(en) Canada, Common Cause, MORTAR #3 - Active Corrosion:
Building Working-class Opposition to Pipelines by Two Toronto Members,
Two Kitchener-Waterloo Members
Pipelines transport approximately 95% of Canada's crude oil and natural gas, and are
crucial to the viability of the petroleum industry. New pipeline construction is essential
to the distribution of oil to other markets and in the profitability of an increased rate
of oil extraction. This makes pipelines a linchpin in the struggle against climate change,
not because of the act of construction or the transport of oil itself, but because of the
increase in oil extraction that will occur throughout Canada if they are built. As the
petroleum industry makes considerations about their growth, they trouble only one thing:
can they build more pipelines? The industry's predicted expansion is entirely dependent on
whether or not pipeline projects will go forward, a process called "market
diversification". In The Decade Ahead: Labour Market Outlook to 2022 for Canada's Oil and
Gas Industry, a report put out jointly by the Canadian government and the Canadian
Association of Petroleum Producers, a lack of community support is identified as the main
impediment to pipeline construction. They seek to engage community stakeholders and
strengthen their "relationships with Aboriginal communities," as this is "key to the
sustainable growth of this sector." Of course, increased profitability and not
environmental stability is the "sustainability" desired here.
In 2016 construction is slated to begin on the Energy East Pipeline: 4600 km of new and
converted pipeline stretching from Hardisty, Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick moving
1.1 million barrels of oil daily. Workers are being trained to complete this work by their
union, United Association, with financial support from TransCanada and the Energy East
Pipeline Project team. Training facilities are located in Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg,
Thunder Bay, Sarnia, Montreal, Miramichi, and Dartmouth. The challenge faced by capital is
to "gain the social license to expand and operate." Our challenge is to shut them down.
Despite global capitalism's complex market structure, resource industries have key
strategic vulnerabilities. While it's possible to offshore manufacturing plants, the same
is not true for mines or oil patches. Mainstream economic and political academics
(fulfilling the intellectual needs of capitalism) understand this strategic vulnerability
and the study of geopolitics is founded on it. An often-unrecognized facet of this reality
is that the point of production is not the only weak point. The success of port blockades,
as well as the strikes of truck drivers, longshoremen, baggage handlers and pilots, and
railway workers prove that global capitalism's supposed strength--the replaceability of
any source for parts, materials, resources, or commodities flowing down the chain--also
introduces serious weakness. Obstructing the transportation of goods could be as effective
as shutting down production at the source.
Unlike the tar sands, Energy East and other projects are still mostly unrealized and
require a significant investment of labour hours and capital to make fact. In particular,
the sort of labour required for pipeline construction is fairly specific and draws on
small, readily-employed and well-paid labour pools. Hindering the supply of labour to
pipeline projects is, therefore, one of the potentially more effective, yet largely
untested methods of opposing pipelines and by extension the entire tar sands megaproject.
The past decade has given rise to a number of environmental struggles centred around the
alarming growth of Canadian oil and gas production and the construction of pipelines
essential to the industry's heady and environmentally unacceptable goal of tripling tar
sands production by 2030. Waged at local, regional, and national levels, these often
intertwining struggles have varied in orientation and effectiveness. While anti-pipeline
organizing at large has certainly led to pressure on policymakers to delay approval of
these projects, political will at the highest levels of Canadian governance is firmly in
support of their eventual construction. An environmental assessment here, a
slap-on-the-wrist fine there, perhaps. But flat out denial of all tar sands pipeline
projects remains impossible under the existing political framework, notwithstanding which
party is in office.
Many activists and organizers have rightly determined that targeting pipeline construction
is a key strategy to prevent the expansion of the tar sands industries. Much attention has
deservedly been focused on First Nations situated directly on pipeline routes, who have
made clear their principled and vigorous refusal to allow pipeline construction on their
lands. Additionally, anti-pipeline activists have pointed out how pipeline resistance is a
way for people to fight the tar sands in their own localities, protect shared water and
soil commons, and join the overarching movement against climate change.
The tar sands are as much the oil fields of Athabasca, as they are its geographically
expansive distribution network of critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure that is
susceptible to blockage and interruption. In this case the flow of capital is likely more
viable than targeting the point of production. Unlike Enbridge's Line 9, Energy East will
require a significant amount of pipeline construction or conversion in Ontario and Quebec.
To help legitimize their project, TransCanada seeks to recruit local workers to build the
pipeline, which fits well with their pioneer-esque, nation-building propaganda. If
completed, Energy East will be the largest pipeline on the continent. It is being pushed
by Canadian politicians and sits only a few rubber stamps away from being approved.
The growing prominence of anti-pipeline activism draws together the more radical remnants
of Canada's environmental movement as well as a growing network of Indigenous solidarity
activists. Anti-pipeline activism has become a hip and radical alternative to tired
liberal environmentalist consumer campaigns and the vague rhetoric of "Native rights" in
favour of at least moral support for Indigenous land claims and land defense. At the same
time and as discussed above, it does offer the promise of strategic intervention against
the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and the Canadian state's wholesale support and
underwriting of this effort. Further, it has become a radical imperative to oppose
pipelines given the current state of the climate crisis.
