by Noaman G. Ali

“I just want to help children,” a voice called out in English from a clothing store in Thamel, a tourist area of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city.

I saw a young white woman walking out of the store, and my curiosity got the better of me. “You want to help children?” I called out.

It was a dark, cold January evening and the narrow streets were lit largely from stores which had no front walls and the signs that hung over them. The woman stopped and turned around.

“Yeah. There are these street girls—and not the glue-sniffing kind—they’re really nice street girls, and they don’t have shoes or socks so I want to buy them socks. That’s a nice thing to do, isn’t it?” she seemed to be pleading.

“I guess,” I said. “But you know there are other ways of helping people here?”

“Like what?” she asked.

“You know about the revolution going on here, don’t you?”

“No. What revolution are you talking about?”

“The communist revolution,” I said, referring to the Maoist movement that has dominated the country’s politics for the better part of the last decade.

“Communism? Isn’t that bad?”

“Why is it bad?”

“Because communists want to take things over and run things and tell people what to do,” she said with conviction.

I tried to explain a bit of what the Maoist communists in Nepal were about, but she wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t know about all of that,” she said. “I’m only here for one more day, and I want to do something nice.”

The politics of doing nice things

A few days later, in the small city of Birendranagar in the western district of Surkhet, I was squatting on my haunches watching as barefoot men, women, and children sat next to mounds of gravel and smashed at stones with hammers.

Bits of stone flew in all directions and kept hitting me in the eyes. It took me awhile to realize that these people were producing the gravel.

A toddler wearing a black shirt and no pants—never mind shoes—was hitting at a rock with a hammer as a playtime activity, imitating the older children and adults around.

Other youth, in their teens and early twenties, were collecting large stones and rocks and arranging them in blocks to build a bridge.

The sun beat down on our backs as I asked Veer Bahadur, a 49-year old stone-breaker with dusty, bandaged thumbs, to tell me about his life.

His 35-year old wife, Jitmaya Nepali spoke more. We communicated through a translator, a small-business owner who was showing me around the city.

They explained that they were from the Thapa, a caste of historically-oppressed indigenous (janjati) peoples. Completely landless, they were living in a hut thrown up on some land near the construction of the bridge. They had four children. Only the youngest was in school.

I asked about untouchability, the political, economic, and cultural system by which people from upper castes would refuse to touch people from the lowest of castes, make them do the worst of jobs, and generally treat them with disrespect and contempt.

“There used to be a lot of that,” Jitmaya said. “But there’s not so much of that now.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“The Maoists,” she said.

In the course of a ten-year long People’s War launched in 1996, during which they took control of some 80-percent of the countryside, the Maoists struggled against untouchability and for the rights of oppressed castes and nationalities, women, small businesses and, of course, workers and peasants.

Before the People’s War, Jitmaya explained, she used to do the same work, but earned much less than she does now. “There’s more earning now for us to eat.”

When it came to politics, though, Jitmaya asserted that whoever won the elections, it just didn’t do much for her and people like her.

Still, she noted, “The Maoists are all right. Congress and UML only look out for themselves and for the rich. The Maoists at least look at and talk about the wretched and the poor.”

The Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), or UML, were the largest parties in Nepal before the Maoists came onto the scene. Although they have opposed the attempts by Nepal’s monarchy to take total control, they have also leaned heavily on the highly oppressive semi-feudal landlords and sections of the bureaucracy to support them. The two parties are also often seen as being very close to India, whose control and influence is considered by many to block Nepal’s prospects for economic and political development.

Congress and UML’s reluctance to support the economic and cultural reforms needed to establish a true democracy played into support for the Maoists in the course of the People’s War. But when the monarchy took total control of the country in the early 2000s, the Maoists ended the War and joined hands with Congress and UML in a People’s Movement that decisively abolished the monarchy.

Surprising everybody, perhaps including themselves, the Maoists emerged as the largest party in the Constituent Assembly elections held in 2008. But the following years brought little political stability, as different parties cycled through Prime Ministerships. No administration could last very long—leading to intense dissatisfaction throughout the country.

“What’s politics got to do with us? Why should we go after politics? What will the Maoists do for us?” Balbahadur Viswakarma said when I asked him about his views on politics and the Maoists.

A couple of hours away from Birendranagar, in the “village development committee” of Maintada, Balbahadur is a labourer from the Dalit caste of “untouchables.” 50-years old, Balbahadur was squatting on a pile of rocks, which he was putting together to construct a home, when I went up to speak to him in Hindi.

“I have a little bit of land that can sustain my family for six months,” he explained. “The rest of the time I do this kind of work.”

His view on politics appeared thoroughly pragmatic. “We need development, we need jobs. We’ll vote for whoever gives us bread and livelihoods. The land we live on is not registered in our names, we’ll vote for whoever gets it registered.”

But his words further on betrayed some appreciation for the Maoists’ struggle.

“More people have gotten livelihoods as a result of the People’s War. Before the War, only the children of rich people got jobs and income. Those people who were already big leaders, or owned businesses, or had a lot of land.

“There was also a lot of untouchability and discrimination, but it was reduced as a result of the People’s War. Little people got the opportunity to speak out.”

Still, Balbahadur argued that the People’s War was not a success because the Constituent Assembly had proven incapable of producing a constitution.

Not only that, “Congress and UML are parties of the rich. They won’t do anything for the poor. Revolution is necessary. Things change so fast, but workers and peasants still need jobs, electricity, an end to load-shedding, irrigation. But not in this violent way. So many people died, there was so much loss, it’s not right.”

What is it about these Maoists that people could express, at once, their appreciation for their actions and skepticism about their intentions?

How are Maoists handling their departure from revolutionary politics and entry into mainstream politics?

And just who are these Maoists, who risked life and limb in a ten-year long People’s War against the police and army of Nepal?

A dancing revolutionary

Bimila Hamal was suffering from motion sickness and so she spent most of the bus ride to Surkhet half-asleep—on top of me.

Surkhet district is in the western part of Nepal, some fifteen hours west of Kathmandu by bus. The ride is bumpy and winds its way along precipitous mountain paths.

The 26-year old kept apologizing about giving me the trouble, and I sat there awkwardly trying to make sure she didn’t fly out of the seat every time the bus hit a bump, which was often. My head hit the coaster above me several times.

A screen at the front of the bus played a Nepali film, and Bimila was totally alert for one of the songs, explaining that she really liked it. From time to time her phone would go off to the tune of a sweet and sugary Hindi song.

An hour or two away from Birendranagar, as the daylight came up, the usually cheery Bimila turned sombre and pointed out a national park in the lush greenery of the hills and valleys below.

“There are elephants and tigers in this park,” she explained. “During the People’s War, we would have to march through these jungles, mostly at night.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked.

“No. The animals were afraid of us,” she said. “We were afraid of the police.”

Bimila was part of a Maoist artists’ troupe. She joined the Maoists when she was 13-years old, in the middle of the People’s War. Completely banned, the Maoists were totally underground.

Her nom de guerre is Sarala. It means simple.

“We would often walk at night and I was so tired that I would fall asleep while walking! Then someone behind me would bump into me and ask, what happened?”

I first met Bimila in Kathmandu, when delegates and observers were taking a break from the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist, held in mid-January. I asked her then about how and why she joined up with the Maoists.

Bimila is from a family of small peasants—poor, but not too poor. Her parents supported the Maoists and their ideology of equality and development. Her father was sometimes jailed, and to avoid police he was often not at home.

Bimila’s mother and her daughters faced the brunt of police repression. That just fueled even more resentment against the state and underscored the Maoists’ point that there could be no liberation under the existing political order.

“There was a lot of persecution. The police would harass us. They beat my mother because we would occasionally feed and house Maoist activists. The police slapped me around. My mother told me to go fight.”

So Bimila became a whole-timer (full-time activist) with the Maoists. Because she was young she wasn’t assigned to fighting. Instead, she joined in with the artists, and was trained in dancing. She was also trained in political and social science, public speaking and how to conduct mass work.

“There was so much injustice and persecution, I felt I had to go fight for liberation.”

For several years, Bimila explained, she and her comrades spent a lot of time walking from village to village, from district to district, from region to region, spreading the Maoist message through song, dance and theatre. “I’ve visited much of Nepal, on foot. People really loved us everywhere we went.”

The Maoists and communities that supported them were the frequent target of state repression, so even artists were trained in handling weaponry for self-defense, as well as in first aid.

Many of Bimila’s friends died in the People’s War, but she also remembered it fondly as a time of great camaraderie and solidarity. Bimila got married during the People’s War, and now has a five-year old son—named Soviet.

I bumped into Bimila a couple more times over the next few days, and when I learned that she was going to Surkhet with another comrade from the All Nepal Women’s Association (Revolutionary) (ANWA(R)), I asked if I could come along. That got me on the 15-hour bus ride to the western part of Nepal.

“Sometimes this peace seems like a dream,” Bimila told me. “In those years, I could never imagine that I’d be taking a bus on official roads to visit friends across the country.”

At one point in Surkhet, Bimila showed me two videos of herself dancing. One was filmed in one of the Maoists’ Base Areas during the People’s War. Bimila dances in a circle with other men and women in western Nepali style to a deuda, a man and a woman competing in singing verses—here, revolutionary verses. But in the other video, she dances by herself to a popular Bollywood song, at a picnic in peacetime.

After the War, Bimila resumed her education and is now enrolled in a B.Ed. program. I got the sense she’d like to be some kind of a performer. But, she noted, her husband encouraged her to continue as a leader instead.

Like so many others, Bimila is torn between the need to complete the revolution and the comforts of peace—“a morbid peace” because the efforts and sacrifices of the People’s War did not lead to the outcomes people fought for: No constitution, no government of the workers and peasants, no accelerated development toward equality.

Instead, the deep practices of the state came back, even when the government was led by Maoists. Politicians went back to the kinds of wheeling and dealing, corruption and scandals, and subordination to Indian expansionism that had led to the People’s War in the first place.

