Avi Lewis’s team is claiming credit for a mobilization it did not organize while close allies attack the activists who initiated it. But his team should get its story straight about the Confront Carney’s CEO Summit protest and think carefully about whether hostility toward independent, non-sectarian anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist organizing serves its broader aims.
On Friday, Max Blair sent an email to the Lewis for Leader list seeking donations and citing the highly successful Confront Carney’s CEO Summit march, which was initiated and mainly organized by Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed (CCBF). It noted:
“On Monday of this week, Carney convened his auction house of international billionaires and hedge fund managers and Canadians took to the streets. CBC reports that over 1,000 people joined that protest, including Indigenous leaders, labour unions, climate and housing advocates, and everyday people like you and me who don’t want to see more corporate power over our lives.
Even more interesting, many of the speakers gathered under the banner of ‘The Many vs. The Money.’ Sound familiar? The grassroots organizing model that Avi ran on is already starting to bear fruit and bring the NDP together with the broader progressive movement in Canada.
Avi and the team have been hard at work making this happen and proposing a better way forward where the government governs for the many, not the money.”
The protest was initiated by CCBF, the organization that grew out of the platform crafted by 45 activists and researchers during my NDP leadership campaign, Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed: Onwards to a Socialist Future. At CCBF’s May 24 founding convention in Toronto, I proposed organizing a Carnival Against Capitalism in response to Carney’s CEO Summit. In July, CCBF released a public letter signed by David Suzuki, Yann Martel, Roger Waters, Ellen Gabriel and roughly 1,000 other authors, artists, academics and activists calling to “Confront Carney’s CEO Summit.” In the months that followed, CCBF wrote articles, organized webinars, memes and videos about the summit and distributed 12,000 “Confront Carney’s CEO Summit” stickers and 2,500 posters across Toronto. A committed on-the-ground organizing crew in Toronto put enormous energy into the mobilization, distributing thousands of leaflets and blanketing the city with promotional materials, while Jasmine Peardon and Bianca Mugyenyi coordinated much of the broader mobilization from Montreal.
As the Confront Carney’s CEO Summit mobilization gathered momentum, the Many vs. the Money coalition, which initially focused on organizing a counter-summit, became involved in the protest mobilization. Convened by the Council of Canadians, World Beyond War and 8th Fire Rising, Many vs. the Money broadened the coalition in the final weeks, contributed logistics and helped boost attention, including through a press conference on the morning of the demonstration.
While many individuals in the Many vs. the Money coalition are close to the NDP leader, neither Lewis nor, to my knowledge, any NDP MP attended the demonstration. This was notable because the NDP caucus had been meeting in Toronto earlier that week. An NDP riding association in Peterborough did organize a bus from that city to the march, but to the best of my knowledge there was little other visible party presence at the protest.
It’s common for politicians to take credit for successful protests and movements they don’t build. The wild contradiction here is that the Lewis campaign is invoking the success of the Confront Carney’s CEO Summit mobilization while prominent Lewis allies simultaneously belittle, disparage and undermine some of the activists who initiated and built it.
In a Breach interview about the CEO summit, Lewis adviser Martin Lukacs (whose partner is the NDP leader’s director of communications) disparaged CCBF for its role in initiating the demonstration. The Breach managing editor stated:
“In the aftermath of the rally, I was hearing a lot of confusion about who are the organizers of the of the demo, who were the organizers of the counter summit…. A lot of people felt that with Carney mania being what it is, as well as Toronto organizers already being all out in September for two other big mobilizations, one of which is for Migrant Justice and the other is for Grassy Narrows, that the emphasis should probably be put on organizing a really successful 2 days of teachings and music.
And there was another smaller group called Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed, which didn’t participate in, you know, the broad coalition organizing, but decided to go ahead and call for a rally on the Monday, the evening of the start of the of the Carney Summit.
And my sense is that many people from the many versus the money coalition got concerned that, you know, the showing wouldn’t be strong enough.