Unfortunately, the efforts of anti-pipeline activists have so far largely resulted in
failure, having done little to nothing to stop or even meaningfully delay pipeline
development. While awareness of the issue is at an all time high, the projects are
continuing largely unrestrained. Believing that the building of working-class
self-organization is a crucial component in the fight against capitalism, and therefore
the ecological destruction and injustice it necessarily creates, we identify and analyse
the shortcomings of existing anti-pipeline activism. Further, we then outline a possible
alternative strategy for confronting environmentally destructive industries in Ontario.
We propose that to have a successful ecological movement revolutionaries need to reorient
our strategy and focus on building well-rounded locally-based organizations of the working
class that have the power to contest destructive policies brought on by capitalists and
the state. In other words, it is our view that environmental activism on its own is a
non-starter that will fail unless interwoven within a broader emancipatory, revolutionary
politics.
I. Towards Meaningful Solidarity and Joint Struggle
The extraction economy at the heart of the Canadian colonial state simultaneously robs
Indigenous people of their traditional territories and the resources within them while
ensuring the most severe health and environmental impacts are visited first and foremost
on Indigenous communities. Indigenous territorial claims and way of life are an impediment
to the Canadian ruling class's accumulation of wealth; outright resistance by Indigenous
communities is a powerful external threat to the ongoing stability of the entire economic
system of Canada. That being said, the economic system of Canada is still capitalism, and
capitalism thrives on instability - to a point. Capitalism is a system that survives on
crisis; the question is always only whether this is the final crisis. Instability that
doesn't produce destruction breeds innovation within capitalism, and innovation often
gives rise to further consolidation and new eras of stability. Simply put, it is often the
case that what hasn't killed capitalism has made it stronger. If the counter-forces to the
Canadian ruling class are not sufficient, the working class loses more than its chains.
Revolutionary support of Indigenous struggles is not only a moral imperative but a class
imperative.
Non-Indigenous members of the working class, especially in southern Ontario, must explore
alternatives to the now-common patterns of behaviour in "Indigenous solidarity activism."
For instance, the commonly expressed desire (less frequently acted upon) to join
Indigenous blockades, contribute money or basic labour to supporting a geographically
distant community whose struggles they are largely unfamiliar with, or most commonly,
joining solidarity marches alongside "outraged" NDP members and other assorted liberals,
which amount to lobbying and government pressure tactics with a radical veneer.
Instead we argue that anarchists and radical environmental organizers need to build
organizations in their own neighborhoods that are able to construct their own blockades.
If the climate crisis and the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada is as dire as we all
claim (spoiler: it is), we must all act to subvert, repurpose, or render defunct all
capitalist and state infrastructure that contributes to the Canadian colonial project.
The best way for non-indigenous members of the working class to support Indigenous
struggles isn't to peel potatoes at a barricade or send out tweets in solidarity. It's to
build resistance within the non-Indigenous working class rooted in our own communities;
resistance that is firmly grounded, widespread, and capable of contributing to bringing
the national economy to a halt.
We can't abandon Indigenous people in remote areas as the only concrete sites of
resistance to environmentally harmful projects like the tar sands and its attendant
pipelines. No one can dispute the legitimacy of land defenders like those at the
Unist'ot'en blockade, and we fully support their efforts to stop pipeline intrusion on
their territory. However, the best form for that support to take is for those of us living
in the urbanized south of Canada to build up our capacity to make our own blockades
throughout this economy. We're proposing multiple fronts, not a siege mentality.
II. The Lay of the Land
In researching the position of leftist groups for this article, we were greeted with a
bevy of environmental solutions for both a capitalist and a post-capitalist world. We are
told to replace furnaces with solar panels; close factories and provide those workers with
jobs of equivalent pay and content; voluntarily "simplify" our lives while dismantling
capitalism; and nationalize the pipelines, to name a few. These remedies betray a
significant focus on consumption, and arguments over guilt, innocence, or absolution
through our lifestyles with little time spent discussing production and how to address
workers' participation in environmental destruction. There are the assertions of Earth
First!-types, as expressed by the organization's co-founder Dave Foreman that it is "the
bumpkin proletariat so celebrated in Wobbly lore who holds the most violent and
destructive attitudes towards the natural world (and toward those who would defend it)."
In contrast, there is the commitment of the Wobblies', otherwise known as the Industrial
Workers of the World, Environmental Unionism Caucus to strategize about, "how to organize
workers in resource extraction industries with a high impacts [sic] on the environment",
which lacks a broader vision of addressing industries which cannot exist in their current
form or at all, if we are to prevent crisis.
Both of these sides, however crudely expressed here, left us wanting for their lack of
specificity, clarity, and dynamism. In discussions about the culpability of workers in
environmental destruction or crisis, we found ourselves sliding between the two
dichotomous tropes existing in their purest forms within primitivist and workerist
tendencies: they are the evil or noble workers, class traitors or economic draftees. Aside
from the obvious oversimplification, these views shed light on a particularly troubling
environmentalist orientation to workers that denies their agency.
