Alberta at the Crossroads

In 1934, Bertolt Brecht wrote, “It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak.” The recent election of Pierre Poilievre as Leader of the Conservative Party and the growing influence of the far-right must be a wake-up call to the Left— being right wins us nothing if we have no power. It’s more important than ever that we organize a popular force by breaking outside of our activist subcultures, meeting people where they are, and re-politicizing our currently de-politicized spaces and institutions. But building power in populist times will also require us to dismantle some dominant beliefs that the political and corporate élite in this country are invested in maintaining— namely, that populism is bad, polarization is to be avoided, and politics are something you “have” and not something you do.

Emma Jackson is an organizer, writer and campaigner based on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, AB. She grew up in the Canadian labour movement and first cut her organizing teeth in the student fossil fuel divestment movement. Read more »