Jack Layton 1950-2011

Jack Layton passed away today. He fought the good fight politically as well as against cancer. His final letter to Canadians should inspire us all to continue that fight in these dark days. To send condolences go to http://www.ndp.ca/home

A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton

August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

Consumption Crisis

Remember after 9/11 G W Bush told America that the best thing to do was to go shopping? America listened and now faces the consequences of this disasterous neo-con advice.

Shop for victory. Buy for Bush and Blair. What to get? Big, expensive stuff, clearly, now that Vigilance rather than Prudence stalks the Treasury, and the £2.2 billion contingency reserve has largely gone on fighting foot and mouth and other pre-Taliban adversaries. But conspicuous spending seems obscene when the first flurries of war begin and when Afghan refugees eat grass or weeds.

Through out the eighties and ninties as the neo-con agenda took over governments around the world those proclaiming the new rights agenda continually promoted globalization reminding us that the advanced industrialized capitalist countries were now transfroming from fordist manufacturing economies to service industries. No longer were we to be workers, we were consumers. Others would work for us. With the great crash of 2008 the chickens have come home to roost for that bankrupt ideology.

Furthermore the ideology of the neo-cons was that we should no longer be renters but owners. Thatcher began the transformation in England, with the selling off of row housing to those who rented.

In America the ideology of home ownership began with Clinton and continued under Bush. Congress pushed the idea of homeownership as self reliance and responsibility. It conincided with both Thatchers push and Clintons push to adopt the neo-con agenda of work for welfare. They go hand in hand.

Of course during this past presidential election republicans and right wing commentators focused on this push for homeownership and lowering the mortgage credit limits as being for African Americans. Forgetting that most working poor could not afford thier own homes without a more liberal mortgange scheme.

However all this is moot. The reason for America's economic collapse is twenty years of promoting credit based consumption. Unemployment and corporate restructuring has been continous since the eighties. Offshoring and contracting out, privatization of public services, all the practices of the neo-con agenda have resulted in a growth in credit and consumption and a decline in manufacturing production.

The result was the ultimate in credit crunch economics; the war in Iraq.

The Irrelevance of Protests

As I have said in the past mass demonstrations would not be violent if armed police, riot cops and Swat units were not present. But of course then they would be a carnival that resulted in nothing much than another day out in public solidarity. The FT has a satirical look at the recent protests in the UK against the Cameron Austerity measures and attacks on the public sector unions.

The point is well made, however a real difference is not that violence attracts more attention, as the writer implies, but rather what is a more effective form of resistance to state sanctioned measures we oppose.

Union and Civil Society/NGO endorsed marches, end up being a call to vote out the bastards, which neither challenges the system nor the institutional form of politics.

What does work is mass occupations of the legislature, as occurred in Alberta in the nineties during the attacks on medicare, and the recent occupation of the Wisconsin legislature. But they need then to be followed up with the Mass Strike, of workers and citizens. As we have seen in Egypt.

For it does seem a basic rule of modern British democracy that if you are marching against something you’ve already lost. Parading one’s discontent through London is the political equivalent of a fly bashing its head against a window pane. Of course there’s a terrific sense of community on a march – 250,000 flies with the same headache; it’s hugely empowering. But short of handing out placards with slogans such as “Mildly Miffed” or “I’m so angry I walked peacefully through London”, it is hard to imagine what more the protesters could have done to signal their acceptance of defeat.

It’s irresponsible to admit it, but this kind of peaceful protest is pointless. The system has all the shock absorbers necessary to handle a law-abiding demonstration. The next day ministers were already clear they would ignore the entire event, while insisting that they would be happy to discuss the issues with marchers, though sadly not over tea at Fortnum’s as it seems to be attracting the wrong sort these days.

It’s not that I’m advocating violence and disorder, just dispassionately noting that in Britain it is more effective. What last weekend’s thugs grasped is that ministers can’t ignore anarchists daubing the Cenotaph and bringing a bit of havoc to the capital. Once or twice they might be able to turn on the rioters, but not if it keeps happening. There’s nothing like stoking voters’ fears about the rule of law and the fabric of society to get the government’s attention.

You have to think of this in management terms. On key deliverables peaceful marching just doesn’t cut it. It’s all inputs and no outputs. But violent protest can be measured on key performance indicators. How many shops did you smash up? What percentage were banks? Did you manage to scare the Duchess of Cornwall? I’m sorry Dave; you are below target; do you want to nip over the road and vandalise that RBS?”

Plawiuk for Premier

As I announced on Facebook this morning
Eugene Plawiuk announced today that he is throwing his hat into the ring for leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party...."I am the only progressive in the race" he said, "the rest are Conservatives" His hat did not comment....