Inherent to the solutions put forward by environmentalists, both reformist and
revolutionary, is that on the job, working-class people will remain powerless. While it is
explained, for instance, that the factory should be closed and the workers should be given
another job or that a post-capitalist environmentally-friendly world has already been
figured out right down to your new biogas toilet, there are no illusions of collective
decision-making. The glut of knowledge and skill in the hands and minds of working-class
people throughout the world will remain unacknowledged. It is, at best, a liberal
framework of action where your only input is your purchasing power or the ability of your
physical presence at a rally to bolster another's lobbying efforts. It is, at worst, an
authoritarian and technocratic vision that leaves the position of the worker unchanged as
an interchangeable cog in the overall system of society.
Both environmentalism in its current form and the climate change-denialist
counter-narrative to it depend on the supposed gullibility of working-class people. The
working class are presented with disprovable narratives from both capital and
environmentalists: either everything is under control or it is the end of the
world--again. The limited traction of Chicken Little cries-to-action that involve nothing
more than a signed petition or a march through New York to appeal to the United Nations'
sensibilities belies the liberal environmentalists' assumption that the regular
working-class person doesn't care about the environment. We don't care about our air, our
water, our climate or our future. Ordinary people are portrayed as either stupid ("It's
too abstract") or weak ("they love their cars") and refuge is taken in misanthropy: even
if the masses don't do something about the Earth, the environmental activists can. For
this article, we will choose a different starting point: people are not as naïve as
environmentalists would have us believe. Perhaps people object to being pawns for a
useless and self-aggrandizing movement. As we engage with the politics of ecological
struggle, we must move away from disempowerment and the false dichotomy of the economic
draftee or the class traitor, and move towards analysis rooted in reality.
Reality?
The picture is a compelling one: with few options for survival, poor young men from the
East Coast take jobs out west to support their families. No other viable future open to
them, tossed up on the seas of global economic and ecological forces, they land on
Alberta's tarry shores. We have sad news for the workerists looking for the guilt-free
worker: this sad tale does not appear to be based in fact. In other words, there is no
economic draft in Canada and the Canadian working class are not eternal victims. People
who work on the tar sands or the pipeline are primarily doing so because it is a way to
make more money and they see no reason not to. Those who make high wages on pipelines or
oil fields would be making high wages elsewhere as well.
The recruitment of new, inexperienced hires to work on pipelines is near non-existent.
When one author of this article enquired about getting a job on the Energy East Pipeline
they were informed that only certified journeymen who have completed their five-year
apprenticeship are able to apply for, let alone get, a job. This anecdote provides some
insight regarding who is actually eligible to participate in the construction of the
pipeline. The skill and experience that qualifies one for this job does the same for many
other, also well-compensated positions.
The Energy East Pipeline is expected to employ over 1,000 people per year for planning and
building the Pipeline during its construction phase. After construction, it predicts 900
permanent jobs for maintenance. Predominantly male, these workers currently make above the
provincial average. Concerned regarding the aging of their existing workforce, marching
imminently towards retirement, TransCanada has been investing in schools and training
centres to guarantee the availability of replacements. Whether or not individual
pipefitters work on pipelines, they are highly employable and will have good jobs. As our
demographic study shows, they don't have much to lose by refusing to work on tar sands
pipelines as they will be easily employed in another sector in the same trade. Luckily for
us, organizing among workers to encourage refusal to build pipelines does not imply a
choice on their part between working to expand the tar sands or unemployment.
Demographics
In Canada, the petroleum and other resource industries are highly concerned with
increasing aging-out of skilled workers in crucial trades, such as welding. This scarcity
has given welders and other tradespeople an advantage in the labour market, helping to
preserve their craft unions and inflating their wages. Research done by the Petroleum and
Mining Industry Human Resources Councils of Canada indicates that while average wages at
the Athabasca Tar Sands are relatively high, this represents a handful of highly paid
certified tradespeople who are overwhelmingly outnumbered by much lower-waged workers
including truck drivers and machine operators, occupations which are paid only slightly
above the provincial and national averages.
This disparity highlights a serious demographic difference between the two groups; for
example, while no occupation at the tar sands even remotely approaches gender parity, the
"unskilled" occupations do have a greater proportion of women than the "skilled" ones. The
proportion of Indigenous people working in these "unskilled" occupations is far above the
Canadian national average; the proportion of immigrants is much lower. These trends are
reflected in the "skilled" trades as well, but these trades conform with national averages
to a greater degree. It could be hypothesized that a greater proportion of the "unskilled"
workforce is local, and reflective of the demographics of the area, with 10% of the
population of Fort McMurray being Indigenous, and with many reserves in the surrounding
area; however, this has not been demonstrated.
Extraction industries are committing large amounts of resources to recruitment and
training for younger trades workers, and in some cases are specifically targeting
Indigenous people for recruitment. This paves the way for a potential wave of recruitment
into these industries of a more diverse group of young Canadian workers, especially as
employment prospects for other forms of post-secondary training and education seem to decline.
