In an election that has been dominated by Doug Ford's crass efforts to gerrymander the Toronto municipal outcome while the Toronto political establishment on both the right and the left lined up to defend the status quo and incumbency, there are a couple of bright spots.
These are Saron Gebresellassi for Mayor and Walied Khogali Ali for Ward 13.
Here, finally, we see municipal candidates running on issues of tremendous importance to the workers, racialized and marginalized in Toronto and doing so in spite of the lack of support from the milquetoast faux "progressive" elite that tries to control the "left" politics of City Hall.
Walied Khogali Ali has put forth a program that is all about the struggle to build community and create spaces of social justice in the neo-liberal city that is Toronto. An activist who has fought for years around many issues his platform includes direct and serious approaches to tackle the fundamentals of housing, transit and inclusion that face the city.
His website can be found here:
https://www.votewalied.ca/
Saron Gebresellassi is running what is easily the most left wing campaign for mayor in a generation and it is finally starting to get some notice.
Everything about her platform is solid:
Right to Housing: Recognize that housing is a fundamental human right and that incremental targets alone are not enough. This means we must set in place aggressive plans to provide adequate and sufficient housing for everyone. My first priority will be addressing our housing crisis.
Right to Transit — Towards Free Public Transit: Yes, it’s possible! And the benefits are immense. I will focus on developing a strategy that will set Toronto on a path towards free transit. Free transit will help address climate change, urban gridlock and sprawl, and cut down on spending for road maintenance.
Right to fair allocation of city resources: Re-prioritize our spending towards more targeted youth employment as well as arts and cultural programming so that no one is left behind, especially from low-income areas and the inner-suburbs
Right to employment outside of the downtown core: We have to develop proper and sound incentives for businesses to invest outside of downtown Toronto, among other strategies.
Right to Mental Health and Accessibility: Develop an overall mental health and accessibility framework that underpins all aspects of city planning and budgeting. This means that our city’s budgeting should also be filtered through an overall mental health framework that assesses how our policies contribute towards developing positive mental health outcomes.
Right to Diversity in City Politics and City Hiring: Increasing Diversity in Our Politics and City Hiring. I will call for electoral reform that will create space for fresh faces and voices that reflect diverse backgrounds. I will move towards creating a city-wide employment equity regime that will ensure our city’s workforce and senior leadership reflects the city itself.
Her website can be found here:
https://saronformayor.ca/
These are left candidates that at last strike out past the deadening nothing politics of the NDP downtown establishment, that are not running because of some family last name, and that are running on serious platforms regardless of the empty do-nothing faux endorsements of the "labour council".
There is a lot of work to be done to build a serious left alternative in Toronto.
A solid start would be getting behind these two candidates.
