Check out the trailer…

Immediately following the movie the GYCL will be meeting to discuss upcoming events this spring.  Feel free to stay if you’d like to get it out, check out the club or get involved!

Check out Liz from a previous Guelph visit:

Sneak Peak:

Struggle and resistance is the way forward…

The results of the 2011 Federal election are a call to action for the youth and student movement. It is time to pick up our picket signs and banners for major mobilization against the extremely dangerous Harper Conservative majority government.

The Conservatives have no mandate from the young people, nor from the people in general, to accelerate their pro-capitalist, anti-peace, anti-environment agenda – and this must not pass! In confronting our emergency situation, young people should take heart in the fact that Harper won the support of less than 25% of registered voters.

The election has also shown how flawed the Canadian voting system is. The situation calls out for mixed-member proportional representation.

Pirates and bloodsuckers

The greater number of the parliament is now a rouge’s gallery of bloodsuckers, pirates, psychopaths, vultures, and thugs masquerading in business suits under the cover of a legal political party. They are the happy prisoners of racism, sexism and homophobia, the architects of the G20 mass arrests, and represent an agenda of billion-dollar corporate climate crime, imperialist war and pillage and a vicious attack on accessible education, good jobs, and justice, dignity and fundamental rights – like women’s reproductive rights.

To win, the Conservatives fought selective campaigns in target ridings. Automated mysterious phone calls even mis-informed voters on election day about the location of polling stations. A Tory campaign’s communication director tried to grab a ballot box at one advanced campus poll box with the hopes of intimidating voters. Throughout the campaign the Conservatives ran from dialogue with youth, refused to respond to surveys from people’s movements like the “report card on education”, and fired-off cheap Quebec-bashing (warning of a “coalition with separatists”).

Youth vote pushes for change

The youth vote turnout was apparently, like the general turnout, not significantly higher – despite comedian Rick Mercer’s Maple-leaf enwrapped non-partisan “Vote Mobs” on campuses and much hype about social media, etc.

The voting ID rules still frustrate young people voting. Many youth lack, for example, proof of a physical address or their name on utility bills. The first-past-the-post system also discourages voting when a vote for a progressive candidate is supposedly ‘wasted.’

The major election debates appear more and more to be a choice between Capitalism Lite, or Capitalism Classic. The parties are not identical, however, and had more youth voted they likely would have pushed for what was perceived as change and elected larger bloc of parties not aligned directly with big business, suggested by the “student vote” drive in public schools.

We welcome the NDP’s victory as official opposition, the new young Quebec NDP MPs in Ottawa, and the election of the first Green MP. The sharp turn towards the New Democrats in Quebec away from the Bloc Québécois is a rejection of the Conservatives, not a resolution of the national inequalities in the Canadian constitution. In fact, these three non-big business parties have inconsistent records of fighting for social progress and peace (all supporting, for example, the current imperialist war in Libya).

Can’t stop, can’t wait

In practice the ‘Orange surge’ has limited capacity to block the big business agenda. The Tories are in full control of the Commons and the Senate.

We can’t wait four years to fight-back in another election. Urgent, direct and united mass action is needed now. The youth movement must seek-out every platform to combine our efforts, resist and defeat the Harper Tories starting this summer. The first battleground struggles will likely be Harper’s law and order legislation, as well as military spending and austerity measures with the new budget that will include cut-backs to education.

Finding ways to mobilize as many youth as possible behind a people’s agenda must be an important topic for the young workers gathering at the Canadian Labour Congress and the Quebec Confederation of National Trade Unions, the Rebelles feminist gathering in Winnipeg, and the Canadian Federation of Students General meeting at the end of the month.

Instead of ignorance, poverty, prisons and war as the future for youth, the YCL expresses its support for the new campaign for a Charter of Youth Rights (www.youthcharter.ca).  The people’s of Europe and the Arab world are rising up, making history, and pushing for a better future. Look at the bold occupation of State Capitol building in Wisconsin. We need to create many Wisconsins, many of these mass mobilizations.

Struggle and resistance is the way forward!

YCL CEC, May 2011

We encourage youth and student activists to also read the analysis of the Communist Party of Canada, which can be found at http://www.parti-communiste.ca/?p=442

Drew Garvie is a service sector worker, part-time student, campus and community activist, and leader of the Young Communist League in Ontario. He has been actively involved in a number of movements including opposing the Harper Tories’ racist immigration policies and the fight for Palestinian human rights.

