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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>How so Wayne ?</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>" </STRONG><FONT face="Times New Roman">an
exploitative Shock Doctrine itself."</FONT><BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>David J.</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ewj@pigsqq.org href="mailto:ewj@pigsqq.org">"E. Wayne Johnson
朱稳森"</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=davegreen84@yahoo.com
href="mailto:davegreen84@yahoo.com">David Green</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A
title=peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net
href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, September 04, 2013 5:49
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Peace-discuss] Why Unions
Need to Join the Climate Fight</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>"Anthropogenic Climate Change" is apparently a Scam, <BR>and an
exploitative Shock Doctrine itself.<BR><BR>Caveat Emptor.<BR><BR>But judicious
use of resources and eliminating waste<BR>is always a good idea.<BR><BR><BR>On
09/05/13 6:40, David Green wrote:
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cite=mid:1378334418.66094.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
type="cite">
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style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255); FONT-FAMILY: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); FONT-SIZE: 10pt">
<DIV><SPAN>Thanks David. Just the kind of thinking I</SPAN>'m trying to
encourage in my campaign.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2 face=Arial><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> David Johnson <A
class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:davidjohnson1451@comcast.net>"><davidjohnson1451@comcast.net></A><BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> <A class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated
href="mailto:Undisclosed-Recipient@yahoo.com">Undisclosed-Recipient@yahoo.com</A>
<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Wednesday,
September 4, 2013 2:40 PM<BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Why Unions Need to Join the
Climate Fight<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=y_msg_container><BR>
<DIV id=yiv1146776036>
<STYLE></STYLE>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV><BR><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">A little long but if you
have the time, well worth the read.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">David J.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">“Our goal is transformative. To
reassert common interest over private interest." <BR><BR>"Our goal is to
change our workplaces and our world. Our vision is compelling."
<BR><BR>"It is to fundamentally change the economy, with equality and
social justice, restore and strengthen our democracy and achieve an
environmentally sustainable future." <BR><BR>" This is the basis of social
unionism </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">( as opposed to corporate
unionism )</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"> – a strong and progressive
union culture and a commitment to work in common cause with other
progressives in Canada and around the world.” <BR><BR>"Brothers and
Sisters, all I would add is: don’t say it if you don’t mean it. "<BR><BR>"
Because we really, really need you to mean it." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></FONT>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV class=yiv1146776036meta><SPAN class=yiv1146776036submitted><B>By
Naomi Klein - September 3rd, 2013</B></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=yiv1146776036content><I>Naomi delivered the following speech on
September 1, 2013 at <A href="http://www.newunionconvention.ca/"
rel=nofollow target=_blank moz-do-not-send="true">the founding convention
of UNIFOR</A>, a new mega union created by the Canadian Autoworkers and
the Canadian Energy and Paper Workers Union.</I> <BR><BR>I’m so very happy
and honoured to be able to share this historic day with you. <BR><BR>The
energy in this room – and the hope the founding of this new union has
inspired across the country – is contagious. <BR><BR>It feels like this
could be the beginning of the fight back we have all been waiting for, the
one that will chase Harper from power and restore the power of working
people in Canada. <BR><BR>So welcome to the world UNIFOR. <BR><BR>A lot of
your media coverage so far has focused on how big UNIFOR is – the biggest
private sector union in Canada. And when you are facing as many attacks as
workers are in this country, being big can be very helpful. But big is not
a victory in itself. <BR><BR>The victory comes when this giant platform
you have just created becomes a place to think big, to dream big, to make
big demands and take big actions. The kind of actions that will shift the
public imagination and change our sense of what is possible. <BR><BR>And
it’s that kind of “big” that I want to talk to you about today.
<BR><BR>Some of you are familiar with a book I wrote called The Shock
Doctrine. It argues that over the past 35 years, corporate interests have
systematically exploited various forms of mass crises – economic shocks,
natural disasters, wars – in order to ram through policies that enrich a
small elite, by shredding regulations, cutting social spending and forcing
large-scale privatizations. <BR><BR>As Jim Stanford and Fred Wilson argue
in their paper laying out UNIFOR’s vision, the attacks working people in
Canada and around the world are facing right now are a classic case of The
Shock Doctrine. <BR><BR>There’s no shortage of examples, from the mass
slashing of salaries and layoffs of public sector workers in Greece, to
the attacks on pension funds in Detroit in the midst of a cooked up
bankruptcy, to the Harper government’s scapegoating of unions for its own
policy failures right here in Canada. <BR><BR>I don’t want to spend my
time with you proving that this ugly tactic of exploiting public fear for
private gain is alive and well. You know it is; you are living it.