And so they ended up supporting it and they made it a joint mobilization and brought in a lot of the relationships with frontline indigenous organizers for the joint rally. It’s unfortunate that the, you know, Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed has been taking credit for the Monday.”
Despite his criticism of CCBF, Lukacs confirms that Many vs. the Money concentrated on the counter-summit, which generated relatively little media attention, while CCBF focused on organizing a mass protest. The 2,000-person march ultimately became the main expression of opposition to the capitalist gathering.
As part of building momentum for the protest, four days before the march I published my tenth article opposing the CEO summit. As with previous articles, I accompanied it with CCBF’s latest promotional image for the march, which featured Secwépemc and Ktunaxa land defender Kanahus Manuel. In response, NDP MP Leah Gazan, who was probably still at the NDP caucus retreat in Toronto, attacked me vociferously.
On my Facebook page, the only MP who backed Lewis during the NDP leadership race wrote, “If you are gonna use our voices and our bodies as indigenous women, please don’t take up our space. She is an icon in her own right for the risk she has taken for our Freedom and rights. I stand with her and all matriarchs. We are the leaders who have sacrificed a lot. Please don’t take up our space.”
Gazan’s criticism made no sense. I had shared an official rally image accompanying an article criticizing the CEO summit, and the image itself promoted Manuel’s participation in the demonstration. Manuel had also previously shared the image and Peace Brigades International had published an article using it while noting that she would be speaking at the rally.
When I responded, “What are you talking about?”, Gazan, an MP who I’ve never spoken to or interacted with, posted a half dozen abusive statements labeling me a “professional mansplainer … icon of the oppressive class … using the stories of oppressed people with lived experience to build your own career… you continually degrade oppressed people…. save your white mansplaining for somebody else… don’t use our brown bodies for your political agenda…. mansplainer profiting off our suffering as indigenous people globally.”
Gazan also brought my wife into the exchange, writing, “and please don’t bring up your amazing partner who you are clearly luckier than shit to have. She is so amazing and is a freaking rainbow over your white male privilege.”
While Gazan spent her evening criticizing me on Facebook, she took her time addressing issues directly within her responsibilities as NDP critic for Indigenous Affairs and the Environment. In the article that elicited her attack, I criticized Carney’s announcement the previous day that many of the country’s most polluting fossil fuel projects will no longer be reviewed under the Impact Assessment Act. It took Gazan five days to release a statement challenging Carney’s odious move, and I could find no public statement from her about Carney’s CEO Summit.
This episode reflects hostility from the Lewis leadership towards independent anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist organizing. The attacks predate the CEO summit mobilization. Lewis defended the decision to exclude my insurgent campaign from the NDP leadership race while Lukacs described the campaign as “grifting” and questioned its finances. (In fact, CCBF’s ability to invest substantially in stickers, posters and other organizing materials before it was clear the mobilization would take off was possible precisely because we had been prudent with the donations we received.)
Lewis has made building an activist base an explicit part of his political strategy, even using it to justify not seeking a seat in the House of Commons. While this is a sensible Left electoral strategy, seeking hegemony over the non-sectarian left is dangerous for movements. Independent organizations shouldn’t subordinate themselves to a party leadership or their political project.
It is also strategically counterproductive and myopic thinking. Rather than focusing on isolating activists unwilling to subordinate their work to his aims, Lewis’ path towards a large NDP caucus/Prime Minister would benefit from a bolstered anti-capitalist left. It could broaden political debate, generate pressure around issues the party itself champions and allow Lewis to appear moderate. “Socialist” parties traditionally win when there’s a substantial anti-capitalist left.
The Confront Carney’s CEO Summit mobilization and Carnival Against Capitalism was a genuine collective success, and everyone who participated deserves recognition. But collective ownership should not mean erasing how the mobilization began or who built it — nor should political cooperation require independent organizations to surrender their histories, identities or autonomy.
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