Drew supports the student movement in its call for universal, quality public education at all levels. He calls for massively increasing education funding and the passing of a federal Post-Secondary Education Act, eliminating tuition, and stopping military recruitment and privatization on campus.

Drew actively protests Canada’s war in Afghanistan and is a supporter of the Six Nations reclamation in Caledonia.

Voting Communist is the strongest message you can send against capitalist globalization and imperialist war. For example, none of the candidates in Guelph from the major parties (including the Greens) have spoken against our involvement in bombing Libya.

A vote for the Communist Party of Canada is a vote that reflects the growing awareness that environmental destruction, economic crisis, racism, sexism and homophobia, and war have systemic causes rooted in capitalism itself.

Yes our undemocratic FPTP system means that you have a two party race in ridings like Guelph.  But, politicians pay attention to the “wasted votes” and where they’re going.   Voting Communist sends a message to those in power that you want real change.  And then the real change will come from your participation in social movements and in the streets!  People and our environment before profits!

More links and campaign info:

Click here for the full platform and campaign election site!

Check out the Guelph Mercury’s All-Candidate’s Debate Replay:

http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/elections/article/519602–guelph-riding-forum-replay

Two good articles from the Merc:

Communists hopeful for brighter future for all

Youth don’t feel engaged enough to vote

Campaign Video:

HOW TO VOTE

You can vote on May 2^nd from 9:30am-9:30pm.  On your “Voter Information Card” it will say where to vote.  All you need is the card and ID.  But if you didn’t receive a card in the mail…

What to bring to the polls on E-day if you haven’t received a “Voter Information Card”: http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e

***They will let you vote regardless if you swear an oath.  Your ballot will be sealed until they can confirm the info but it will still be counted!

Where to find your poll: http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/finded.aspx?L=e

-fill out your postal code and click search

-In the FAQ section on the right hand side click “Where do I vote?” under the “voting process” heading

-your poll will appear

The Young Communist League of Canada fully endorses Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2011 from March 7th-20th and salutes the upcoming organizing taking place on campuses and in communities across Canada to help build IAW and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Apartheid Israel.

Last year’s events took place in over 55 cities world wide and this year’s
actions will be expanded and strengthened.

Click here for Guelph IAW events!

A HISTORICAL MOMENT!

IAW 2011 is coming at a historical juncture where a new wave of revolution has discredited the racist ideas that the Arab peoples do not struggle for democracy and against imperialism. Israel remains the favored outpost of American imperialism in the region and IAW plays an important role in exposing Apartheid Israel’s most heinous crimes against Palestinians, and the role it plays in securing US corporate interests which have savaged the Middle East and the globe.

We proudly support the use of the term “Apartheid” despite the attacks on free speech by Zionists and Conservatives. How else can one describe a situation where occupied Palestinians are denied statehood and are colonized by illegal Israeli settlements that continue to expand?  What is it when Arab Israelis are denied access to the majority of land in Israel itself and suffer severe discrimination on a daily basis?  Israel has escalated its policies of war, occupation, assassination, kidnapping, torture and detention, partition, economic de-stabilization, starvation, the withholding of water, the bulldozing of homes and shops, and the targeting of civilians.

We stand with South African anti-Apartheid veterans, such as Desmond Tutu, Ronnie Kasrils, COSATU, the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Young Communist League of South Africa, in refusing to be intimidated and referring to Israel’s racist policies by their name as defined under the UN’s 1973 Convention: the “Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”.

CONDEMN HARPER

The vast majority of the world, through the UN, has opposed Israeli
Apartheid for over 40 years as one of the principle road blocks to peace in the region.  But this is not reflected in Harper’s unconditional support for the most extreme pro-Zionist and genocidal measures taken by the Israeli state.  Canada has more than doubled its bi-lateral trade with Israel since the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement was signed.  This trade is now $1.3 billion a year.

Harper’s foreign policy now stands virtually alone in the world in terms of this uncritical support.

In 2006, when a Hamas majority was elected by Palestinians, Canada was among the first countries in the world to cut funding to the democratically elected government of Palestine.  Harper also supported the invasion of Lebanon and “Operation Cast Lead” – Israel’s three week massacre of 1,400 Gazans (including over 300 children).

