Word filtering out of the offices of the Coalition of Progressive Electors has COPE’s Left Front maneuvering to remove party stalwart Tim Louis from any elected office within Vancouver’s socialist municipal political party. The Left Front message is clear: Tim Louis no longer represents the forces of the vanguard, but rather that of a repressive counter-revolutionary force.
At COPE’s upcoming annual general meeting — to be held this Sunday, July 6th, at the Ukrainian Hall, 154 East 10th Avenue — the Left Front will actively oppose the re-election of Tim Louis as a COPE co-Chair, and de facto voice of the party, as well as any of his supporters — and instead offer a socialist slate wholly committed to revolutionary Marxist principles.
Vancouver is in the throes of a social and economic crisis; ours is a city on the verge of disintegration and collapse. The vital socialist forces of the Left Front will work together with the marginalized and the working class to develop a new economic order. This November, the masses once aroused, will emerge from the subterranean fires of their brutal repression, and establish a new and vital revolutionary sovereignty.
VanRamblings feels quite assured that the Left Front will set about to establish a necessary 100-year dictatorship of the proletariat that will lead, as it has in mother Russia and in China, to a free and egalitarian society without social classes and government, a just and democratic state for all.
Gosh, it’ll be just like the Paris Commune — VanRamblings, for one, can hardly wait to join the revolutionary brigades, as the Left Front proclaims a Republic of freedom, equality, and the fraternity of the people, while constituting a government of municipal defense and economic harmony.
The palaver above aside (only some of which is invented, by the way), VanRamblings’ sources tell us that, in fact, the members of the Left Front — a revolutionary cadre within COPE, mainly associated with the online publication, The Mainlander — will, indeed, oppose the election of Tim Louis to the position of COPE co-Chair, as well as any of his supporters who intend to run for the COPE BoD — that, indeed and in fact, the members of the Left Front consider the indefatigable Mr. Louis to be too “right wing”.
Yes, you read that right — Tim Louis, married (bourgeoise, don’tcha know), a lawyer (Q: What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start), and most egregious of all, a west side Vancouver resident, is too right wing, and represents the forces of counter-revolution.
Migawd, with less than five months to go before the upcoming November 15th municipal election, the once proud and now fractured and fractious Coalition of Progressive Electors finds itself in a sorry, unelectable state. COPE has marginalized itself or is, perhaps, finally and once and for all, about to fully marginalize itself, to recede as a powerful electoral force, as a potent voice for the marginalized within our city, to become what — a voice only for hoary, empty and nostalgic socialist platitudes, and little else?
Make no mistake, VanRamblings would fully support the election of a populist, socialist city councillor to Vancouver City Council. We’re just not entirely sure that the otherwise good-hearted folks in the Left Front represent the aspirations of the diversity of the Vancouver electorate.
Economics professor Kshama Sawant elected as Seattle’s first socialist City Councillor
Before and since her election as a member of Seattle City Council, on November 5th, 2013, VanRamblings has watched in awe as software engineer, socialist activist, and economics professor Kshama Sawant not only became the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since the radical progressive Anne Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916, but led and won the fight to establish a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Sawant has advocated on LGBTQ+ issues, women’s issues, people of color issues and cuts to education and other social programmes, implementation of a “millionaire’s tax” on wealthy Seattleites, and rent control, about which she has said, “rent control is something everyone supports, except real estate developers …”, while comparing the legal fight for its implementation to same-sex marriage, and the legalization of marijuana, both of which she supports. Sawant’s campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage is credited for bringing the issue into the mainstream across the United States. In response to criticism that the $15 an hour minimum wage could hurt the economy she said, “If making sure that workers get out of poverty would severely impact the economy, then maybe we don’t need this economy.”
Kawant also advocates for an expansion of public transit and bikeways, ending corporate welfare, ending racial profiling, reducing taxes on small business and homeowners, protecting public sector unions from layoffs, living wage union jobs, and the expansion of social services. Unsurprisingly, Kshama Sawant has emerged as Seattle’s most popular elected official, and one of the most popular elected representatives across Washington state.
We might just as well have written about Dr. Ben Isitt, a Canadian historian and legal scholar (area of study, the relationship between social movements and the state), an avowed and proud socialist, who since his election in November 2011 has held public office in Victoria as a city councillor and regional director — Isitt has also been touted as a future Victoria mayor.
In Vancouver, with a wolf in sheep’s clothing, anti-democratic Vision Vancouver civic administration in place, the progressive forces within COPE find themselves engaged in a continuing bitter struggle for control of the party apparatus, a struggle defined by recrimination, name-calling and tests of ideological purity — a dissolute municipal political party utterly unfocused on the needs of a desperate Vancouver electorate crying out for change, and ill-prepared to run a serious campaign for elected office this autumn.
Tim Louis. Whether the Vancouver voting public realizes it or not, we have all of us sorely missed the witty, angry, clarion voice of Tim Louis at Vancouver City Council, by far the most articulate and hard working member of Council (and Park Board) when he held elected office, and the sole hope for COPE this November 15th, as the candidate for Vancouver City Council who might best advocate for the concerns, interests and aspirations of the broadest cross-section of those of us who reside in the city of Vancouver, from the vast numbers of our populace who rent, to the marginalized, the homeless living on our streets, pensioners on fixed incomes, minimum and low-wage workers, and our immigrant population.
