8th of March International woman’s day: In search of lost memory

IOF – Sempreviva Organização Feminista

The main historical reference of the origins of the International woman’s day is the second international socialist women’s conference in 1910, in Copenhagen, Denmark, when Clara Zetkin proposed a resolution to officially create an international woman’s day. In the resolution there is no allusion to the 8th March. Clara only mentioned the idea of following the example of the American socialist women. It is sure that it was from this moment on that the commemorations began to be of international character, expanding through Europe, motivated by the organisation and initiative of socialist women.

This and other historical sources intrigued the researcher Renée Coté to an extent that she published, in 1984 in Canada, her exciting research searching for the lost link(s) from the history of the International Woman’s Day.

Renée, as part of her research, rediscovered the history of the American socialist feminists who tried to retrieve – from the whirlwind of history of the workers struggles during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century – the intense participation of women workers, and to make visible their demonstrations, their strikes, their capacity for autonomous organisation of struggles, highlighting the fight for the women’s right to vote, in other words, universal suffrage. Using this rediscovery as a base, she hypothesises about why these historical records have been overlooked or why they have been lost with time.

What is clear, from Coté’s research, is that the reference to an 8th March, or an American women workers strike, to a women’s demonstration or to a women’s day is not registered in any of the sources researched during that period, mainly in the newspapers and socialist press of the day.

There were strikes and repressions of workers in the period from the late 19th century to 1908, but none of those events is related to the death of women in New York, which is supposed to have given rise to women’s day. Coté’s conclusion from this research is that there was no heroic strike, be it in 1857 or in 1908, but a heroic feminism that struggled hard to strengthen itself between American woman workers. The search for the 8th March retraced the American women socialists’ struggle for an autonomous existence.

The sources found, reveal the following: The first “Woman’s Day” was held on the 3rd May 1908, in Chicago, presided by Lorine S. Brown, documented by the monthly newspaper “The Socialist Woman”. The

commemoration was held in Garrick Theather, with the participation of 1500 women that “applauded the demands for economical and political equality of women, on the day dedicated to the female workers’ causes.” This day was dedicated to the female workers’ causes, denouncing the exploitation and oppression of women, but defending, principally, the female vote. Equality between men and women, women’s autonomy, and, consequently, the women’s vote, was defended, inside and outside of the party.

In 1909, Woman’s Day was an official activity of the socialist party and was organised by the women’s national committee, celebrated on the 28th February. The press at the time talked of a “woman suffrage meeting”, for the voting of women, in New York. 

Coté found that the American socialists suggested the last Sunday of February as Women’s Day, but in the beginning, it ended up being celebrated on several different dates. Growing numbers of women workers adhered to the Day, including strikers, and women’s participation continued to increase.

The newspapers mention New York’s International Woman’s Day the 27th February 1910, in Carnegie Hall, with 3.000 women, where the principal associations in favour of woman’s vote gathered. This meeting was organised by socialist women but nonsocialist women participated as well.

It is registered that there was a long strike of New York’s shirtwaist makers that lasted from November 1909 to February 1910, in which 80% of the strikers were women. The strike ended 12 days before Woman’s Day. This was the first woman’s strike of great amplitude, denouncing the conditions of life and work of these women, and demonstrating the courage of these tailors, receiving mass support. Many of these workers participated in Woman’s Day and enlarged the struggle for the right to vote (conquered in 1920 in all states in the USA).

Clara Zetkin, a German socialist, proposed that the Woman’s Day or Women’s Day become “a special day, a yearly celebration of women, following the example of our American sisters.” Zetkin also suggests, in a newspaper article in the German magazine Diegleicheit, of the 28th August 1910, that the main theme should the struggle for women’s right to vote.

In 1911, International Women’s Day was celebrated by German women on the 19th of March, and by Swedish women together with the 1st of May, etc. In short, it was celebrated on different days.

In 1913, in Russia, under the Czarism regime, the first International Day of Women Workers for the right to vote was held. The Russian women workers participated in this meeting, in Petrograd, and were repressed. In 1914, all the organisers of the International Woman’s Day in Russia were arrested, which made commemoration of the day impossible.

In 1914, the International woman’s day in Germany was dedicated to women’s right to vote. And it was celebrated for the first time on the 8th March, as far as we can understand, due to the convenience of the date that year.

The European Socialists coordinated the celebrations for the right to vote, connecting it to women’s political emancipation, but the date was decided in each country, but in this continent during the war years, International Woman’s Day was not given so much attention.

Another interesting reference, that indicates the origins of the 8th March as International Woman’s Day, is the link between this date and the active participation of Russian women workers in actions that led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. A political action of Russian women workers on the 8th March – according to the Gregorian calendar – or the 23rd February – according to the Russian calendar – precipitated the beginning of the revolutionary actions that brought victory to the Russian revolution.

Alexandra Kolontai, a feminist leader of the socialist revolution, wrote about the fact and about the 8th March but, curiously, it disappeared from the history of the event. She wrote, “The Women Workers’ Day on the 8th March 1917 was a memorable day in history. The revolution of February had just begun.” The fact is also mentioned by Trotski, leader of the revolution, in the History of Russian Revolution. In the text it is clear that the women began the general strike, going bravely out into the streets of Petrograd, on International Woman’s Day, against hunger, war and czarism. Trotski wrote, “23 February (8th March) was International Woman’s Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this ‘Women’s Day’ would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without date. But in morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for support of the strike… which led to mass strike... all went out into the streets.”

