1w ago

‘We’re All Getting Screwed. I’ve Had Enough’

thetyee.ca

‘We're All Getting Screwed. I’ve Had Enough’ | The Tyee

6 comments

It seems to me that a large portion of people who might vote NDP are also very aware of the realities of climate change. How do you hope to appeal to them?
I have a good example about this. My union ships coal out, both metallurgical coal, that makes steel, and thermal coal, which is burned. We’re supposed to phase out coal by 2030.
If we were to end coal shipping today, probably about 100 of my members would be out of work. But by giving us five years to phase it out, our union and employers can transition to shipping other products mined in Canada.
That’s a perfect example of identifying a product that is harmful to the environment and moving gently and safely so that workers are protected. The environment is going to be protected.
Goddamn this guy gets it! I was literally making this argument in another thread.
He hits most important notes correctly from a working class perspective. He looks and sounds genuine. Donated to his campaign. I am hopeful!
I read the whole article and as someone who's voted NDP multiple time. I don't find what was conveyed particularly compelling.
Within the NDP party the general ideology and what was said really doesn't stand out.
- Agreed.
  The NDP used to be champions of the worker, having strong union and worker rights platforms.
  That is pretty much gone now. The NDP is in tatters, they aren't unified nor stand for much of anything now. Too bad, because we need worker rights more than ever.
  
  If something's got a rotten foundation, it won't collapse until it's really needed and pressure is put on it. That's what's happening to the NDP now. Nobody saw the rot that was happening for decades because the pressure wasn't on. Now it is, and the party's coming apart at the seams.
  Some of it is sabotage. The powers that be have made a tremendous effort to capture the levers they need to control the two main national parties so they can guarantee their uninterrupted control of our government, and they don't want a viable third party undoing all their illusion of choice by providing an actual choice, so they have arranged for nasty ideologues with conflicting ideologies to tear the NDP apart from within and make it unsupportable for the vast majority of people. And that's worked great.
  But it's also a reflection of the wider destruction of labor movements in general. We are all routinely pitted against each other over trivial differences by social media and news organizations and convinced different groups among us are responsible for each other's ills, when we need to be united and cooperative as a national and global working class with far more goals and interests in common than we have apart. We'll now have to make tough choices and pick our battles, because we don't have an army big enough to fight on every hill, and not every hill is worth dying on if the entire army is going to die there.
  But at the same time we're trying to be united and strategically minded, we still need to be able to detect and identify the rogue elements and ideas that are being used to sabotage and divide us. It's a difficult position to be in, they've stacked a lot against us. Have they stacked enough against us? I don't think so, but it's still a lot stacked against us. The first step is to get everybody to even acknowledge that it's happening and work towards consensus on the broad strokes of what we want to achieve. And I think we're making some progress on that front. People are starting to see what's going on for what it is, and people are starting to realize just how much the economy is not working for people anymore, and they're starting to see why. The government's empty promises ring more hollow, the billionaires' attempts at manipulation grow stronger. People are simply waking up and opening their eyes, not being "woke". And once their eyes are open, don't waste more time showing them what they're fighting against, they've already started to see it. Instead we need to take the opportunity to show them what we're fighting for, to give them a big picture that makes sense, and be able to articulate the change that people are craving in a way they can relate to.

6 comments