People have been telling me for a long time that I should start blogging and, now that I have stepped down as an OCAP organizer, I think it’s time to actually get to it. I intend to write on a fairly wide range of subjects. Some of it will still be related to anti-poverty struggles, including those of OCAP, but I also want to pay more attention to movement building and political initiatives at this vital time. The years since the Great Recession have seen a remarkable period of sluggish recovery, kept alive with zero interest rates and other such initiatives. This period, however, has been dominated, not be any abandonment of neoliberal austerity but by the intensification of that agenda. Social cutbacks and the proliferation of low wage precarious work have been the order of the day. This agenda has been implemented by outstandingly reactionary political players. The neoliberal centre has maintained the attack but figures like Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban and Ford and Kenney in Canada have emerged. The impending global downturn will only intensify such attacks and produce the political monsters ready to carry them out.
I want here, then, to examine and, hopefully, even contribute modestly to development of strategies and organizational forms that can advance effective resistance and point towards social transformation. How do we transform this period of largely defensive and inadequate struggles into an offensive against neoliberal capitalism, endless war and the reckless path towards climate and broader ecological catastrophe? How do we create forms of social mobilization and political initiatives that can alter the societal balance of forces, win inspiring victories and transform the thinking of masses of people? There are examples and issues to consider throughout the world but I will not fail to pay a great deal of attention to the struggle against the Doug Ford Tories right here in Ontario.
These are some of the broad themes I intend to tackle here. I will start posting very soon and will put out the pieces I write on social media. Please feel free, however, to sign up for the email list so that you can get what I write here forwarded to you directly. Thanks and I hope you will find at least some of what I have to say interesting and helpful.