We can therefore see that the revolution began as a consequence of popular organisation that overcame the opposition of the party leaders. The initiative came from the most exploited and oppressed women workers: the textile women workers. The number of strikers was around 9.000, the majority women. From these reports, we understand that Women’s Day was the victor, was massive, but without victims.

Renée Coté found 1921 documents of the Communist Women’s International Conference where “a Bulgarian comrade proposes the 8th March as the official date for International woman’s day, in remembrance of the Russian women’s initiative.”

After 1922, International woman’s day is officially celebrated on the 8th March.

This history got lost in the official history records of both the socialist movement and  history of the period. It is part of the historical and political past of women and of feminist movement of socialist origin in the beginning of the century.

Some European feminists in the 70s, unable to find the concrete reference to the textile workers in a fire in 1857, in New York, considered it a mythical fact. But this hypothesis was discarded due to the sheer number of facts and events linking the origins of International Woman’s Day to left-wing American women.

Several hypotheses have been raised about the 8th March and missing links, in the search for deeper understanding.

It is a fact that in New York, USA, the textile workers had denounced their conditions of life and work and were also going on strike. This moment of women workers’ organisation was part of a bigger historical process of social transformation that made it possible for women to fight for their rights, for equality and autonomy, participating in the social and political context that motivated the creation of an International Woman’s Day that represented women’s struggles, conquests and the need for organisation. It is therefore necessary to connect the threads of histories in this period together.

To this end, there is a report that needs to have its sources checked, synthesised by Gladys Gassen (in a text for FETAG2 rural workers), indicating that, in March 1911, 18 days after woman’s day and not in 1857, “in a badly ventilated textile factory that occupied the last three floors of a 10-story building of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, NY, a fire started which involved 500 women – young women, Jewish women and

Italian immigrants – that were working under precarious conditions, with the floor covered with materials and inflammable waste everywhere, no emergency exits, no fire hoses... To “prevent the interruption of work” the company had locked the door with a key. When the firemen were finally able to reach the floors where the women were the women were, 147 women had already died, carbonised or crushed on the pavement, where they had thrown themselves in desperation. After this tragedy, a Factory Investigation Committee was created in New York, a committee that had been requested 50 years previously. This is how the history of health and life protection laws began. The trade union leader Rosa Schiederman organised the presence of 12.000 women at the funeral of the women factory workers to express their sorrow and loss and to declare solidarity with all women workers.”

So, even though it is necessary to continue the search for lost memories, what is certain is that a whole cycle of struggle, in a era of great social transformation until the first decades of XX century, made International Woman’s Day the symbol of women’s active participation in the struggle for changes in their lives and in society.

We therefore celebrate on a yearly basis, as our ancestors did, our initiatives and conquests, evaluating our struggles and updating our agenda of struggles for the equality between men and women and for a world where all can live with dignity.

How radical is youth? - CCF 1935

From the Research Bureau of the Saskatchewan CCF, September 1935.



Link to PDF of document here.

Socialism in the 21st Century: A Model with Changeable Pieces

What does 21st-century socialism consist of? Is it only a slogan or a dream that can be turned into a reality? Last century’s socialism has bequeathed this new one a logbook, with certain qualities that 21st-century socialism must acknowledge, embracing some, correcting others, and avoiding still others completely. The fast-changing times we live in today will necessarily make this model a puzzle we can put together and take apart.

By Juan Carlos Monedero
 
Read this article at ecosocialism canada.

Honouring Our Activists

Regina Celebrates Canadian Dimension
By Joyce Green, Phil Hansen and Jim McCrorie
Canadian Dimension, Jan\Feb 2009

Often the politics of the Left are driven by crisis and committment, and in the process of organizing and analyzing we neglect the human need to build community, have fun and celebrate our successes and our heroes. In an attempt to redress this, on Ocotber 18 a committee convened as Canadian Dimension - Regina, consisting of Jim McCrorie, Phil Hansen and Joyce Green, organized Honouring Our Activists, an event that combined music, food, poetry, solidarity and fun with presentations of honours to seven notable Saskatchewan activists. The event was a success - sold out. It certainly raised Canadian Dimension's profile - and raised some money, as well.

Folks came in from the Swift Current area, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and Regina. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, represenation from the Grain Services Union and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, Briarpatch magazine, Rock the Boat Books and the Canadin Centre for Policy Alternatives were all present. We were fortunate to have he company of Jim Struthers, who in his eighties holds one of Dimensions oldest subscriptions.

Success was due in no small aprt to the cohort of young volunteers who ran the bar, did the set-up  and clean-up of the hall, and brought new energy into the Dimension circle. Special recognition goes to Mike Radmacher, Trevor Holloway and Nicole Leah - and to Ann McCrorie, who designed and produced the programs and certificates for the honourees.

The Luther Bach choir (profiled in CD's July/August 2008 isue), under the direction of Dr. Carl Cherland and with singers Meredith Cherland, Beth Drozda, Hilary Schroeder, Don Waite, Kevin Grant and Rob Pope, performed a special program titled "Songs of Hope and Justice."

