Why we’re re-launching Courage
The victory of the campaign to make Avi Lewis leader of the federal New Democratic Party was a breakthrough for the Canadian left.
It proved naysayers wrong: there is indeed a huge appetite in this country for bold socialist politics.
The need could not be more urgent.
Most of us are struggling with the cost of everything from housing to food to transit while the billionaire class hoards more and more wealth. We’re getting hit by climate change-fuelled heat waves and floods, as wildfires choke our skies and burn down entire towns.
Meanwhile Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada are being exploited by Mark Carney to ram through a right-wing corporate agenda—a frenzy of pipelines, militarization, AI expansion, and public service cuts—that will make the lives of working people even harder.
Democratic socialism is the answer to these crises. But there is so much work to be done to rebuild the Canadian left, strengthen our movements and labour unions, and transform the NDP into our effective and winning electoral arm.
That’s why we’re inviting you to join us in building an independent political organization to contribute to that struggle inside and outside the NDP.
We write this as organizers who were deeply involved in the Avi Lewis leadership campaign, joined by other social movement organizers from across the country.
Now is the time to seize an opportunity we helped to create: an NDP leadership seriously committed to making the party a more democratic, parliamentary wing of our movements. Combining the best of both worlds, we believe movements and a party can together create a force stronger than anything they can pull off on their own.
But while we now have a socialist as NDP leader, we are vigilant about the opposition and backlash that is certain to come—from provincial NDP leaders that are supportive of fossil fuel expansion and too timid to challenge corporate power, to a hostile establishment media, to the political and economic elite.
We plan to do the following:
- Organize for a socialist agenda within the NDP: coordinate party members who share our values into an organized current or tendency; help people get involved in the party and elect socialists into office; defend Avi Lewis when he’s attacked; and push him when necessary
- Do socialist political education: collectively develop a clear analysis of capitalism and train the organizers we need to win a democratic majority for socialist transformation
- Run or support campaigns outside the NDP: win material improvements for Canada’s multi-racial working class
To do this, rather than create something entirely new, we are helping to relaunch Courage, a democratic, membership-based organization that has been dormant for years.
While it was active after launching in 2017, Courage organizers fought for a different kind of NDP, advocating for Palestine solidarity within the party, pushing for democratization, and putting forward detailed, compelling policy proposals around public ownership, a Green New Deal, and land back for Indigenous peoples.
Now there is finally a chance to realize this vision across the entire federal NDP.
Conservatives and Liberals, by contrast, offer us only fake worker-friendly populism, very real racism, or corporate greed wrapped in a flag.
But Canadians are hungry for deep change.
For taking on wealth and power. Tangibly better lives. Unleashing our collective imagination.
A politics of courage.