Amidst the smears, my insurgent left NDP leadership campaign continues to rack up wins. Our positions are shaping a race that many have sought to exclude us from.
Yesterday Heather McPherson sent a message to the NDP list describing “my plan to call a national emergency on housing — to marshal resources, build more co-op and below-market homes, ban corporate profiteering in housing, and protect tenants’ rights.”
McPherson is echoing our call to “declare a national housing emergency”. As part of addressing the housing crisis, we’ve laid out a detailed plan that includes building 100,000+ social housing units per year and employing the emergency powers act to convert 200,000+ Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) properties into housing cooperatives.
In a similar fashion, Heather released a statement at the end of August echoing our call to investigate Canadians who’ve been fighting in Gaza. On Palestine our recent statement and email campaign calling on the NDP to boycott the racist Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs prompted leadership candidate Tony McQuail to put out a statement headlined “Boycott CIJA: No support for genocide in NDP”. Another leadership candidate, Tanille Johnston, also released a statement “calling for an immediate boycott of CIJA”. For his part, Avi Lewis replied to the email campaign by highlighting his Palestine history and by backing the conclusion of a Jewish Faculty Network report he co-authored finding that CIJA promotes genocide (he doesn’t use the word “boycott” though).
Since his campaign launch video failed to mention the leading moral question of the day, Avi has become more aggressive in condemning the lawless genocidal Jewish supremacist state. It’s partly a response to my supporters criticizing his failure to mention Gaza in the slickly produced video.
Our comprehensive, democratically drafted, platform “Capitalism can’t be fixed — onwards to a socialist future” has laid down a marker in the race. It is putting pressure on the other campaigns to offer policy details and to criticize capitalism. Over the past four months of campaigning, we’ve likely questioned our ecocidal, wealth-concentrating, economic system more than all branches of the NDP over the past few years.
I’d be happy to “lose” the race by having the other leadership candidates take up our policy proposals. (With the attacks against me and evidence mounting the NDP brass were angling to block me, I inquired three weeks ago about the legality of turning over the campaign’s funds, infrastructure and platform to someone better placed to bypass NDP vetting but Elections Canada finance rules prohibit it.)
From the standpoint of the left, the NDP leadership race is principally an opportunity to push the so called “overton window” in the direction of social and economic justice. To expand the parameters of what is politically acceptable in mainstream politics.
That’s one of reason why leftists attacking my campaign for failing to submit to the party vetting process long before it is required is baffling. This position effectively sabotages what the left should be seeking from the NDP race above all else, namely dragging the conversation leftward.
Even as the party brass and many others seek to box us out of the race, we are directly shaping the discussion. Imagine the impact we could have if the party brass allowed us to message all NDP members and participate in the various forums.
As part of my bid to lead the NDP I’ll be doing a 10-city eastern Canada tour beginning Tuesday in Halifax. Details here.
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