Indigenous struggles and deep democracy

I6

Working on [building settler solidarity with] Six Nations…[it] was very interesting...and inspiring to see Six Nations, which is this Indigenous group that has the oldest surviving democratic constitution in the world, who have been actively fighting colonialism for five hundred years, who have retained a great deal of their culture in the face of genocide, and still works by those sorts of principles that we were trying to discover in 2001. Things like consensus, broad deep forms of respect, broad forms of solidarity and affinity. They have methods for cultivating those that have lasted for literally thousands of years. So seeing that in action and also seeing what the state does in the face of that and how they try and divide and conquer was very inspirational and changed my thinking a great deal.

Precarity and inertia

I9

I think...one of the most present problems right now is...how precarious everything is around us in terms of our living spaces, we have no control over [them], we...pay all this rent [and] it's just burned off….The places we work, we have no control over the vast majority of them so that we're just thrust around here and there. We're fired with no notice, we have to deal with all kinds of unfair working conditions depending on the whim of the employers and this creates a lot of problems for everyone. We're stressed out, we're just left with no energy and time at the end of the day other than to watch TV or zone out or whatever.

Winning, solidarity, and common sense

I3

I guess in a grander way, I'm thinking of a quote...by Zygmunt Bauman who is a post-modern theorist. I remember reading an article of his and he ended by saying something along the lines of: the day you don't have to justify yourselves for being in solidarity with everybody else is the day that that's achieved. It's an abstract thought but in a way if you don't have to defend your decision about entering [into a relationship of] solidarity with someone, if you don't have to justify that, then it means that it's understood in common sense and therefore, if you don't have to explain that or justify that to anybody, then that means that you've won...in a way.

Youth of colour fight back

I1

Some of the really inspiring stuff that I've seen...since September 11th, 2001 has been...immigrant and refugee youth taking on leadership roles, oftentimes beginning with the fightback that they're seeing in their own communities but extending well beyond that...to a far broader social perspective.

Memories of struggle

I1

Here in Nova Scotia we're losing all kinds of memory of our own history everyday as people pass away. In the late ‘80s, as an undergrad student, I had a project [in] a labour history course I was taking….I went up to Cape Breton and interviewed folks in their kitchens around what was happening with the mine workers’ strikes in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The best folks died and I don't think I realized at the time how useful that stuff was. We don't have that even going on today and we're losing…[our collective] memory….we don't have a tremendous amount of intergenerational memory on what [struggles were] about, what [they were] fighting for, what the underlying basis [for them was.]

Social and personal change

I15

...I...realized that while I could identify what was wrong...with certain actions that promoted hate against other individuals, I didn't see how I was part of that system….It was the first time that I realized that it wasn't just about me fighting other people, it was also about me changing myself.

Care and organizing

I21

I think it's important to nurture people in the political movements that are important to me. So the form is as important as the content. So how we organize, and how we talk to each other, and how we behave is extremely important….a person I truly respec[t] once said to me that [the]...only...criteria for [being] progressive [is] they had to be interested in ideas and care about people and if they didn't have one or the other they were not progressive. So there are a lot of people in our progressive movements who either don't care about people or don't care about ideas...that's what I mean… [by] the converging of the social and the moral.

Prefiguring alternatives, resisting the status quo

I3

We need to organize outside of the current mainstream political structures and create, pre-emptively, alternative ways of organizing and living and generating living, breathing examples of other ways of living. One strategy can't really exist without the other. I think if we organize, if we do our own thing, and yet we completely ignore the mainstream political system and let it turn to fascism then whatever alternative pockets exist might get screwed in the long run and, at the same time, if we just depend on asking [for] reforms of the political system then all we're going to get are scraps all the time and never have any kind of real change before it's too late.

State violence and movement strategy

I30

I think if you've got enough people you can take a stand in any way to prevent stuff. But let's face it, the state has all the firepower, all the guns, and all it takes is an excuse and they'll use it….So when [the state] move[s] in they have every right in their mind to come in and surround and corner people...but if you defend yourself, if you resist that then you're the aggressor.

Apocalyptic futures

I17

[The future] could go either way. It could be so good or it could be so awful and there seems to be this almost masochistic yearning for an apocalyptic future. Almost self-destructive, you know, it's all bad...it's all going to fall down. People seem to almost anticipate that [but] I don't think they get the implications of it.