In order that we could premise our ideas on reality, instead of a politically-convenient
"just so" story, we researched the population demographics of tar sands workers, as well
as those involved in pipeline construction and maintenance. The main community in Wood
Buffalo, Alberta is the city of Fort McMurray. It is dominated by the petrochemical
industry and, as of 2012, out of a population of just over 100,000, around 40,000 are
non-permanent residents. In 2001, its total population was only just above 40,000, so in
ten years its population has close to tripled. A direct result of the continued expansion
of the Athabasca tar sands, we infer that much of the new local population is economically
connected to the tar sands projects and have few social ties to the area. The population
is approximately 80% white, 10% Aboriginal (an almost even split between Métis and First
Nations), and 10% "other" (with South Asians as the only non-Aboriginal racial minority
with over a thousand people). Almost 85% of residents identified English as their first
language, while only 3% identified French as theirs. Only a few other minority languages
break 1%, but these notably include Cree, Spanish, and Arabic.
Demographic research found an obvious split between "skilled" and "unskilled" workers.
Workers with "skills" included pipefitters and millwrights with a trade school education.
Workers without "skills"--machine operators and truck drivers for instance--with only
their bodies and time to offer for sale, were much more numerous, more likely to be
female, and unlikely to have anything above a high school diploma, if that. Compared to
the Canadian average, Indigenous people are over-represented and immigrants are
underrepresented, particularly in the "unskilled" sectors. As for wages, skilled workers
make above the Albertan average, while somewhat surprisingly the unskilled workers' wages
are comparable to the Albertan average wage.
III. Organize the Recruits
When organizing workers in environmentally harmful industries is proposed, the name of
Judi Bari is necessarily bandied around. Aside from holding some questionable beliefs
about femininity, communion with the Earth, and the scientific method, Bari was a
dedicated organizer who seems to have been on the right track. She proposed that
environmentalists work with the lumber workers and tried to agitate them against their
employers. She argued that the largest threat to the jobs of the lumber workers' was not
environmentalists, but their employers, who would necessarily lay off workers when the
clearcut was complete. Most significantly, she argued for community-based struggle over
the nomadic nature of Earth First!. Generally we are friendly to all of this. In hindsight
however, the issue was not that she was wrong but that she and others had arguably waited
until too late in to the struggle for the redwood to lay the groundwork that was necessary
for victory. Her arguments were unclear, her strategy was not well-formulated and her
organizing was not able to came to fruition before she was singled out and targeted for
repression.
In February 2015, US oil workers went on strike for the first time since 1982. This strike
included over 5,000 United Steelworkers members who walked out of a chemical plant, a
cogeneration complex and eleven refineries, together accounting for 13% of the United
States' fuel refinement capacity. This strike has been framed by "green" groups and
unionists as a prime opportunity to engage the state, and oil refinery workers, with an
environmental agenda. Statements made by from those doing picket-line support have
identified this as a chance to engage in "green syndicalism." Though they are not
inherently wrong about the possibly catalytic nature of strikes, and the importance they
can play in consolidating struggle from a pre-existing movement, providing picket-line
support in this context shows a lack of insight regarding the state of their own movement.
This opportunistic, magpie-like approach to organizing, which brings to mind "ambulance
chasing," is reactive rather than strategic, and gives few opportunities for the critical
work of building long-term organizational structures.
The disappointing truth is that the groundwork has not been laid to take advantage of this
opportunity. Long-term organizing cannot be faked and without this foundation, picket-line
support for these workers is not just a well-intentioned, harmless or pointless
demonstration of abstract solidarity; it is politically questionable. In essence, it
involves well-meaning outsiders entering into a conflict between the workers and their
bosses with their own agenda--an agenda that the workers have no immediate reason to
support--and that they are not prepared to discuss and decide upon. In this strike,
environmentalist support, if it has any effect, only serves to make environmentally
harmful jobs more appealing without successfully directing the conversation towards the
utility of the job itself. All too often the Left will place itself in these "no-win"
situations by organizing too little and too late, such as by trying to organize
communities around imminent pipeline projects, giving an impossibly narrow window in which
to organize successfully, and no time to build power. A contrast would be revolutionaries
organizing communities before imminent threats appear, which would prepare working-class
communities for larger battles over regionalized environmental destruction and pollution.
A principled environmentalist approach to workers in these industries is not for them to
make the industry more "sustainable," but to organize for its abolition, or at least
something more substantial than better PR. To work towards this challenging goal, there
must be broad support from organized neighbourhoods, as well as a cultural shift caused by
organizing in recruitment halls, colleges, universities, and all other appropriate spaces,
such that the workers at the point of production are the last pin to drop. Thus, though we
would agree that moments like this are crucial points for intervention, revolutionaries'
lack of preparation makes it just another missed opportunity.