<BR><BR>I want to talk about how we fight it. <BR><BR>And I’ll be honest
with you: when I wrote the book, I thought that just understanding how the
tactic worked, and mobilizing to resist it, would be enough to stop it. We
even had a slogan: “Information is shock resistance. Arm yourself.”
<BR><BR>But I have to admit something to you: I was wrong. Just knowing
what is happening – just rejecting their story, saying to the politicians
and bankers: “No, you created this crisis, not us” or “No, we’re not
broke, it’s just that you are hording all the money” may be true but it’s
not enough. <BR><BR>It’s not even enough when you can mobilize millions of
people in the streets to shout “We won’t pay for your crisis.” Because
let’s face it – we’ve seen massive mobilizations against austerity in
Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Britain. We’ve occupied Wall Street and Bay
Street and countless other streets. And yet the attacks keep coming.
<BR><BR>Some of the new movements that have emerged in recent years have
staying power, but too many of them arrive, raise huge hopes, and then
seem to disappear or fizzle out. <BR><BR>The reason is simple. We are
trying to organize in the rubble of a 30 year war that has been waged on
the collective sphere and workers rights. The young people in the streets
are the children of that war. <BR><BR>And the war has been so complete, so
successful, that too often these social movements don’t have anywhere to
stand. They have to occupy a park or a square to have a meeting. Or they
are able to build a power base in their schools, but that base is
transient by its nature, they are out in a few years. <BR><BR>This
transience makes these movements far too easy to evict simply by waiting
them out, or by applying brute state force, which is what has happened in
far too many cases. <BR><BR>And this is one of the many reasons why the
creation of UNIFOR, and your promise of reviving Social Unionism –
building not just a big union but a vast and muscular network of social
movements – has raised so much hope. <BR><BR>Because our movements need
each other. <BR><BR>The new social movements bring a lot to the table –
the ability to mobilize huge numbers of people, real diversity, a
willingness to take big risks, as well as new methods of organizing
including a commitment to deep democracy. <BR><BR>But these movements also
need you – they need your institutional strength, your radical history,
and perhaps most of all, your ability to act as an anchor so that we don’t
keep rising up and floating away. <BR><BR>We need you to be our fixed
address, our base, so that next time we are impossible to evict.
<BR><BR>And we also need your organizing skills. We need to figure out
together how to build sturdy new collective structures in the rubble of
neoliberalism. Your innovative idea of community chapters is a terrific
start. <BR><BR>It’s also important to remember that you are not starting
from scratch. A remarkable group of people gathered a little less than a
year ago for the Port Elgin Assembly and produced what they called the
Making Waves agenda. <BR><BR>The most important message to come out of
that process is that our coalitions cannot just be about top-down
agreements between leaders; the change has to come from the bottom up,
with full engagement from members. <BR><BR>And that means investing in
education. Education about the ideological and structural reasons why we
have ended up where we are. If we are going to build a new world, our
foundation must be solid. <BR><BR>It also means getting out there and
talking to people face to face. Not just the public, not just the media,
but re-invigorating your own members with the analysis we share.
<BR><BR>But there’s something else too. Another reason why we can’t seem
to win big victories against the Shock Doctrine. <BR><BR>Even when there
is mass resistance to an austerity agenda, and even when we understand how
we got here, something is stopping us – collectively – from fully
rejecting the neoliberal agenda. <BR><BR>And I think what it is is that we
don’t fully believe that it’s possible to build something in its place.
For my generation, and younger, deregulation, privatization and cutbacks
is all we’ve ever known. <BR><BR>We have little experience building or
dreaming. Only defending. And this is what I’ve come to understand as the
key to fighting the Shock Doctrine. <BR><BR>We can’t just reject the
dominant story about how the world works. We need our own story about what
it could be. <BR><BR>We can’t just reject their lies. We need truths so
powerful that their lies dissolve on contact with them. We can’t just
reject their project. We need our own project. <BR><BR>Now, we know
Stephen Harper’s project – he has only one idea for how to build our
economy. <BR><BR><B>HARPER’S ONE IDEA</B> <BR><BR>Dig lots of holes, lay
lots of pipe. Stick the stuff from the pipes onto ships – or trucks, or
railway cars – and take it to places where it will be refined and burned.
