Congratulations to Avi Lewis on his victory in the NDP leadership race. After a brief moment of celebration his leftist backers should start ensuring he upends the party bureaucracy while promoting socialist, internationalist and anti-ecocide policies.
Sunday Lewis won the NDP leadership on the first ballot. He garnered 56 percent of the vote in the first round. His closest challenger, Heather McPherson, received half the number of votes while Tanille Johnston, Rob Ashton and Tony McQuail were far behind (if allowed to participate I likely would have surpassed Johnston’s third place tally of 5,159 votes)
Congratulations are due to Lewis on his victory and those who worked on his campaign deserve praise for their hard work over the past six months. Lewis ran an effective and dynamic campaign that clearly inspired many on the left.
The Lewis campaign also won the three main executive positions on the NDP federal council. Niall Ricardo, Libby Davies and Kiera Gunn defeated the party brass’ slate, which is a rare occurrence at NDP conventions.
With his supporters now in charge of the key positions in the party, Lewis has substantial internal latitude to reshape the NDP structure and promote his left social democratic agenda.
But will he?
Only if the leftists who volunteered on Avi’s campaign press him.
Renewal, Courage and others seeking to reform the NDP should immediately launch petitions demanding Lewis and his slate move to fulfill their pledge to democratize the party. The new federal council should be pressed to review the undemocratic vetting process and how to channel power downwards to electoral district associations. There should be a leader/party president tour with the explicit aim of rejuvenating/building as many riding associations as possible into hubs of local activism. National Director Lucy Watson must be removed and others in the bureaucracy pressed to leave. Lewis and his executive slate have the mandate to make these changes and should begin the process today.
Concurrently, activists should press Lewis to double down on his leftist campaign rhetoric about setting up public firms and building large amounts of public housing. Lewis should be pushed to demand Mark Carney take the resources for it by reversing the military buildup.
Left activists who helped Lewis prevail shouldn’t just defend him from the capitalist press and ecocidal provincial NDP leaders. They should pressure him. While some label Lewis a “divisive” radical whose policies would be impossible to enact, he’s more of a left social democrat with some internationalist and ecological consciousness. Yes, Lewis is a vast improvement on Jagmeet Singh or Heather McPherson, but he’s not advocating to abolish billionaires, let alone expropriate capitalists’ socially derived wealth. Nor is he calling to shut down the tar sands, which is a minimum for ecological sanity. He has also refused to raise Canada leaving NATO, which is required to be pro-peace.
Leftists who participated in his campaign should say Lewis’ policy proscriptions are the bare minimum. Instead of erroneously lionizing him as “anti-imperialist” or “anti-capitalist” as some prominent left supporters have done since his victory, they should hold his feet to the fire. Lewis is already coming under immense pressure from the right so he needs to be pushed from the left. We should be arguing that the ‘practical’ solution to tens of thousands sleeping on the streets while billionaires horde substantial wealth is to challenge corporate landlords while building massive amounts of social housing. We should be arguing that the principal security threat that requires attention is the climate crisis and lack of drinking water on reserves not Russia or China.
If the Lewis leadership is to be successful it will be because it broadens the parameters of the mainstream debate and unleashes activist momentum. Everyone who campaigned for Lewis should celebrate, pat themselves on the back and get to work pressing the new leader to seriously take on our many economic and social crises.
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