says. “Unfortunately, since the pilot was cancelled, we don’t have any data to speak to that.”

Several examples cited in the report include a 24-year-old man with mental health issues who worked several part-time jobs before basic income, but often experienced discrimination because of his condition. Basic income made him feel “much more motivated” to get a university education so he could find a job with better wages and working conditions, the study says.

For many participants, basic income proved to be “transformational, fundamentally reshaping their living standards as well as their sense of self-worth and hope for a better future,” it adds.

Concern that basic income would give people more money to feed bad habits was also dispelled by the research. For example, over half of respondents who smoked tobacco and just under half of those who drank alcohol said they either cut down or quit. Only a few individuals said they smoked or drank more.

One woman said she entered a treatment program for alcoholism and has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings ever since, the report says.

Basic income also had a “noticeable impact” on the use of health services, with many survey respondents reporting fewer visits to health practitioners and hospital emergency rooms, according to the report.

“The results strongly suggest that basic income has the potential to improve the physical and mental health of participants and reduce their demands on public health resources,” the report says. They also show “the stability basic income provides can help recipients move to better paying employment and to play a fuller role as citizens in society.”

Former conservative senator Hugh Segal who helped Ontario’s former Liberal government design the basic income pilot project, says the study confirms findings from a mid-1970s experiment with basic income in Dauphin, Man.

“The way basic income stabilizes individuals and reduces costs to social services like health and psychiatric care is the same in a big city (like Hamilton) as it was in rural Dauphin,” he says. “That is very encouraging and important.”

“The employment findings also mirror what happened in Dauphin where labour force participation remained the same except for young single men who were able to quit their jobs to complete high school and for mothers who were able to look after young children,” he adds.

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What would have been available

The numbers behind Ontario’s ill-fated basic income pilot, which was axed by the Doug Ford government in July 2018.

$150 million

How much money was allocated to the pilot, over three years.

$17,000

The maximum amount a single person would have received in one year under the pilot.

$24,000

The maximum amount a couple would have received in one year under the pilot.

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The McMaster study results will be helpful for legislators in P.E.I. and British Columbia who are considering basic income projects in those provinces, Segal says. The Ford government should also heed the study findings, he adds.

“Hopefully the government will give some thought before its budget, and before it puts together its next set of (welfare) programs … and do something that is much more constructive and that is actually progressive conservative as opposed to just small-minded conservative,” Segal says.

Under Ontario’s pilot, launched by the Wynne government in April 2017, single people received annual payments of up to $17,000 — about twice as much as someone on welfare. Couples got up to $24,000 and those with disabilities received a $6,000 top-up. People who worked saw their basic income reduced by 50 cents for every dollar earned until their income reached $34,000 for singles and about $48,000 for couples.

The project’s goal was to determine whether regular, unconditional payments improved housing, health, education, employment and social outcomes for people living on social assistance or low-wage jobs in an efficient and non-stigmatizing way.

About 4,000 people in three test sites — Hamilton-Brantford, Thunder Bay and Lindsay — received the basic income as part of the experiment while about 2,000 people were to be studied as a control group.

Before it was prematurely scrapped, it was the largest, longest-running pilot of basic income in North America. It was cancelled before any government research could be conducted.

An online survey of 424 basic income recipients conducted from mid-December 2018 to mid-January 2019, by the grassroots Basic Income Canada Network, found similar improvements in participants’ health and well-being, but did not focus as deeply on employment outcomes as the McMaster research.