Most recently Stephen Harper appeared with Israeli PM and war criminal
Netanyahu the morning after the brazen military attack against unarmed peace activists bringing humanitarian aid to the imprisoned people of Gaza.  The courageous Freedom Flotilla activists, including Victoria BC’s human rights activist Kevin Neish, were carrying baby food, clothing, medicines, building materials and other supplies desperately needed by the people of Gaza, who continue to suffer under a vicious blockade intended to starve the Palestinians into submission.

REVERSE THE ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH

Free speech in Canada has also been a casualty of Stephen Harper’s support for Imperialism and Apartheid Israel as the federal government has attacked voices for Human Rights at home.

In 2009, Jason Kenney, Minister of Censorship and Deportation, banned
British MP George Galloway from entering Canada, because he had recently led a humanitarian convoy to Gaza.  The Harper Tories have cut funding to Canadian organizations that have spoke out against Israel, including the Canadian Arab Federation and KAIROS, and have founded the “Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism” which is attempting to label all criticism of Israel as “the new anti-Semitism”.

This new attack on our democratic rights has also been felt by IAW and BDS activists, many of whom are youth and students.

Last spring the Ontario Legislature passed a motion by Tory MPP Peter
Shurman condemning Israeli Apartheid Week as “inciting hatred against
Israel”.  In previous years university administrations have banned IAW
posters and put up road blocks for booking space on campuses for Palestinian solidarity events.  In February 2011, Mohawk College in Hamilton Ontario, tried to bankrupt a speaking event involving Jewish anti-Zionist scholar Norman Finkelstein by arguing that exorbitant security expenditures were necessary.

YOUTH FIGHT BACK!

But youth and students are fighting back against this repression with a
renewed counter-offensive.  Across Canada there have been important
victories.  This includes the growing BDS movement which held a pan-Canadian conference in Montreal in October 2010.   We call on youth, students to continue this work and to coordinate and organize a cross-Canada BDS organization.  Important victories have already been won, such as the recent move by the Hudson Bay Company to discontinue Ahava products (an Israeli cosmetics line) in January 2011.

The proof that this movement has real potential to weaken Apartheid
Israel is that the Israeli Knesset is currently discussing a bill that
will criminalize the promotion of BDS within Israel.

The BDS campaign was launched in 2005 by a call put forth by over 170
Palestinian civil society organizations.  The YCL-LJC echoes their demands.

We call that Israel respect the right of return for all Palestinian
refugees; that Israel dismantle the wall and put an end to its colonization; the creation of a viable and genuinely independent, sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem; the certifiable de-nuclearization of Israel, and mutual security guarantees for all states in the region.

The time has come to impose sanctions and a full boycott against the rouge state of Israel, beginning with an immediate ban on all Canadian military exports.  Canada must end its complicity with Israeli war crimes and adopt a foriegn policy of peace and disarmament including support of UN resolutions and developing peaceful and cooperative relations with all states in the Middle East.  There is no other “road map” to a just and lasting peace in the region.

Central Executive Committee

YCL-LJC Canada

It’s a battle for the future of Hamilton’s young workers and a battle for all Canadians to protect their future. This is only the latest attack on young workers by big multi-national corporations trying to erode working conditions, wages, pensions and a quality of life that past generations fought so hard for. This so-called “labour dispute” is about the company trying to stop indexing pensions and denying new hires the existing defined benefit pension plan, without which workers will retire into poverty.

Hamilton has a long history of working class people not giving in to policies that aren’t in their interests; a history of militancy and unity. Hamilton is a community that demands a fair wage for a fair day’s work.  Hamilton workers, youth, students and all those fighting for social justice will stand up and fight for people’s needs over profits and greed.

In Canada, we have been told that the recession is over and that we have been in recovery for a few months. Repeatedly we are told this. Why is the message so often repeated by the corporate owned news? Because the people don’t believe it. We don’t see it! The “recovery” has been for the profits going to the super rich who have saved themselves at the expense of the workers, whether by massive injections of public funds or through “stimulus funds” (essentially theft from the people, in both cases). While they have restored fat corporate salaries, and bonuses, they continue to cut wages, benefits and pensions. The people’s quality of life continues to decline.