Repeat, but more and faster. Before anyone figures out that this is his
one idea, and what has allowed him to maintain the illusion that he is
some kind of responsible economic manager, while the rest of the economy
falls apart. <BR><BR>It’s why it’s so important to this government to
accelerate oil and gas production at an outrageous pace, and why it has
declared war on everyone standing in the way, whether environmentalists or
First Nations or other communities. <BR><BR>It’s also why the Harper
government is willing to sacrifice the manufacturing base of this country,
waging war on workers, attacking your most basic collective rights.
<BR><BR>This is not just about extracting specific resources – Harper
represents an extreme version of a particular worldview. One that I
sometimes call “extractivism”. And others times simply call capitalism.
<BR><BR><B>EXTRACTIVISM</B> <BR><BR>It’s an approach to the world based on
taking and taking without giving back. Taking as if there are no limits to
what can be taken – no limits to what workers’ bodies can take, no limits
to what a functioning society can take, no limits to what the planet can
take. <BR><BR>In the extractivist mindset, labour is a commodity just like
the bitumen. And maximum value must be extracted from that resource – ie
you and your members – regardless of the collateral damage. To health,
families, social fabric, human rights. <BR><BR>When crisis hits, there is
only ever one solution: take some more, faster. On all fronts. <BR><BR>So
that is their story – the one we’re trapped in. The one they use as a
weapon against all of us. <BR><BR>And if we are going to defeat it, we
need our own story. <BR><BR><B>CLIMATE CHANGE – DON’T LOOK AWAY</B>
<BR><BR>So I want to offer you what I believe to be the most powerful
counter-narrative to that brutal logic that we have ever had. <BR><BR>Here
it is: our current economic model is not only waging war on workers, on
communities, on public services and social safety nets. It’s waging war on
the life support systems of the planet itself. The conditions for life on
earth. <BR><BR>Climate change. It’s not an “issue” for you to add to the
list of things to worry about it. It is a civilizational wake up call. A
powerful message – spoken in the language of fires, floods, storms and
droughts – telling us that we need an entirely new economic model, one
based on justice and sustainability. <BR><BR>It’s telling us that when you
take you must also give, that there are limits past which we cannot push,
that our future health lies not in digging ever deeper holes but in
digging deeper inside ourselves – to understand how ALL our fates are
interconnected. <BR><BR>Oh, and one last thing. We need to make this
transition, like, yesterday. Because our emissions are going in exactly
the wrong direction and there’s very little time left. <BR><BR>Now I know
talking about climate change can be a little uncomfortable for those of
you working in the extractive industries, or in manufacturing sectors
producing carbon-intensive products like cars and planes. <BR><BR>I also
know that despite your personal fears, you haven’t joined the deniers like
some of your counterparts in the U.S. – both of your former unions have
all kinds of great climate policies on the books. <BR><BR>And this isn’t
some recent conversion either: the CEP courageously fought for Kyoto all
the way back in the 90s. The CAW has been fighting against the
environmental destruction of free trade deals even longer. [Former CEP
President] Dave Coles even got arrested protesting the Keystone XL
pipeline. That was heroic. <BR><BR>But...how to say this politely?...I
think it’s fair to say that climate change hasn’t traditionally been your
members greatest passion. <BR><BR>And I can relate: I’m not an
environmentalist. I’ve spent my adult life fighting for economic justice,
inside our country and between countries. I opposed the WTO not because of
its effects on dolphins but because of its effects on people, and on our
democracy. <BR><BR>The case I want to make to you is that climate change –
when its full economic and moral implications are understood – is the most
powerful weapon progressives have ever had in the fight for equality and
social justice. <BR><BR>But first, we have to stop running away from the
climate crisis, stop leaving it to the environmentalist, and look at it.