Dimension collective member Bernadette Wagner performed several of her powerful, political poems for the event. Cy Gonick delevered the keynote address: "Forty-Five Years of Canadian Dimension."

The Dimension - Regina committee identified the seven honourees from a very long list of worthy activists who have contributed to progressive politics in Saskatchewan.

Doug Cuthand

Doug Cuthand is an independent film producer, director and writer. He is the creator and owner of Blue Hills Productions, an independent television production company with an extensive list of impressive credits. His work focuses on the lives, history and culture of First Nations peoples.

Doug has been active for many years in First Nations politics. He served as executive secretary of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), before being elected vice chief of the FSIN in 1977, a position he held until 1982. He is chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Little Pine First Nation.

Doug is a thoughtful and notable presence in provincial public affairs through newspapers and television. His contributions serve to educate a primarily non-Aboriginal, mostly uniformed audience about issues in Indian Country, thus challenging racism and ignorance and building understanding and empathy. Since 1991, he has written a weekly column for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. Selected columns were republished ina book titled Tapwe: Seleted Columns of Doug Cuthand (Theytus Books, 2005). From 1999 through 1998, he was producer and host of Indigenous Circle on CTV. In 200 and 2005, he was the regional producer of Vision TV's Insight.

His film credits include Aboriginal Waterways; Patrick's Story; Circle of Voices; Donna's Story; Childhood Lost; You're in Our Hearts; Sweetness in Life; Stage, Screen and Reserve; The Life and Times of Gordon Tootoosis; Wheels of Thunder; and For the Love of the Land.

Bev Currie

A retired farmer and rancher from southwest Saskatchewan, Bev Currie is a citizen activist particularly concerned about eco-politics and rural community politics. Bev and two of his brothers were among the few in the province who dared to form a co-operative farm after World War II, on which they grew cereal crops and raised cattle. The Currie farm was and still is a member of the Saskatchewan Federation of Production Co-operatives. Bev served several terms as its president.

As a young farmer, Bev was active in the farmer's movement. His development as a radical and socialist was nutured by his work with the youth sections of the Saskatchewan Farmers Union, where he eventually became the president, and the Co-operative Commoinwelth Federation. He has been a provincial member of the NDP executive and served one term as the provincial party's president. Many will recall his vigorous support for the late Woodrow Lloyd when the former premier, who made medicare possible, was driven from the leadership by the NDP's right-wing. For this, and for Bev's support for the Waffle, he was not flattered with a second term. He has run three times for a seat in the House of Commons - twice for the NDP and once for the Green Party.

Bev is increasingly concerned witht he state of the environment. He became convinced that humans were converting the land, a renewable resource, into its opposite. The development of sustainable alternatives has become a preoccupation for him.

Don Kossick

Don Kossick, a proud son of Moose Jaw's south end, is a well known political activist and long-time community organizer in Saskatchewan, Canada and overseas. From his memorable days as a student radical and activist at the University of Regina, he has worked extensively in community development and the promotion of social justice. He has been an active participant in many of the nation's social movements, including those for students, farmers, workers, women and aboriginal peoples. He remains a resolute promoter of human rights and environmental sustainability.

He is currently a board member of Quint Develpment Corporation and the Station 20 West revitaliztion project in Saskatoon's core neighbourhoods. Don has been selected Saskatoon Citizen Activist of the year for three of the past five years by Planet S magazine's public poll. Don is  a prolific writer and has penned numerous articles and commentaries over the years, including contributions to Canadian Dimension and Briarpatch.

He developed and co-ordinates http://www.makingthelinksradio.ca/, a community-radio website dedicated to linking global and local issues from a social-justice perspective. Don also has been working in Mozambique, focusing on the use of community radio as an organizing tool in building healthy communities.

Stacey Lalacher and Greg Hluska

Despite having no exprience in publishing, Stacey Lolacher, then a political-science student at the University of Regina, and Greg Hluska, a U of R graduate in marketing, started Regina Streets magazine for distribution by panhandlers in return for a donation. The idea began as a conversation among friends who sought to put their political theory into practice.

According to Stacey, the magazine has three goals; "First, we want to increase circulation to the point that can give people who would otherwise be pandhandling the chance to gain some financial security through its distribution. Second, we want to educate people about poverty, its causes, its effects and possible solutions. Lastly, we want to build a repository not only of news, but also of scholarly analysis of poverty and related issues." The motivation is the elimination of poverty.

Greg and Stacey are models of solidarity, vision and committed activism. If young people like these two take over the world, our future is in good hands.

Bonnie Morton

Bonnie Morton, a Regina resident, has lived most of her life and raised her son in poverty. For the past 21 years she has worked as an anti-poverty aadvocate with the Regina Anti-Poverty Ministry; has served as president of the National Anti-Poverty Organization; as chair of the Regina John Howard Society; and as president of the Core Community Group.

Bonnie is currently chairperson of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues; chair of the Equality Advisory Committee of the Court Challenges Program; and board member of the Court Program. She has received the Keith Couse Award for social-justice work, the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, the International Helen Prize for humanitarian service, the Saskatchewan Centennial Medal and the Elizabeth Fry Society's Rebel with a Cause Award.