The workers who are essential to fossil fuel production are predominantly skilled trades
people. They have gone through years of schooling, training and apprenticeships to get to
a point where they are of use to companies like TransCanada. Though these fossil fuel
projects are advertised as something that will benefit many through the creation of jobs,
they hire relatively small numbers of highly specialized workers. Organizing against
recruitment or participating in counter-recruitment is a relatively untested idea in the
arena of environmental struggle, possibly because, as we previously pointed out, the
environmental movement has tended to demonize these workers rather than work with them.
What we know is that these skilled workers spend a lot of time in schools and training
facilities: engineers in universities and plumbers, pipefitters and welders in colleges
and trade schools. This is a potentially opportune time for intervention. There is a
relatively long period of time in which to engage with them and for them to switch
trajectories and to acquire employment elsewhere. In making this decision, workers will
not likely find themselves unemployed, but nevertheless a lot is being asked of
them--certainly more than the environmentalists are asking of themselves. How is it that
we propose to reach these workers? Surely picketing or flyering sites of recruitment or
education is not enough.
While we refute the fallacy of identifying employment in these industries as being
tantamount to an economic draft, the ways in which these industries secure employees does
share qualities with the ways in which the military recruits. They function through
partnerships with educational institutions, including high schools, colleges, trade
schools and union halls. Though these locations are physically available to us, whether or
not we see these spaces as politically available to us is up for debate. The question is
whether we can position ourselves, as leftists, within educational institutions outside of
humanities and social science programs. Do we have the ability to put forward an
environmentalism that caters to trade schools and not graduate-level environmental studies?
For guidance, we look to the only substantial examples of counter-recruitment we could
find: military counter-recruitment in the United States. Military counter-recruitment in
the early to mid 2000s predominantly took the form of lobbying municipal levels of
government to mandate that equal access be given to counter or anti-recruitment in high
schools or colleges. This tactic was taken because it is federally mandated that the
military have access to these educational spaces. In fact, No Child Left Behind
legislation mandates that student tests, which apparently identify students who are of use
or likely to join the armed forces, be shared with recruitment agencies. Anti-recruitment
entails anti-war organizers or former military going into schools and making the pitch
that the armed forces are lying. They provide a more accurate view of what war is like
while identifying the misdeeds of recruiters.
The relative absence of counter-recruitment or recruit organizing in comparison to the
prevalence of anti-war mobilizations can likely be blamed on similar tropes as those
assigned to the worker in the environmentally-harmful job: either they are murderous
traitors to the working class or pitiful destitute small town boys who have been
hoodwinked into being cannon fodder for imperialism. The existence of these tropes in
either context is largely irrelevant at low points of conflict; they are not apparently a
problem, as they are only rhetorical in nature. However, at times of heightened
imperialist aggression or the expansion of resource extraction or transport, they become
detrimental to our ability to wage struggles and something that must be overcome. This was
the case with a noteworthy experiment in anti-war organizing: Vietnam War coffeehouses and
GI newspapers.
The Vietnam War coffeehouses began in 1967 as civilian-run off-base spaces of
counterculture. Initially designed with a semi-bohemian culture in mind and with the goal
of turning new recruits before they became effective killing machines, coffeehouse
organizers soon discovered problems with their plan. The hippie-esque aesthetic of the
spaces, though designed to attract the most organizable, tended to attract instead GIs who
were becoming interested in the dope scene, and not necessarily in organizing. Second,
their strategy of focusing on new recruits ignored the realities of those they were trying
to organize with: basic training involved high levels of isolation, including from other
GIs. Further, it was experience in service itself that tended to produce dissent. The
flexible nature of the project, however, did allow these civilian leftists to adapt the
project to the needs of the GIs on the bases near them.
A critical point in the coffeehouse projects was when they abandoned their orientation to
cultural alienation and consciously set out to do direct political organizing. Only then
did coffeehouses become an off-base meeting point for GIs; it was their anti-brass
atmosphere, not bohemian culture that kept GIs around long enough to read anti-war papers
and to be introduced to leftist ideas. Many had been so shaken by their experiences
fighting overseas that they actively sought a new framework for understanding the world.
The most common next-step for action in these spaces was the creation of GI newspapers,
frequently produced with the support of civilian leftists. Hundreds of GIs worked to
create these papers, thousands more distributed them on-base and tens of thousands read
their content. Despite the conflicts occurring overseas and on-base, the war continued and
people sought out a way to achieve higher levels of struggle. This began to take the form
of base wide actions that led to significant consequences for the GIs involved. With the
general failure of off-base actions, struggle then turned to localized unit-based
organizing in their barracks.
