Trudeau and Syria, Toronto 1910, 'Secularism' & more -- April and May on The Left Chapter in review

April and May saw 61 posts published on The Left Chapter (!). During this period we launched our Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project as well as pages dedicated to posts related to Vintage Photography and Parks.

The Toronto writer A.M. returned to The Left Chapter with an insightful piece of analysis James Comey and the limits of liberalism as well as the powerful Institutionalized: EQAO, TOEFL and the Neoliberal Classroom. Robert McCarthy contributed another guest editorial Trudeau's Refusal to Stand Up to Trump A Disgrace. We also featured Josh Kolic's piece on a truly remarkable and inspiring sports story Basketball Against Fascism -- The Rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

If you have an article, editorial, analysis, recipe or story you would like to contribute there are details on how to do so on our Submissions page as well as at the end of this post.

Thanks very much to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1) Justin Trudeau's dangerous Syrian Trump gambit

What a difference a night and an imperial missile strike makes. Especially to those who jockey for position within the shadow of an empire.

Read More!.

2) Toronto Working Class and Immigrant Life 1910 - A Photographic Exposition

This is a remarkable portfolio of photographs taken of Toronto in 1910 that was put out in the 1960s.

Unlike many photographic looks at the city's past, this one is not nostalgic or glamorous in anyway, but is rather a portrait of working class and immigrant life in the city.

Read More!

3) Fake 'secularism' is not an excuse for Islamophobic bigotry

A string of profoundly disturbing incidents of Islamophobic bigotry centred around high school students who are allowed a space to pray in to accommodate their religious beliefs have occurred lately in Ontario.

Read More!

4) Nova Scotia NDP leader Gary Burrill makes powerful closing debate statement truly worth watching

If you are old enough you may perhaps still dimly remember a post-war time when, even in the capitalist countries, it was a standard political assumption across much of the political spectrum that society was progressing and that the evils of hunger, inequality and injustice could and would be ended (at least to some degree) one day by the actions of governments.

Read More!

5) Secrets and Lies -- Chrystia Freeland's grandfather and collaborating with the Nazis

By now most people have heard at least vaguely about the fact that Liberal Foreign Affairs minister Chrystia Freeland had a grandfather, Mykhail Chomiak (sometimes also spelled Khomyak) who was a Ukrainian nationalist collaborator with the Nazis in Poland during the Second World War. He was the editor of a newspaper,  Krakivski Visti, that was not simply pro-Nazi, but published an array of viciously antisemitic articles (more on this point shortly).  

Read More!

6) When it comes to opportunistic hypocrisy on the environment, Rachel Notley is right up there with Trudeau

If you are among the growing number of people who are rightly outraged by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's hypocrisy on environmental issues then you should be equally outraged by the actions and stances of his newfound, close ally on these issues, Alberta's NDP Premier Rachel Notley.

Read More! 

The top food related post for the period was Indian Style Ground Lamb Flatbread Wraps.

Over the coming weeks The Left Chapter is interested in getting different perspectives on the NDP leadership race including from those both inside and outside of the party, from partisans of various candidates (perhaps explaining why), from critics of the race or those who think supporting any of them is perhaps a mistake, from those who would like to see a candidate who has yet to emerge, analysis of the candidates from an objective left perspective, etc.

If you have perspectives about the NDP leadership race specifically that you would like to share in blog/article/editorial form please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, event or petition, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: Chrystia Freeland, the NDP Leadership Race & more -- February and March on The Left Chapter in review

See also: CAFE, Molson Coors Boycott, Road Tolls & more -- December and January on The Left Chapter in review

Nova Scotia NDP leader Gary Burrill makes powerful closing debate statement truly worth watching

If you are old enough you may perhaps still dimly remember a post-war time when, even in the capitalist countries, it was a standard political assumption across much of the political spectrum that society was progressing and that the evils of hunger, inequality and injustice could and would be ended (at least to some degree) one day by the actions of governments.

Partly this was due to threat that was posed to the capitalist system by Communism with its promise of the eradication of poverty and of full employment, but it was also due to the existence of large currents of thought and mass political parties that were committed to a vision of society that was either explicitly or implicitly anti-capitalist, including parties like the NDP.

That era is long gone now and, until recently, the notion that governments could bring any kind of transformative change at all has been buried by short-term political electoralism, rank careerist opportunism and a fixation on enabling and reinforcing neo-liberal austerity principles of fiscal "responsibility" that are entirely detached from any sense that we can change things through taxation, spending and social justice policy.

In the ongoing Nova Scotia election the Gary Burrill led NDP has the distinction of being the first wing of the party in some time to, however cautiously, truly try to move away from this bankrupt Third Way embrace of perpetual retreat.

They released a relatively solid policy platform that returns more to a traditional (and not terribly radical even just thirty years ago) reformist social democratic idea and that is not framed in either neo-liberal terms or neo-liberalism's version of "populism", the "pocketbook populism" that was the hallmark of the Ontario NDP's disgraceful, shortsighted and reactionary 2014 provincial campaign.

These themes reached a notable conclusion at the end of the leader's debate on Thursday. Burrill gave a closing statement that spoke powerfully to how our society has abandoned any notion that the future will be better, more equal, more fair or more secure for our children and our children's children.

We have, indeed, sold both the generations entering the workforce and adulthood now as well as future generations out to selfish and self-serving narratives centred on tax cutting and a mindless austerity that benefits only the corporations and the wealthy.

He directly says, as so many NDP leaders have failed to for so long, that the economics and social policy framework of the future are not inevitable but are based, instead, on the choices that our governments make and that we make as a society. Our hands are not tied.

Whether this will signal any meaningful shift in the party more broadly and whether Burrill himself and the NSNDP will continue along this road or not remains to be seen of course.

But it is a moving statement worth watching that reminds that it is, as my comrades in the Socialist Party of Ontario used to say, never too late to write the future.