Let ourselves absorb the fact that the industrial revolution that led to
our society’s prosperity is now destabilizing the natural systems on which
all of life depends. <BR><BR>I’m not going to bore you with a whole bunch
of numbers. Though I could remind you that the World Bank says we’re on
track for a four degrees warmer world. That the International Energy
Agency – not exactly a protest camp of green radicals – says the Bank is
being too optimistic and we’re actually in for 6 degrees of warming this
century, with “catastrophic implications for all of us”. That’s an
understatement: we haven’t even reached a full degree of warming yet and
look at what is already happening. <BR><BR><B>CLIMATE CHANGE – IS
HAPPENING NOW</B> <BR><BR>97% of the Greenland ice-sheet's surface was
melting last summer – as Bill McKibben says, we’ve taken one of the great
features of the planet and broken it. <BR><BR>And then there are the
extreme weather events. Hell, I was in Fort McMurray this summer and the
contents of the town’s museum – literally, its history – was floating
around in the water. <BR><BR>I was trying to get interviews with the big
oil companies but their headquarters in Calgary were all empty as the
downtown was dark and the city was frantically bailing out from the worst
flood it has ever seen. <BR><BR>And not even the provincial NDP had the
courage to say: this is what climate change looks like and we are going to
have a lot more of it if those oil companies get their way. <BR><BR>We
know that this climate emergency is only getting more dire. And our
excuses about why we can’t do anything about it – why it’s somebody else’s
issue – are melting away. <BR><BR>But engaging on climate does not mean
dropping everything else you are doing and turning into a raving
environmentalist. <BR><BR>Because I know that the fights you are already
waging against austerity, against new free trade deals, against attacks on
unions have never been more important. <BR><BR>Which is why I’m not
calling you to drop anything. <BR><BR><B>CLIMATE CHANGE – IS AT THE HEART
OF ALL OUR EXISTING DEMANDS</B> <BR><BR>My argument is that the climate
threat makes the need to fight austerity all the more pressing, since we
need public services and public infrastructure to both bring down our
emissions and prepare for the coming storms. <BR><BR>Far from trumping
other issues, climate change vindicates much of what the left has been
demanding for decades. <BR><BR>In fact, climate change turbo-charges our
existing demands and gives them a basis in hard science. It calls on us to
be bold, to get ambitious, to win this time because we really cannot
afford any more losses. It enflames our vision of a better world with
existential urgency. <BR><BR>What I’m going to show you is that
confronting the climate crisis requires that we break every rule in the
free-market playbook – and that we do so with great urgency.
<BR><BR><B>CLIMATE ACTION = THE LEFT AGENDA</B> <BR><BR>So I’m going to
quickly lay out what I believe a genuine climate action plan would look
like. And it’s not the market-driven non-sense we hear from some of the
big green groups in the U.S. – changing your light bulbs, or carbon
trading and offsetting. This is the real deal, getting at the heart of why
our emissions are soaring. <BR><BR>And you will notice that a lot this
will sound familiar. That’s because much of this agenda is already
embraced in the vision of your new union, not to mention everything you
have been fighting for in the past. <BR><BR>First of all, we need to
revive and reinvent the public sphere. If we want to lower our emissions,
we need subways, streetcars and clean-rail systems that are not only
everywhere but affordable to everyone. <BR><BR>We need energy-efficient
affordable housing along those transit lines. We need smart electrical
grids carrying renewable energy. We need garbage collection that has, as
its goal, the elimination of garbage. <BR><BR>And we don’t just need new
infrastructure. We need major investments in the old infrastructure to
cope with the coming storms. For decades we have fought against the steady
starving of the public sphere. <BR><BR>Again and again we’ve seen how
those decades of cuts have left us more vulnerable to climate disasters:
superstorms bursting through decaying levees, heavy rain washing sewage
into lakes, wildfires raging as fire crews are underpaid and understaffed.
Bridges and tunnels buckling under the new reality of heavy weather.
<BR><BR>Far from taking us away from the fight for a robust public sphere,
climate change puts us right in the middle of it – but this time armed
with arguments that raise the stakes significantly. It is not hyperbole to
say that our future depends on our ability to do what we have so long been
told we can no longer do: act collectively. And who better than unions to
carry that message? <BR><BR>The renewal of the public sphere will create
millions of new, high paying union jobs – jobs in fields that don’t hasten
the warming of the planet. <BR><BR>But it’s not just boilermakers,
pipefitters, construction workers and assembly line workers who get new
jobs and purpose in this great transition. <BR><BR>There are big parts of
our economy that are already low-carbon. <BR><BR>They’re the parts facing
the most disrespect, demeaning attacks and cuts. They happen to be jobs
dominated by women, new Canadians, and people of colour. <BR><BR>And
they’re also the sectors we need to expand massively: the care-givers,
educators, sanitation workers, and other service sector workers. The very
ones that your new union has pledged to organize. The low-carbon workers
who are already here, demanding living wages and respect. Turning
low-paying low-carbon jobs into higher-paying jobs is itself a climate
solution and should be recognized as such. <BR><BR>Here I think we should
take inspiration from the fast-food workers in the United States and their
historic strikes this past week. They are showing how this organizing can
be done. Maybe it will turn out to be the first uprising in a sustained
rebellion fighting for both real wages and real food! One in which the
health of the workers and the health of society are inextricably linked.