Bonnie holds a Bachelor of Human Justice degree and is working toward her master's degree in Justice Studies at the University of Regina.

Lorna Standingready

Lorna J. Standingready was born and raised on the Peepeekisis Reserve. Her parents died when she was young, and she became the foster child of Keith and Doris McKeechie. Lorna raised seven children, who now have families of their own.

Lorna survived ten years of residential schoolls to go on to university studies. While in residential schools, her love of learning and gifts for art and music were recognized with awards and certificates. She excelled at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, University of Regina, holds a Bachelor of Administration (2000) and is presently working on a master's degree in Human Resource Development.

Lorna is the recipient of the Saskathcewan Indian Women's Association Appreciation Award, and in 2005 she recieved the Saskatchewan Jubilee Award. She has also been involved in the women's movement, health and child welfare programs and, as of 2008, with the John Howard Society. For many years Lorna has also been active in many roles with the NDP, serving as secretary to the party's Aboriginal People's Commission and a s vice president of the provincial NDP from 2001 to 2007.

Saskatchewan’s psychedelic past

The province was once a major centre for psychiatry research with drugs like LSD and mescaline
By Rory Maclean
The Sheaf

When most people think of LSD, the first thing to come to mind is more likely a hippie love-in rather than a therapeutic drug, but for several decades in Saskatchewan, LSD was part of the new cutting edge of drug therapy.

Experiments that took place in Saskatoon and at the Weyburn mental hospital radically expanded the field of psychiatry and were a notable part of the shift from a focus on psychoanalysis to cognitive science, driven by drug therapy.

Shortly after the Second World War, British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond began studying LSD, perceiving a similarity between the effects of LSD and the early stages of schizophrenia. His work was not well accepted in England, but in 1951 Osmond accepted a position at the Weyburn mental hospital where he met some like-minded researchers.

They began first by experimenting on themselves with psychedelic drugs, including mescaline and LSD-25. Osmond, along with Abram Hoffer, the superintendent of the Weyburn mental hospital, and others such as Duncan Blewett felt that in order to treat schizophrenia they had to know what the experience of it was like.

Given that LSD seemed to mimic the effects of the early stages of schizophrenia, Osmond and his contemporaries reasoned that perhaps schizophrenia was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Hoffman encouraged the budding new field of experimentation in his hospital and the researchers received a number of grants from Tommy Douglas’s Cooperative Commonwealth Federation governent (the precursor to the New Democratic Party).

They were opening the field of drug therapy but, according to University of Saskatchewan history of psychiatry researcher Erika Dyck, they still tended to engage in psychoanalysis.

They did, however, distinguish themselves from the psychoanalysts, who they considered to be “dogmatic therapists largely concerned with treating middle-class patients,” says Dyck.

In her paper “Land of the Living Sky with Diamonds,” Dyck argues that these radical experiments were happening at a time when the social and political landscape of Saskatchewan was also changing dramatically.

“Individuals involved in LSD research acknowledged the importance of place in terms of the supportive research environment, the optimistic intellectual atmosphere, and the receptive medical community,” she writes.

At that time, the controls on drug experimentation were minimal compared to today. Chemicals were supplied with little hesitation.

Osmond was even responsible for administering author Aldous Huxley with the dose of mescaline that led him to write The Doors of Perception, an enthusiastic description of his experience.

Osmond experimented with many chemicals but LSD became the drug of choice because it is potent in extremely small doses — mere micrograms — and it was available for free from Swiss chemical supplier Sandoz. The economical nature of LSD also made the CCF government more open to financially supporting its research.

Perhaps the best known LSD research at the Weyburn hospital was the experimention on alcoholics. Hoffer and Osmond began using LSD on patients to simulate delirium tremens — a potentially lethal state of agitated delirium suffered by chronic consumers of alcohol.

Since this treatment was not envisioned as a therapy — thereby replacing alcohol with LSD — it relied on administering patients with a single mega-dose of between 200 and 1,500 micrograms, says Dyck.

For comparison, a typical tab of LSD blotter today contains around 30 to 90 micrograms. A threshold dose is about 20 micrograms.

The researchers lauded their form of shock-therapy as successful, claiming a 50 per cent recovery rate for the length of the post-treatment study period.

“Patients in the initial study were chronic alcoholics in the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Weyburn. Following the LSD treatment, the male patient stopped drinking and remained sober for at least six months, at which point the follow-up study ended. The female patient continued drinking after the experiment but stopped during the follow-up period,” Dyck writes.

Hoffer later rejected the theory that they were simulating delirium tremens and speculated that it was more likely the self-reflective experience of LSD that convinced alcoholics to stop drinking.

Blewett, the founding chairman of the U of S psychology department, also argued that LSD was effective in treating alcoholism because it allowed patients to look within themselves.

“Other methods frequently produced dependence, whether on a chemical or a psychotherapeutic relationship, and did little to assist the patient in resurrecting self-control,” said Dyck.

Critics have since rejected these experiments for their lack of controlled trials, but the work begun by Osmond, Hoffer and Blewett has contributed to the conception of alcoholism as a bio-chemical disease, and one that can be treated.
Psychiatry was a different world during this time, as evidenced by the researchers’s psychedelic experiments, which would be difficult to attempt today.