It seemed certain that the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (or UCPN(Maoist)) had abandoned its program of revolution. When those who were committed to the goal of revolution decided to split and to form the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist (or CPN-Maoist, also called the Dash Maoists for simplicity’s sake) in 2012, Bimila sided with the revolutionaries.

Now Bimila is a regional bureau member of the Dash Maoists, a central committee member of the All Nepal Women’s Association (Revolutionary) and its district in-charge in Surkhet.

She often deals with cases of polygamy, violence against women, sexual harassment and alcoholism—these things go together all over Nepal—organizing ANWA(R) activists to empower women and to bring men around.

“First we try to persuade them, but if they don’t behave then we may slap them around a bit….” She laughed, somewhat apologetically, breaking out a brilliant smile, “Because we have to liberate women!”

Well, all right.

Revolution, nationalism and small business

There was some mischief in Kanta Poudel’s eyes.

In Kothikada, on a peak overlooking the Surkhet Valley in which Birendranagar is located, the 30-year old schoolteacher was telling me about the situation of women in her region.

We weren’t alone. We were surrounded by over a dozen men and women listening to our conversation.

“There was violence against women in general and domestic violence as well. Our voices weren’t heard, many times we literally couldn’t even speak,” she explained.

Many of the women nodded or muttered in agreement. The men looked on.

“All we were good for was cooking food and cutting grass. We had no rights to property—in law, yes, but not in reality. Things have gotten better. They are not as good as they should be, but they have gotten better.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because of democracy and peace. There has been education and general social change. Things change with time.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what about struggle?”

“Yes,” and here the twinkle in her eyes was betrayed by the slight, sly smile on her face. “Because of struggle—people’s struggle.”

Among the spectators was Kanta’s father, 72-year old Tikaram Devkota, a small peasant from an upper caste, a committed monarchist and an opponent of the Maoists.

Some ways down from Kothikada in Chhera, I met with 33-year old Balkrishna Bandhari, who owned a small roadside shop from which he sold food (noodles, rice and dal, so on) and basic condiments.

“Politics in Nepal is golmaal [a circular mess],” he said, as the sun settled and we sat around a fire. “What’s happening is bad and dirty. Politicians have no principles. They’re treacherous. And not just any one leader, all leaders are like this. There’s no constitution, no rule of law, no stability. Foreign companies won’t invest because of the war and so there are no jobs.”

“Isn’t foreign investment a problem?” I asked.

“Regulate it! But we need it. We don’t want it like British companies did to India, but we need jobs.”

I asked him what he thought of the parties. “I’m not with any party. I haven’t voted for anyone. There’s UML and Congress and the Maoists and the khaoists”—meaning ‘eaters’—“but I am not with anyone.”

I heard that kind of skepticism in politics from dozens of people all over Nepal.

“I am definitely not with the Maoists, although I had faith in the person of Baburam Bhattarai.”

Baburam Bhattarai is a senior leader of the UCPN(Maoist), and an accomplished academic and intellectual. He was finance minister from 2008 to 2009, and won widespread admiration for his performance, particularly by pressuring the bureaucracy to collect more taxes than had ever been collected by any government before. His administration also managed to control prices of petrol and other essentials.

But the first Maoist administration under the prime ministership of UCPN(Maoist) top leader Prachanda (Pushpa Kamal Dahal) was forced to leave government in a struggle with the army and other parties in 2009. Bhattarai then became prime minister in 2011, but instead of delivering on a constitution, he dissolved the Constituent Assembly in May 2012. To make things worse, inflation kept rising as joblessness increased.

Meanwhile, the struggle inside the party between revolutionaries and reformists continued.

In the course of the People’s War, Maoists had set up Base Areas, where the government forces could not enter, and in which they developed organs of people’s power from below. These included people’s councils for governance and administration, people’s courts, people’s micro-industries (including a people’s micro-hydroelectric project), and much more.

Even where the Maoists were not in full control, they had mobile people’s councils and mobile people’s courts, delivering quick dispute resolution rather than having people travel far to district courts. In many areas they took over land from large landowners and redistributed it to poor peasants. It was part of what made them so popular.

But upon ending the War in 2006 and entering the peace process, the opposition set conditions upon them to reverse the land reforms and to dismantle structures of people’s power. Prachanda and Bhattarai accepted this condition, saying they could achieve the revolution through other means. Though the revolutionaries in the party were skeptical, they went along with it.

But six years later, the struggle sharpened, especially after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The Maoists had suspended the revolutionary process so that they could play the game of parliamentary politics, only to find that they couldn’t play it that effectively. In fact, it seemed like Prachanda and Bhattarai had given in to the logic of the top-down parliamentary process rather than looking to build people’s power from below.

The revolutionaries finally broke in mid-2012, accusing Bhattarai and Prachanda of having no intention of walking down the revolutionary road.

“I used to like Bhattarai,” a small-business owner, who chose to remain anonymous, told me in Birendranagar. “But not anymore. Instead, I support the Dash Maoists,” he said, referring to the faction that had split by its popular name. He was not, however, a member.

I sat across the table from him, talking over dinner in a small hotel. I was having a hard time believing him. “You do know that communists want to take over property and redistribute it?”

“Let them!” he said. “There are people richer than me. Every day, I work from four o’clock in the morning to ten o’clock at night. What for? Eight to ten hours of work is enough But here in Nepal, only a small fraction of the population actually works. Everyone else just eats.”

I was confused. “You mean, most of the people work and a small fraction eat?”

“No. There are a few rich people who live off of exploitation, but go outside, what do you see? You see these youth doing nothing but standing around and playing carrom all day.”

He was right. Just next to the hotel was a dingy, seedy bar-café, with a carrom board outside, around which were half a dozen to a dozen young men. In fact, as I traveled through the countryside for long hours on buses, passing through small villages and towns I saw carrom board after carrom board surrounded by young men. In the city of Kathmandu, in district Nawalprasi in the south and, of course, in Surkhet, I saw it on the ground.

“There’s no electricity so they can’t sit at home watching TV all day. They have no jobs. There’s nothing for them to do but to play carrom, or to go get drunk. They have to live off other people’s money.”

He explained that despite belonging to an upper caste, he came from a poor, landless working-class family. His father worked in other people’s homes. He left Nepal at a young age to study in India but could not complete his university education. So he started working there when he was 18-years old, then in other parts of Southeast Asia, before very recently returning to Nepal. He was now 45-years old.

“I was compelled to go abroad, like so many youth. Our youth have no future in Nepal. They are wasted here. If the communists take my property to create development and jobs for everyone, then I am happy to give it all up!

“I took a loan to start this business, and I make a little bit of a profit that pays it off and feeds my family but everyone should work equally. My prime minister should work as much as I do—and I should work only eight hours.”

So what was his problem with Baburam Bhattarai? By all accounts he was a hard worker, and he was trying to invite foreign investment to the country.

“India’s rulers have always tried to dominate Nepal,” he explained. “India demonstrates friendship, but actually it loots our resources.”

He went on to explain how Nepal has entered into many unequal treaties with India, and that Bhattarai’s government had, in fact, entered into even more unequal relationships like this.

Nepal’s population is some 26 million, whereas India’s is over 1.2 billion. A lot of small business owners and workers flow into Nepal from India—while the reverse also happens. But the major threat appears to be the wholesale exploitation of Nepal’s resources by large Indian companies.

In fact, Bhattarai had signed onto the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) with India, which was roundly criticized even by members of the UCPN(Maoist), never mind the Dash Maoists.

Despite having the world’s second-largest potential for hydroelectric generation, Nepal lags far, far behind, with several hours of load-shedding in major cities and practically no electricity in rural areas. Instead of using state power to raise national capital in order to develop the capacities, Bhattarai’s government was continuing to sign over national resources to Indian companies.

“The Karnali River, I mean the river itself, was all but sold to an Indian company,” he explained. “I am not against foreign investment, let them develop the resources and take money—but then they restricted Nepali businesses from doing the same, they have to take permission from the Indian company! Let them take our money, but not our national property.”

In fact, the Dash Maoists have started a company to try and raise the capital necessary to develop the hydropower project and replace the Indian company, demonstrating the potential for Nepalis to form their own alternatives from the ground up.

“Instead of developing our own resources, Bhattarai has continued our dependence on Western powers.” He explained how the World Food Program was being relied upon to get food to remote areas in Nepal.

“What they need is roads, education, agricultural training, and whatever else is necessary to make them self-reliant and to make our country self-reliant. At first, we will be happy to work twelve to fifteen hours, if that’s what it means to stand on our own feet. How long are we supposed to last on handouts? The first day, okay; the second day, okay; but the third day? Who will keep giving us free food? They’ve ruined our habits. We’ve become dependent on others. We need business, we need jobs.”

To him, Bhattarai and Prachanda’s leadership had shown itself to be incapable and steadily more corrupt.

“They’re doing what other politicians have done, eating up our tax. There’s a 13% value-added tax on everything we buy. Where does it go? What are they doing with it? Prachanda and Baburam used to be like us, but now they’re living in palaces. They’re getting cozy with big capitalists who are themselves cozy with and depending on foreign powers.”

He repeated a joke popular among the Dash Maoists, “These are the Dash Maoists, but Baburam and Prachanda are the Cash Maoists.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “But development takes time. It won’t happen in a day even if the Dash Maoists come to power. So how can you blame the ‘Cash Maoists’ for that?”

“Yes, development takes time and will take time. But where is the Cash Maoists’ plan for development? Where is their plan for irrigation in agriculture, for electricity, for industries? There is no constitution now and that’s because those in power never accept demands unless we back them up with force.”

The next morning he took me around the city to meet with the stone-breakers and to see his own homes. He had a modest, solid home in which his sons lived as they studied—one of his sons had quit his studies and, typically, was working abroad—and another home was just a shack, out of which his wife operated a little store selling some biscuits, snacks and tea. Behind the shack was a tiny plot of land on which he wanted to build a solid house.

There were goats tied to slim trees and posts. “We’re raising these goats to sell them. You’ll find just about every middle-class family in Nepal doing three or four things to make ends meet,” he said. “The poorer don’t even have these options.”