Former participants launched a class-action lawsuit in March 2019 against the Ford government for breach of contract. SOURCE

Popular uprisings against neoliberalism are spreading around the world

Image: jorge paredes/Flickr

 

Puerto Rico. Hong Kong. Ecuador. Haiti. Lebanon. Iraq. And now, Chile. People are rising up around the world against austerity and corruption, defying police forces unleashed to suppress them. Many of these mass movements share a fierce critique of capitalism. In Santiago, Chile, more than 1 million people flooded the streets last weekend, and mass protests continue. There, the brutal Pinochet dictatorship from 1973-1990, during which thousands of progressive activists and leaders were tortured, disappeared and murdered, was followed by decades of neoliberal policies, with rampant privatization, union busting, stagnant wages and increased costs for education, health care, transportation and other services. Chile, among the richest countries in South America, is also one of the most unequal. At least 20 people have been killed during recent protests there, further angering and emboldening the crowds.

These global protests also occur at a critical inflection point in history, with as few as 10 years remaining for humanity to transition from a fossil fuel economy to one powered by renewable energy. On Wednesday, Chile’s embattled, billionaire president, Sebastian Pinera, abruptly announced that his country was cancelling plans to host two major international summits, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in mid-November, and the United Nations climate summit, the 25th “Conference of the Parties,” or COP25, in the first two weeks of December.

Carolina Schmidt, Chile’s COP25 president-designate, said, “The citizens have expressed in a strong way their legitimate social demands that require the full attention and all efforts from the government.”

Chile’s cancellation of the COP could be a setback for global action on climate. But climate activists should take heart: this renewed spirit of rebellion around the world signifies a rejection of the status quo, and could portend accelerated, grassroots mobilization to avert irreversible, catastrophic climate change.

“Social injustice and the climate crisis have a common root cause,” the Climate Action Network said in a release not long after Chile’s COP cancellation. “Climate justice and solidarity is fundamentally about the protection of human rights and a better quality of life for all.”

The climate crisis touches everyone, first and most forcefully the world’s poor. The mass uprising in Puerto Rico that forced the resignation of governor Ricardo Rossello was the culmination of decades of frustration with Puerto Rico’s colonial status and the more current exploitation by Wall Street vulture funds. But the discontent was fueled by the utter devastation of the back-to-back hurricanes Irma and Maria two years ago. “The austerity policies that have been implemented have put the people of Puerto Rico in a position of vulnerability. Social inequality has increased to levels that we have never seen here,” Manuel Natal, a member of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, said on the Democracy Now! news hour days before Rossello’s resignation. “We need more democracy, not less democracy. We are on the brink of a political revolution here.” Rossello’s ouster was the first time in U.S. history that a governor was forced from office by popular protest.

Indigenous people are also leading the way, often at the front lines, confronting resource extraction with disciplined, nonviolent resistance. Hundreds of Indigenous and campesino social leaders in Colombia have been murdered in recent years, simply for standing up for justice and environmental protections.

The Paris climate agreement specifically notes the importance of climate justice, and pledges to work “in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.” One of the enduring conflicts that has hampered international climate negotiations has been the refusal by wealthy nations, principally the United States, to accept the simple premise that “polluters pay.” The U.S. is the wealthiest nation in human history because, in part, it has polluted its way to the top, using cheap, dirty power: coal-fired power plants, diesel locomotives and now, so-called clean-burning fracked gas.

The Green Climate Fund was supposed to raise billions of dollars to finance renewable projects in poorer countries. The fund’s pledging conference last week fell short of its goal, primarily because the Trump administration reneged on the U.S.’s $2-billion commitment. Australia and Russia followed suit, refusing to make contributions.

A new study by Climate Central, a news and science organization, shows that climate-induced coastal flooding will likely be far worse than previously predicted, forcing between 200 to 600 million people, rich and poor, to flee their homes later in the century. Climate change-fuelled wildfires are now raging across California, with hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes and at least 1 million people without power.

Popular uprisings are also spreading like wildfire, though, against corrupt autocratic leaders, austerity and inequality. People are also flooding the streets, globally, linking the movements against inequality with the fight for a just, sustainable world powered by renewable energy. SOURCE

RELATED:

Local issues are fuelling a growing worldwide revolt. Will the elites notice?