“It strikes me that the layers of regulation and bureaucracy are much thicker today,” said Dyck.

Experimentation with new psychiatric drugs has become much more tightly controlled by legislation, ethics boards and ethicists, she said.
By 1968, LSD had become a controlled substance in Canada and the U.S., severely restricting its use.

“I think that the media had a lot to do with it,” said Dyck.

Many publications were blaming the growing student protest movement on the use of psychedelic drugs and the rise of psychedelic celebrities like Timothy Leary.

Leary, a former Harvard-based psychologist, was expelled from his position for freely giving away LSD to community residents. He later travelled across California offering LSD as a new form of consciousness expansion with the slogan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

According to Dyck, this contributed to the idea that LSD was over-hyped.

“There was too much hype. It was almost caught up in a placebo type (of effect),” she said.

Osmond had left the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital by the early 1960s and Hoffer resigned in 1967, but by that time he had moved from psychedelics to experiments with high doses of vitamins. The Weyburn mental hospital was demolished in 2008, after the facility had essentially been closed for a decade.

Report on Rebuiding the Left: Reflections from the Waffle

Below is a summary from the Rebuilding the Left conference held on January 30 in Regina. Participants will be receiving further information by the end of the month.



PDF of report here.

Regina Riot: Police infiltrators revealed

By Heather Polischuk, Leader-Post

On July 1, 1935, a public meeting in Regina's Market Square erupted in chaos.

In what came to be known as the Regina Riot, police fired bullets and tear gas into the crowd while the crowd responded with smashed windows and counterattacks on police. When the dust settled, Regina city police Det. Charles Millar lay dead while dozens more city and RCMP officers were injured.

Meanwhile, On-to-Ottawa Trekker Nick Schaack was taken to hospital with what would later prove to be a fatal head injury. Numerous Trekkers and even Regina residents who'd just come for the meeting were also injured.

University of Regina history professor Bill Brennan says while the event left no real long-term impact on the city, it was nonetheless a key moment in Regina's history. Brennan was scheduled to speak on Thursday about the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the riot during the RCMP Heritage Centre's Speakers' Series.

"It seems appropriate," he said of the talk's location during a Thursday morning interview. "The Mounted Police were involved in the events I'm going to talk about tonight, and here we are holding it in the museum that recognizes the history of the RCMP."

Although many have a basic knowledge of the Regina Riot, or at least have heard of it, Brennan said there are aspects of the event that are less well-known.

"All of what's been written about the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot have approached these events as part of the nation's history, and that's certainly true," he said. "At the same time though, these young men were here for (about) three weeks ... in the summer of 1935. So it's an important episode in Regina's history, too, and one that hasn't been written about nearly as much as the national story, and so I thought that would be an interesting approach to take in giving the talk."

Brennan gathered information from a number of sources, including a recently declassified RCMP file on the riot, which includes information on why police decided to disrupt the meeting when and how they did.

A possible answer emerged in those documents. Brennan said a private detective employed by the CPR had managed to infiltrate the Trekkers and found information the group was planning "a big event (in Regina) to draw attention to their plight" on July 2.

"We don't know what it might have been," Brennan said, although he added it might have mirrored actions they'd taken in other cities -- the occupying of businesses in a bid for relief. "Were they going to try to seize Hotel Saskatchewan, for example? ... We don't know, but certainly there's some indication from this (RCMP) file that there was a reason, in (the RCMP's) mind anyway, why it was important to move quickly before the Trekkers did something dramatic."

The Red and Green Pony

Milton Acorn's "The Red and Green Pony"
by Ron Dart
The Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Red and Green Pony is one of the most important Canadian political parables, and it was written in the 1950s by Milton Acorn. The tale is a well told political fable that records and anticipates much that was about to unfold in the latter half of the 20th century. The leading protagonist is Tommy, and there can be no doubt that Tommy Douglas (the father of universal public healthcare in Canada, voted ‘The Greatest Canadian’ in the 20th century in a CBC survey in 2004 and still on secret and classified files of the RCMP and CSIS) is the leading historic actor in the story. Acorn was holding Douglas high in a time when most reviled, opposed and sought to topple Douglas through a variety of questionable means. Douglas, for those who do not know, was the father-in-law of Donald Sutherland and the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland.

Read the full article here.

The Nuclear Debate in Saskatchewan Across the Generations

Campion College Environmental Sustainability Committee presents:

"The Nuclear Debate in Saskatchewan Across the Generations"
with Jim Harding, Brett Dolter and Katherine Arbuthnott

Monday March 1, 7:30 PM
Campion College Chapel, 2nd Floor
Regina

How can we help build a new Left?

New Socialist, December 2009



Subscribe to New Socialist here.

Howard Adams: Reflections on rebuilding the left

Howard Adams (September 8, 1921 – September 8, 2001) was an influential twentieth century Metis academic and activist. He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of a French Metis mother and an English Metis (Anglo-Metis) father. In his youth he briefly joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Adams became the first Metis in Canada to gain his PhD after studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966.

He returned to Canada and became a prominent Metis activist in Saskatchewan, often creating controversy by propagating his Marxist and Metis Nationalist views in reference to contemporary and historical events. Adams was often critical not only of Canadian society but of Aboriginal leadership for what he saw as its co-option, and cultivation of dependency by receiving government funding.