He also showed me a couple of large plots of land he said were government owned. “There’s nothing going on here, they lie empty. Do something, anything. Build housing, give people a place to live. Start a factory, give people work to do. People in Nepal want development. Too many of them think it’ll come from shanti [peace], but unfortunately those in power have left us no choice but to get it through kranti [revolution]. I support the Dash Maoists, but ultimately all of these leaders put together won’t set the path. We, the people, are the ones who have to do it.”

21st century socialist guerrillas

“The geography really helped us,” Khagendra Rana said to me, as we stood on the roadside in rural Surkhet, looking at the majestic hills covered magnificently from bottom to top in dark green trees. “We would walk through these jungles on these hillsides.”

At one point as we drove through the hills, he perked up. “This is the spot where we ambushed about a hundred Nepal Army soldiers. There were maybe five of us. We retrieved a lot of weapons that time.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced. “How could five of you ambush a hundred soldiers?”

He explained. “They were in two trucks. We set up an IED on the roadside, that flipped over one of the trucks.” I looked down, it was a dizzying tumble into the lush green brush.

“The rest we scattered from up above.” I looked up. Rocks and trees provided extensive cover.

The 30-year old is a former guerrilla, he used to be a battalion commander in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). His nom de guerre was Jalan—it refers to a feeling of burning.

Jalan was in India over ten years ago studying to become a medical doctor when the People’s War picked up. He left his studies midway and came back to Nepal to get involved in the struggle.

“We started off by cutting the tails of the landlords’ and government agents’ horses and buffaloes. They would ride around on their horses and people would laugh at them,” he said with a mischievous smile. From there, the youth graduated onto more militant, and then armed activities.

“We had nothing but simple weapons at first. The clothes on our back, a t-shirt and a pair of pants. I didn’t even have slippers when I carried out that ambush. Afterward we went back to command and the villagers celebrated and got us flip-flops. I remember how proudly I received those flip-flops that day.”

At some point, we talked about courtship and marriage during the People’s War.

“During the People’s War, if you met someone you liked, you had to get the permission of your party committee to court them,” Jalan explained to me. “The courtship period had to be for one or two years, so that you could get to know your potential partner properly.

“Sometimes a party committee might suggest it was time for you to get married. That’s what happened to me. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but party leaders said I should start thinking about marriage, and even encouraged a partner for me.”

The party, in some ways, had come to replace the role of parents and families. It was the party that would approve and conduct marriages. “But it wasn’t to the kind of arranged marriage where people would be forced to marry.”

Bimila had told me how worried people would be for their partners. She married someone from the PLA, and because their assignments were so different—he, like Jalan, a roving guerrilla, and she a roving artist—she would often have no news of her husband for months on end.

They would meet at party functions, like secret rallies or meetings, or could arrange to meet if they found out their assignments were close-by.

The emotional toll of these fragmented relationships was heavy as well.

“I met my wife twice in two years before I got married to her; and I met her twice in the three years after we got married,” Jalan said. “When we would part, there was no guarantee that we would return.”

Over 15,000 people were killed or disappeared during the People’s War, mostly by government forces (though the Maoists seem to count both party and government combatants as martyrs).

“Once I led a mission of forty-seven men near Pokhara. Only seven returned. Thirteen were arrested. The rest died.”

Pokhara is the country’s second-largest city. The arrested were taken there.

“I myself was arrested,” Jalan said to me. “I still can’t believe how I escaped alive. I was surrounded on all sides by cops, but I broke free and lashed out. I injured seven of them. I jumped on a motorbike and got out of there. It was like a miracle.

“In the main city of Pokhara, I blended into the crowds and got out of there.”

“We were fighting for world revolution,” he sighed.

Bimila once said that her unit was told that after they liberated Nepal, they would go and help liberate people in other countries.

“We were told that, too,” Jalan said. “We were going to help liberate oppressed and exploited people around the world.”

But then, without the completion of the revolution, Maoist leaders completely disbanded the PLA. In 2011, Prachanda and Bhattarai signed a Seven-Point Agreement with opposition parties to effectively liquidate the PLA. A few thousand former guerrillas could opt to join the Nepal Army while others would be given compensation packages ranging from 500,000 to 800,000 rupees.

“In my cantonment, about half of us just walked out—we were about 1,500. We went to the main square in Birendranagar and burned the Seven-Point Agreement. I could have opted to become a major in the Nepal Army. I would have been getting training right now and a nice salary.

“But I fought for revolution. We gave up so much for the revolution, and in the end our leaders gave up the revolution. It was nothing less than a betrayal of the revolution.

“It was wrong of the party to turn Prachanda into a god-like figure. It was wrong for the now-leaders of the Dash Maoists to not tell us sooner about the contradictions in the united party.

“After the PLA was demobilized into cantonments, we’d get a monthly stipend of 3,000 rupees, and many of us would give 1,000 rupees back to the party in Prachanda’s name.

“During the War and after, we used to think that death was inevitable, but hoped it would happen only after seeing Prachanda’s face.”

The sense of betrayal runs deep among thousands of former guerrillas, as does the sense of loyalty to Prachanda. A sizeable portion of the former PLA broke with the UCPN(Maoist) and went over to the Dash Maoists, looking to complete the revolution. Many remained with the main party out of a sense of loyalty.

“There are honest PLA even in the Prachanda faction,” Jalan said. “One former commander burned his uniform rather than hand it over to the Nepal Army. He also refused to hand over his arms to the Army, depositing them directly with Prachanda instead.”

A third section simply took the compensation and abandoned both.

A former guerrilla couple I met at the Kohalpur bus stop on my way to Surkhet had used the compensation they received to start a small roadside café serving passengers who got off from buses for fifteen minutes. The wife sat nursing a baby, and the husband spoke to me as he prepared tea.

“We don’t have faith in either the UCPN(Maoist) nor the Dash Maoists. Let them earn our faith now. And if they want to revive the struggle then let it be in the streets. We’re done with guns.”

There was a tiredness etched onto the faces of even those former guerrillas who hadn’t abandoned the idea of eventually returning to arms.

Jalan showed me the river and the bridge that used to separate a Base Area from a “red zone” village, an area that was under Maoist influence but still very accessible to the government due to the main road.

The village was built on a hill that sloped down to the river. As we returned from the bridge and climbed up the slope toward the main road, the dashing Maoist was as out of breath as I was.

“I used to run daily when we were in the cantonments, but since then, not so much,” he said somewhat sheepishly.

After the end of the War, many of the guerillas had turned to civilian pursuits, even if they were in the cantonments. Many took up their studies again. Jalan had completed his B.Ed. and planned on getting his M.Ed. and eventually his PhD.

He had a daughter to look after now as well.

A party divided in theory and practice

I bumped into some members of the UCPN(Maoist) at a hotel restaurant in Surkhet, while I was with Dash Maoist members. We sat at two tables next to each other, eating lunch.

Getting to the heart of the split between the UCPN(Maoist) and the CPN-Maoist means looking past the confusing jumble of alphabet that their names represent and looking at the subtlety of their different theoretical positions. I’m going to try and do that in this section, bear with me.

Narbahadur Bista, an elected member of the former Constituent Assembly and a regional committee member of the UCPN(Maoist), began commenting on the size of the Dash Maoists’ recently elected central committee.

The central committee is a representative body elected from delegates sent to a communist party’s general congress. The Dash Maoists had elected 51 central committee members at their congress. Although the UCPN(Maoist) was yet to hold its congress, its delegates would end up electing 99 and leaving it up to the provisional central committee to select an additional 55 or so.

Basically, Bista was saying that his central committee was bigger than Bimila’s. Bimila was responding that it wasn’t size, but what you did with the central committee that mattered.

In classic Maoist theory, the goal of a revolution in a “semi-colonial, semi-feudal” country is to rally the popular, democratic class forces—workers, peasants, middle-classes, and nationalist business classes—into a United Front, but under the leadership of the workers and peasants.

The United Front has to defeat imperialism and feudalism, both the actual representatives and armies of these forces, and the political economic system they embody. This means that the revolution must redistribute lands to producing peasants and then begin collectivizing farms to achieve economies of scale and production, and also must promote then appropriate the resources of the capitalists, in order to build the infrastructure necessary for a socialist society.

This, in a nutshell, is the theory of the New Democratic Revolution—a continuous but prolonged move from an underdeveloped economy to a socialist society.

In theory, a revolutionary party has to be tightly disciplined if it’s going to defeat the organization of the ruling classes—that is, the imperialists, the feudal classes, and the capitalists who are allied to them rather than to the nation.

So during the People’s War in Nepal, the Maoists had a very tight, highly disciplined underground party, even though it was vast and commanded the support of millions of people organized into all kinds of mass associations and unions.

Adding many people to the Central Committee makes more sense when the party comes to power after a revolution. But here, the UCPN(Maoist) was doing that before the completion of the New Democratic Revolution, meaning it was building A kind of a mass party more geared toward parliamentary elections.

That meant wheeling and dealing to bring a lot of people with vastly different theoretical and ideological positions into the same party. It probably couldn’t be focused in the same way on revolution any more.

It wasn’t all that simple for the Dash Maoists, either, given their broad membership of 160,000 or so. But they were trying. So did that mean that the UCPN(Maoist) was abandoning revolution?

“There’s no truth to that,” said Kamalesh D.C., a journalist and a district committee member of the UCPN(Maoist), who I met along with Bista. The Dash Maoists had left me alone with them.

“Marxism is not dogmatic, it has to be creative and respond to social phenomenon. We can’t apply it here as if this is Russia or China or Vietnam or Peru.”

The Maoists had ended the War because they decided that, although they had occupied most of the countryside, they simply could not penetrate the heavily fortified cities—large and small alike. So the party decided to enter into a peace process to gain access to the cities.

The idea was to launch an insurrection, and something of the sort was attempted in May 2010 but the Maoist leadership called it off after a few days.