Spain likely to host COP25 climate change summit after Chile’s withdrawal

ILO celebrates 100 years of fighting for fair labour practices

A good anniversary should not go to waste. Yet how many Canadians know, in this moment of inequality and discontent, that we helped found a century-old international organization whose constitution proclaims that “universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based on social justice?”

Established under the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the International Labour Organization outlived the beleaguered League of Nations to become the first United Nations specialized agency. Its staff barely escaped the rise of fascism in Europe, settling into a wartime home at McGill University from 1940–1948.

At McGill, the ILO prepared its post-war future, anticipating decolonization. It drafted the 1944 constitutional text, the Declaration of Philadelphia, declaring that “Labour is not a commodity;” “Freedom of expression and of association are essential to sustained progress;” “Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere;” and “All human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.”

Beyond adopting paper standards, the ILO has assumed an active yet largely forgotten role in democratization, including ending political apartheid in South Africa. It insists on playing a role in international economic policy-making, calling for a fair globalization. On its 50th anniversary in 1969, it won the Nobel Peace Prize for its relentless social justice action.

The ILO has realized that this centennial moment is too weighty to wrap itself in self-congratulation: it has emphasized the need for an inclusive future of work. Canadian celebrations have picked up on this theme. MORE

Federal party leaders focus on wooing union heartland on Labour Day

Riding of Hamilton Centre expected to be closely fought between the NDP, Liberals this fall election

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, left, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, centre, and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were scheduled to be in Hamilton on Labour Day. (Canadian Press)

Wooing workers in Canada’s union heartland was the focus for federal party leaders this Labour Day, with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh all in Hamilton, Ont.

Trudeau participated in the annual Labour Day parade there, Singh was to catch up with the participants at the annual Labour Day picnic, and Scheer was expected at the Labour Day classic football game between the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger Cats.

Hamilton has a long-standing connection to Canada’s union movement as the historic epicentre of the steel industry and related businesses. It was there in the 1870s that workers first agitated for the government to legislate shorter work days, an effort that eventually led to the first national union, albeit a short lived one.

Hamilton is also home to five federal ridings: the Liberals hold two, the NDP two and the Conservatives one, with the vote bouncing between all three parties in recent elections.

The riding of Hamilton Centre is expected to be closely fought between the NDP and the Liberals this election. David Christopherson, the NDP MP who has represented the area for over a decade, has retired, leaving his seat vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the NDP are hoping to take the riding of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek away from the Liberals by counting on support from steelworkers who have complained about their treatment at the hands of the current local Liberal MP.

NDP pitching to union workers

Singh made a pitch to union workers Monday, promising that if his party forms government, they’d bring in legislation to end the ability of companies to replace striking workers with temporary employment. He also promised to immediately raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and ensure better protections for contract workers.

“This is what you get when you get a New Democrat,” Singh said during an event Monday morning in Toronto before he headed to Hamilton. “You get someone on your side.”

Singh was joining Labour Day events in Hamilton at the invitation of the local labour council, while Trudeau was invited by the local chapter of the Labourers International Union of North America, which represents construction workers, among other industries. MORE

Greens Are the New Hope for Europe’s Center. For the Far Right, They’re Enemy No. 1.

“Governing is radical,” said Annalena Baerbock, a co-leader of Germany’s Green party. “We are ready.”CreditCreditDaniel Kopatsch/EPA, via Shutterstock

BERLIN — When protesters in reflective yellow vests took to the barricades in France, rebelling against a gas tax that would hit hardest those who could least afford it, Annalena Baerbock was watching closely from across the border.

A co-leader of Germany’s Greens, Ms. Baerbock has seen her party steadily strengthen over the last year. But she knows if the Greens are to become a bigger force, they will have to convince voters that climate policy is not an elitist but a common cause, while also addressing their economic concerns.

“The lesson from France is that we cannot save the climate at the expense of social justice,” said Ms. Baerbock, who at 38 is roughly the same age as her party. “The two things need to go hand in hand.”