Our future as a community and as a country will be bleak indeed if we allow the multi-nationals to dictate our wages, working and living conditions according to their profit margins. We must unite and stand together against the practices of companies like U.S. Steel. They cannot pull the wool over our eyes. If a particular “foreign investment” won’t maintain our living standards – such as defined benefit, indexed pensions – then the ICA (Investment Canada Act) must be used to fix the situation, up to and including measures such as divestiture and public take-over.

Two-tier contracts, like the one US Steel is pushing, means poverty and no future for young workers.  Already, youth unemployment is at record highs. Underemployment and part-time McJobs are the only option for most youth. Now they want to gut the last unionized jobs left. This will mean further roll-backs across the board in every sector. The solution is unity and struggle!

The youth and young workers of Hamilton, Ontario and Canada, will not stay silent and watch the destruction brought about by these firms. We stand in solidarity with the over 900 members and 9000 retirees of USW local 1005 who demand nothing more than fair treatment and what they were promised when U.S. Steel came to our city.  These promises have been flagrantly broken, and the federal and provincial governments have done nothing to stand up for the workers.  A Canadian future that involves Harper at the helm means more collusion with the largest and most vicious trans-nationals and a low-wage economy for the rest of us.

The Young Communist League – Ontario demands the following immediate measures be taken by the McGuinty and Harper governments to provide a future for youth and workers in Ontario:

• the provincial government compel US Steel to return to the bargaining table to negotiate an early and just settlement with Local 1005
• prosecute US Steel to the full extent of the law, including for price fixing and bargaining in bad faith
• enact foreign investment laws that protect jobs and benefit Canada – not US Steel, Vale Inco, and the rest of these corporate criminals
• substantially increase CPP pensions and reduce the voluntary pension age to 60
• put through tough anti-scab legislation
• a Bill of Rights for Labour guaranteeing the right to strike, picket and organize
• the nationalization of US Steel’s Canadian operations; put them under public ownership and democratic control
• a $16/hr minimum wage, no more poverty wages!
• bankruptcy protection for workers’ wages and pensions
• end tuition fees, by rolling back and eliminating them – Education is a right!
• massive public investment to create jobs, expand manufacturing and secondary industry; build a Canadian car, build affordable housing, expand public services and Medicare, and build a national child care program

But the solution won’t come from government without a massive and militant fight back, with organized Labour leading the way.  The YCL-O realizes that it is capitalism itself that has spawned this most recent sharpened attack on the living conditions of the global working-class.  Ultimately, socialism, which would put workers in the driver’s seat in this country, is the only way to offer an end to re-occurring crisis and struggle against capitalist regression.

As one of the chants against US Steel goes: “What do we make? Steel! What do they do?  Steal!”

Solidarity with Hamilton Steelworkers!  Youth and young workers of Ontario, unite to defend our future!

The Convention was held Sept. 24 to 26 at the University of Toronto campus.

This is a series of interviews with YCL delegates from across Canada accompanied by pictures of the convention.

The Convention concluded a seven-month period of ideological mobilization by the League on important questions about the youth and student fight back and the role of the YCL. This included oral and written discussion. Six discussion bulletins of comments from outgoing leadership, members, clubs, committees, and friends who are non-members were completed and circulated.

The convention debated over a hundred amendments to the main political resolution sent by YCL clubs, committees, and individual comrades;

The convention confirmed the main thesis of the report: The global economic crisis, transferred through the policies of the Harper Conservatives, is the primary attack that the youth and people’s movements must unite and combat.

The convention confirmed that the proposed priority areas of struggle for the YCL with one significant change: it instructed the League to make the broader question of the environmental struggle a priority, rather than the narrower proposal to involve the YCL in the climate change movement.

The areas of struggle for the YCL are: young workers, peace and anti-imperialism, the student movement, and the environment.

The convention confirmed and elaborated that the YCL demand for a Charter of Youth Rights as a basis for unity of the youth in the struggle. It added the demand for education as a right of youth, in addition to Peace; Jobs; Democracy; A democratic solution to the national question; Recreation, culture, sports; A healthy environment; and Full equality.

The new Central Committee of the YCL made an evaluation that the convention was a great success, with vigorous, comprehensive, theoretically informed and generally action-oriented discussion by delegates, as well as healthy level of democracy and a strong sense of unity in the organization. The convention sent a bold demand for a stronger, more united and more militant youth and student movement in Canada, fighting for peace, jobs, accessible education, the environment, and a charter of youth rights!

Visit HERE for more info on the convention.