The forms of GI organizing discussed here were predominantly run by and directed at white
working-class GIs despite the high percentage of working-class Black and Latino men who
served. Radicalized white GIs focused on the near non-stop production of agitational
propaganda in order to reach their not-yet-radicalized fellow white GIs. To contrast,
racialized GIs were more likely to take part in direct confrontations, work refusals, and
fighting back against riot controls because they were generally more politically
developed. Thus, they were more likely to participate in collective actions occurring
around them without requiring remedial agitational propaganda. This racial dynamic of
resistance and politicization within the American Armed Forces should come as no surprise
as it existed within a context of colonized and racialized working-class people within the
United States already joining the fray of uprisings and rebellions taking place across the
world. The movements of struggle Stateside had already done much to prepare racialized GIs
for resistance within and against the American Armed Forces. What those resistance
movements also imbued in them was a healthy understanding of the violent and dangerous
role white Americans can play in suppressing movements of class struggle. It took little
more than an indication that the edifice of class collaboration between white GIs and the
American ruling class was unstable for racialized GIs to join the fight in earnest. This
is not in any way to imply that radicalized white GIs lead the way for GI resistance in
the Vietnam war. Racialized GIs were essentially waiting for their white comrades to get
their shit together so that the full force of white supremacist countermeasures to
resistance wouldn't have all of them shot in the back.
The lessons we draw from these organizing experiences are that, with assistance, vet and
GI newspapers led to political development. Those that were successful and interesting
were such because they endeavoured to engage, intervene, and assist organizing with GIs as
actual people. The civilians involved examined and familiarized themselves with whom they
were actually organizing. This all took place within a context of broad, global resistance
to the US' actions in southeast Asia. When they began their struggle, the context was
vaguely similar to that of environmental struggle today. There was not unanimity over
Vietnam, as there is not over climate change or the importance of ecology-based struggle.
At the same time, outside of capital, there is seemingly not broad support for oil
companies, just tacit acceptance.
Within the broader struggles against the Vietnam War, there was a willingness on the part
of organizers to go beyond the usual tropes. This is required in environmentalism as well.
As it stands, environmental activists have something to say to politicians, to consumers
and even to corporations but they seemingly have nothing to say to the people who are
employed in these industries. It is a glaring hole in environmental strategy that betrays
a bourgeois understanding; again the worker lacks agency. Though environmental activists
are happy to state that they would rather use workers for installing solar panels than
processing fossil fuels, they are unwilling to engage the worker in those decisions.
An understanding of the uneven political development of GIs in Vietnam along predominantly
racial demarcations is not an insignificant matter to our considerations of pipeline
resistance. The context in which Canada's extractive economy - and resistance to it -
operates is that of colonialism. Anti-colonial resistance is a centuries old tradition of
Indigenous life. The matter before non-Indigenous revolutionaries is not one of supporting
Indigenous political development and struggle but of catching the non-Indigenous working
class up on that development and waging its own struggle against the Canadian ruling
class. The non-Indigenous working class poses more of a threat to Indigenous land
defenders than it does to the ruling class in clashes between the two. This is true
whether we are talking about the oil fields of Athabasca, pipeline routes of northern
Ontario and Quebec or the streets of Caledonia. This truth today should not be left to
stand tomorrow by any non-Indigenous revolutionary. The task before non-Indigenous
revolutionaries is to bring the non-Indigenous working class into direct conflict with the
Canadian ruling class and into solidarity with the Indigenous communities that continue
their struggle against our mutual class enemies.
We don't claim to have a quick solution to a problematic orientation that has developed
for decades within the Left but here is our starting point: the place where workers most
strongly feel the effects of environmental destruction is in their neighbourhoods. Impacts
may manifest as tailing ponds, skyrocketing heating bills, water shut-off plans like those
in Detroit and now Baltimore, or water restrictions to which industry is exempt, as in
California. These are issues against which the working class can and must organize. Our
goal then is that workers become environmental organizers in their own right so that this
understanding can be carried over into their workplaces.
IV. Organize the Neighbourhood
A favoured strategy of the environmental movement has been "building awareness,"
particularly within the sphere of reform. The concept of awareness would make sense if
ignorance was the problem and not informed reaction. To "build awareness," the first step
entails visibility and supposed "presence" rather than action, and reaction is
characterized as being based in ignorance rather than genuinely contradictory interests.
This does not distinguish between the opposed interests of the classes and, moreover, is
not conscious of how capitalism creates unequal degrees of environmentally-caused
suffering (whether through intense disasters or slow decline), such as the virtual
inevitability of localized pollution having a greater effect on working-class communities.
There is no environmental struggle with greater stakes than climate change, yet
environmentalists have proven unable to motivate significant numbers of ordinary workers
in North America to take effective action. This fault lies both with the attitudes toward
the workers, and the attitudes toward organization and action. The failure of "building
awareness" is arguably a contributing factor to the environmentalist turn to "green
capitalism" and an explicit orientation toward venture capital, demonstrated by the
appearance of schools of thought such as the "Bright Greens." Implicit in this is a
rejection of the working class (whose labour power causes polluting industry to function)
as a political actor rather than a consumptive economic one.
The reality is, however, that ecological disaster is not just possible, but inevitable,
for the Canadian working class, a working class which is intensely subjected to propaganda
which denies global warming or argues in favour of "green jobs" and weak reforms rather
than serious change; it is a working class which will be spectacularly unprepared both to
understand and to materially endure disaster when it comes. What is needed, then, is a
different kind of "awareness" based around neighbourhood organization and the idea that
workers can band together to improve their situation. Environmentalism, then, is simply
good sense.