This is the Greens’ moment in Europe, or at least it could be.

The Greens now routinely beat Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in the polls and are widely expected to be part of the next German government. In recent European elections, Green parties gained significantly in other corners of the Continent, too, winning 63 out of 751 seats in the European Parliament, an increase of about 47 percent.

A crop of once radical, single-issue environmental protest parties have emerged as the unlikely beneficiaries of the seismic disruptions to Europe’s politics of recent years.

Climate change has vaulted to near the top of voters’ concerns in a Europe seared by record-high temperatures. The collapse of traditional social democratic parties has opened acres of space on the center left. A generation of younger voters is casting about for new allegiances, and others, for an antidote to the nationalist, populist far right.

If nothing else, the Greens now sit astride Europe’s latest culture war. MORE

The Green New Deal In Canada: Challenges For Indigenous Participation

This postingis heavily edited for brevity. You are encouraged to read the full posting HERE

AS WE MOVE THROUGH another colonial election year at the federal level, there is one arena that challenges most politicians: climate change and what we do about it.

Those paying attention to political debates know that taking action on climate appears to be at odds with the economic paradigm created and practiced over the last century and a half.

Rooted in a philosophy of extractivism, Canada’s economy relies on the theft and plundering of Indigenous lands and territories and peoples.

Most of the goods and services created from these extractive industries are the very drivers of climate change itself. Think tar sands, fracked gas, coal, forestry (and as such deforestation), water diversion to support it all, etc.

Considering this extractive economy, it will require a major overhaul for Canada itself to take meaningful action on climate and address the legacy of ongoing colonization, through a transformative economic, social and political shift. It is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore this truth. Droughts, floods, forest fires, super storms, erratic weather patterns, melting sea ice, decline in plant and animal species, and on and on, are increasingly top stories in the daily news (though the media often fails to connect these events to climate change).

While Indigenous peoples have been raising alarms about the state and health of Mother Earth for decades, if not centuries, decrying the abuses heaped upon her, Western science is now catching up, too.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that we have less than 11 years to cut global GHG emissions in half – while protecting our remaining cultural and biological diversity – or face catastrophic climate crisis.

It is also becoming increasingly understood that current plans and strategies, including the Paris Agreement, are failing to include or address the legacy of social injustices created by colonization, capitalism, and militarism; forces that destroy the cultural diversity which is key to mitigating climate change. Correspondingly, high level international and state policies and proposals also fail to include the full participation of Indigenous peoples despite the recognition of the important roles we play in addressing the climate crisis.

This includes the much heralded Green New Deal.

So what is this Green New Deal thing I keep hearing about?

As I write, environmental groups and centre-left political parties in both Canada and the U.S. are advocating for something called the Green New Deal (GND). Both versions of the GND are predicated on stabilizing current economic systems while simultaneously taking action on climate change, along with challenging current systems of injustice. The narrative of GND is an intentional throwback to the New Deal, an economic stimulus package created after the great depression in the U.S. by President Roosevelt.

As Julian Brave Noisecat writes in his Guardian piece No, climate action can’t be separated from social justice, The “Green” New Deal discussions happening in contemporary America “envisions a society where people have universal access to energy, jobs, healthcare and housing [and] is a call for renewed commitment to the equal distribution of opportunity and justice.”

To achieve these ends, the GND calls for major economic shifts toward a green energy economy.

Meanwhile in Canada, the discussions are more preliminary and revolve around conceptualizing a Northern version of a GND. It includes 150 organizations and prominent Canadians, including CUPE Ontario, the Canadian Health Coalition, the Canadian Unitarian Council, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Indigenous Climate Action (that’s us!), Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The campaign’s current tagline is ripped straight from the IPCC report mentioned above and calls for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

…The fact is that the GND is still being created in silos of elitism and is aimed primarily at influencing, and putting pressure on, colonial and corporate power to lead change.While it’s true that governments should be stepping up, history has indicated a stubborn attachment to the status quo, absent the will and commitment of the people. Indigenous Climate Action and other Indigenous organizations and communities are striving to ensure there are measures of accountability and true transformation embedded in moving things forward on the GND to avoid repeating history..