<BR><BR>It should be clear by now that I am not suggesting some half-assed
token “green jobs” program. This is a green labour revolution I’m talking
about. An epic vision of healing our country from the ravages of the last
30 years of neoliberalism and healing the planet in the process.
<BR><BR>Environmentalists can’t lead that kind of revolution on their own.
No political party is rising to the challenge. We need you to lead.
<BR><BR><B>HOW TO PAY FOR IT</B> <BR><BR>So the big question is: how are
we going to pay for all this? <BR><BR>I mean, we’re broke, right? Or so
our government is always telling us. <BR><BR>But with stakes this high,
crying broke isn’t going to cut it. We know that it’s always possible to
find money to bail out banks and start new wars. So that means we have to
go to where the money is, and the money is with the fossil fuel companies
and the banks that finance them. We have to get our hands on some of their
super profits to help clean up the mess they made. It’s a simple concept,
well established in law: the polluter pays. <BR><BR>We know we can’t get
the money by continuing to extract more. So as we wind down our dependence
on fossil fuels, as we extract LESS, we have to keep MORE of the profits.
<BR><BR>There’s lots of ways to do that. A national carbon tax and higher
royalties are the most obvious. A financial transaction tax would be a big
help. Raising corporate taxes across the board would too. <BR><BR>When you
do that, suddenly, digging holes and laying pipe isn’t the only option on
the table. <BR><BR>Quick example. A recent study from the CCPA compared
the public value from a five billion dollar pipeline – Enbridge Gateway
for instance – and the value from the same amount of money invested in
green economic development. <BR><BR>Spend that money on a pipeline, you
get mostly short-term construction jobs, big private sector profits, and
heavy public costs for future environmental damage. <BR><BR>Spend that
money on public transit, building retrofits and renewable energy, and you
get, at the very least, three times as many jobs...not to mention a safer
future. The actual number of jobs could be many times more than that,
according to their modeling. At the highest end, green investment could
create 34 times more jobs than just building another pipeline. <BR><BR>And
how do you raise five billion dollars for public investments like that? A
minimal national carbon tax of ten dollars a tonne would do the trick. And
there would be five billion new dollars every year. Unlike the one-off
Enbridge put on the table. <BR><BR>Environmentalists, and I include myself
here, have to do a much better job of not just saying no to projects like
Northern Gateway but also forcefully saying yes to our solutions about how
to build and finance green infrastructure. <BR><BR>Now: these alternatives
makes perfect sense on paper, but in the real world, they slam headlong
into the dominant ideology that tells us that we can’t increase taxes on
corporations, that we can’t say no to new investment, and moreover, that
we can’t actively decide what kind of economy we want – that we are
supposed to leaving it all to the magic of the market. <BR><BR>Well –
we’ve seen how the private sector manages this crisis. It’s time to get
back in there. This transition needs to be publicly managed. And that will
mean everything from new crown corporations in energy, to a huge
re-distribution of power, infrastructure and investment. <BR><BR>A
democratically-controlled, de-centralized energy system operated in the
public interest. This agenda is increasingly being described as “energy
democracy” and it’s not a new idea in the union world – Sean Sweeney of
the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University is here today, and many
fine trade unions – including CEP - have been working on this agenda for
years. It’s time to turn energy democracy into a reality here in Canada.
“Power to the people” is a terrific slogan to start with. <BR><BR>As you
all know, there have been some modest attempts by provincial governments
to play a more activist role in bringing about a green transition, while
resisting the pressure to double down on dirty energy. <BR><BR>But in
those cases, we’re starting to see something very disturbing. In the
provinces where governments have taken the most positive, bold action,
they’re getting dragged into trade court. <BR><BR>And that brings me to
the last piece of a real progressive climate agenda. <BR><BR><B>TRADE</B>
<BR><BR>It’s time to rip up so-called Free Trade deals once and for all.
