A World in Revolt

Prospects for Socialism in the 21st Century
An international political education conference, May 22-25, 2008 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street West (St. George Subway Station), Toronto, sponsored by Socialist Action-Canada, Socialist Action-United States, and the Socialist Unity League (LUS) of Mexico.

Thursday, May 22
7 p.m. Palestine, the Annapolis trap, and the Global Boycott Campaign -- Andy Pollack (SA-US, New York), Mazen Masri (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid-Toronto) and Khaled Mouammar (President, Canadian Arab Federation).

Friday, May 23
4 p.m. Feminism, Anti-Racism and Immigrants' Rights – The Marxist View -- Sarah O'Sullivan (SA-Canada, Halifax), Jason McGahan (SA-US, Connecticut) and Rebecca Doran (SA-US, San Francisco).

At a meeting in Toronto in the fall of 2000, some 750 activists responded to a call to "rebuild the left" by developing a structured movement against capitalism. This call for a new political formation that would be "more than a movement, less than a party" was similar to other initiatives in Canada and around the world that have been undertaken as the traditional organisations of the political left have waned.

The call was based on the understanding that the discovery and creation of a new kind of left politics is not going to be easy. It was in this spirit that, when the first Toronto initiative faltered, a group of independent socialists continued to meet with other activists across Ontario to try to learn from the experience and find a way forward. The group asked hard questions about how radically different from that first initiative a new political formation of the left would need to be. And they exchanged ideas and assessments of the political situation in Canada and the world, both to focus debate and to arrive at areas of political agreement.

Out of this process—a ray of sunshine during the long winter of 2003—this political statement was completed, launching the Socialist Project as a new political formation on the Canadian left.

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