Manipulating choices

I26

I volunteered with an underground midwife....she still caught babies, still did the exact same job...but there was no funding for it, women still paid her out of pocket. So where did that take me? I guess that was a turning point in my politics because it really made me think not just about women's choices and how women conceptualize those choices and manifest them but how...the broader society manipulates women, or offers certain choices for women.

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.

Reaching people

I7

There's lots of people who, if you tap into their values in the right way, will be able to get onside with you in a way that at least will keep us going, that at least will keep us on a more positive track. I think it's just a matter of bringing out those values and framing them in such a way that they enable us to make more intelligent political decisions.

Hope in the dark

I4

There's always going to be that kernel of good possibilities and I think it's going to be a lot harder for rich people to keep in this bubble that we're in right now which is not having to realize the incredible poverty and the incredible suffering going on in the rest of the world. Especially as climate change refugees start to come to North America. And as stuff in North America starts to get flooded and in Europe, so that part to me is hopeful. Unfortunately it's going to come with a lot of shit and we're probably going to end up killing a lot of people and I also think that neoliberalism cannot exist in that future, in that vision of the future, because something as powerful as the state might not be able to exist except through a huge amount of coercion or totalitarianism.

Building a new world

I30

All the things that are happening, the crisis in the earth, the political crisis, the monetary crisis, all those things can make people retrench. So the foundation that needs to be laid, we have to do it right now in the struggle to say ‘no!’ and send a clear message about where we should go. So where we should go [is to build] the Pachamama Alliance, which is the Indigenous People and non-indigenous of north and south com[ing] together...to build a world that is socially just, spiritually fulfilling, and environmentally sustainable.

Winning

I1

At a base level, winning would mean workers control the means of production and community control of resources around us. I think it would be breaking down and getting rid of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other issues. Winning would mean ensuring that there's no one who's living in poverty at all. Winning would mean that kids have opportunities, that beginning at an early age whether it's early childhood education or making sure they've got food. Winning would mean a sense of communities being able to come together and make decisions that are relevant to their lives and have those decision-making processes matter in a way that they don't today. Winning would mean an entire transformation of society.

Possibilities today

I13

...what is possible today? What would it look like if the people won? On the one hand, I believe that Lenin was right, a revolution can't be sustained without a very highly organized and disciplined central group. This is the big dilemma. On the other hand, a highly trained and disciplined central group tends to want to perpetuate itself and you can't have one and you can't have the other.

Dark futures

I8

I might not live to see it, it might be a hundred years after I die, but [the] fall of democracy, [the] fall of the monetary system, I see that accelerating. I actually can almost see it before I die. Just the way capitalism is like a cancer, they both want the same thing, constant growth, and just like cancer it's starting to chew on itself, and it's starting to get out of the control of the masters, and cracks are starting to show in its facade, and it's evil, and I just feel that blackness getting thicker, [like] fog.

Organizing and alternatives

I24

If the goal is equality, for example, then you have to organize society in such a way that you're going to get that equality and you have to organize the economy in such a way that gives you that equality. That means that the very ethos of this economy has to be overcome, has to be destroyed because as long as the economy is running on the basis of profit, and accumulation of wealth, and growth we can never achieve equality because it's the antithesis of the system. On a political level we have to have a decentralization of power. I don't agree that we can achieve it through...spontaneous uprisings all over the place, I don't think that's going to get us anywhere. We need to see centralized organizations as facilitating the grassroots movements rather than dominating the grassroots movements.

Accelerating the collapse

I2

I think that the whole concept of shit hitting the fan is a weird way to refer to a collapse that's already in progress and that's depressing. I feel like there's going to be an acceleration that could be really fast.