It also calls for a new kind of action, rarely tried in the environmental movement:
genuine collective action from organized neighbourhoods which have informed themselves and
made a collective decision to intervene in a situation, rather than informal activist
cells or dictates from large NGOs. Rather than abstract talk about a "new social movement"
(echoing the New Left obsession with national campaigns and single-issue movements) or
affinity groups, this would represent autonomy and communitarianism, not a "social
movement" guided by the velvet-gloved fist of NGOs where those who object to the set
narrative are jeered at by well-trained media commentators.
Nearly every left-liberal journalist's, academic's, or activist's prescription for what to
do about climate change hinges on an ill-defined hope for a social movement capable of
effectively confronting the combined powers of state and industry. The loudest voices in
this milieu, from Chris Hedges to Naomi Klein, have made variations of the claim that
"only social movements can save us now." Certainly, there's a kernel of truth here; it's
impossible to conceive of a way out of this mess that does not rely on mass movements to a
certain extent. At the same time, this follows the usual liberal pattern of an ideological
or moral battle for hearts and minds of policymakers and the "general public," rather than
acknowledging the total lack of interest capitalists have in solving the problems they
have caused. Additionally, the populist appeal to "the public" to do something about
climate change seems to always follow the dead-end narratives of elections, lobbying, and
"citizen action," rather than the broader fight waged by truly emancipatory politics;
neither will a mass movement capable of actually implementing the "alternatives" these
writers are so fond of hinting at just sprout up from nowhere.
On the other side of the coin, anarchists more sympathetic to insurgency will advocate for
small groups of people to monkey-wrench ecologically harmful industry. These clandestine
affinity group proponents may argue that only a few committed people are required to
damage a pipeline project enough to stop it. This tactical short-sightedness goes beyond
the fact that actions such as these can trigger broad sentiment supporting the state
pushing back against "violent" anarchists and anti-pipeline struggles, generally. It's
also simply not true. A primary industrial infrastructure project that crosses a
gargantuan area of land with multiple international financial stakeholders would not be
waylaid by the "propaganda of the deed" of rootless environmental radical playing
asymmetrical warrior. This is not a debate about "true anarchist principles" or about
whether you can blow up a social relationship. This is simply about tactical efficacy. It
is far more effective for revolutionaries and environmental radicals to build
organizations that can give working-class people agency in determining their lives. The
building of these organizations is done through immediate struggle - which could include
opposition to pipeline construction - while not losing sight of the long game. When these
organizations unite with others of similar intention to wage struggles together, we will
have something worthy of being referred to as a "movement." While it is imperative for
current financial interests in the Canadian fossil fuel industry that pipelines be built,
it doesn't mean the clock is ticking on the defeat of the working class and that at hour
of pipeline completion the fight is lost. This frantic, apocalyptic thinking clouds the
mind and makes us prone to self-involved lashing out and not the self-sacrificing and
deliberate organizing our class' situation requires.
Where would these movements come from? Any workplace struggle that has a chance of
succeeding relies upon deep support from the communities where the workers live. On the
other hand, community struggles often falter when they are unable to exert any real
pressure on the powerful entities harming their common interests. Clearly, any successful
approach to organizing in neighbourhoods directly or indirectly threatened must recognize
and root its politics in the interwoven nature between workplaces and their surrounding
communities.
Obviously, neighbourhoods which are presently situated along pipeline routes or near
dangerous resource development projects are those with the most apparent material interest
in opposing these developments. However, these groups cannot bear the weight of such a
difficult struggle alone. Far too much solidarity activism in support of Indigenous
communities and blockades rests on passive support from afar. While this moral support is
all well and good, it does little to support these communities and their struggles. At the
same time, while these neighbourhoods may have use for bodies on the line when their
situation reaches a crisis point, it doesn't do that much good for urban activists to
travel up north and sit on the sidelines. What we propose as a strategic imperative to
this type of solidarity work involves a much longer, more arduous approach rooted in the
neighbourhoods where we presently live and work. This is difficult, but a worthwhile and
necessary foundation for building towards a revolutionary situation in Canada, however
unlikely it may seem. In other words, we are talking about organizing to win.
An important first step is to move away from the reactive stance most of the Left is
currently mired in. Individuals and groups who are seriously committed to revolution as
well as environmentalism should avail themselves of the multiple proactive strategies of
organizing in their neighbourhoods which could provide a strong basis for future
environmental action, as opposed to the normal leftist approach of crisis mobilization.
Engaging in environmental organizing as an aspect or result of building these stronger
communities and organizations means making the same case to workers for taking action on
the environment as for taking action against landlords or bosses--that it is in their
collective material interest. This appeal must also be interwoven with a broader plan
towards social and economic empowerment.