This Tuesday, August 31^st, Guelph Conservatives welcome federal Citizenship and Immigration (Censorship and Deportation) minister Jason Kenney.  Mr. Kenney is coming as a special guest to a BBQ hosted by the Guelph Conservative Party, along with their candidate for the next federal election.  But he isn’t just here to enjoy the food, the company, the summer weather – or even the beautiful scenery at Riverside Park. Mr. Kenney is here on a mission: to portray the Harper government’s immigration program as being about creating a welcoming, multicultural Canada for immigrants from all over the world by playing on the popular sentiments of Canadians who genuinely hope that this is the case.

In the real world, if not in the minds of Harper’s propagandists, the citizenship and immigration regime Kenney is presiding over is about:

• Bringing in US-style raids and national security policies, part of a broader strategy of changing the definition of acceptable policing in Canada, including racial profiling, workplace raids and harassing people at women’s shelters
• Using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to bring hundreds of thousands of workers to Canada, to work for very low wages with almost no legal protections and no path to permanent residency
• Using powers brought in by Bill C-50 to reject valid refugee claims for political reasons from certain countries and giving quotas for immigration to certain countries
• More generally, creating a climate of fear among migrants (with and without status), making it dangerous for targeted communities to speak out, for example, about unfair or unsafe working conditions
• Promoting racist ideas about “good immigrants” and “bad immigrants” – racist ideas which also attack non-migrant working class people and seek to divide domestic workers and foreign workers, whose unity is a threat to the Harper Tories’ corporate agenda
• Removing LGBT rights from history taught to new immigrants
• Defunding the ESL programs of major NGOs, such as the Canadian Arab Federation, when they speak out against the Harper government’s uncritical and unconditional support for the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians
• Attacking free speech by denying George Galloway, a British member of parliament, entry to Canada because of he opposes the occupation of Afghanistan
• Curtailing democratic rights by setting up a “Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism” which has sought to equate democratic criticism of Israel with “hate speech”, this is a danger to free speech as well as the very real struggle against hate speech and crimes
• Denying American soldiers and their families refusing to participate in the illegal war and immoral war in Iraq asylum in Canada, despite motions passed in the House of Commons demanding that they be allowed to stay
• The recent Tory demonizing of the Tamil refugees, who have fled violence in their homeland and applied for refugee status in keeping with international law

The Guelph Young Communist League rejects these policies.  We demand that the Harper government end their racist attacks on the “Canadian” working class and all workers working in Canada, whether they be immigrant, migrant or non-status.  We condemn Harper’s immigration policy which is deeply connected to his broader big-business, anti-people policies.

No One is “Illegal”!

Treat the Tamil Refugees with Humanitarian Respect & Dignity!

Youth Unite to Defeat the Harper Tories!

“Strategy and tactics for social transformation”

Please join us at the 6th annual YCL Ontario summer school, featuring discussions, workshops, panels and presentations on the strategy and tactics of social change, revolution, how capitalism works, as well as internationalism, Latin America, and youth struggles for peace and solidarity.

Come learn, participate and meet other young commies, progressive activists and allies!

When – Friday, Saturday and Sunday August 20-22nd

Where – beautiful Guelph, Ontario

Cost – pay what you can ($5-$10)

This school comes in the context of a continued economic assault on young workers and ‘round two’ of the economic crisis, as well as the mass arrests of over 1,000 protestors at the recent G20 demonstrations.

Join us for special discussions on mass action, debates about the merits of the ‘diversity of tactics’ and ‘direct action’ models of activism, as well as workshops and speakers on movement building including revolutionary writing; anti-racism, homophobia and sexism; Marxist economics; organizing for the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students in South Africa; and the situation of the youth movement here across Canada.  Also, join us Saturday night for a fantastic camp fire social!

Friday – 6pm – University Centre room 442 – University of Guelph
Saturday – 9am – The “Portillo” Ranch! – 6834 Hwy 124 – Guelph
Sunday - 10am – University Centre room 442 – University of Guelph

Friday and Sunday courses will be at the University of Guelph campus, while Saturday will be at a farm house. Internal transportation, accommodation and basic meals (with veggie option) will be provided.

Please notify us of any food allergies or dietary restrictions.

For more info please email ycl.ontario@gmail.com

***Friends, allies and newcomers are welcome!

Join the Facebook group for more details!