Global Justice and Local Struggle: OCAP's Campaign

by Jackie Esmonde


The demonstrations against the Free Trade Area of the Americas that emerged in Quebec City in April 2001 were the inspiring product of over a year of work and the mobilization of up to 60,000 people. As the tear gas clears, we will undoubtedly spend much time analyzing the meaning of Quebec City. But equally important, we must move forward, continuing our work in building the movement against global capitalism.

As the global justice movement continues to grow and mature, it will have to move away from a strategy focused predominantly on the disruption of major meetings of global capitalists and their political allies, to bring the fight to a more local level. his is by now a common observation. The criticisms launched at the FTAA – that it advances the agenda of global capitalism through facilitating privatization of services, that it entrenches deregulation of labour and environmental standards and increases inequality both within and between countries – provides a framework for analyzing the form of neoliberal restructuring in Canada. In Ontario we have seen massive spending cuts to services for the poor and working poor, attacks on organized and unorganized labour, and an accompanying inability of the broad Left to influence these shifts. "Summit hopping" alone cannot begin to address these dynamics.

This is why there is such great potential in a proposal by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for a major province-wide action in the fall of 2001. OCAP has spent the last eight months visiting communities around the province, seeking to build grassroots support. In their organizing they have explicitly drawn links between the fight against global capitalism and more localized struggles. OCAP has fostered its links with First Nations communities, social justice organizations, union leaderships, and rank and file workers in many communities. While OCAP has proposed a broad outline for actions that will be aimed at economic disruption, the hope is that communities and groups will then begin to organize themselves in ways that are relevant to their specific local concerns.

In the tactical splits that have emerged in the months since Seattle, OCAP is an organization that has explicitly and unapologetically aligned itself with militant direct action. The organizing for the fall has not deviated from this approach. The goal for the fall actions is to create economic disruption based on targets that recognize the roots of our oppression and exploitation, and the roots of our power – for example targeting "free trade" highways and disrupting workplaces. However, over the course of organizing, OCAP’s a growing emphasis has been placed on mass mobilizing as an end in itself.

Although OCAP is an organization that labels itself "anti-capitalist" the campaign itself has not been explicitly so. Rather it has been more generally tied to a critique of the government lead by Mike Harris. The original slogan for the action was "Defeat Harris 2001", a slogan that perhaps claimed too much and which did not resonate with many people who were being approached regarding the campaign. OCAP has now refocussed, organizing the action under the banner of: "The Retreat is Over – Fight to Win." This emphasizes OCAP’s goal of mobilizing resistance for a longer term struggle.

An action of this type – which is creative, decentralized and grassroots – could serve as a much needed spark for a massive and militant mobilization in Ontario that can begin to challenge the torturous process by which hard won gains have been lost.

To find out more about the campaign, or to register your group for the Delegate Council on June 15-16, 2001, contact OCAP at (416) 925-6939 or (416) 530-1550.

Jackie Esmonde is an activist with OCAP and the New Socialist Group.