Public opinion has been shaken by the ‘discovery’ of unmarked graves of children who died in residential schools. The word ‘discovery’ has to be placed in quotation marks because Indigenous communities have been saying for many years that terrible things happened at these places. The time has come to call this what it is – a genocide.
Gene McGuckin, Member of the Vancouver Ecosocialists
After the Heat Dome Killings, What Is to Be Done?
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Greetings,
I am speaking to you this evening from the traditional territories of the Quay Quayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations in a place otherwise known as New Westminster, BC.
The state of the American labour movement has, since the mid-1970s, been dispiriting. There have, of course, been moments of creative and inspiring resistance, but the predominant story has been a chronicle of decline: private-sector unionization rates below where they were a century ago, the abject failure to make breakthroughs in key emerging sectors, defensive stagnation in bargaining achievements, and – election-year rhetoric aside – the political marginalization of working-class concerns.
On the same day sparks ignited the fire that would devour Lytton, B.C., another story was setting #ClimateTwitter aflame. Lobbyists for the American oil giant ExxonMobil made an unintended confession, one that gets to the heart of the climate crisis and how we survive it.