What does an organized neighbourhood look like, and how do we differentiate mobilization
from organization? Common activist modes of behaviour involve primarily one-sided
conversations, a battle of ideas, and "converting" people to a particular way of thinking,
then, if successful, to get them to sign onto your specific issue or cause. We would
contrast this mobilization pattern with an organizing pattern, which we centre on the
establishment of democratic spaces to make decisions and take collective action. Effective
decision-making and action strengthen the organization and neighbourhood and, ultimately,
the neighbourhood organization is more capable of enforcing its decisions and building its
power. Environmental activism tends to skip these steps, steps which we believe are
prerequisites to effectively contending with environmental issues, and which also
contextualize environmentalism within a broader struggle toward revolution, rather than
treating it as a standalone set of ideas in the style of the New Left. It also provides an
opportunity for environmentalism to contribute to a popular understanding of, and
opposition to, capitalism, and to build that understanding among the people who are
uniquely positioned to end capitalism: the working class as a class.
When we write about neighbourhood organization, we don't mean independent and isolated
neighbourhoods or a sort of socialism-in-one-neighborhood. We envision federated
neighborhoods that work together on issues that could span large geographical areas. We
aim to build neighborhood organizations that are independent and directly democratic. A
starting point that could build common struggles between neighborhoods would be ecological
issues, and they could further work together in struggles against, for example, police
violence.
Moreover, it is our imperative to build environmentally-conscious working-class power in
southern Ontario, both because this is where we stand and because to do otherwise would
mean leaving small, remote communities to fight these battles on their own, against the
might of Canadian and global capital. There are few other effective ways for us to engage
in environmental struggle outside of merely acting as allies or riding someone else's
bandwagon. The current pattern of environmental struggle largely follows the pattern of
high-profile, high-energy, high-risk blockades and protest sites. These function as focal
points for both the state and the activist Left, which flock to them. This activist
attention is dubiously helpful at best. At any rate, these blockades indicate decisive
action taken by strong communities. Yet, even these communities cannot stand against
capital on their own. What is needed is connected struggles, both rural and urban, which
are more difficult to suppress and which build a true sense of common cause against a
common foe.
V. Conclusion
Many members of Common Cause, and certainly the members of this writing group, began to
explore revolutionary politics because of our interest in environmental defense. A few of
us even joined this organization because of our immense dissatisfaction with the
environmentally-focused organizing that we had struggled to make potent for years. One
thing that we learned was that, while participating in environmental organizing, we must
ensure that we have not developed the same orientation to both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous working-class people as the oil companies. Working-class people are not
stakeholders from whom we must gain enough tacit support that we can achieve our
predetermined goals.
Given the stakes of unmitigated and irreversible climate change, and the power of state
and capital to firmly oppose efforts to improve our collective lot, the only strategic way
forward lies in organizing among the working class. What is urgently needed is a wholesale
effort to build working-class organizations that are capable of presenting concrete
opposition to these projects. We have tried to outline here a viable and enactable vision
of environmental struggle which is rooted in working-class organizing. This must
necessarily be a vision founded in practicality and the need to launch the most effective
attacks possible, rather than relying on moralistic arguments.
Throughout this article, we've tried to make the case that the current state of
anti-pipeline and environmentalist politics is at an impasse, and that in order to
seriously change the situation in Canada, activists struggling on this terrain must pivot
towards organizing among the working class at a local level. For all the talk of "Chicken
Littles" in this article, it is right to be genuinely concerned about the disturbing
emissions trajectory the world is on and the unprecedented scale of human misery and
environmental collapse that will follow. Moreover, the chasm between the emissions cuts
that science tells us are needed and the rapacious growth of state-abetted fossil fuel
industries shows us that the entire rotten edifice of the global economy is at odds with a
liveable future for all. However, it is patently clear that with its current strategy and
composition, the overall movement against the tar sands and for climate justice in Canada
is bound to fail.
We wish to see the recomposition of a bold and capable working class in Canada with a
clear understanding of its general interests regarding the environment and the trashing of
the commons as a function of capitalism. We wish to see communities capable of standing up
to pipeline companies and their allies in government, confident that their resistance will
be echoed throughout the country. We wish to see Indigenous blockades strengthened and
supported not only in words, but in strong, disruptive action throughout the economy.
But wishes don't amount to much. And though we spilled a lot of ink trying to think of
some ways forward, the fact is most of the organizing we discussed is theoretical and
untried. Further, it promises to be a fraught and difficult process. That said, if you
consider yourself a revolutionary, isn't this approach more palatable than writing your
objections to the National Energy Board, clicking "like" on the Unist'ot'en Action Camp
page, or milling around with a bunch of liberals carrying a sad, inflatable pipeline?
There is still time to start the challenging work of organizing. While times will no doubt
be harder in the future due to climate change, there is no sign of a coming apocalypse,
especially for those of us in southern Ontario. Pipelines are intimately tied to the
structure of the Canadian economy and the expansion of the tar sands but if we lose the
battle against Energy East that does not mean that we should give up. Capitalism will find
new ways to grow and we will find ourselves participating in new struggles. Powerful
working-class organizations are part of a long-term strategy to win real and revolutionary
gains, and will take years of hard work. However, with 2015 set to be another
record-breaking year in the crescendo towards runaway climate change, and a number of
Indigenous struggles like the Unist'oten blockade set to come to a head, there's no time
like the present.
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