Why is Canada negotiating with terrorists?
Or, what I want for the new leader of the NDP.
It didn’t just happen all of a sudden, but the world changed last week.
We’ve reached the tipping point that allowed billionaires and oligarchs to take over the American government, to abandon any pretence of commitment to supporting its citizen population and ensure the concentration of power and riches in the hands of a very few privileged white men (let’s call it what it is)
And here in Canada, our Prime Minister and his government are negotiating with those terrorists, on a spectrum that runs from turning a blind eye to embracing with pandering complicity.
This is not what I want for my family, my country, my world, my global community.
It’s certainly not what I voted for in the past federal election (and in case you are new here, I voted New Democrat, knowing full well that the chances of us winning were slim to none given the political climate. I voted for the party that, while not anywhere close to perfect, aligned most closely with my own personal values and vision for a world driven by social responsibility and community care)
I felt a lot of trepidation watching as the election unfolded, and my fears have not been assuaged in observing the ways in which our government is moving forward in negotiating with - and capitulating to - the mad man figurehead for the architects of Project 2025.
We are more than halfway through the calendar year, and only 167 days since the mad man was sworn into office (for a second time people!).
The speed with which Project 2025 is being executed is horrifying, and if you don’t believe me, check out the tracker here.
It’s so easy to drop into freeze and feelings of helplessness that lead to inaction on these policies affecting our closest neighbours.
But that’s how the terrorists win.
I believe that, as a country, we should be calling out and condemning the actions of our neighbour state as loudly and as collectively as its citizens are. And we should be defending and protecting the people and systems that will and already are suffering as a result of its heinous policy.
Instead, we have elected a government that embraces the principles and practices of a terrorist nation, all because of economics.
I will remind you here that economics is a philosophy, it’s a matter of choice, not destiny. We get to choose the ways in which we will enter into and manage systems of commerce.
Whether you choose to believe it or not, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is political.
And whether you choose to believe it or not, the capitalist patriarchy is doing a shit job of it.
The truth is that we are all connected. Collectively, we the people outnumber them the oligarchs.
What happens anywhere in the world happens to us. The air we breathe, the water we rely on for survival as a species, the planet we inhabit, are all singular contiguous systems.
We are all breathing the same air, drinking from the same stream, and living on this big blue marble, together.
I want a family, a community, a country, a government that puts people and the planet first; that understands that collective interdependence is the natural and necessary condition for thriving and surviving; that understands that none of us is free until all of us are; and that lives and breathes that understanding with a commitment to ourselves and each other that we will work towards creating a reciprocal, inclusive and supportive system where every one of our kin - human, animal, and plant - can thrive in peace and yes, prosperity.
This is what I will be looking for in the process of rebuilding my political party and electing a leader for the New Democratic Party, or honestly, whatever political party has the chops to call out injustice and inhumanity, and embrace universality and accessibility.
This is what I will be striving for in choosing and participating in my local communities.
This is what I will be working towards in my own personal life and family and the choices we make together.
Do I know what that looks like specifically? No, not really.
Like most of us, even though there has always been something in me that knows in the pit of my stomach that things are just not right, I was not raised or conditioned to question or challenge the system.
We have all been brainwashed into believing the bullshit messages of a capitalist heteronormative patriarchy whose aim is to serve no one but the elite few, at the expense of life itself.
And that’s just fucking crazy.
We must do better if we want to survive.
It’s as simple as that.
Thanks for reading!
If you’re looking for me off Substack, you’ll find me here, here, here and in the Kin Keerpers’ Collective