Not Just a Smear Tactic

Matthew N. Lyons

April Rosenblum. The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism Part of All of Our Movements. Self-published, 2007. Download at www.thepast.info

In July of 2006, Bluestockings bookshop in New York City announced it was hosting a workshop for social justice activists on “opposing anti-Semitism in the movement.” The announcement sparked a heated online discussion on New York’s Indymedia website. Some people asked if the workshop was going to be “some Zionist bullshit” and why it wasn’t going to address other forms of discrimination, such as “Zionist anti-Semetism [sic]” against Palestinians. Critics doubted the existence of any real anti-Semitism on the left, or they suggested that it was caused by “right-wing Jews” having “cried wolf too many times.” One charged that “whining about anti-Semitism is like whining about ‘anti-white,’ or ‘reverse racism.’” They added that “Jews are one of the wealthiest groups in the world with the most privilege.”

Anna Feigenbaum

Ward Churchill. Pacifism as Pathology. AK Press 2007; Peter Gelderloos. How Nonviolence Protects the State. South End Press 2007

In a 2001 In These Times article on the FTAA demonstrations in Quebec City, Abby Scher, like many others, reflected on the effective interplay between protesters’ violent and non-violent tactics. She ended her discussion with the question: “Is Quebec… a wonderful demonstration of ‘a diversity of tactics’ – or a turning point where the gap between tactics yawns larger?” Now, six years later in a post-9/11 climate, the ‘War on Terror’ continues, corporate power grows, and frustration has set in amongst many movement participants. As protesters are finding themselves disheartened, pessimistic, and often downright bored with ineffective demonstrations, questions about movement tactics are resurfacing. Specifically, many people are voicing a call for more confrontational direct actions in our struggles against globalization and imperialism.

Black Power From the Inside

Chris Harris

Muhammad Ahmad. We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960-1975. Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 2007

Toronto’s Black community has long suffered a crisis of increasing poverty, racism, and violence. This is largely the result of the oppression that African-Canadian people have endured through the implementation of neoliberal policies and the expansion of both the police state and the prison industrial complex. In Canada, African-Canadian people (the majority of whom are located amongst the lowest ranks of the working class) are confronted with two primary problems. First, a growing Black underclass is unable to compete for scarce decent paying jobs. Second, the Canadian ruling class – responding to the crisis of neoliberal globalization with their wars on drugs, guns, and gangs – is criminalizing Black working-class youth and expanding the prison industrial complex. In recent years, the Black left has responded to this crisis by trying to organize Black youth at the grassroots level, and by trying to build new mass organizations that can continue the legacy of militant
anti-racist struggle that characterized the Toronto-based Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) in the 1980s and 1990s.

You Can’t Jail the Spirit

The Movement to Free Political Prisoners

Bryan D. and Tom K.

All too often, when activists raise the issue of our movements’ Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, it is done with a sense of guilt for how they have suffered. That is not what this roundtable is about. Though the lack of support that PPs and POWs receive from contemporary movements is unfortunate, this roundtable is no guilt trip. The image of martyred revolutionaries languishing forgotten in cages is not our focus here. Men and women on the inside and their comrades on the outside are not charity cases but revolutionaries with hard-learned experiences and present-day perspectives that need to be acknowledged by those of us with less experience.

The Three Way Fight Debate

For over a generation, the decline of anti-colonial liberation struggles inspired by socialism has coincided with the rise of new forms of anti-imperialist mobilization in Western Asia. Beginning in 1979 with the Iranian revolution, and continuing in the present with national liberation struggles led by Hezbollah and Hamas, these movements have mixed religious fundamentalism with the hopes of millions striving for a better life. It is thus not surprising that leftists in the West have had a difficult time figuring out how to relate to these movements. On the one hand, they seem to represent the strivings of oppressed people seeking to free themselves from imperialist domination. On the other hand, the religious ideologues of the Iranian revolution tortured, imprisoned, and murdered tens of thousands of leftists and radicals. The program of these new Islamic movements has often been avowedly patriarchal and politically regressive.

Strength in Numbers?

Why Radical Students Need a New Organizing Model

Caelie Frampton

In October of 2006, 1,000 students gathered at a mass meeting at Simon Fraser University (SFU) to impeach seven elected student union directors who were widely perceived to be acting against student interests and to be supported by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).1 In the lead up to the assembly, the impeachment campaign involved classroom speaking, petitions, motions of non-confidence passed by 30 different student groups, occupations of student union space, and banner drops. The mobilization culminated in a court case that acknowledged the legitimacy of the impeachment meeting. Compared to these vigorous grassroots initiatives, the SFU component of the CFS National Day of Action four months later on February 7th, 2007 was dismal. Thirty people, mostly consisting of recently-impeached student leaders and their friends, stood around holding prefabricated “Freeze Tuition Fees” signs. Considering the recent spike in radical organizing at SFU, it was no coincidence that they protested alone. Having reclaimed their student government, many students at SFU were not interested in supporting a rally orchestrated by the national organization widely perceived to be linked to the actions of the impeached student officials.

Into a Black Hole

Tar Sands and Oil Production in Western Canada

Macdonald Stainsby

When I moved from British Columbia to Alberta recently, I discovered that the political realities of one province are largely unknown to those living in the other. In BC, oil is seen as a scheme hatched by mad cowboys that has little effect on the mountainous peace of the West coast. Similarly, when people speak of the Olympics in Alberta, it’s still in reference to the Calgary Games of 1988 – a stark contrast to BC, where the coming 2010 Winter Games are associated with rapidly increasing property values and social dislocation. Despite these differences, the economies of both provinces are said to be “booming.” The Albertan economy is growing faster than that of any other North American state or province, while BC is in the middle of a significant economic upswing. While sharp differences in political consciousness remain, especially at the local level, both BC Premier Gordon Campbell and Alberta Premier Edward Stelmach are supporting policy initiatives aimed at reconciling the political and economic differences between their provinces.

