The Red Review | Issue #15 (December 2024)
A Socialist Action Journal
Stand Up for Sarah Jama
by Tom Baker
Over the past two years I have been part of a grassroots activist and labour campaign in the Hamilton Centre Ontario New Democratic Party Riding Association that led to a young, disabled, Black, social justice fighter, Sarah Jama, winning the nomination to be the ONDP candidate in November 2022. Close to 600 new members joined the party at that time: defenders of Palestinian human rights, trade union leaders and militants, anti-war activists, LGBTQI+ folks, environmentalists, antipoverty activists, and more. This massive grassroots mobilization led to Sarah’s overwhelming victory as the new MPP for Hamilton Centre in the March 2023 provincial by-election, attracting nearly 10,000 votes.
She was an enthusiastic new addition to a rather moribund ONDP caucus. She brought with her new methods of resistance against a stacked system. From the first day she rolled into Queen’s Park, she sought to give a voice to the broad working class and oppressed communities. She openly criticized “the political system that continues to oppress, deflect and ignore the needs of people”. Sarah represents a new kind of politics that is rooted in truth, and fighting the power of those who have called the shots for so long. She is a brilliant organizer who listens to people’s ideas and works with them to push back and win.
US Capitalism Emerges Unscathed from 2024 Elections
by Jeff Mackler
For those on the left who struggle for a better world, agreement with the above propositions is the essential starting point. Neither capitalist party can be reformed in any significant way. By definition they exist to advance and defend the interests of the ruling elite.
Working people need our own independent political party, but not just any kind of party conjured up and announced by well-meaning activists, but a special type of party. Here we refer to a trade union-based Labor Party, a working class party based on independent fighting unions democratically organized and controlled by workers at the workplace, and nationally – a party whose program and activities are determined by the rank-and-file. Today, to be frank, no such party exists, not even the nucleus of a class struggle left wing that aims to build such a party. Indeed, today’s labor movement stands at the lowest point in the modern era, representing barely six percent of the private sector workforce. Today’s bureaucratic mis-leadership is largely corrupt and a virtual appendage to the Democrats, if not the Republicans.
Alberta’s Anti-trans Proposals Appalling
by Imogen Xavier
I come before you as a trans woman, both optimistic and afraid. Deeply grateful for my rights, less than a decade of age as they may be, and filled with fear they will be taken again within my lifetime.
Below you will find an extended excerpt from Amnesty International’s reporting on the Alberta Conservative government's reactionary, transphobic policy changes. The changes are contained in the 2024 Education Amendment Act, 2024 Health Statutes Amendment Act, and the Fairness and Safety In Sport Act. More details are provided in the Amnesty article.
Socialist Action Canada joins many other organizations in denouncing these policies and the intolerance that motivates them. After that is an introductory analysis of popular transphobic rhetoric, and its interrelation with the mechanisms of capitalism
BC Election Shows Futility of NDP Reformism
By Gary Porter
The October 19 provincial election in British Columbia resulted (so far) in 46 seats for the NDP, 45 for the Trumpist Conservatives and 2 seats for the Greens. Mandatory recounts in seats where the winning margin was by less than 100 votes means it is not yet clear who will form the government. The popular vote was also very close: 46% for NDP; 45% for the Tories. The Green Party got 8%. Previously, the NDP had 55 seats out of a total of 87, a big majority.
If the seat count remains the same, by tradition, the Lieutenant Governor will ask David Eby to try to form government. Eby will need the support of two Green MLAs to do so.
It was similar in 2017, when John Horgan required the support of Andrew Weaver’s Greens to form a government. The Greens and the NDP signed a confidence-and-supply agreement. But the NDP subsequently approved the Site C dam project on the Peace River to produce vast quantities of electricity, primarily to support fracking of natural gas (methane) in north-east BC.
COP or CON? Big Conservation corrupts biodiversity protection
by Fiore Longo
Some 31 years after the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) came into force, the latest Conference of the Parties – as the regular jamborees of governments, NGOs and others with a stake in these conventions are known – starts this week in the bustling Colombian city of Cali.
This one, COP16, is particularly important as it’s supposed to resolve some vital but unfinished business concerning the new global “action plan” for biodiversity, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Don’t be misled by the typically pedestrian title: what’s at stake here could dramatically affect millions of people around the world, especially Indigenous and local communities, because the Framework has a number of fatal flaws.
What’s Really Behind the Immigration Crackdown
by Syed Hussan
The Trudeau government has launched an immigration crackdown that’s pushing international students, temporary foreign workers, refugees, and undocumented people to a breaking point.
In the next two years alone, 2.3 million permits will expire.
These changes are not just numbers—they mean more abuse, more poverty, more people uprooted or forced to become undocumented.
Why is the government doing this? These cuts aren’t random—they’re Conservative-style immigration cuts in a Liberal disguise. Trudeau is bending to the anti-migrant ideas of Pierre Pollievre and his supporters, hoping to win their votes, by choosing to blame migrants for economic problems instead of finding real solutions.
Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution (15th anniversary)
By The Militant
Permit me to begin by expressing my sincere regrets over my inability to speak before a Copenhagen audience in the Danish tongue. Let us not ask whether the listeners lose by it. As to the speaker, his ignorance of the Danish language deprives him of the possibility of familiarizing himself with Scandinavian life and Scandinavian literature immediately, at first hand and in the original. And that is a great loss.
The German language, to which, I have had to take recourse, is rich and powerful. My German, however, is fairly limited. To discuss complicated questions with the necessary freedom, moreover, is possible only in one’s own language. I must therefore beg the indulgence of the audience in advance.
The first time that I was in Copenhagen was at the international Socialist Congress, and I took away with me the kindest recollections of your city. But that was over a quarter of a century ago. Since then, the water in the Ore-Sund and in the fjords has changed over and over again. And not the water alone.
Lenin's Revolution: Red, Gay, And Almost Glorious
By Kevin Childs
It was a hundred years ago this week. The first snows had just fallen on Petrograd lighting up the dark. The Bolshevik Revolution promised to transform the lives of gay men across the world. Russia became, for a moment, a shining ideal of liberation and equality. At a time when they were persecuted and imprisoned in Britain, Germany and America, gay men were at the heart of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. Its idealistic leaders, Lenin and Trotsky offered a new world order of equality, opportunity and freedom, where gay men and lesbians would flourish.
Three men, the poet and novelist Mikhail Kuzmin, the diplomat Georgy Chicherin and the rural utopian poet Nikolai Klyuev, moulded and celebrated the events of November 1917 in surprising ways. They were three among many gay men and lesbians who embraced the revolutionary cause.
Chicherin was probably the most brilliant diplomat of his generation. A true internationalist, what drove his commitment to equality? His socialism? His homosexuality? Did the Revolution survive because Chicherin brokered peace with Germany? Lenin believed so.