Adams' intellectual influences include Malcolm X whom he saw lecture at Berkeley, and the general radical environment of that institution during the 1960s. He was the maternal great grandson of Louis Riel's lieutenant Maxime Lepine who fought in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.

Major works include Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View (1975), The Education of Canadians 1800-1867: The Roots of Separatism (1968), and Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization (1995).
 
Howard Adams audio presentation below is from the Rebuilding the Left conference held in Toronto in 2000.
 
Listen to Howard Adams here.

A Short History of the Socialist Party of Canada

By J. M. Milne



Further reading : The Impossibilists: A Brief Profile of the Socialist Party of Canada
On-line
Book 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Below is the cover of the Socialist Party's 1944 Manifesto.

Socialism: the Goal, the Paths, and the Compass

by Michael A Lebowitz
MRzine

On the occasion of the presentation of El socialismo no cae del cielo: un nuevo comienzo at the 2010 Havana Book Fair, 18 February 2010

There's an old saying that if you don't know where you want to go, any road will take you there. As I've said on many occasions, this saying is mistaken. If you don't know where you want to go, no road will take you there. In other words, you need an understanding of the goal. You need a vision for the future.

Marx had a very clear vision. It was a vision of a society which would permit the full development of human beings -- a society which allowed everyone to develop their potential. And, that would occur not because of gifts from above but, rather, as a result of the activity of human beings. This was his concept of revolutionary practice -- the simultaneous changing of circumstances and human activity or self change. Human development and practice -- this "key link" in Marx reminds us that there are always two products as the result of our activity, the change in circumstances and the change in people themselves. It reminds us that what Marx called rich human beings, socialist human beings, produce themselves only through their own activity.

The Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela incorporates this concept. It stresses that the goal of society must be the full development of every human being and that participation and protagonism is "the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective." In 2007, President Chavez of Venezuela reinforced this vision by introducing what he called "the elementary triangle of socialism." Social ownership of the means of production, social production organized by workers, and production for social needs and purposes make up this triangle.

Firstly, social ownership of the means of production is the way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of producers, or state bureaucrats. Secondly, social production organized by workers permits workers to develop their capacities by combining thinking and doing in the workplace and, thus, to produce not only things but also themselves as self-conscious collective producers. Thirdly, satisfaction of social needs and purposes is the necessary goal of productive activity in the new society because it substitutes for the focus upon self-interest and selfishness an orientation to the needs of others and relations based upon solidarity.

This is the vision of the society we want to build. This is where we want to go. And if we don't know that, no road will take us there. However, knowing where you want to go is not enough. It's not true that if you do know where you want to go, any road will take you there. Isn't there a relationship between the goal and the road you take to get there? Are these independent of each other? For example, can you get to the goal by going in the opposite direction? Do you build social ownership by relying upon capitalist ownership of the means of production and the capitalist monopoly of our social heritage and of the products of our labor? Do you build a society of associated producers and social production by preventing decision-making by workers and retaining the gap between thinking and doing? Do you build a society based upon solidarity, where production is for social needs, by stressing selfishness? In other words, do you go forward by going backwards?

Maybe. Maybe sometimes it is necessary. Socialism does not fall from the sky. It is necessarily rooted in particular societies. We all start from different places -- in our development, in our histories. Therefore, there cannot be one single path. All paths will be different. Some will be longer than others. Some will be relatively straight, while others will require switchbacks because of the obstacles along the road. As we have learned, the biggest mistake is thinking that there is one road and one model.

But there is a problem. When you are not going directly toward the goal, how do you avoid getting lost? How you avoid the problem of the growth of capital and capitalist interests, the alienation of workers in the process of production, and thus an emphasis upon possessing things and consumerism, the growth of self-interest at the expense of solidarity? Some would say that there is no problem as long as we have a compass, as long as we have a directional finder. And that the party is that compass: the party can point in the direction of the goal when obstacles have temporarily forced you to go in the opposite direction.

I agree with that in principle. But I also believe that we need to learn from historical experience that the party is not itself immune, that it does not stand outside society and thus does not always point to the true North. This was certainly the case, for example, in Hungary, Yugoslavia, and China. And, not only there. I have just returned from an intense month in Vietnam. There is no question in my mind that, under the conditions facing Vietnam in the 1980s, it was essential for them to make a significant change in the path they were on.

By developing an economy which they describe as a market economy with a socialist orientation, they have succeeded in lifting their people from significant poverty. Whereas previously people were facing starvation, now Vietnam exports food. This is a very important achievement. They have also begun a process of industrialization.

However, there are serious problems. Young people are overwhelmingly oriented toward capitalism. They say openly that Vietnam needs more foreign investment, and they credit that foreign investment with ending poverty. They want capitalism, and they look upon Marxism as having no relevance to their lives. I stress this point because the students we met were not selected randomly. They came largely from the young communists.

And the dominant views increasingly are in fact no different from those in other countries in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, and other nearby countries relying upon foreign investment and export-oriented industrialization are the basis of constant comparison in Vietnam. In other words, capitalism is winning in Vietnam. There is growing inequality, there is the emergence of millionaires (not as many as in China so far), and there is a significant process of privatization of state-owned industry (which is called equitization).

