Unity through political action and the capacity to mobilize targeted communities into supportive public action is critical to act as a bulwark against oppression by armed bodies whose raison d’etre is to enforce laws that protect those with property against those without it. Nothing less will work.

James Wilt is right to point out that as enforcers of capitalist laws, police forces are inherently violent instruments of class oppression and must be abolished along with the capitalist system they serve. However, in the meantime, until that happens, measures are needed to restrain and neutralize police brutality to whatever extent may be possible.

The COVID-19 crisis presents a remarkable opportunity to realize a post-pandemic Canada in the interests of the many through unity and action. To achieve fundamental change, we need to find a unified voice and to coalesce around and embrace a historic project of democratic decision-making. Are we up to it?

The government’s inaction reflects a deeply rooted attachment to risk-based, reactive paradigms when proactive initiatives that are precautionary and based on harm-avoidance are needed. The Liberal government is ignoring the reality that the virus does not discriminate, that prisons are porous to it, and that protecting the right to live is what defines us as human beings.

Workers ought to be made whole to mitigate their losses stemming from the current economic crisis. Systemic delays, inadequate resources, unpreparedness, crippled medical resources and, in some cases, outright indifference to the fate of hundreds of thousands of working people has compelled many to work in close proximity without adequate protection.

While the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are fiercely challenging the U.S. imperium with a dramatic vision without even the merest existence of a labour party, our own NDP, with its superior connection to organized labour, treads softly in confronting the corporate agenda. Why can’t the visionary boldness of a Tommy Douglas inform the NDP in this critical moment?

If a movement ever develops in Canada with the potential to change its political landscape, like England’s Momentum which helped elect Corbyn as Labour Party leader, or the U.S. youth who breathed life into Bernie Sanders campaign, then the Courage Coalition will very likely be its backbone. This deftly organized, loose alignment of activists represents the best connective tissue between mass movements and electoral politics on the Canadian left today.