“There is no fixed date of insurrection. What we are saying is that we have to use the People’s War and the nineteen-day People’s Movement [that overthrew the monarchy] as the basis to move forward,” Kamalesh said. “We have to preserve and institutionalize the changes, that is, the republic.

“Besides, we now think that peaceful change is possible. Armed bloody revolution is not in the interests of the people. If we hold the state mechanism in our control, then class struggle doesn’t need to take the same form everywhere.”

I asked Kamalesh how what he was saying, about peaceful transition to revolution through parliamentary government, squared with revolution, which was about smashing the old state institutions and their replacement with people’s power. In fact, at that time, the Supreme Court, in alliance with the status quo parties, appeared to be going after Maoists with a vengeance.

“Well, yes, not all state institutions are under our control, but we are in government. And we keep the class struggle going in all these institutions.”

“But why dissolve the organs of people’s power that were developed over the course of the People’s War? Couldn’t they be expanded into a people’s state?” I asked.

“The dissolution of people’s power was a step back. We had to take a step back so that we could take a step forward. We had to agree to the peace process, and that meant we had to agree to these conditions.”

This was one of the cruxes of the disagreement between the Prachanda faction and the Dash Maoists. The Dash Maoists saw the dissolution of institutions of parallel, people’s power as a tremendous mistake. It meant that from now on, the Maoists would have to play the political game by the rules of the existing political order rather than putting forward a politics of oppressed classes from a position of strength.

The point of New Democratic Revolution is that state institutions are under the control of the workers and peasants. But the UCPN(Maoist) appears to have a strictly economic approach to the question.

“New Democratic Revolution means what? It means capitalist revolution. For us to get to New Democratic Revolution we need to achieve economic development first, and we are doing that through the stage of the capitalist revolution.

“People are disappointed because they think that the New Democratic Revolution is complete, but it is not complete. We have to go to the people and tell them that the revolution is not over, we have to finish it. We may eventually need armed revolution to complete the transition, but just now there is no situation of armed revolution. It’s philosophical, we haven’t given it up.”

This is the other crux of the problem. New Democratic Revolution does not wait for the capitalist revolution to happen first. Workers’ and peasants’ control of the state is supposed to be the condition necessary for developing capitalist relations and replacing them with socialist relations.

In effect, it appeared to me that the Prachanda-Bhattarai UCPN(Maoist) position was that Nepal needed to achieve a capitalist revolution before workers’ and peasants’ power could be established, that the transition to socialism could be achieved peacefully and through parliamentary means.

In theoretical terms, this is the complete opposite of the positions that led to a crystallization of Maoism as revolutionary politics in the first place. In fact, the UCPN(Maoist)’s congress later passed precisely this line of capitalist revolution, sidelining the New Democratic Revolution.

What’s more, in my time there, Bhattarai’s focus seemed to be on building or improving roads in certain areas of the country—those likely to attract foreign investment. Prices for essential goods kept increasing and there was little respite for the poor. There appeared to be no effort toward developing and implementing social welfare programs.

In many areas of the country, agricultural land was being sold off not for productive purposes but for real estate development. In Nawalprasi I saw the board of a developer showing how a site was to be divided into plots for homes. Dash Maoists claimed Bhattarai and Prachanda were facilitating such processes.

Even if they weren’t, they didn’t appear to have a plan to stop them, and that might have been a result of their preoccupation with political matters.

But even under non-revolutionary, social democratic developmental theory, the state is supposed to take a more active role in guiding investment, pooling together capital, and making investments itself. It’s domestic investment, not foreign investment, that leads to substantial industrialization and economic development. Agriculture is supposed to be promoted through subsidies and focused planning, not replaced with real estate.

It seemed that not only had Bhattarai gone from being a revolutionary Maoist to a supporter of capitalism, he was doing it in a way that submitted Nepal to policy prescriptions of neo-liberal international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund! That could only end up benefiting the already-rich, as well as companies in large countries like India and the United States, not the masses of Nepal. Cash Maoists, indeed.

If this is the case, then what was the point of the People’s War and the whole fight for revolution? No wonder so many see it as betrayal.

The struggles ahead

“We draw a line on the blackboard and we ask, ‘Can you erase this line without rubbing it?’

“They say, ‘No.’

“So we ask them, ‘If you cannot erase this line without struggle, how can you change society without struggle?’

“Then we ask them, ‘If you go on the street by yourself and struggle, can you be successful?’

“They say, ‘No.’

“So we ask them, ‘If you cannot struggle without a collective, then why don’t you join us?’”

Bishal Giri, 23-years old, was explaining to me how he approaches and recruits students to the All-Nepal National Independent Students’ Union (Revolutionary) (in Nepali that mouthful is abbreviated to Akhil Krantikari). He was a member of ANNISU(R)’s Nawalprasi district committee, in the southern plains.

Bishal’s simple exposition reminded me of that Western woman who wanted to help barefooted children in Kathmandu.

Can social change be accomplished without struggle? Can it be restricted to a few charitable or NGO programs? Or does it require mass transformation?

The People’s War may have given a shock to some of the worst aspects of social discrimination against oppressed classes and women. But it doesn’t seem like it changed any of the class structures that made that discrimination so potent.

At the ground level, many people realize this, largely because they find themselves unable to feed their children adequately, or if they can feed them then to educate them, or to get them jobs even if they are educated.

For all the NGOs and charities operating in Nepal, people find themselves all the more pressured every day.

Meanwhile, having mobilized hundreds of thousands of people across the country, and tens of thousands of actual cadres, the Maoists did nothing with their enthusiasm and the political and administrative skills they developed over the course of the People’s War.

The Base Areas were dismantled. People’s power and people’s courts were dissolved. Land reforms were often reversed. Micro-industries and agricultural communes that had developed in the Base Areas, and that could have served as a starting point for a real people’s economy, were all but abandoned.

What’s worse of all is that the passion and movement of the masses was stopped in their tracks.

Cadres at the grassroots of the Maoist party recognized this, just as radicals in the leadership did. But it was primarily members of the artists’ front and the guerrillas—people like Bimila and Jalan—who pushed to have the debates at the top tiers of the party spread throughout its rank and file.

Ultimately, that cleared the ground for the Dash Maoists to break away and form a party seriously committed to revolution. There are two major obstacles they face.

Not only are they up against international powers, other parties that want to maintain social inequality and their own privileges, but they are also going to struggle against their former friends and comrades who were, once upon a time and not so long ago, right there with them fighting for revolution.

They also face the skepticism of the masses whose hopes were brought up when the Maoists first put forward and fought for their program of class, caste, gender and ethnic equality—only to be shattered and brought back to the ground.

The CPN-Maoist’s members know that they have to practically demonstrate that they are not hungry for seats or power, but that they are committed to serving the people and agitating for their needs and rights.

And they plan on doing just that, through agitations for Nepal’s sovereignty and for the rights of the people, and through programs that serve the people and organize their power autonomously from that of the ruling classes.

In the days, weeks and months ahead, they face the task of putting together the pieces of the once mighty struggle of the workers, peasants, women, oppressed castes and nationalities, to revive structures of people’s power, and to complete the revolution.

These artists, these guerillas, these students, these business-owners, these 21st century revolutionaries are not throwbacks to another era of armed struggles and people’s revolution. They fight not only for their own country but with a keen awareness of the fact that the success of their struggle can have reverberations around the world.

Where, in Libya, Syria, Egypt and all of these other places, people’s struggles seem to be heading to no popular and democratic resolution, they pose a model for revolution that puts the process firmly under the hands of the oppressed and exploited classes.

Just like Hugo Chávez was not merely the comandante of the Venezuelan revolution, but, because he stood up to neo-liberal policies on a world scale, a comandante of the anti-imperialist revolution worldwide, we need to understand that the Maoists in Nepal fight not just for themselves but for all of us.

Their revolution is not just their own, it is ours, too—a revolution to put people’s democracy and socialism back on the world’s agenda.

We can help them, at least a little bit. They don’t want our handouts—a few socks and shoes. They want us to put pressure on our governments to stop interfering in their country’s matters in ways that try and undermine the revolution. Hell, what they want is for us to make socialist revolution in our own countries!

Given the intensity and speed with which the political and economic system around is experiencing crises after crises, that may not be a long ways off. But as we prepare the ground for our own struggles, it’s up to us to give these revolutionaries in the Third World the moral and political support that they deserve.

Noaman spent almost a month in Nepal from January 7 to February 4 in 2013 for research and reporting.  He can be reached at noaman [dot] ali [at] gmail [dot] com.

by James Chemose, Eric Omwanda & Owen Sheppard – LCO

In the year 1963, Kenya attained a partial, political independence from the hands of its British colonial masters by both the edge of the sword and political negotiation. For many within Kenya, this was a cherished dream come true after many years of labour and sacrifice: freedom from the colonial government, which forced Kenyans to carry identity papers called kipande, engaged them in forced labour, alienated them from their lands, and paid low wages and salaries to black Africans, just to mention a few abuses.

From the early days of British imperialism in Kenya, communities resisted this invasion and abuse in unique ways.

The Giriama community of the coastal region was one of the first to rebel against the British. This group showed enormous bravery and strategic acumen through the guidance of their leader Mekatilili wa Menza, a woman who spearheaded their guerrilla campaign against colonial rule between 1913 and 1914. Despite slowing the progress of colonialism at a crucial moment when the balance of forces did not clearly favour imperialism, Mekatilili was eventually captured in 1914 and taken to Western Province, where she was assassinated.

Other elements within indigenous communities opted to collaborate with the colonialists. Settlers and missionaries often tricked local leaders by offering them presents, such as a bicycle that was offered to King Mumias of the Wanga in exchange for his cooperation. These early comprador elements greatly smoothed the way for theft and militarization of land and resources.

Settlers soon controlled a sufficient base to occupy the land, confiscate livestock and other resources from indigenous peoples, and appropriate or import the capital necessary to begin building inland cities. Kenya’s capital Nairobi was established in 1899 as a supply depot along the new East African railway system built to hasten resource extraction from interior areas of the continent.