But they are advocating for systems change, aren’t they?

Yes, but they are also advocating for the same forces that drove us into a climate crisis to please pave the way out for us. Asking oppressors for liberation has not proven an effective strategy.

Currently, the GND proposals are focused on changing the energy infrastructure while redistributing wealth but ultimately failing to center the destructive intertwined roles of capitalism, consumerism, militarism and colonialism as foundations to the current crisis.

In other words, the GND in its current iteration is not a structural solution.

Without an acknowledgment of the severed spiritual and mental connection to the natural world we will continue to make the same mistakes.

It is Indigenous communities, locally, nationally and internationally, that continue to push for an actualization of instilling deeper spiritual connections the Mother Earth to help us relearn what systems of colonization, capitalism, and extractivism have severed.

Without these as tenets to a call for systems change it is merely a regurgitation of the same broken structures that perpetuate disconnection and individualism.

The current proposals for the GND, if ever taken up by those politicians, could have lasting impacts for generations to come, paving the way for new social, political and economic systems providing a new baseline.

We cannot afford for history to repeat itself.

What did we hear at The Pact for a Green New Deal Town Halls?

Historic floods and wildfires. The MMIWG final report linking resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. Growing economic inequality. Our government’s failure to live up to the demands of the Truth and Reconciliation committee or to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This moment of systemic crisis calls for systemic change. That’s why over 100 groups have come together in 2019 to launch The Pact for a Green New Deal.

The Pact for a Green New Deal is a coalition calling for a far-reaching plan to cut emissions in half in 11 years, in line with Indigenous knowledge and climate science; create more than one million good jobs; and build inclusive communities in the process. Its bold, justice-based vision is galvanizing thousands of people by recognizing, and working to respond to, the multiple crises we face.

Since The Pact launched on May 6, 2019, organizations in the coalition have set off with the goal of listening to people from coast to coast to coast in the ambitious project of defining what a Green New Deal looks like for their community.

In less than a month, volunteers organized an astounding 150+ town halls, taking place in every single province and territory, to build alignment towards a set of shared principles for a Green New Deal. 

Of these 150+ events, about half were held in large communities (over 100,000 people), and half in small communities (under 30,000 people). The organizers we heard from hosted town halls ranging in size from four people, in Iqaluit, to over 300 in Edmonton. All in all, more than 7,000 people joined Green New Deal town halls in their communities — representing environmental groups, labour unions, faith groups, political parties, city councils, community and neighbourhood associations, Indigenous organizations, women’s organizations, the Fight for $15 and Fairness, student unions, local media, and more.

We worked with analysts to pull themes from the town hall conversations that took place: people gathering in grief, in rage, and in hope to share what they think the Green New Deal must include, and what it must put an end to. What follows is a summary of some of those themes; it is not a complete analysis or completed report. There is much work still to be done to bring in those who did not attend town halls, to allow time to hear from other groups, and to make sure voices marginalized by the status quo are made central in the process.

Red Lines and Green Lines 

Methodology

The town hall process was not about coming to complete consensus on specific policies or finding the perfect wording, but rather creating an opportunity for thousands of people to contribute their ideas for what a Green New Deal should look like, to identify commonalities, and to start developing specific proposals.

Participants were asked to discuss their red lines and green lines: the things that absolutely should not be in a Green New Deal for Canada, and the things that people, groups, communities and institutions want — and in some cases, need — to see in a Green New Deal in order to be on board.

Participants shared an incredible 8900 red lines and green lines. There were almost three times as many green lines as red lines, suggesting that participants are eager to focus on a hopeful and positive vision of the future. Some clear themes emerged from the responses, as outlined in the following sections.