And we sure as hell can’t be signing new ones. <BR><BR>You’ve fought them
for decades now, since the CAW played such a pivotal role in the battle
against the first Free Trade deal with the US. You’ve fought them because
they undermine workers rights both here and abroad, because they drive a
race to the bottom, because they hyper-empower corporations. <BR><BR>And
you were right – even more right than you knew. Because not only is
corporate globalization largely responsible for soaring emissions, but now
the logic of free trade is directly blocking us from making the specific
changes needed to reduce climate chaos in response. <BR><BR>A couple of
quick examples. <BR><BR>Ontario’s Green Energy plan is far from perfect.
But it has a very sensible “buy local” provision so that wind and solar
projects in Ontario actually deliver jobs and economic benefits to local
communities. It’s the core principle of a just transition. <BR><BR>Well,
the World Trade Organization has decided that this measure is illegal.
<BR><BR>The CAW is already in a coalition fighting back – but more green
policies will face the same corporate challenges. <BR><BR>Here’s another
example. Quebec banned fracking – a courageous move that has been taken up
by two consecutive governments. <BR><BR>But a US drilling company is
planning to sue Canada for $250- million dollars under NAFTA’s Chapter 11,
claiming the ban interferes with its “valuable right to mine for oil and
gas under the St. Lawrence river.” <BR><BR>We should have seen this
coming. A WTO official was quoted almost a decade ago, saying that the WTO
enables challenges against “almost any measure to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.” <BR><BR>In other words, these maniacs think trade should trump
everything, including the planet itself. If there has ever been an
argument to stop this madness, climate change is it. <BR><BR>The battle
lines have never been clearer. Climate change is the argument that must
trump all others in the battle against corporate free trade. I mean, sorry
guys, but the health of our communities and our planet is just a little
more important than your god-given right to obscene profits. <BR><BR>These
are moral arguments we can win. <BR><BR>And we don’t have to wait for
governments to give us permission. Next time they close a factory making
fossil-fuel machinery – whether cars, tractors, or airplanes – don’t let
them do it. <BR><BR>Do what workers are doing from Argentina to Greece to
Chicago: occupy the factory. Turn it into a green worker co-op. Go beyond
negotiating a last, sad severance. Demand the resources – from companies
and governments – to start building the new economy right now.
<BR><BR>Whether that’s electric trains or windmills. Watch that factory
turn into a beacon for students, anti-poverty activists,
environmentalists, First Nations. All fighting together for that vision.
<BR><BR>Climate change is a tool. Pick it up and use it. Use it to demand
the supposedly impossible. <BR><BR>It’s not a threat to your jobs, it's
the key to liberation from a logic that is already waging a war on the
entire concept of dignified work. <BR><BR>So all we need is the political
power to make this vision a reality. And that power can be built on the
urgency and science of the climate crisis. <BR><BR>If we stay true to a
clear vision that these changes are what is required to stave off an
ecological collapse, then we will change the conversation. <BR><BR>We’ll
escape from the clutches of narrow free-market economics, where we are
constantly told to ask for less and expect less and we will find ourselves
in a conversation about morality – about what kind of people we want to
be, about what kind of world we want for ourselves and our kids.
<BR><BR>If we set the terms of that conversation, we back Stephen Harper
up against the wall. <BR><BR>We finally hold him accountable for the
lethal ideology he serves – the one that he has been hiding behind that
bland and boring mask of his. <BR><BR>That’s how you shift the balance of
forces in this country. <BR><BR>If UNIFOR becomes the voice for a boldly
different economic model, one that provides solutions to the attacks on
working people, on poor people, and the attacks on the Earth itself, then
you can stop worrying about your continued relevance. <BR><BR>You will be
on the front lines of the fight for the future, and everyone else –
including the opposition parties – will have to follow or be left behind.
<BR><BR><B>FIRST NATIONS</B> <BR><BR>I believe that a key to this shift is
deepening your alliance with First Nations, whose constitutionally
guaranteed title to land and resources is the biggest legal barrier Harper
faces to his vision of Canada as an extraction and export machine – a
country-sized sacrifice zone. <BR><BR>As my friend Clayton Thomas Mueller
says, imagine if the workers and First Nations actually joined forces in a
meaningful coalition – the rightful owners of the land, side by side with
the people working the mines and pipelines, coming together to demand
another economic model? <BR><BR>People and the earth itself on one side,
predatory capitalism on the other. <BR><BR>The Harper Tories wouldn’t know
what hit them. <BR><BR>But this is about more than strategic alliances. As
we tell our own story of a different Canada to stand up to Harper’s story
about endless extraction, we will need to learn from the Indigenous
worldview. The one that understands that you can’t just take and take, but
also care-take, and give back whenever you harvest. That five-year-plans
are for kids, and grownups think about seven generations. A worldview that
reminds us that there are always unforeseen consequences because
everything is connected. <BR><BR>Because building the kinds of deep
coalitions that we need begins with identifying the threads that connect
all of our struggles. And indeed that recognize they are the SAME
struggle. <BR><BR>I want to leave you with a word that might help.