As colonialism reached maturity, indigenous people were increasingly denied the right to grow cash crops such as tea and coffee, these industries being placed under strict settler control. Indeed, settlers took over much of the fertile land and left Africans with less productive areas. The British occupation of Kenya’s Central Highlands, where favourable climatic conditions allowed for European-style farming and the absence of endemic malaria, was so intensive that the region became known as the “White Highlands”.

Necessarily, this process of settlement caused mass displacement of indigenous people. This and the machinations of colonial divide-and-rule policy stoked so-called “tribal” rivalries that continue to simmer today. Far from a clash of cultures, these tensions stem from ongoing issues of land appropriation.

In fact, the expulsion of subsistence farmers from their lands and the complete, imposed transformation of the economic system in most communities created a class system. Farmers became indentured labourers in rural areas, or members of the new urban proletariat. Inevitably, this created exactly the conditions of impoverishment, class solidarity, and organization needed for the coming independence struggle.

By the 1950s, numbers of trade unionists and freedom fighters had joined the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), which became known as the Mau Mau movement. Mau Mau was a guerrilla army under the leadership of Stanley Mathenge and Dedan Kimathi, the objective of which was to harass the colonialists off the land. According to Ogot and Ochieng’ in their book Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, members of Mau Mau and their allies set aside ethnic differences incited and heightened through colonialism, instead drawing on solidarity against their common imperialist enemy. In fact, although the Mau Mau movement largely drew its membership from the Kikuyu ethnic group, Luo people calling themselves Onegos also formed a Mau Mau group to fight alongside them. (p40)

Many Mau Mau militants were killed in brutal repression and reprisals including RAF bombing raids and civilian concentration camps not unlike those the British had recently liberated in the fascist-held Europe of WWII.

Ultimately Britain’s superior military resources exhausted the capacities of the armed resistance. But the fighting had also sapped the colonial government’s resources. The administration realized it would be economical to release the the Kenya colony into the hands of moderate African independence activists such as Jomo Kenyatta. Trained in the UK as a lawyer, Kenyatta successfully presented himself as the civilized alternative to armed struggle. In return for guaranteeing the undisrupted flow of capital, he was permitted to become the first president of an independent Kenya.

Unfortunately, despite the Uhuru (Independence) government’s pledges of harambee (“let’s pull together”) and “African Socialism”, full measures were not taken to build an equal and democratic society. Public control over the economy, including vital services like transportation and telecommunications, was not protected. Public assets were gradually sold to foreign-based companies more interested in making profits for European shareholders than serving the needs of people. Issues left over from the colonial period, such as uneven infrastructure development and land distribution, were never remedied.

All these factors have worsened social inequality following independence, and opened the door to continued ethnic tensions often incited by politicians. In 2007, this sort of political incitement along ethnic lines resulted in rampant horizontal violence, characterized as a “war”, following the general elections. A thousand were killed in fighting and approximately 600,000 internally displaced.

Now, with another General Election just around the corner on 04 March, it remains to be seen whether the dispossessed of Kenya will remember their tradition of resistance to exploitation and stand united in the face of those politicians who mediate public dissent against the demands of foreign and local capital. The many ongoing “peace campaigns” in poor and working-class areas of Nairobi rarely develop beyond sloganeering, and certainly do not place a class analysis at the centre of the electoral violence issue.

It is ironic that those who desire peace in Kenya might do well to think on the words of one of its chief historical detractors, the very Winston Churchill who served as British Prime Minister through much of the Mau Mau war: study history.

By Rhea Gamana

I used to say that activists, especially the youth, were just complaining, paralyzing the traffic, and that they should do more productive things rather than going out to yell on the streets. I used to say to myself that they should just go abroad and earn a living.  Then they would have a better life and could be able to provide their families. I changed my attitude when I reunited with my mother.  Now I understand why they do those things. I am now one of them.

My mother used to be a government employee in the Philippines, but since her salary wasn’t enough to provide for us, she decided to come to Canada and be a live-in caregiver. She left my brother and I behind.  This is a common story for Filipinos.

In the last four decades, a Labour Export Policy (LEP) has been implicitly implemented to address the economic crisis in the country. This is not a long-term and people friendly solution to poverty.

The Philippine economy does not have a national industrialization plan to end underdevelopment. Instead it depends on remittances from overseas Filipino workers. Their numbers continue to rise under the administration of current President Benigno Aquino III. The LEP divides families. There are now 4500 leaving every day to work in different countries. The Philippines is the number one source country of migrants to Canada.

I was a good student and daughter in the Philippines. I took care of my family. Yet I was always sad that I couldn’t speak to my mother face-to-face if I needed advice from her.

When the time had come that we were going to reunite with her, I was nervous but happy. Prior to coming here in Canada, we attended a few orientations where they told us that Canada was a better place to achieve the future I wanted.

My Philippine educational attainment was considered nothing here in Canada. I had graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and wanted to become a lawyer or a teacher. A week after our arrival here in Canada almost 7 years ago, I applied for a job at a fast food chain.

I resigned myself to working as a part-time cashier while waiting for the right time to go back to college. After working for almost a year, my workplace got robbed.  I thought I would die that day. The robber pointed the gun towards my stomach, and hit my head on the cash register.

That day changed me. I was diagnosed with PTSD, and that lasted for three years. This was not what I expected from a country like Canada. It was not what was described to us in the pre-departure orientation session we received in the Philippines.

According to a study titled “Filipinos in Canada: Economic Dimensions of Immigration and Settlement” by Dr. Philip Kelly of York University, Filipino immigrants have the highest educational attainment of all migrant groups yet still tend to be deskilled. For example, if I was a nurse in the Philippines, I could only work here as a nanny or personal support worker. In my case, I wasn’t able to use my education here in Canada at all.

Research also shows that children of Filipino migrants make less money than their parents and have a lower educational attainment.  According to Statistics Canada, 32% of first generation Filipinos have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 28% of the second generation.

The Philippines is a semi-colonial country, which means that the country itself is not independent and remains under the control of Western imperialism. The Philippines is a semi-feudal nation. Big business landlords and elites exploit the natural resources and the cheap serf-like labour of the country. This results in the displacement of families who then migrate to urban areas or to other countries to find a better living.

It makes me wonder why the Canadian government only allows one family member to come to Canada if they need more people here.

The Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) is a program of the federal government allowing Canadians to import temporary migrant live-in caregivers, known around the world as domestic workers.

If they complete the program they can become Canadian citizens and sponsor their family through the reunification program.  This takes an average of seven years, sometimes more.  That’s a long time to be separated from your family.  A long time spent taking care of the children of others, while your own need you at home.

This aspect of the program causes damage to family relationships, one that affects the children deeply—this I can tell you from personal experience.

Canadians need to be aware that we are part of this system. Not only here in Canada through our immigration policies, but also in the Philippines where Canadian imperialism contributes to forced migration. Part of our taxes goes to fund Canadian companies in the Philippines (especially in the mining sector), and Canadian military training of the Philippine armed forces to help protect those companies and forcefully displace Filipinos from the countryside through militarization.

I want a Philippines with true democracy and true independence. I want justice for the marginalized and underrepresented.

Today I am the Chairperson of Anakbayan-Toronto. We advocate for human rights, and we struggle for national industrialization that will keep Filipino families intact and ensure that no one will have to leave the country for a better life.  I don’t want any child to suffer what I went through.

Anakbayan-Toronto will not stop calling for national industrialization and genuine land reform in the Philippines, This is the only way that Filipinos will be able to work decent jobs, and not have to leave the country.

ZAD Movement in France Reflecting a Strong Anti-Capitalism
by Julie Gorecki, Basics Community News Service

PARIS – In the forests of the small French village of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL), you’ll find farmers ignoring eviction notices, activists strapped to tree tops, and police barricades surrounding the area. When entering NDDL you see the word “ZAD” sprayed all across city walls and road signs. It means “Zone a Défendre”, or “Zone to Defend” in English. Stop signs are plastered with stickers that read “No Airport!”

The mobilization against the construction of a second airport outside of the French city of Nantes came out of a 2009 French Climate Camp. The aim, was the same as all other climate camps that had gained serious force in Europe at the time; self sustain, educate, debate and mobilize towards “system change not climate change.” Direct actions were planned in week one and executed in week two. It was here that climate justice activists started planning to block the development of the airport. The first step was occupying the land where the airport would be built. In the following months a small group indefinitely moved into the forests of NDDL and started constructing cabins. They sent out a call out across Europe mobilizing activists to join them in an anti-capitalist movement saying “NON!” to the new airport.

Three years later a wide range of leftist groups from France and abroad inhabits the area. It has become what some call a self-sustaining community of “eco-anti-capitalist resistance”, while others have labeled it “Europe’s largest post capitalist protest camp.” Whichever way you look at it, it has become a prime example of direct action for system change in Europe.

Today, groups present at ZAD range from the association of farmers, to trade unionists, radical environmentalists and anarchists. There is also a heavy dose of those who wear no political label but are deeply engaged, while artist activists are also out in good numbers. In the midst of this diversity of radical political stripes and sectors, there is a powerful solidarity between the inhabitants, who are now known as “Zadists.” They are united by one common end – challenge the exploitation of our current economic system by stopping the construction of an airport, do so by physically occupying the land where they plan to build it, and autonomously construct the alternative.

The result has been an array of self-made shelters ranging from mud huts, impressive wood cabins, to tree houses nestled high in trees. For those who live at ZAD permanently, construction has extended to things needed to make life good within the zone. Self-managed bars, communal vegan kitchens, art spaces, and a recently built nursery to make engagement with parents easier, are all examples of how developed this place really is.

ZAD’s level of organization is nothing less than outstanding, demonstrating the power people have when they come together. Camps, buildings, and intersections have all been named and put onto an easy to read map. Weeks are packed with endless seminars, workshops, and days of construction. Activities include countless topics such as anti-repression, dealing with state violence, to forms of art resistance and vegan cooking workshops. “Life here is mostly good. It takes some time to adjust to a few things, but the good things about it beat the rest. Like the calm, the community… knowing that I’m completely independent from the system while fighting it at the same time. It’s good. I’m happy here,” says Pierre, (a cover name, to protect his identity from police) who has been living at ZAD for about 8 months.