Here’s some of what we heard.

Green Lines

The town hall responses were sorted into the following twelve Green Line categories: Economy and Government, Green Infrastructure, Nature, Agriculture, Social Justice, Democracy, Plastics, Climate Science, Decent Work, Indigenous Reconciliation, Climate Debt, and Rights. Of these categories, the ones that occurred most frequently were Economy and Government, Green Infrastructure, Social Justice, and Indigenous Sovereignty. It is clear that systemic change and radical shifts are needed to transform the systems and institutions that perpetuate inequality, racism, xenophobia, and ongoing colonial violence.

Indigenous Sovereignty

A Green New Deal must include the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Participants highlighted the importance of Indigenous knowledge, and respecting Indigenous title and relationship to the land. Decolonization must go hand in hand with a Green New Deal.

Specific recommendations included:

• • Full recognition of Indigenous title and rights.
  • Fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
  • Fully implementing the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
  • Fully implementing the Calls for Justice in the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Economy and Government

Time and time again, we heard that transforming the economy is at the heart of solutions to environmental degradation and climate change. Town hall participants are ready for governments to lay the groundwork for this change in a wide range of ways — from carbon taxes, to subsidies for green initiatives, to public investment in renewable energy and infrastructure and fundamentally changing the priorities of the economic system itself.

Specific recommendations included:

• • Setting a legally binding climate target for Canada in line with the science of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  • Creating millions of good, high-wage jobs through a green jobs plan, ensuring fossil fuel industry workers and directly affected community members are guaranteed good, dignified work with the training and support needed to succeed.
  • Increasing unionization and implementing workers’ rights, including at least a $15 minimum wage, pay equity, paid emergency leave, job security, protections for migrant workers, and the right to organize and unionize
  • Personal and public subsidies for greener technology, including affordable energy-efficient housing, and transportation.

Green Infrastructure

In talking about infrastructure for an equitable and sustainable society, participants named renewable energy and public housing as areas in need of urgent action.Specific recommendations included:

• • Making massive public investments in the infrastructure to build a 100% renewable energy economy – including power generation, energy efficiency, public transportation, public housing, food justice, ecological and localized agriculture, and clean manufacturing.
  • Ensuring sustainable, financially and physically accessible public transportation for everyone.
  • Prioritizing and incentivizing local renewable energy creation especially with public service buildings.

Social Justice

The climate crisis cannot be addressed in isolation. Participants made connections between environmental issues and struggles that have long been led by communities on the frontlines of racism and an extractive economy: migrants, Indigenous communities, rural towns and villages, poor and working-class people, and disabled people. Participants also noted the rising leadership of youth whose lives and futures are at stake; and who must be included at decision-making tables.

Specific recommendations included:

• • Promoting justice and equity by centering the communities marginalized by our current economy. This means addressing past and current harms to Indigenous peoples, Black communities, communities of colour, LGBTQ people, migrants, refugees, and undocumented people, rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and youth.
  • Ensuring free accessible post-secondary education for all.
  • Full access to quality public services including healthcare, education, income security, housing, childcare, pharmacare, dental care, pensions, and more — for all.
  • Status for all: Permanent resident status and family unity for all migrants and refugees here, and landed status on arrival for those that arrive in the future. No detentions, no deportations.
  • Ensuring that Canada pays its fair share of the climate debt to countries in the Global South that have been impacted by practices and decisions in Canada, and ensuring that corporations based in Canada are not damaging the climate and environment elsewhere, contributing to conditions that force people to migrate (including wars, unjust mining, pollution, etc).

Red Lines

Town hall participants talked about putting a stop to the industries, institutions and practices that endanger our future and accelerate environmental destruction. Some of the Red Lines that came up discussed the fossil fuel industry, extraction and pollution, plastics, and a failing democracy.

