Dear Jack,

I see that you have lined up with Harper (and Martin) behind the brutal (and stupid) Yankee practice of minimum sentences for crimes involving guns (and what next?). The right-wing editors of the Globe condemned you all on January 13 for pandering to law ‘n’ order hysteria. Are you not embarrassed? I suppose not. A social democrat has gotta do what a social democrat has gotta do. And a naive, unrealistic, soft-on-crime small-c communist has gotta write you this Dear Jack letter. Don’t bother answering, I know you’re very busy trying to win as many seats as possible at any cost, and I know what you’ve gotta say.

My very first publication, in 1961, was an article welcoming the New Party (in Cy Gonick’s first magazine, Root and Branch, Berkeley). I was a founding member of the New Democratic Party. After you guys expelled the Waffle I let my membership lapse but I still loved you. When you, Jack, apologized for Big Dick Hillier’s “let’s kill scumbags” speech I was hurt but I still loved you, mostly for the sake of your predecessors, James Woodsworth, M.J. Coldwell, Stanley Knowles, Frank Scott, Tommy Douglas, yes even David Lewis, and my teachers, Michael Oliver (first president of the NDP), Harry Crowe and Ken McNaught, and others, many others. But now that love is gone. And so Jack, and Canadian social demahkracy, goodbye and goodbye. May you rest in Blair.

This article appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of Canadian Dimension (Women Speaking Out).