ZAD keeps this massive community connected with its very own pirated radio station called “radio klaxon.” Klaxon reports on where the police are located, updates on daily actions and reminds its listeners of the diverse message of ZAD by broadcasting shows on various issues concerning Zadists. That being said, the level of critical discussions about political views, ideologies, and how to live well together at ZAD do not go ignored. ZAD is based on fighting interconnected systems of oppression that not only exploit the environment but also minorities, marginalized people and women. Several collectives have formed on site to keep this significant systematic critique alive.

One of them is the women’s only “Women, Trans, Dyke” group who empowers women and lesbians in the zone. They have also held mixed anti-sexism and anti-homophobic meetings as a reminder of the several forms of capitalist domination many Zadists are fighting.

It is difficult to judge how many people live on the site, but it is said to fluctuate between 200-500 permanent residents, and with visitors and special events there can be up to 1000 people moving through the zone. Days of national mobilizing and action have seen up to 20,000 supporters.

However, in October of 2012, the government announced that before November they would evacuate ZAD for good. It wasn’t a good ecological start for newly-elected “Socialist” President Francois Hollande – acting like just another capitalist – who promised to put climate change high on his political agenda. More importantly Hollande elected Jean Marc Ayrault, the mayor of Nantes between 1989-2012, as France’s prime minister. Ayrault also happens to be the main man behind the airport project and has been pushing its development for decades. Protestors have developed the popular catch slogan “NON Ayrault’port”, as a creative alternative to “NO Airport.” However, with his new political powers Ayrault has only intensified his efforts in continuing the airport project.

Last October police forces numbering 1200 moved into ZAD under the code name “Operation Cesar.” Tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets were their weapons of choice, leaving many injured. Bulldozers also rolled in crushing a high number of significant standing structures. Police elevated in cranes wrestled people out of tree houses. In many cases they used tear gas or pushed on pressure points on activists bodies to speed up the process. These expulsions went on for most of October and have continued sporadically since then. It was then that French mainstream media started paying attention to images of farmers and Zadists getting roughed up.  Images of tear gas turning pristine forests into smoky battlefields were aired across the nation. Yet, the inhabitants stuck by their word and with great effort defended the zone. They built immense road blockades, locked themselves into structures, hung from difficult to reach trees, and stood strong in the face of police lines. On November 17th a call out was put out for a weekend of protests and action to rebuild all that has been destroyed at ZAD.

The response was tremendous. An estimated 30 000 showed up in the streets of Nantes, and then moved to ZAD in order to start reconstructing. Several structures were re-built and 40 tractors, chained tightly together, now form a protective ring around the welcoming camp “la Chataigne.” Thousands gathered in Nantes and across France the following weeks to make their voices against the construction of the airport heard.

“The citizens of Nantes don’t want this second airport. We are strongly opposed. Look at the protests! Look at the resistance! With today’s climate change we must develop industries that don’t contribute to the problem,” says Elisabeth, a life long resident of Nantes and supporter of ZAD.

The fierce resistance has ended the expulsions for now and today ZAD is as active as ever. They have been successful in holding down camp, and rebuilding what has been lost. The difference is that now they do so enclosed within police lines and at constant threat of another destructive eviction.

Tensions between the government and those resisting the airport are much older than the ZAD settlement itself. In the 60’s there were already quarrels between farmers and the state on changing traditional methods of farming within the region. Moreover, the same airport project the Zadists are fighting today was first proposed in 1972.

Resistance led by local farmers and residents has gone on since then, making the struggle more than 40 years old. Unlike the massive factory farms of North America that shell in extraordinary yearly profits, the farming industry in France still largely functions on a small-scale level. Farmers usually inherit their land from ancestors and the profession still has the reputation of hardly making a profit. Their average annual earnings range around 24 000 euros a year depending on what they’re farming. Most of the farms at ZAD are dairy farms, which are known to earn even less.  The high rate of suicides among French farmers is a sad symptom of their struggle. Farmer’s unions form a significant part of the labour movement in France. In relation to ZAD, the ACIPA, a collective of 45 local anti-airport associations including far left political groups, and trade unionists, is the organization that has mobilized farmers and locals against the construction of the airport.

There are of course significant ideological differences between farmers and the tree squatting activists of ZAD. At certain times they have caused serious tension. Nevertheless, the movement has seen a remarkable level of unity and friendships evolve between all groups there. Farmers have been seen standing between lines of police and balaclava-wearing activists and in some cases have even opened up their farms to aid Zadists.

The attacks on the ZAD settlement itself have significantly increased awareness and support for the movement. Now it is being compared to the famous 1970’s struggle of Larzac, a movement of farmers who mobilized against the construction of a military base on their land. After 10 years of strong resistance, they won. Their victory was confirmed when the first-ever socialist president Francois Mitterrand came into office and obliterated the plan for the military base in Larzac. Today, Hollande has proven to ignore the footsteps of his predecessor, and instead stands against the many people he promised a much ‘lefter’ France. However, Zadists and supporters alike are looking to the victory of Larzac as inspiration and are not planning to back down any time soon.

by Alex Felipe ([email protected]).

The Connecticut mass shooting was a tragedy, it was the seventh this year alone. The media, mainstream and social, have been ablaze with justified outrage. Many fingers are being pointed in so many directions that for those seeking to understand why, they would equally be justified in being left in a daze.

The Western Left, in its decades long insecurity, has allowed the field to be dominated by voices placing blame on symptoms rather at the root cause.

The aftermath of Newtown has shown the need for a coherent and inclusive narrative from the Left. Instead, what we see are calls for small reforms to the system that has already failed us.

It’s time for the Left to step up. To again allow itself to think big. To again dare to put forward a grand narrative.

According to Mother Jones magazine, six of the twelve deadliest shootings in US history have happened since 2007. And according to Time Magazine’s “The Worse Mass Shootings of the Past 50 Years,” sixteen of the twenty-six took place in the USA.

In response to this the internet is ablaze with blame: poor gun control, poor access to treatment for mental illness, male violence, White male violence, etc…

And yet are not all these explanations, while containing valid points, unable to truly get to the source of why this is happening so much more often now, and why they are so much more common in the US.

The two most common explanations focus on mental illness and gun control. Clearly these are very important issues. However, they fail to explain why mental illness has been on a shockingly disturbing rise since the 1970s, or why gun ownership was on the decline since the 1950s only to spike up again in the last four years, or why the dates to mass shootings directly link up to these events.

It was in the success of the Western Left that led to concessions to the working people in the decades previous to the 70s. Yet this success led to decadence, to a relaxation of organization and struggle, and thus a catastrophic chain of events followed that led us to the social, economic, and political crises of today.

Without a strong and unified Left, the economic crisis of the 70s brought about the reemergence of a more ruthless form of capitalism that had lay dormant since Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” Real wages went on a decline, and job security dramatically decreased.

It was then that the mental health issues that were already an inherent part of the capitalist system was exacerbated.

Mass shootings in America became commonplace. Using Time magazines’ list, there was one in both the 60s and 70s. In the “greed is good” 80s they became part of the new normal. From Mother Jones magazines’ list of mass shootings in the US since 1982 there were eight in the 80s, twenty-three in the 90s, and twenty-four from 2000 to 2011.

The 80s also gave rise to a series of financial bubbles followed by increasingly worsening crises until the major collapse of 2007-08–a crisis that we are still mired in, and one that threatens to grow worse, much worse.

After 2008 gun ownership sharply rose, and with the threat of an even greater collapse on the horizon, this year we saw seven horrific acts of mass shootings.

Why is the Left not talking about how these narratives are interwoven together as a part of the fabric of our social system?

It is as if we are afraid of our own hard won lessons: that all our issues are tied together, that far from them being intersections–which imply independent issues that meet at certain points–that in reality the critical social problems we face today, have their roots within the capitalist system itself.

The link between mental health and capitalism is not new. Theorists and researchers have been making this connection since the early days of industrialization.

Oliver James, clinical psychologist and author of “The Selfish Capitalist” has looked at the empirical evidence.

In his book he points to research showing how mental health issues, which he prefers to label as “emotional distress,” have been on the dramatic increase. Knowing how definitions differ, he cites studies like those conducted internationally by the World Health Organization (WHO), and by researchers like Joseph Veroff, who uses the same methods over a forty-year period, so as to allow proper comparison.

The WHO study notes a doubling of the incidence of mental illness in the US, Australia, and Britain from the early 80s to the turn of the century. It also shows that citizens of these English speaking nations are twice as likely as those of mainland Europe (who while also being capitalist have stronger social welfare systems), and six times more than poor countries like Nigeria, to exhibit mental health problems.

Veroff’s research of American emotional well-being conducted the same study in 1957, 1976, and 1996. It found a 15% jump in emotional distress from 1957 to 1976, and in 1996 those numbers were 2/3rds higher still.

Further, James cites that in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2000, an analysis on the distress levels of 269 US youth found that “by 1950 standards, the average child of 1990 is in need of professional help.”

Since the financial collapse of 2007-08 things have only gotten worse, and its ramifications have been there for us to see.

James calls the link between mental health and capitalisms’ return to full prominence “affluenza.”

Mass killings are an extreme symptomatic manifestation of this ailment.

Capitalism today, James writes, stokes up “both aspirations and the expectations that they can be fulfilled. … In the entrepreneurial fantasy society, the delusion is fostered that anyone can be… Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s – a person born in 1958 was more likely than one born in 1970 to achieve upward mobility through education, for example… [The] toxins that are most poisonous to well-being are the systematic encouragement of the ideas that material affluence is the key to fulfillment, that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame.”

To take these linkages further, it is no coincidence that when capitalisms’ renaissance in the 70s occurred in the West that the relationship with the developing world also began to morph.

Salaries and job security declined in the West as production was shifted to the Global South.  At the same time cheap foreign labourers were brought in to work in the West.

