Avi Lewis should replace NDP national director Lucy Watson with a Palestinian Canadian. A month since NDP members voted for change it is troubling that the person most associated with the discredited, racist, Liberal-lite manner of ‘doing politics’ has yet to be removed.
On Wednesday the Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed campaign hosted a webinar titled “1 month of Avi Lewis Leader of NDP & Lucy Watson lingers.” Nathan Colquhoun put together some snazzy images for a presentation on Watson. Colquhounnoted that Watson blocked my candidacy for NDP leader and expelled me from the party as well as blocking Bianca Mugyenyi from running and Barry Weisleder from the party convention in Winnipeg. Watson instructed the federal council to mislead members about my removal, claimed those opposing the suppression were “mostly non-members” and framed a polite democratic appeal as “subverting our rules”.
My and Weisleder’s suppression was explicitly related to Palestine.
The morning after Wednesday’s webinar I saw a post bolstering the case for removing Watson over the party’s anti-Palestinianism associated with her. Maisonneuve magazine recently reported on a “letter addressed to the federal NDP caucus in March 2025 signed by twenty organizations, accusing the NDP candidate vetting committee of conducting anti-Palestinian racism by denying the candidature of three prominent members of the Arab Canadian community. ‘Their approval for running for the party has been unjustifiably denied on grounds, stands and positions typically taken by other party representatives; the main contentious issue raised against their NDP candidature is that a few pro-Israel advocacy groups such as CIJA, B’nai Brith Canada, or Simon Wiesenthal Centre have or would raise objections about them or took issues with some of their social media posts. These are intellectuals who have voiced their opinions about the Middle East conflict based on expert opinion,’ the letter states. ‘In fact, we sense a gatekeeping approach that is at best racist given that similar positions and issues with non-Arab candidates have been allowed to go through a democratic diversity of opinion.”
Even as the party was distancing itself from its overtly anti-Palestinian history the backroom brass was continuing to enable genocide and apartheid.
Lewis won a large mandate saying he’d seek to turn the NDP into a bottom up, pro-Palestinian, activist oriented party. His people also swept all the NDP’s main elected positions on a change platform (the national director is the top non-elected position).
It’s a bad sign Watson remains national director thirty-five days into Lewis’ mandate. Quietly reshuffling her out of the position for someone who simply follows Lewis’ commands isn’t what thousands of leftists took out memberships for.
Lewis should replace Watson with someone who represents a symbolic break from the party’s anti-Palestinian and leftist repression. Ideally it would be a Palestinian Canadian or someone NDP ‘vetters’ blocked for defending Palestinians.
A great candidate to demonstrate contrition would be Palestine House’s Hammam Farah, who recently posted a heartbreaking video about a new memorial fund devoted to his grandma killed in Gaza. Another potential candidate is Beisan Zubi, who ran for the NDP in Kitchener five years ago. If Farrah, Zubi or another Palestinian Canadian isn’t available or interested, Watson should be replaced with someone excluded by the party for standing up for Palestinian rights. Former NDP candidate, Rana Zaman, comes to mind, but there are (unfortunately) many others who’ve been excluded who could be selected.
Avi Lewis must remove Lucy Watson if he wants people to believe he is committed to a fresh, anti-racist, more democratic approach to left wing politics. The longer she remains in her position the more members will conclude backroom fixers and bureaucrats hostile to Palestinian rights continue to run the party.
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