Activist scenes

I27

One of the things we do a really bad job of is fostering a sense of hope. I know that's kind of cheesy but people come to radical politics because they think it's going to do something and be a legitimate option and we don't make it that. We make it seem like a club, we make it seem like something that people of only a certain ilk can engage in….It should be a part of everyone's day to day experience.

Radical community, radical memory

I6

[In the alter-globalization movement] lots of people were thinking about how things could be done very differently and a lot of people were trying to create groups and activist institutions that were not based on the idea of building a new structure of society and the imagination and going out and trying to propagandize it to the world, but actually trying to build that future in the present. So there was this real focus on consensus-based decision making, a big focus on being the change – that was a big phrase, still is I suppose – a big focus on creating...radical communities within the structures that exist today. But also I think it was a bit of a surprise, everyone was very surprised when all of these groups came together and you saw these labour groups marching beside environmental groups….Everyone, for reasons that were completely ahistorical, is really surprised by the emergence of things like the black bloc or...the Ya Bastas from Southern Europe. There was...this moment where everyone was like, 'oh! Where did all of this come from?'

Radical dialogue

I14

For Marxism to work it has to be a discussion and if you look at the period where...the great Marxist revolutions happened, I mean the early 1900s, it was a discussion. Lenin and Trotsky would debate each other, Luxemburg would debate, other folks from Germany or from France would weigh in on those debates. It was a conversation about...what tactics the progressive movement should be using but also on the actual composition of what Marxist theory is and then with the establishment of the Soviet Union it became this very, very doctrinaire approach to Marxism which is an absolute failure and has led us to the point where I think the left is the weakest it's ever been since the rise of capitalism in a lot of ways.

Whiteness and the limits to movements

I19

[What are the] conversations that need to be had? Well...there's the race conversation. Not that that conversation doesn't happen but I don't think it happens in a way that ever gets anywhere near to addressing the issue. It kind of happens in this...massaging white guilt kind of way - we're talking about it...but it never actually gets addressed at all. I think that's a major issue locally….I think there's the whiteness of our movements and then there's racism in Halifax and where the activist community fits in to addressing that. I think that's a conversation that needs to be had that isn't because I think it very much limits what groups can do and what organizing can accomplish in the city...

Thinking anew

I22

I think one of the problems with the Left is the idea that they can return to the past….if you take Canada, for example, people believe they can return to the social contract of the post-Second World War era. Coming out of this era there was a sort of agreement between the labor unions and capital for the social welfare state, pensions, and so forth and that it's possible with this latest onslaught against workers right here...people think they can go back. I think that social contract is dead, it's a corpse. People need to come up with new arrangements, new ways of organizing society. So they need to think anew.

Coexistence without domination

I25

To me winning would be being able to live life without feeling like I owe something….I think it really depends on the situation. I think it's safe to say that if there were no need for prisons, no need for borders, or money, all of these sort of institutionalized methods of control, I think if you got rid of all those and just had the co-existence of people working, living together and not depleting and stripping the ecosystem in which they're placed, to me I guess that would be [winning].

Hope and moving beyond

I1

I have tremendous amounts of hope. I don't know what folks who don't have that do….I think in the course of human existence the current system, capitalism…[has had an] incredibly short lifespan. Longer than my life, so there's a sense of perspective, but really in terms of the way that humans have organized, it’s one form amongst many that we've gone through and I think that we can move beyond that.

Capitalist cooptation

I6

I think the most dire consequence of the evolution of capitalism today is its capacity for cooptation. It is extremely adept at commodifying and co-opting any sort of movement at all, even the most radical. I think that the reformist strategies, whether they’re NGOs, or unions, or other things….I wouldn't say I reject all of them I would just say that all of those in and of themselves are not sufficient.

Indigenous knowledge

I7

You learn about history and all the really bad stuff that has happened, to the Indigenous population particularly, and I was like, wow, what keeps people motivated there?...if human society is going to get through what we're going through now, it's going to be because of the knowledge of indigenous peoples. I feel like there's that wealth of knowledge there that's just not tapped in the mainstream and it's the total opposite of the dominant culture.

Women, power, and winning

I26

It would be about women recognizing power, women understanding that they hold that power, and that they can exercise that power, and that exercising that power can change society, can change the individual, can change the family, can change the community, can change the society. And that would look not only like women recognizing and exercising that power but the society...recognizing that that power is valid.