It was then that countries like the Philippines began to export its own people as commodities, both to meet their local economic needs, as well as to meet the worldwide need for cheap disposable labour in the face of economic crisis. It too is no coincidence that post-2008 this trade in people radically expanded.

It is for these same reasons that we can infer why it is usually White men behind these mass killings. They feel the most betrayed by the loss of the American/capitialist Dream. Racialized communities in general have always been on the outside of that dream, and its loss is no significant loss at all. But with White men the changes since the 70s have been a slap in the face–a slap with serious consequences for all.

The interwoven nature of economics, politics, mental health, and access to guns are clear. And yet both mainstream, and ‘alternative’ media for the most part are focusing on the symptoms. This, is in a very specific way, is an even greater tragedy.

In these critical times when capitalisms flaws are there for all to see, we on the Left need to shake off our insecurities, to reaffirm the need for a shared grand narrative. It is in seeing how all our struggles are linked that we are able to create a shared movement for social change. In this shared narrative we can realize the collective “We” that is necessary if we are to present a real alternative.

The reaction to the Connecticut killings demonstrates the need for the Western Left to reevaluate itself, and to remember that it was once a potent force, in order to become one again.

The individualism that dominates Western culture has spread to the level of ideas. When events like Newtown happen, society tends to look at it as an individual event, devoid of history. We forget that in society, as in an individual life, effects have causes that go beyond what happened at that particular moment.

As the Left moved from collective rights to individual rights in the 60s we forgot what made our movement strong. That it was in fighting for our rights as a people that resulted in our gains as individuals. In flipping the script we have basically accepted the core ideology of the system that oppresses.

The Left today needs to rediscover the “We” that made it strong. It needs to break away from self imposed segregation. From the self-contained groups that fight symptomatic issues–halting any chance of an overarching coalition united in its shared antagonism to the root cause of their hardship.

The tragedy of Connecticut is a wake up call.

It is not enough to feel sympathy, sympathy fades with each new report of a new mass killing, and as these events become normalized.

It is not enough to blame the symptoms, no matter how important it is to try to reduce their severity, the ailment is not remedied until we get to the root cause.

We have to face up to the fact that this issue is tied with so many others. That it is in the very DNA of our society itself.

It’s time we faced up to the truth. Our society is hurting us, and for some of us, that personal hurt is translating to a personal vendetta.

It is time the Left pull itself together. That we stop fighting individual fights against various symptoms of the same root cause: be it racism, sexism, gun control, or whatever other single issue.

It is time that we join all these struggles together as they spring from the same source:  Capitalism itself.

- – -

* hyperlinks to sources are embedded above *

by Hassan Reyes

TORONTO, ON – Activist and community from across Canada met in Toronto on November 9-10 in the 2^nd General Assembly of the Canada chapter of the International League of Peoples Struggle.

“This conference is a unity building exercise,” said Steve Da Silva, Vice-Chair of ILPS-Canada. “We will be discussing how to build up the leadership capacity of our organizations to carry out and coordinate our work.”

The over 50 delegates represented organizations including Anakbayan, WUAI, BASICS Newservice, Immigrant Workers Centre (MTL), Migrante (OTTAWA, MTL and VANCOUVER), Barrio Nuevo, Gabriela, BAYAN, Philippine Solidarity Group, First Nations Solidarity Working Group of CUPE 3903, PATAC, Anti-colonialist Working Group, ACTION, Cordillera Peoples Alliance, Alliance for Peoples Health (BC), LATUC, Barrio Nuevo, Kasama Project (US) and Centre for Philippine Concerns (MTL).

Other activities associated with the assembly included a conference addressing issues facing workers, first nations, communities and others as result of the mounting ‘austerity’ agenda being imposed on most nations as well as the sort of military aggression in the Middle East and North Africa. The conference also featured a concert of progressive artists and musicians including the award-winning D’bi Young, Tru Rez crew and others.

The Assembly and conference kicked off with an opening speakers panel addresses from Swedish writer Jan Myrdal, Palestinian Revolutionary figure and Political Leader Leila Khaled (via livestream), Ecuadorian National Assembly member Maria Augusta Calle (by video), US Hip hop artist M1 of Dead Prez among others speakers.

“I’m glad to see so many people from First Nations communities present here today,” said Malcolm Guy, Chairperson of ILPS-Canada, referring to a number of indigenous organizer who were present. “The lack of francophone organizations here shows some of the weakness of our work. There are strengths and weaknesses to our work, and we need to build on the strengths and address our weaknesses.”

Gentrification kills 550 jobs in Mimico

Editor – Revista Encuentro

TORONTO, ON – Approximately 550 jobs will be lost as the Christie cookie plant located at Lakeshore Blvd. and Park Lawn Rd, closes its door in 2013.

In operation since 1948, the 625,000 square-foot factory manufactures such products as Bits & Bites and Stoned Wheat Thins.

Jeff Gurczenski, a 54 year-old fork lift operator who has been working for the plant for 8 years told the Toronto Star that the plant closure will impact him severely. “Very tough with my age and the economy,” Gurczenski said. “It’s a lot of people, a lot of years.”

Labour groups and peoples organizations have also reacted, with Toronto and York Region Labour Council President John Cartwright stated “If something is not done, there will be hardly any blue-collar jobs left in an increasingly unaffordable city”.

Spokerperson for the May 1st Movement, Pablo Vivanco stated “this is another example which shows that transnational capital has no allegiance to the communities it operates in and the workers that it employs.”

The owners of the 27 acres site and operators of the plant, Mondelez Canada stated in a news release that “While this was an appropriate location for a large bakery when it was first built, the significant residential development surrounding it has led to operating constraints that will become increasingly difficult with the further residential expansion that is underway.”

A spin-off of the snack division of Kraft Foods, the US based Mondelez International has operations in more than 80 countries with annual revenues of approximately $36 billion from its brands including Cadbury chocolate, Nabisco and Oreo biscuits and Tang powdered beverages.

City officials have acknowledged that that Mondelez intends to turn the lands into condominiums. “They’re talking about going to regeneration lands … but at the same time they show us a site plan with 7,000 condos, 27 towers,” said Councillor Peter Milczyn, the chairman of the city’s planning committee.

Like many working class areas in Toronto, South Etobicoke has been experiencing a rising tide of gentrification.  Gentrification, or class displacement created by increases in property values which make housing and commodities unaffordable for working class people, often occurs as a result of re-zoning of lands to permit and encourage private condominiums to be built.

In the l990’s, high-end condominiums were built on the Waterfront area at the Eastern section of Mimico, beginning a wave condo developments in the area that have continued to this day.  The City of Toronto has supported this process through the designation of this area as an ‘employment revitalization area’, and the adoption in 2000 of a Community Improvement Plan which aimed to “examine existing development and plan for future development”.  Since 2006, the City of Toronto together with public relations and planning consultants have been engaged in advancing the Mimico 20/20 Action Plan, which looks to promote the re-development of Lakeshore Blvd and encouraging the small retail and condominiums characteristic of other gentrified areas.

Statistics confirm that this process of gentrification has in fact been taking place.  Average area property values increased from $355,618 in 2009 to $441,642 in 2011, while the percentage of families earning over $100 000 increased from 22% to 30.4% of the area population.

Gentrificación Eliminara 550 Puestos de Trabajo en Mimico

Editor – Revista Encuentro

TORONTO, ON – Aproximadamente 550 puestos de trabajo se perderán cuando la planta de galletas ‘Christie’, situado en Lakeshore Boulevard. con Park Lawn Rd, cerrara sus puertas en 2013.

En funcionamiento desde 1948, la fábrica de 625.000 pies cuadrados, fabrica aperitivos tales como ‘Bits & Bites’ y ‘Stoned Wheat Thins’.

Jeff Gurczenski, operador de ascensor tenedor de 54 años de edad que ha estado trabajando para la planta durante 8 años, le dijo al Toronto Star que el cierre de la planta le impactará severamente. “Muy difícil de mi edad y de la economía”, dijo Gurczenski. “Es un montón de gente, un montón de años.”

Grupos sindicales también han reaccionado.   El Presidente del Consejo Laboral de Toronto y York Region, John Cartwright declaró: ” Si no se hace algo, no quedara ningún empleo de cuello azul en esta ciudad cada vez más inasequible “.

Los dueños del sitio de 27 acres y los operadores de la planta, Mondelez Canadá, afirmó en un comunicado de prensa que “mientras que este fue un lugar apropiado para una panadería grande cuando fue construido, el desarrollo residencial que lo rodea ha creado restricciones en las operaciones que serán cada vez más difícil con la nuevas expansiones residenciales que está en marcha. “

Un separación de la división de aperitivos de la empresa estadounidense Kraft Foods, Mondelez Internacional tiene operaciones en más de 80 países con unos ingresos anuales de aproximadamente $36 mil millones por parte de sus marcas como Cadbury chocolate, galletas Oreo y Nabisco y las bebidas en polvo Tang.

Funcionarios de la ciudad han reconocido que Mondelez pretende convertir las tierras en condominios. “Están hablando de regeneración … pero al mismo tiempo muestran planes con 7.000 condominios, 27 torres “, dijo el concejal y presidente del comité de planificación de la ciudad, Peter Milczyn.

Al igual que muchos barrios obreros en Toronto, South Etobicoke ha venido sintiendo el impacto de una creciente ola de gentrificación.  Gentrificación, o aburguesamiento es el desplazamiento de clase creada por el aumento de valor de las propiedades que hacen que la vivienda y los productos sean inalcanzables para la clase trabajadora, y se produce como resultado de la re-zonificación de tierras para permitir y alentar condominios privados.

En l990, condominios de alto costo fueron construidos en la zona ribereña de Mimico, a partir desde ese entonces esta área ha visto desarrollo varios proyectos de condominios. La ciudad de Toronto ha apoyado este proceso a través de la designación de esta zona como un “área de revitalización de empleo”, y la adopción en 2000 de un Plan de Mejoramiento de la Comunidad que tuvo por objeto “examinar la infraestructura existente y planificar el desarrollo futuro”. Desde 2006, la ciudad de Toronto, junto con consultores de relaciones públicas y planificación han participado en la promoción del llamado Plan de Acción “Mimico 20/20”, que busca promover el desarrollo de condominios sobre esta parte de Lakeshore Blvd.