And then there is the party, "the socialist orientation." It is my sense that a growing portion of the party is looking to Sweden and social democracy as the appropriate model. (In fact, this was openly advocated at the conference I attended at the Ho Chi Minh National Political Academy, the Party school.) In other words, an emerging goal is not the socialist vision but, rather, capitalism plus social policies which reduce inequality -- a capitalist welfare state.

There is an infection in Vietnam, and the party is not immune to that infection. I suspect that the next Party Congress will involve a struggle over this direction. Some party leaders are very worried about these tendencies. Certainly, the direction of change in the party in recent congresses has been to strengthen capitalist tendencies -- for example, they have removed the prohibition on membership in the party by capitalists.

Something has been missing in Vietnam. Missing so far has been a sufficient emphasis upon that participation and protagonism that is "the necessary way" to ensure the complete development of human beings, "both individually and collectively." While there has been some focus upon grassroots democracy (for example, in Ho Chi Minh City), there has been very little decision-making by workers in workplaces (outside of annual congresses in state-owned industry), and there has been little emphasis upon conscious production for social needs. And, the results are predictable. In the absence of social production organized by workers and production for social needs, the third side of the socialist triangle, social ownership, is withering away. And, increasingly, the human product is people who embrace the logic of capital.

I think that Vietnam reinforces the lesson that every step to the market must be accompanied by two steps in the direction of building a socialist society: building worker decision-making in workplaces and building institutions based upon solidarity. If we recognize that people produce themselves through their activity, then their activity should unleash their potential rather than be left to an orientation to the market and self-interest. This is what I was stressing in Vietnam -- that the party needs to create the conditions in which people can develop their capacities as protagonists within their workplaces and their communities, institutions such as the communal councils and workers councils being developed in Venezuela.

I suggest that, through such a process of producing rich human beings with confidence and dignity, both the people and the party will be inoculated against the infection that can prevent us from reaching the socialist goal. That won't be achieved, however, by a one-sided focus upon developing productive forces. In short, we should never forget the essential insight of Che Guevara -- the necessity simultaneously to build productive forces and socialist human beings.
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Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2006). He works with the Centro Internacional Miranda in Venezuela. His forthcoming book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, will published by Monthly Review Press this year.

URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/lebowitz190210.html

Tea Party, Canada-Style!

America's battle over health care reform started in Saskatchewan
By Christopher Flavelle
Slate

Nearly 50 years before Sarah Palin gave us "death panels," the American Medical Association was testing the limits of health care scare tactics in the Canadian prairies. During the 1960 provincial election in Saskatchewan, the AMA helped fund an advertising campaign aimed at defeating the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a quasi-socialist party whose leader, a former Baptist minister named Tommy Douglas, had promised to introduce universal, government-funded health care in the province.

The AMA, together with Saskatchewan's College of Physicians and Surgeons, warned that if the CCF won, doctors would leave the province in droves. But here was the kicker: As Dave Margoshes writes in his 1999 biography of Douglas, the campaign told voters that if the state were permitted to take over health care, "patients with hard-to-diagnose problems would be shipped off to insane asylums by bungling bureaucrats."

The campaign failed. Douglas won the election, and the CCF government went on to introduce his health care plan in 1962, creating the model that the rest of Canada would later follow. (So far as we know, insane-asylum panels did not come to pass.) But the fight for health care reform in Saskatchewan, which the AMA worried could spark change in the United States, was a precursor to the battle in America today—a mix of populist anger, political opportunism, and disinformation. As Democrats debate whether to pursue health care reform in the face of growing opposition, they might consider the lessons of Saskatchewan.

Like the Democrats after their 2008 victory, the CCF moved slowly at first to implement its plan, a delay that emboldened the opposition. In an attempt to win the support of doctors, the government created an advisory panel for their concerns. Doctors used the panel to stall, and the government waited more than a year to pass its reforms, with the start date delayed until July 1, 1962. The province's doctors responded with a vote to strike if the plan was implemented.

The events of the next 10 months were ugly by Canadian standards. Douglas' push for health care reform "lit the fuse of the incendiary bomb that would tear Saskatchewan apart into its two opposing elements," wrote Doris French Shackleton in her 1975 biography of Douglas.

Part of the unrest came from doctors themselves. In the months leading up to the new plan, physicians across Saskatchewan put up office signs reading, "Unless agreement is reached between the present government and the medical profession, this office will close as of July 1." Douglas' wife, Irma, described how a doctor would tell his pregnant patient, after a check-up, "I'm afraid this is the last time I'll be able to see you."

The doctors' worries about being paid by the province, rather than patients, may have been genuine. But those concerns were amplified by Saskatchewan's opposition Liberal Party, which had been shut out of power since 1944. Like the American Republicans 50 years later, the Liberals fought health reform in two ways: directly, by opposing it in public; and indirectly, by supporting groups that could provide the appearance of broad-based public anger. In Saskatchewan, the public opposition to health reform came in the form of a movement called Keep Our Doctors, which organized rallies and protests across the province.

Sometimes, the Liberals blurred the line between political opposition and rabble-rousing. At a Keep Our Doctors rally outside the provincial legislature, Liberal leader Ross Thatcher used the occasion to call for a special session of the legislature, which wasn't sitting at the time. To illustrate his point, he invited TV cameras to follow him up to the locked doors of the legislature, which he then made a show of trying to kick down.

