Working through and across differences–while maintaining the diversity of an inter-generational anti-oppression and radical politics–has strengthened the terrain for inclusive, participatory, and revolutionary struggle in Canada for the upcoming year.

Despite all of the worry from progressives of what the Conservatives would do with a majority government, few gave thought to what a Conservative government would do to the labour movement and to labour law. Do the Conservatives have a secret agenda to undermine Canada’s unions?

I could tell you about day to day life in the park, or the marches that have taken place, or what the many people I have talked to have said about why they are part of this world wide show of frustration and displeasure. As for myself I’m seeing red flags and I’m not talking about the communists.

Although I do sympathize with the goals and spirit of the movement, I am seeing a lot of the activists and independent alternative media blindly throwing their support behind it even though they freely admit they have problems with the way things are being done, things being said and the transparency.

I think we can pause a small moment to share the joy in the birth, however tenuous, of an international solidarity of workers and oppressed peoples in struggles against global captialism.

Promises of great wealth and vast public benefits generously spread through the streets and into the domiciles of each and every resident are standard for the oil and gas industry when it is trying to wedge a massive new project, like the Keystone XL Pipeline, into the political and physical landscape.

Some time in the very near future–perhaps as early as this fall–President Obama and administration insiders will approve the construction of the massive Keystone XL pipeline. With the stroke of that pen the gates will open to the flow of about 700,000 barrels of the most costly and toxic oil on earth from below the no longer quiet boreal forests of Alberta to Oklahoma and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Globe and Mail–the Canadian media’s strongest supporter of neoliberalism and uncontrolled capitalism–published a news story today that questions whether the economists, business owners and governments that dictate the economic policies of Western society might have it all wrong.

While big marches and sit-ins during the struggle for black rights and an end to the Vietnam War were effective tools for promoting change, such tactics in North America now appear to be losing steam as effective tactics.

In 1974, Judge Gordon H. McConnell set a precedent in Canadian law, when he sentenced two men responsible for 22 acts of willful damage. Instead of incarcerating the young men, McConnell ordered the offenders to meet their victims to atone for their offence and ultimately make repairs when possible or pay the out-of-pocket costs sustained by the individual victims.