Fossil Fuels 

Town hall participants were heavily in support of not only preventing the future growth of the fossil industry — through actions like halting the construction and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, and ending government subsidies — but phasing it out on a timeline in line with the demands of Indigenous knowledge and science.

Specific recommendations:

• •  A plan to fully phase out the fossil fuel industry and move to 100% renewable energy by 2040 (at the latest) must be developed and implemented (including a plan to fully support workers throughout this process).
  • Freezing the construction and/or approval of all new fossil fuel extraction and transportation projects — we cannot solve the problem if we make it worse at the same time.
  • Fossil fuel subsidies from the federal or provincial government should be immediately eliminated and redirected to support the transition to a clean economy.

Protecting Biodiversity and Nature

Participants emphasized the importance of ending water extraction, water pollution, and other activities that jeopardize the health and sustainability of the environment.

Specific recommendations included:

• • Enacting laws that grant personhood protections to our forests and bodies of water, and the creation of an environmental bill of rights.
  • Stopping the dumping of waste (civic or industrial) into bodies of water.
  • Ensuring greater protection for critical biodiversity and natural areas.
  • Collectively ensuring the right of all people to clean air, clean water, healthy food, and a safe environment built on connection and community.
  • Ensuring the protection of at least 30 percent of land and waters in Canada by 2030.

Plastics

Participants voiced support for stopping the production of single-use plastics, and advocated for the importance of ending our reliance on plastics as a society.

Specific recommendations included:

• • Developing alternatives to plastic bags, straws and other single-use plastic items to address the problem of plastic waste, while maintaining the necessary access that these items often provide.
  • Ending boil water advisories in Indigenous communities.
  • Legislating the curtailment of excessive packaging.

Democracy

Participants made systemic links between current environmental issues and the necessity of ending corporate lobbying and transforming the democratic systems and institutions that have helped to create the multiple crises we face. Participants noted they would like to see “no more first past the post elections.”

Specific recommendations included:

• Honouring the promise of making Canada a Proportional Representation Democracy.

Next Steps:

The communities and organizations represented by people who attended town halls did reach beyond the “green bubble” that typically exists within mainstream environmental events and campaigns. That being said, there is much room for improvement in reaching out to the labour movement, social justice movements, Indigenous peoples, and those who are marginalized or who have been most impacted by the current and historical harms a Green New Deal must address.

Moving forward, consultation will continue and groups and organizations are encouraged to make submissions to this process. Many town halls have yet to be held, some groups are still preparing their own specific submissions; and so, the recommendations above should be taken as a living document that will continue to evolve and change as new voices enter the conversation.

Thank you for your words and participation. Let’s keep working to secure a Green New Deal for all.  SOURCE

Greens surge as parties make strongest ever showing across Europe

“We have to decide: are we a Europe that will defend democratic values, or just a collection of strong national states?” 

Party could hold balance of power in EU parliament with projected 71 MEPs

 Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president. Photograph: Hayoung Jeon/EPA

Green parties have swept to their strongest ever showing in European elections, boosting their tally of MEPs to a projected 71 compared with 52 last time. The result gives them every chance of becoming kingmakers in a newly fragmented parliament.

“Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” a delighted Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels.

“This is a mandate for real change: for climate protection, a social Europe, more democracy and stronger rule of law.” Above all, Keller said, the Greens “want to achieve climate action now – because if we wait any longer, it will be a disaster”.

Any parliamentary group that wanted Green support would have to “deliver on our three key principles: climate action, civil liberties and social justice”, she said. “For us it’s clear: this is all about content.” MORE

Read more

The federal NDP must stand tall in its commitment to a boldly progressive agenda

 

In 2015, Libby Davies retired as deputy leader of the NDP and member of Parliament for Vancouver East, after four decades of work as a politician, community organizer and activist for progressive causes. Her recently published book, Outside In: A Political Memoir,recounts her career and the causes she has worked for, from the legalization of same-sex marriage to housing justice and access to safe injection sites on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In the following excerpt, Davies diagnoses what went wrong for the NDP in the 2015 federal election and how the party can avoid the same pitfalls in the future.

