Canada’s Narrowing Space for Dissent: Speech, Assembly, and the Right to Strike
By Gary Porter
Canada has long positioned itself internationally as a rights-respecting democracy, its Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing expression, peaceful assembly, association, and — through judicial interpretation — the right to strike. But over the past two years, a pattern has emerged across federal, provincial, and municipal governments: a steady tightening of the legal space in which Canadians can protest, speak, organize, and withhold their labour. Despite some push back from the courts, the legislative and enforcement direction points toward contraction rather than expansion of these freedoms.
Fight for a Working Class City Hall!
By MSA & CCBF
Across Ontario, workers, small business owners, and entire communities are being squeezed by rising costs, precarious work, and the devastating consequences of climate catastrophe. Doug Ford’s unapologetic corporate agenda of austerity and privatization is only accelerating the surging crises. Rather than equipping municipalities to meet growing needs, his government has cut their funding and stripped their ability to deliver the public services on which communities rely. Public services — from mass transit to libraries— are defunded and left to decline while the private sector waits to fill the gap at a price.
Why I Welcome Endorsement of Municipal Socialist Alliance
By Scarlett Gillespie
I am deeply honoured to receive the endorsement of the Municipal Socialist Alliance in my campaign to become the next Mayor of Hamilton. This endorsement means a great deal to me because there is real common ground between the MSA’s vision for municipal politics and the reasons I entered this race in the first place. Hamilton is a working-class city. Yet too many working people are being priced out of housing, struggling with the cost of living, watching public infrastructure deteriorate, and feeling increasingly disconnected from the institutions that are supposed to represent them. The MSA’s platform calls for housing justice, stronger tenant protections, more public, non-profit and co-operative housing, investment in public services, and a municipal government that puts working people and communities before private profit.
Argentina: Tens of Thousands Take to Streets in March of Anger
By Fernando Scolnik
Tens of thousands took to the streets in more than 70 cities across Argentina in Saturday’s March of Anger (Marcha de la Bronca). The demonstrations were a long-awaited breath of fresh air in the face of right-wing austerity and repression, as well as “opposition” from political and union leaderships that call for passivity, even in the face of the government’s weakening. Saturday’s protests are not the first time in recent months that thousands have shown a will to fight, defying the passivity of these union bureaucracies. On August 6, thousands protested against the “Inviolability of Private Property” bill that sought to attract foreign investment by streamlining evictions and making it harder to take public ownership over private lands.
What Is Imperialism?
By Alan Freeman
It is a commonplace idea in Western Left Liberalism, including too many Marxists, that Marx had no conception of imperialism and had nothing to say about it. This ridiculous idea can be sustained only because the Left Liberals do not understand that Imperialism is nothing but an extension of Colonialism. This, in turn, arises because the western Left thinks, frankly, that Capitalist Imperialism is a modern invention. This is a very unfortunate misreading of Lenin’s famous description of Imperialism as a ‘final stage’ of capitalism. It would be truer to say that capitalism is the final stage of imperialism. This is because capitalism was born out of colonialism, of which modern imperialism is merely the most developed form.
Building the Confront Carney’s CEO Summit Protest
By Bianca Mugyenyi
Months of organizing brought movements together and carried an unapologetically anti-capitalist message across the country. The September 14 demonstration against Mark Carney’s CEO summit was a big boost for the Left. Some 2,000 people participated in the Confront Carney’s CEO Summit protest in Toronto, which included a “Carnival Against Capitalism” targeting the largest gathering of capitalists in Canadian history. The biggest explicitly anti-capitalist protest in Canada in many years received widespread mainstream media coverage. CBC’s The National went live to the march at the top of its broadcast that night, while international outlets including Reuters, Al Jazeera and the New York Times reported on the protest.