But in another precursor to today's Tea Party movement in the United States, the unrest over health reform in Saskatchewan proved to be more than just political theatrics. "The fears inspired by the doctors and fanned by the Liberal party," Shackleton writes, "convinced many people at least briefly that the CCF was a dictatorial, power-mad, ruthless group of politicians who would rather see people die for lack of medical care than back down." Shackleton described "a sense of civil war." (Read more about the unrest in Saskatchewan.)

Public anger against the plan found its lightning rod in Douglas, who had resigned as Saskatchewan's premier to run for federal office as the member of Parliament for Regina. Election Day was June 18, 1962—just two weeks before the new health care plan was to take effect. A woman who worked on Douglas' election campaign recalled the venom of the time. At night at the campaign office, "teenagers would come up and hiss at us through the glass," she remembered later.

"The city's residents had been whipped into a near-hysteria by the doctors' anti-medicare campaign," Margoshes writes, adding, "There were graffiti threats on city walls and calls in the middle of the night to Tommy's house. His campaign manager, Ed Whelan, got frequent calls from a man threatening to 'shoot you, you Red bastard!' A few homeowners placed symbolic coffins on their front lawns."

As in the United States today, opponents of the health reform plan weren't sure whether to denounce the CCF as Communists or Nazis, so they did both. Protesters greeted Douglas' motorcade with Nazi salutes—when they weren't throwing stones at it. Other opponents painted the hammer and sickle on the homes of people thought to be associated with the party.

The doctors made good on their threats: When the new health care plan was introduced on July 1, doctors across the province walked off the job. But the government was ready, flying in replacement doctors, mostly from Britain. The strike ended after three weeks, the health care plan stayed in place, and four years later, the Canadian government passed the Medical Care Act, which provided funding for every province to create a similar plan.

Douglas and his party were vindicated. Once their plan took effect, Shackleton writes, it "was soon so well accepted that no political party had the temerity to suggest its abolition."

But that vindication came too late. Douglas, who had led the CCF to five straight provincial victories, lost his federal campaign that June, receiving barely half as many votes as his opponent. Two years later, the Liberals defeated the CCF for the first time in 20 years. The party that passed health care reform would spend the next seven years out of power.

The events leading up to the 1962 doctors' strike in Saskatchewan are different from today's Tea Party movement in important ways, of course. Saskatchewan wasn't seized by the same level of broad distrust for government that U.S. opinion polls show today. The idea of a government role in health care was already accepted, to a degree: Saskatchewan had already passed the Hospital Insurance Act in 1947, which paid for hospital care. And the changes Democrats have called for stop well short of single-payer health care, notwithstanding the charges of their critics. Even the AMA supported Obama's plan.

But the anger of those months in Saskatchewan undermines a key belief in the debate over health care reform. When confronted with the overall success of Canada's brand of government-funded health care—better health outcomes at much lower cost—Americans tend to respond that such a broad government role is anathema to American culture. This has the ring of an excuse—after all, the idea was apparently somewhat anathema to Canadian culture in 1962. As Douglas said then, "We've become convinced that these things, which were once thought to be radical, aren't radical at all; they're just plain common sense applied to the economic and social problems of our times."

The point isn't that U.S. and Canadian cultures aren't different. Rather, it's that cultural attitudes aren't static. However much some segments of U.S. culture may resist Obama's proposals, the Saskatchewan experience suggests that resistance will dissipate if the plan produces a system that works better than the status quo—especially since, as in Saskatchewan, the government was elected on a promise to make that change.

The other lesson of Saskatchewan is less exciting for Democrats: Even if people come around to the reform itself, they may not come around to the party that pushed it through. If they want to achieve health care reform, that may be a chance that Democrats have to take. But re-election qualms shouldn't be dressed up with bromides about the limits of what's possible. As Canadians can attest, health care reform takes a little more backbone than that.

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Doris French Shackleton, a biographer of Tommy Douglas, describes the mood at the time:

The anger crackled in the air. Every business interest, every insurance agent, every local Chamber of Commerce … now aided and abetted the doctors' cause with every resource at their disposal. Stores were closed to swell "Keep Our Doctors" rallies and parades and marches on the legislature. Newspapers and radios bristled with accusations. There was, as many testified, a sense of civil war.

Shackleton tells of the story of an elderly priest, Father Athol Murray, inciting a "Keep Our Doctors" rally in Wilcox, a small town 25 miles south of the provincial capital, Regina. "This thing may break out into violence and bloodshed any day now," Father Murray told the crowd—"and God help us if it doesn't."

A volunteer on Tommy Douglas' federal election campaign, which came at the height of the unrest in Saskatchewan, tells this story: "I drove home one day with a taxi-driver. He was a man who could really have benefited from Medicare. He had no teeth: he had had them all extracted. He said he had five children and a sick wife. And he blasted me about Medicare and about Tommy. There was no arguing with him."

Christopher Flavelle reports for ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom in New York City. He is Canadian.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2245037/
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Regina's top hits of 1970!

I was at Wascana Park for the Goodbye to Summer concert. Ahh, to be young again. And they don't make music like this anymore!