Certainly, what happens in Parliament is enormously important. The terrible legislation passed by Harper’s government, his disregard for democracy, his secrecy, arrogance, and elitism, it was all part of a decade of darkness. Fighting the government in Parliament was our job, and we did it well.

But somewhere along the way we lost our bigger vision and connection with people, including some of our base, as we became focused on winning. We forgot how to be creative and bold outside of Parliament and bring people with us.

I know we face formidable double standards in the mainstream media. Regardless of how well we do, they would still find a way to trash or ignore us. On that I am cynical. All the more reason for us to be smarter than all of them, and find new ways to do politics with people who have a passion for social justice and a better world.

In these political times, the NDP is needed more than ever. The rise of right-wing populism even here in Canada and the underwhelming position of Trudeau’s Liberal government on crucial issues such as climate change, democratic electoral reform, income inequality, and more make it crucial for the federal NDP to stand tall and unwavering in its commitment to a boldly progressive agenda. We must embrace a post-fossil-fuel economy and lead the way on an economic and social transition to it, and demonstrate that retraining, good jobs, and social advances create a healthier economy and healthier society overall. MORE

Protecting water in a post-capitalist economy

This posting is part 3 of a series on the role of water justice movements in a post-capitalist economy. (Read blogs one and two.) Emma Lui writes, “We can learn from communities in Jacksonville, New York, South America, and globally that have begun the inspiring work of transitioning to the next economy.”

Emma Lui is an activist, a writer and a contributor to the book, Corporatizing Canada: Making Business out of Public Service.Photo: Jonny White/Flickr

If we think about where power is manufactured and deployed, it is helpful to think about actual sites of struggles.

Some examples include:

• Creation of legislation: House of Commons, Standing Committees or Senate Committees, public consultations.
• Government departments: National Energy Board, Ontario’s Ministry of Environment
• Courts and legal challenges
• The physical location of projects: Nestle’s bottled water plants, along a pipeline route
• Government or corporate spaces: shareholders meetings, LNG event at Canada 2020
• Educational institutions: classrooms (Big Oil influencing what students learn at school), museums, university campuses
• “Public debate” in traditional media, social media

Examples of communities contesting power include Climate Strike rallies on Parliament Hill, legal challenges against the Trans Mountain pipeline, the Tiny House Warriors with their mission to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline from crossing unceded Secwepemc Territory, as well as creative actions at the Canada 2020 LNG event and at Catherine McKenna’s recent town hall.

It is also helpful to think about other areas where neoliberalism and capitalism, broadly, are strengthened, reinforced, and advanced:

• Collective consciousness and how a society understands and talks about an issue, e.g. the federal government frames pipelines as a matter of national security rather than a threat to clean water.
• Within ourselves (our goals, the work we do, the beliefs we have), within our relationships and families (the roles we play, what work is paid and unpaid) and within our communities (how we relate to one another).
• Consumer and business relationships: where we shop, what is considered a good for sale, what we buy and if we buy.

It is important to think about and contest power structures at these sites and areas in order to advance water justice, climate justice, social justice, Indigenous rights, and human rights more generally.

At the same time, we need to be working to create the next economic system.

Writer and activist Rev. angel Kyodo williams points out, “…why has our imagination been stolen by capitalism in such a way that we can’t even imagine a different possibility for different economies and different ways of trading and being in relationship to one another?”

Activist and PBI-Canada’s Executive Director Brent Patterson notes that anti-capitalism is entering the mainstream — see recent comments by George Monbiot on BBC, Naomi Klein on Twitter and Phil McDuff’s article “Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism” in the Guardian.

This creates opportunities to imagine and explore ideas — some that have long been discussed and debated as well as new ones — for the next economic system. MORE