The necessity of decolonization

I28

...I think Canada is a colonial state and the question is to what extent will First Nations ever have self-determination as long as Canada is a settler state? I guess never maybe….So does that mean I overthrow Canada?...I think we need to decolonize, I think we need to think through how we're colonizing by being here and...actively confronting that...in the same way when you’re part of a system of oppression. For example, gentrification, if you live in a low income neighbourhood because that's the only place you can afford but you recognize the fact that you’re also forcing people out who are on a...lower income, a different bracket of class...or of color, how do you oppose it? I don't know, burn down the condo?

Property destruction and repression

I18

I love the black bloc going out and smashing corporate windows. I think that corporations perpetrate violence...as part of doing business and I think...it's totally justifiable to go and destroy their property, to act violently towards their property as a way of...shaking them up and [provoking] fear in them. But what does that do? It justifies the security state and it allows them to be even more dominant and predatory.

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.

Building solidarity, not conflict

I3

I do believe that non-violent action is more effective as a strategy because the object is to build solidarity rather than conflict and I feel that that is ultimately what we're fighting for. Certainly I feel that non-violent action is more effective just by the very nature of what it is. It's less alienating to people who are largely ignorant of the issues that are being confronted. That it's less intimidating and therefore approachable and it's easier to communicate with people through it.

Managing disagreement effectively

I18

Thoughtless action is obviously going to lead to unintended consequences and it's going to be less effective than if you are measured and considered and reasonable and have a plan and account for contingencies....I think it's really important but at the same time I think that the left does suffer from too much...crippling talk. There should be more mechanisms in left wing groups if there is a major point of disagreement to compartmentalize that disagreement, and not to ignore it, but to defer it...until we're effective with all the stuff we agree with.

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.

Sectarianism, violence, and authority

I24

When I was involved in the sectarian left in the sixties and seventies the vision then was that we were going to take over control of the state and run society…[in order to] creat[e] equality and all of that sort of thing. There was never any clear understanding of how that was going to happen and the propaganda among those sectarian groups of one kind or another was always that in the Soviet Union everybody's got a place to live, and everybody's got a job, and they’ve got health care, and nobody ever looked at the fact that people were being shot everyday for virtually nothing. I think that most of these sectarian groups were characterized by the Stalin-type leader who was the ultimate authority.

Practicing solidarity

I1

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was a debate around mass organizing versus propaganda of the deed and that was the way it was framed….I recall those debates throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and I recall really sharply [that] the spokescouncil meetings leading up to the WTO in Seattle gathered different communities from the Pacific North-West, from Washington state, or Oregon, or BC and [they advanced] very different approaches. By that time, we had developed a fair amount of respect for each other...[and] many of those debates were had in pretty fraternal ways and played out better than maybe they have most recently.

Winning is a collective process

I27

Winning is the ability to develop a collective process in which we're destroying the things that are unjust in this world. I have my particular perspectives of what that world should look like but my overall perspective is that that perspective should change as that's happening, especially since it's a collective process….I can't [inscribe] an individual viewpoint onto a collective future, it should be a collective viewpoint onto a collective future. I think then that what a post-capitalist society would look like [is] hard to exactly imagine...because it would still be a place of constant struggle. There's no ideal way of being.

Beginning with the basics

I11

I like Food not Bombs because I think that having food and...sharing food is... one of the most...basic things. If we can do that then we can do everything else...or we can work towards doing everything else for ourselves too.