Workers in Ontario are now realizing that they can fight and win significant changes in the workplace. The union movement should double down on this victory by putting its resources into organizing, effective contract campaigns and properly funding campaigns that speak to the broader working class. Passively sitting back and waiting for the election would be a fatal mistake.

Those of us in countries like Canada, UK and the U.S. need to strongly oppose the brutal war in Yemen and the siege of civilians in Mosul and any and all intervention in Syria. We need to understand that solidarity with the people of Syria, Iraq and the entire region begins with us actually stopping the reflexive reaction to intervene in countries we don’t live in.

Albertans don’t have to repeat the mistakes and duplicate the experiences of the NDP in Ontario and Nova Scotia where one-term governments were not pushed by movements on the ground, eventually turned rightward and introduced anti-worker legislation, and were then ousted by the some of the country’s most radical anti-labour right-wing governments.

Bringing together these strikes with the burgeoning OPS contract fight, and showing up at OPSEU’s numerous rallies and info pickets, Ontario workers can begin to build some real solidarity and power capable of taking on the Liberals.

Without a perspective geared towards revitalizing the organizing capacity of the broader working class, any new political organization launched will be doomed to succumb to abstract debates over program and theory.