Ontario is gearing up for a provincial election on October 2. Since the last one in 2000, the conditions facing most people in the province have worsened. Opposition to neo-liberalism exists but it has not recovered from the demobilization of the massive Days of Action protests during the Tory government’s first term in office.

Several initiatives focusing on the provincial election campaign have been launched. These include Ontario Needs a Raise (ONR) and Housing Ontario Means Everyone (HOME). These initiatives have built fairly broad-based coalitions to organize actions in Toronto and across the province.

At this time, it is important for everyone fighting for social change to be clear about why and how we should relate to elections.

We should have no illusions about the ballot box. Despite the promises of reforms, elections themselves have little impact on the fundamental realities of exploitation and oppression that shape people’s everyday lives under capitalism.

For working-class people in Ontario, who to vote for is an increasingly difficult decision. No political party offers a strong left alternative to the Tory agenda or is committed to mass mobilization to fight for reforms. It is no surprise that voter turnout continues to drop.

Elections as an Opportunity

However, election campaigns can provide an opening for activists to come together to reach people in their neighbourhoods and workplaces and build our capacities to organize around demands. This provided the motivation for a broad call-out in March 2003 to labour and community groups and networks working to improve income security across Ontario. Over 15 groups came together, including Justice for Workers, Pay the Rent and Feed the Kids, Justice with Dignity, Ontario Disability Action Coalition, the Canadian Auto Workers, Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Canadian Union of Public Employees - Ontario, the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union, and the Ontario Federation of Labour. We agreed to use the opportunity provided by the provincial election campaign to do two things.

First, we recognized that the election campaign is a moment when people are a little more open to talking about “issues.” Organizing together to maximize our effectiveness during the campaign is a good use of scarce resources. We came up with a common slogan, demands and joint actions promoting our message.

Second, we want to build some bridges. The coalition faces the constant challenge of not reproducing divisions between wage-earners and what are seen as their “labour issues” (such as the minimum wage) and people receiving social assistance and what are seen as their issues (such as welfare rates).

ONR has three demands: raise the minimum wage, raise social assistance, and index their rates. In practice, it has been difficult to advance all three together and to get any media coverage for the social assistance demand. To counter this, it has been important to have coalition members who can explain why the Tories have both frozen the minimum wage and cut social assistance rates. This has been a deliberate strategy of the Tories with huge benefits for their corporate friends, but the links between the two policies have not been made very strongly by activists in either labour or welfare organizing.

These links are also difficult to build because the popular notion that there are “deserving” and “undeserving” poor people pits the working poor against people receiving social assistance. We often hear workers and social assistance recipients bashing each other, using the language and arguments promoted by right-wing parties, media and “think tanks.” Divide and conquer tactics are one reason we see more and more people being driven into poverty, especially women, recent immigrants and refugees, and people of colour.

ONR has tried to break down these false distinctions. It also provides an opportunity for labour activists to work side-by-side with community activists and for workers to participate in actions with social assistance recipients. The coalition also allows those participating in it to decide how best to build support for issues and actions in the areas where they are active, such as their own communities and union locals. It has made efforts to help people who become interested in the issues to tap into something that would continue after the election. In this way, the coalition could support community-based self-organization.

Avoiding Pitfalls

It has been a challenge to ensure that the focus of the coalition is not on electing a particular party. Left activists argued hard that our work was not to tell people to vote or who to vote for. Practically, none of the parties support all of our demands so it does not make sense to argue for these demands and then say that just kicking out the Tories is enough.

More importantly, we do not want to conflate organizing during an election campaign with the election. We want to use the election campaign events (all-candidates meetings, distribution of literature, media attention, etc.) as tools to build our on-going campaigns. For most members of the coalition, working during the election is not the only thing we do.

Although working-class, poor and oppressed people can become more confident if a party that purports to represent some of their issues wins the election, voting is not in itself a politicizing act. Any gains we make will depend on how the economy is faring and how strongly people push “their” party after the election.

With the NDP’s shift to the right, focusing on elections as a way to win real gains detracts from the organizing that needs to be done to win any gains at all. This point was the basis for debate within the coalition and in other coalitions focusing on the election campaign, especially with some labour representatives, and shaped discussion about what literature should say.

Why Be Involved?

It is important for left activists to work in these kinds of coalitions. Organizing within ONR has challenged ONR members to decide who will be the driving force for change. Groups more connected to grassroots organizing have argued that we are trying to contribute to the self-organization of those most affected by government policies and economic conditions. If we did not work in these coalitions, we would not have to figure out how to make these arguments and a lot of resources would continue to go into billboards and other expensive tools for reaching the middle class. If we stayed away, there would be no counterweight to lobby-oriented groups and labour bureaucrats who feel that the goal is to get a party elected and that they should do the work behind closed doors, in collaboration with politicians.

We cannot count on any of the existing political parties. Social democratic parties like the NDP are organized to get votes, not to build fightbacks. In some cases, social democratic parties have made mild reforms when they have gained office. In other cases, such as the Labour Party in Britain, they have continued the hard push towards neo-liberalism.

It is a problem when groups mobilizing during elections make electing a particular party their sole objective. This is especially true now, since there has been a low level of struggle around issues like social assistance, workers’ rights, education and health care. It is also a problem when activists refuse to use certain tactics because reformist political parties, union officials and NGOs don’t support them.

It is a problem when people believe that we can eliminate poverty and oppression through elections under capitalism. We can’t. But socialists and other left activists have always worked to win reforms. In fact, it is hard to imagine what would build the capacity to make larger, more radical gains if people did not fight for immediate demands. Fighting for and winning progressive reforms has a significant impact on the confidence of workers and oppressed people. This helps to build the movements we need to fight for radical change.

As activists committed to the long-term project of building movements to challenge the system, we cannot dismiss the demands that women, people of colour, queers and other oppressed groups often mobilize around. Nor can we ignore the often-contradictory ideas most working-class people have about the world and our tendency as working-class people to have both anti-capitalist and reformist notions of change at the same time. In organizing in Toronto and throughout Ontario, we have to figure out how to talk and work with people who place a lot of value on elections, freedom of speech and assembly, and human rights legislation.