From the Perspective of Resistance

An Interview with Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt is the author of Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy and an editor of a new edition of Thomas Jefferson’s The Declaration of Independence. With Antonio Negri, he is co-author of Empire, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, and Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State_Form. He teaches in the Literature Program at Duke University. Hardt was a keynote speaker at the conference on Empire held in Barrie, Ontario in May of 2007. In his plenary “Empire After Iraq” he critiqued political positions common on the left from the standpoint of their consequences for resistance. In this interview, conducted in July of 2007, Gary Kinsman asked Hardt to elaborate on some of the thoughts he presented at the conference. Tracy Gregory transcribed the interview.

In your talk on Empire, you focused on the importance of evaluating political positions from the vantage of their impact on organizing and resistance. Can you elaborate on this statement?

Gord Hill is an activist from the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation in British Columbia. A long time organizer for indigenous sovereignty, he organizes with the Native Youth Movement (NYM) based in Vancouver and runs Warrior Publications. He is currently involved in the campaign against the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. In this interview with Tom Keefer, Hill explains why the NYM boycotted the Assembly of First Nations’ Day of Action on June 29, 2007. He discusses how the AFN and band council system were formed as a means of government control and assimilation of indigenous communities and the cooptation of grassroots movements. Hill also talks about the role of non-native supporters in struggles for sovereignty and the importance of forming broader radical anti-colonial and
anti-capitalist movements within First Nations communities. This interview took place in July of 2007.

Could you please introduce yourself?

Sunera Thobani is an assistant professor at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on race and gender relations, and migration, citizenship, and nation-building. She was the first woman of colour to serve as President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) between 1993 and 1996. During that time NAC, along with the Canadian Labour Congress, organized the National Women’s March Against Poverty. She made national news in October of 2001 as one of the first critics of US foreign policy and the “war on terror” when she stated, “From Chile to El Salvador, to Nicaragua to Iraq, the path of US foreign policy is soaked in blood.” Thobani is one of the founders of the cross-Canada Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity (RACE) and is currently writing about media representation of the “war on terror” and its impact on gender, race, and empire-building. Sharmeen Khan interviewed Thobani in July 2007.

How did you get involved with the feminist movement and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women?

Join us for the launch of the fifth issue!

Friday November 16, 2007
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Spartacus Books
319 West Hastings, 2nd floor
Free Entry - $5 for a copy of the new journal

Come for speeches, recaps on articles, engaging conversation and bevies.

[[[ISSUE FIVE CONTENTS]]]

- Interviews with Sunera Thobani, Gord Hill, and Michael Hardt

- Articles on TILMA and the Alberta Tar Sands, The Canadian Federation of Students, and the Resistance to the 'War on Terror'

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Social Democracy and Anti-Capitalist Renewal in English Canada

While many radicals would rather not admit it, it’s difficult to talk about a specifically Canadian project of anti-capitalist renewal without considering the role that social democracy plays as either an obstacle to or a potential stepping stone for mass radicalization. As one of the most coherent manifestations of social democratic politics in this country, the New Democratic Party (NDP) has consistently betrayed both its own stated principles and the interests of its supporters: Ontario Premier Bob Rae tore up the collective agreements of public sector workers in order to implement neoliberal reforms, Jack Layton backed a right wing “law and order” agenda. Moreover, high-level social democrats in the union movement have repeatedly sold out working class and popular struggles. But despite these failings, the NDP has managed to maintain the tacit support of a wide range of activists. With a number of provincial elections in the offing, and with the possibility of a federal election around the corner, we decided to take the opportunity to address this paradox.

In the labour, feminist, anti-poverty, student, anti-war, and environmental movements, much of the established leadership and a significant portion of the membership continue to look to the NDP as the only reasonable option for making the changes they seek. This is not entirely unreasonable: in the Canadian context, many important victories for working class people – the right to organize, universal health insurance, unemployment insurance, and old age pensions – were won through a combination of mass mobilization and the legislative implementation of social democratic policies. Although the NDP has never held power federally, measures introduced at the provincial level have occasionally been taken up in one from or another by national, primarily Liberal, governments.

The reforms that we associate with social democracy largely took place during capitalism’s post-war boom. Since then, social democratic policies have been dramatically circumscribed, not just in Canada, but around the world. As an ideological and practical force, social democracy has veered sharply to the right and adopted the basic elements of “the Third Way” approach championed by former British Labour Party leader Tony Blair. This approach involves breaking direct links to working class organizations, rejecting classic social democratic principles, and accepting neoliberal norms in various spheres of social life.

[[[LAUNCH PARTY]]]

Come Celebrate the Launch of Issue Five of
Upping The Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action

Thursday October 18 8:00pm
Smiling Buddha Bar
961 College Street, West of Dovercourt

DJs Miss Ruckus & Big Eva Edna
Raffles and More

Admission $7 with Journal, $5 without

[[[ISSUE FIVE CONTENTS]]]

- Interviews with Sunera Thobani,
Gord Hill, and Michael Hardt

- Articles on the Alberta Tar Sands,
The Canadian Federation of Students,
and the Resistance to the 'War on Terror'

- Roundtable on Political Prisoner Struggles

Here's the cover for issue 5.