Building a new labour movement

Last night I spoke at a fundraising event for the legendary Highlander Center that was part of a three day gathering of labour and community activists organized by the Labour Education Centre.  It was an amazing event.  Incredible diversity, majority people of colour, lots of poor people, many young people.  It was politically diverse from people who have just gotten active to veteran activists, from service workers to anti-capitalist activists, from union, community, and even academia.  And on top of that it was a US/Canada collaboration beginning an 8 month project to build connections between labour and community in Toronto.

It was the first time in a long time that I felt a real movement emerging.  Community-labour coalitions are nothing new in Canada.  Starting with the alliance between women in and outside of the labour movement in the pro-choice and daycare struggles of the 70's and the 80's, labour built a powerful and transformative alliance with the women's movement, unique in the world.  That carried through to the free trade fights and the Action Canada Network that a broad allaince of church, environmental, women's and labour groups.  In Ontario the labour-community coalitions built for the Days of Action were broad and democratic although short lived.   But these were mostly white and mostly working and middle class.  Few poor people and immigrants were involved.  They also tended to be much more coalitions among organizations, a little or a lot top down.

The Connecting Struggles event seemed much more grass roots and it had an approach very similar to the US Social Forum, which I wrote about in July 2007 and which I feature in Transforming Power.  Jojo Gernonimo who was the major organizer worked in the US for a few years and learned from the extraordinary grass roots organizing among poor and working class people there.  He convinced two unions, CUPW and OPSEU to fund people from community groups so that the gathering would not be staff dominated.  Unions often pay for workers to leave work and attend such gatherings but community groups rarely can so this was a breakthrough and the results were impressive.

Last month I blogged about the cross- GTA steward's meeting that attracted almost twice as many activists as expected.  And on Saturday the Labour Council is sponsoring a rally where thousands of trade unionists, jobless workers and community activists will take to the streets. The four key demands are: Fix EI, protect pensions, strong public services, and out people before banks.  Starting with a rally at Metro Hall park [King St. Between University and John] the march will go to Bay Street bank towers and culminate at the Delta Chelsea on Gerrard near Yonge

Unfortunately I will be in Ottawa but I strongly urge everyone in Toronto to attend the rally and become part of this new movement that is growing from the grass roots of the global city