Las estadísticas confirman que este proceso de gentrificación se esta llevando acabo. El promedio de los valores de propiedad de la zona aumentó de $355.618 en 2009 a $441.642 en 2011, mientras que el porcentaje de familias que ganan más de $ 100 000 aumentó del 22% al 30,4% de la población de la zona.

By Prof. JOSE MARIA SISON- Thursday, 27 October 2011

Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle

The G20 summit is to be held in Cannes, France on November 3 and 4. Assisted by their finance ministers and heads of central banks, the heads of governments of the world’s twenty largest economies are supposed to confront once more the global economic and financial crisis and seek solutions.

As in previous summits, they will fail to solve the crisis, bound as they are by the laws of motion of capitalism and imperialism and by the neoliberal dogma. They are driven by the profit-making interest of the monopoly bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy and continue to pass the burden of the crisis to the broad masses of the people.

Public funds in trillions have been used to bail out the big banks and corporations from the crisis of their own making and to wage wars of aggression to please the military-industrial complex. They have brought about spikes and plunges in the financial markets but have not stimulated civil production and employment. As a result, public deficits and public debts have mounted. And now the public debt bubble is bursting in a number of the G20 member-countries, especially the US and certain EU countries.

Solving the crisis of overproduction and the extreme abuse of finance capital is beyond the purview of the G20 summiteers, especially because of their neoliberal blinders. They are now most concerned with the problem of debt defaults plaguing major capitalist countries, including the U.S. and those in the European Union, and still many others.

Apparently their main objective is to contain the threats of default by further pushing austerity measures at the expense of the people. These measures, which include tax hikes for the people and tax cuts for the corporations and the wealthy, pressing down of wages, cutting back on pensions and social benefits, reducing social services and public sector employment and rising fees for social services, can only aggravate the economic and financial crisis.

We anticipate the G20 summit to come out with further plans to skirt the fundamental problems of capitalism and imperialism, to further exploit the people under the auspices of the IMF, World Bank and the WTO and thus to aggravate the crisis. The imperialist powers will impose themselves on the rest of the summitteers and defeat or coopt any contrary view from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

The G20 summit is held at a time that the dominant imperialist powers are gloating over

their success at conquering Libya and taking over its oil resources with the use of barbaric air attacks in combination with their Libyan puppets and rabble brigades directed by NATO special forces. They are expected to dance over the graves of close to a hundred thousand Libyan people massacred by NATO bombs and puppet butchers under the pretext of humanitarian intervention and protecting civilians.

They are poised to claim the mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.as the victory of their brand of democracy as well as the invincibility of capitalism. They will once more go through the ritual of shedding crocodile tears over Africa and all the impoverished and underdeveloped countries of the world now further brought down by global depression.

The US and other imperialist powers are carried away by their wanton use of financial means and hightech weapons of mass destruction to destroy the lives, homes and social infrastructure of peoples with impunity. They are oblivious of the fact that the world capitalist system is practically falling apart because of its grave crisis, bankruptcies, state terrorism and wars of aggression as well as the rising wave of people’s resistance driven by the needs and aspirations for national and social liberation.

We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, call on our member-organizations, all allied forces and the broad masses of the people to take up all the urgent issues against imperialism and reaction, further strengthen themselves organizationally, occupy the public squares and the major streets and undertake all other forms and means of mass mobilization. We must intensify resistance and build the movement for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

by Carolina Crewe
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The failure to allocate money for childcare in the March 26 Ontario provincial budget will have a grave impact on single mothers and working class families in Toronto.

The onset of job losses and a looming depression has created a situation where adults will be returning to school for retraining, signalling a need to increase the amount of subsidized childcare spaces. As a poverty reduction strategy, childcare and early childhood education is an investment that governments cannot afford to ignore. Currently, children who are waitlisted for subsidy spaces number more than 14,000. With numbers this high, the Ontario provincial government is gambling with the well-being of families by foreshadowing cuts rather than growth for the subsidy program. The McGuinty-led government is employing a “pass the buck” strategy by opting to lobby the federal government to top up the subsidy funding, which expired in March 2009. Some 6,000 childcare spaces, currently in use, are slated to be permanently cut in Toronto, as well as 16,000 more spaces across the province.

Most of these spaces were created with federal government-transferred money in 2003, as part of a “Best Start” plan for early learning, childcare and family support programs.

Most affected are families in low-income neighbourhoods whose centres have more subsidized spaces. For example, in Davenport-Perth, 35% of families are living below the poverty line (more than the Toronto average of 32.2%), with 25% of families having lone parents. In the 12 licensed childcare centres in this neighbourhood, 53% of all operating licensed spaces have been subsidized. At least two of the centres in this neighbourhood operate almost exclusively on subsidized spaces at 85% and 92% respectively. Cumulative measures to reduce the numbers of families receiving and eligible for subsidies have already been implemented to achieve the slated cuts, including the introduction of an “Absentee Policy”. This policy penalizes subsidized families, even for keeping their children out when they show symptoms of illness, allowing only 2 sick days per month (even for infants) and a measly one-week vacation over the entire year. Failure to meet the requirements of this Absentee Policy means parents lose subsidized spaces for ALL of their children.

As a mass of families currently accessing subsidized spaces are forced out of childcare centres, low income neighbourhoods will lack parents to pay the full daycare fee to maintain enrolments, resulting in centre closures. In adjacent communities such as Toronto Centre-Rosedale, where the number of families with children living in poverty is at 60%, the fallout from these cuts will be even more devastating. According to the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare, professional Early Childhood Education staff – already drastically under-paid – will lose their jobs, while centres will significantly reduce their capacity or close down altogether. Given the Harper government’s record failure to provide funding for childcare, merely throwing in chump change for children under six, it is unlikely they will step in to reverse the cuts.

At a time when Canadian banks and big businesses are getting bailouts in the hundreds of billions by the Canadian government, these anti-childcare policies of the provincial and federal governments are just another example how working people – especially low-income families and single mothers – are the first to be victimized and the last to be considered in times of crisis.

All children in our communities deserve access to early learning childcare programs and family support. We need to plan together in our communities to fight the coming barrage of policies that will cut families’ access to childcare. Refusal to accept these policies will show the province and the federal government that Ontarians cannot work or access education without adequately funded and equitable childcare.

These Cabbagetown kids are wondering why McGuinty’s budget is going to leave them and their friends without subsidized childcare spaces.

TCHC Plans to Sell 350 Apt. Units and Houses
by Levi Waldron and Ryan Newell (OCAP)
BASICS Issue #13 (April/May)

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation is responding to the financial crisis and sharp drop in real estate prices by proposing the sell-off of 326 apartment units and 45 single-family homes of public housing (see a map with photos of these properties at www.communitywalk.com/tchforsale).

Meanwhile, the waiting list for social housing in the city of Toronto stands at an astonishing 70,000 and many TCH tenants already find it impossible to obtain transfers, especially to larger family-sized units.

TCHC management says that they are only selling properties that no one wants to live in, with high property values that will allow them to replace the units while saving money to put into repairs. However, seen alongside the ambitious “revitalization” plans for low-income neighbourhoods across the city in Regent Park, Lawrence Heights, Alexandra Park, Edgeley Village, Thistledown and Flemingdon Park, it is clear that this sell-off represents the final stages of gentrification that will occur in other “revitalized” public housing projects once property values are high enough.

Even temporary losses of public housing units have huge effects. One example is seen in the TCHC financial plan for Regent Park (2003, Table 3), which predicted a temporary shortfall of 461 unit-years of housing during redevelopment, plus as much as 2087 unit-years lost because demolitions are counted at the start of the year and new units are counted at the end of the year, meaning as much as 2548 unit-years lost, the equivalent of losing a 100-unit building for 25 years.

Unlike with Regent Park, we have no idea where, when, or with what, these units will be replaced. But they will not be replaced with comparably sized units in the same “mixed” neighbourhoods, or it wouldn’t make sense to sell them in the first place. TCHC wants to sell these units because they are located in desirable neighbourhoods with high property values, where the integration of public housing units in mixed-income areas as promoted in its “revitalization” plans already exists. The truth is that public housing can be repaired or rebuilt, communities can be renewed, without the large-scale sale of peoples’ homes, the demolition of older housing projects, and the dispersal of whole communities.

If the TCHC believes they can quietly carry out this dubious sell-off, they are sorely mistaken. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has researched the buildings and houses proposed for sale, and found large numbers of vacant units, and houses receiving overdue repairs after they are vacant and slated to be sold. TCHC is trying to ensure a smooth sell-off by allowing dozens of single-family houses and countless apartment units to sit vacant while families in TCHC buildings all over the city wait up to a decade for a transfer to a larger unit. OCAP has also begun meeting tenants who are unwilling to sit on their hands while the city turns a profit by selling the roof over their heads. One such building is 389 Church St, the only women-only apartment complex owned by TCHC. While TCHC’s claim that they simply can’t find enough women who want to live in shared accommodations with other women is hard to believe, it is harder to believe that other solutions can’t be found (for example, women with children are currently not allowed to stay in the building).

TCHC should be prepared to defend its sell-off proposal in the light of day. It is not enough to promise that the units will be replaced and tenants will be relocated: public housing tenants deserve to live with the dignity of knowing their homes are secure and to maintain the connections they have built over years in the neighbourhoods they call home. But it’s not just the tenants currently living in these units who should be concerned and ready to stand up and fight. Social housing is a public asset that was only won out of poor peoples’ struggle, and we cannot silently watch while it is sold off to make room for private developments. OCAP has announced that it is committed to supporting tenants in disrupting the sell-off process at every step along the way.

We need more social housing now! We need repairs for existing units now!

Visit ocap.ca for more information or contact OCAP at 416-925-6939 or [email protected].

389 Church St, the only women-only apartment complex owned by TCHC, is being put up for sale .