The New Kid on the Block

There’s a new kid on the block called The BC Ecosocialists. It’s a new political party and bills itself as being “left of the NDP and greener than the Greens”.  This new kid speaks my language with only a few reservations.  Nothing is perfect.  But in my opinion, this party might very well have some legs.  Here’s their constitution:

 The purposes of the party are:

1. to utilize our legal status as a political party to respond to the extinction event including

   1. fielding candidates for public office with the intention of winning elections

   2. fielding candidates for public office as a means of building social movements and giving them greater voice

   3. threatening to field candidates for public office to obtain concessions from those holding state power

   4. using the electoral process to witness against the extinction event

2. to work collaboratively with social movements that also seek to arrest the extinction event

3. to participate as part of a global movement of political parties and social movement groups that

   1. seek a carbon-neutral future

   2. seek to dismantle capitalism

   3. oppose austerity

   4. oppose the global death cult that is mobilizing forces of fundamentalism, racism and nationalism to accelerate the extinction event and cause the deaths of migrants seeking to escape its consequences

4. offer an analysis of the extinction event and its causes that recognizes

   1. the synergistic interaction among forces of white supremacy, male supremacy and bourgeois supremacy to both magnify one another and accelerate the extinction event

   2. the fact that the capitalist system is driving the extinction event and that it must be dismantled rather than reformed

   3. that cultural and social practices and institutions are powerful forces that we must change in order to address the extinction event and that these forces affect and are undergirded by a material reality

5. develop public policy and seek democratic support for said policy for implementation by any government at any level recognizing

   1. the precautionary principle

   2. the recognition that ideas of “sustainable development” and “sustainability” are no longer available due to the acceleration of the climate crisis through feedback mechanisms

   3. that struggles against oppression of human beings are inextricable from the struggle to save the planet

6. work to arrest and reverse the local processes of ongoing colonization and genocide called British Columbia and Canada and seek a just relationship with First Nations

We affirm that these things are possible because we affirm

1. that human beings possess a universal common sense and, with the most basic critical thinking and literacy skills, are able to evaluate and adopt policies to address the extinction event democratically

2. our faith that humanity can acknowledge our collective danger, share the losses and rise to the occasion.

Is this new party speaking your language, too? Or at least heading in the right direction? We’ll have to find out. The BC Ecosocialists can be reached at http://www.bcecosocialist.ca.