The issues our group grappled with at SFU have more to do with the future than the past. Where’s the transformational energy needed in an era of ongoing emergency? Has Canadian democratic socialism revitalized itself? How can we articulate socialist ideals and practicalities to the wider public in an era when the topic remains taboo for most corporate media?

At a time of ecological and political crises, the left can ill afford denialism, nor the energy absorbed by playing rigged intra-party games. Once the emotional shock has worn off, it is time for cool and clear analysis of the obstacles, and the opportunities, for broader action combining electoral and extra-parliamentary avenues.

This essay appeared in the October-November 1980 edition of CD. It is the first chapter in a comprehensive history of the Waffle, the movement within the NDP that produced the Manifesto for an Independent Socialist Canada in 1969. Many of the core ideas of the Waffle were first discussed and debated in the pages of this magazine by the very people who eventually emerged as the movement’s leaders.

The social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s gave birth to the “underground press,” which helped constitute the youthful counter-culture and protest movements. But the alternative media and movements of the era did not generate activism oriented towards changing the very structure and policy framework of the media system.

Media are the institutional space that concentrates society’s symbolic power, a concentration that the Internet has only somewhat ameliorated. Yes, the Internet is an invaluable organizing tool for activism – but it’s also a foremost means of neoliberal globalization. Besides, as Steve Anderson discusses elsewhere in this issue, its most democratic aspects are under threat from the logic of enclosure, one backed by powerful corporate and commercial forces.

Progressive-minded Canadians have long been concerned that private media concentration threatens democratic values. In June, 2006, even the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications Report on the Canadian News Media warned that there are “areas where the concentration of ownership has reached levels that few other countries would consider acceptable.”