Overburden. <BR><BR><B>OVERBURDEN</B> <BR><BR>When I was in the tar sands
earlier this summer, I kept thinking about it. Overburden is the word used
by mining companies to describe the “waste earth covering a mineral
deposit.” <BR><BR>But mining companies have a strange definition of waste.
It includes forests, fertile soil, rocks, clay – basically anything that
stands between them and the gold, copper, or bitumen they are after.
<BR><BR>Overburden is the life that gets in the way of money. Life treated
as garbage. <BR><BR>As we passed pile after pile of masticated earth by
the side of the road, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just the dense and
beautiful Boreal forest that was “overburden” to these companies.
<BR><BR>We are all overburden. That’s certainly the way the Harper
government sees us. <BR><BR>- Unions are overburden since the rights you
have won are a barrier to unfettered greed. <BR><BR>- Environmentalists
are overburden, because they are always going on about climate change and
oil spills. <BR><BR>- Indigenous people are overburden, since their rights
and court challenges get in the way. <BR><BR>- Scientists are overburden,
since their research proves what I’ve been telling you. <BR><BR>-
Democracy itself is overburden to our government – whether it’s the right
of citizens to participate in an environmental assessment hearing, or the
right of Parliament to meet and debate the future of the country.
<BR><BR>This is the world deregulated capitalism has created, one in which
anyone and anything can find themselves discarded, chewed up, tossed on
the slag heap. <BR><BR>But “overburden” has another meaning. It also
means, simply, “to load with too great a burden”; to push something or
someone beyond their limits. <BR><BR>And that’s a very good description of
what we’re experiencing too. <BR><BR>Our crumbling infrastructure is
overburdened by new demands and old neglect. <BR><BR>Our workers are
overburdened by employers who treat their bodies like machines.
<BR><BR>Our streets and shelters are overburdened by those whose labour
has been deemed disposable. <BR><BR>The atmosphere is overburdened with
the gasses we are spewing into it. <BR><BR>And it is in this context that
we are hearing shouts of “enough!” from all quarters. This much and NO
further. <BR><BR>We heard it from the fast food worker in Milwaukee, who
went on strike this week holding a sign saying, “I am worth more” and
helped set off a national debate about inequality. <BR><BR>We heard it
from the Quebec Students last summer, who said “No” to a tuition increase
and ended up unseating a government and sparking a national debate about
the right to free education. <BR><BR>We heard it from the four women who
said “No” to Harper’s attacks on environmental protections and indigenous
rights, pledging to be Idle No More, and ended up setting off an
indigenous rights uprising across North America. <BR><BR>And we are
hearing “Enough” from the planet itself as it fights back in the only ways
it can. <BR><BR>Everywhere, life is reasserting itself. Insisting that it
is not overburden. <BR><BR>We are starting to realize that not only have
we had enough – but that there is enough. <BR><BR>To quote Evo Morales,
there is enough for all of us to live well. There just isn’t enough for
some of us to live better and better. <BR><BR>To close off, I want to read
an excerpt from Article 2 of your brand new constitution. <BR><BR>Words
that many of us have been waiting a very long time to hear. Words that you
may have already heard today, but they bear repeating. Here goes...
<BR><BR>“Our goal is transformative. To reassert common interest over
private interest. <BR><BR>Our goal is to change our workplaces and our
world. Our vision is compelling. <BR><BR>It is to fundamentally change the
economy, with equality and social justice, restore and strengthen our
democracy and achieve an environmentally sustainable future. <BR><BR>This
is the basis of social unionism – a strong and progressive union culture
and a commitment to work in common cause with other progressives in Canada
and around the world.” <BR><BR>Brothers and Sisters, all I would add is:
don’t say it if you don’t mean it. <BR><BR>Because we really, really need
you to mean it. <BR><BR>Thank you. <BR><BR>END
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