COPE held the most boisterous rally of the Vancouver election campaign in downtown Vancouver on Saturday evening, drawing over 175 people. In addition to music and poetry, attendees heard from council, park and school board candidates followed by an inspiring speech by Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative’s city councillor in Seattle. The speeches were frequently interrupted by applause and cheers with standing ovations for both Jean Swanson and Kshama Sawant. “The rally made me feel hopeful about being part of a campaign and movement that has political clarity and not being afraid to ask for what we need,” said Alanna Mulholland, Grandview Woodland volunteer canvasser.
For over a year, since Jean Swanson came second in the 2017 Vancouver by-election, an energetic and unapologetic movement has been building momentum towards the municipal election on October 20. A year after the by-election this movement has re-energized COPE, Vancouver’s oldest progressive party, and has produced three city council candidates, Jean Swanson, Anne Roberts, and Derrick O’Keefe.
“Much of what COPE has explicated has been about refusing our current moment in this city,” said Vancouver writer Rahat Kurd as she helped set the tone for the night by reading a moving poem by revolutionary Indian poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. “Speak, speak, speak the words you wish you’d said.”
Socialist Alternative member, Pete Marlowe, sang an updated version of his song The City We Need, inspiring rally participants to applaud after every verse. Quoting Jean Swanson in one of his verses, he sang: “The market’s the very thing that’s failed to build us the City We Need. The rich are very class conscious, and they vote in droves. Let’s fight for a Rent Freeze so we win the City and the Culture We Need!” Vancouver Socialist Alternative member, Nadia Revelo, remarked afterwards that if we don’t have class consciousness, we don’t understand that the other campaigns represent the interests of developers and corporations, not ordinary people. “It is so refreshing to hear from a campaign that is unapologetic about the fundamental conflict of interest between the rich and rest of us,” said Vancouver Socialist Alternative member, Nicholas Caig who brought along three friends who all donated and volunteered.
This theme had an echo throughout the evening. Kshama emphasized the importance of the left getting class consciousness. We need to “understand very clearly who is on your side and who is not. … In a class divided society, we have to pick a side and we pick the side of ordinary people.”
Park Board candidate, John Irwin, said we need to refuse semi-private parks in the city where non-unionized workers are undertrained and underpaid. He also emphasized the need to make reconciliation tangible in the city saying, “We can’t just rename things, we need to go much deeper.” School Board candidate, Barb Parrott, related her experience as a teacher taking groups of students on day trips when they travelled over the Lions Gate bridge. Students often asked if this was the Pacific Ocean. They live in Vancouver and had not seen the Pacific Ocean! She noted the importance of having free transit for children and low-income people. She also called for the building of an indigenous secondary school and universal breakfast and lunch programs for all students.
Anne Roberts, who co-chaired the evening with Derrick O’Keefe, talked about a new way of being on the campaign trail with Jean Swanson last year, saying that it was this experience that brought her back into COPE (she was on Council from 2002 to 2005). “On the campaign trail, it was inspiring, what she brought out in people.” An important part of this was “Jean’s clarity and down-to-earthness. . . .Jean continues to inspire that work in all of us, that we’ll go out there and make this happen.” Following a standing ovation, Jean, in her humble way, related a comment that Kshama Sawant made earlier in the day, “One person can’t be the end all and be all. It is you who I should be clapping for.”
“One of the extraordinary things about this campaign that everyone has been talking about is our City We Need platform.” Jean said that, for the last 40 years of austerity, the dominant framing has been “we can’t ask for this, it will cost too much do this, this will contribute to the deficit too much.” She recounted an experience at an all-candidates meeting where one of the candidates said that we can’t end homelessness. Jean replied, “Of course, we can! We have to! Why can’t we? So, with that kind of framing, all the things we can do in this alleged democracy are whittled right down to practically nothing. In this campaign we are trying to change that framing.” “If there are 2,181 people without homes,” she said, “then we build 2,181 homes. We have to make it legitimate to ask for what we need and we can’t compromise in advance. Part of asking for what we need is changing the frame so what we need becomes a possibility and then becomes a political imperative.”
“Our campaign so far is an example of how we want to work when we get elected. For example, when tenants were confronted with a 4.5% rent increase, our artists went to work, and working over the last year [we] had built a data base of 20,000 people who wanted a rent freeze. The Vancouver Tenants Union (VTU) and the BCGEU got involved and we supported them. We started to mobilize. We went to rallies, we knocked on doors, we circulated petitions, we wrote articles, we did interviews and together we pushed the 4.5% back to 2.5%. That’s 2 down and 2.5 to go!”
So, what would happen when we get elected? “The first thing is we need to get that rent freeze. . . . How will we get that? We have to help build the tenants movement. Let’s make sure that tenants are able to organize freely. . . without fear of eviction and retribution and retaliation from landlords. We can lobby the province to make the maximum allowable increase zero and tie rent control to the units or if they don’t want to do that, they can give Vancouver the power to do it, the power to set up a municipal rent control board. And if the province doesn’t act, there are things the city can do using every tool like business licencing tools to start freezing rents during and between tenancies.” Renovictions are epidemic and the city has the power to stop them.
Referring to the UN report on climate change, Jean said the city needs to be a leader in working for environmental justice. “Let’s have a campaign to try and build support for saving the planet for our grandkids.” She said the City should meet or exceed commonly accepted emissions standards. “Let’s do it! With people in the environmental movement.”
“There are so many places we can work with movements to get the City We Need. . . . And everything we do will depend on the strength and organizing and movement-building of people outside of council.” Jean also talked about the need to get a mansion tax to build needed housing. “Tax the rich to house the poor.” She confessed that she felt shimmer of pride when BC Business Magazine suggested that electing COPE would put fear into the hearts of Vancouver’s wealthy.
In introducing Kshama Sawant, council candidate Derrick O’Keefe reinforced this sentiment, referring to Stephen Harper’s comments about fearing those on the left such as Corbyn and Sanders. “So imagine how scared he’s going to be when he wakes up on October 21 and hears about the Vancouver election.”
Sawant warned that elected councillors will face pressure to “engage in the genteel politics of city hall.” They will face immense pressure to conform from the big business establishment who will seek to alienate them from the movements that elected them in the first place. However, she emphasized that it is when councillors use their public office to build a movement, they will start being effective.
Sawant spoke to the need for political clarity: understanding who is on our side and who is not. In addition to the “inside” work to influence change, she spoke emphatically about the need for councillors to do the “outside” work: representing and working with mass social movements outside city hall. Using this kind of inside/outside strategy is what corporate developers and big business fear. And “that is precisely why we need to do it.” We need to “bring the movement into city hall.” “What is at stake,” she exclaimed to loud applause, “is the chance to bring serious change to Vancouver!”
Sawant emphasized that if there is one thing that listeners take away from her talk it is that “strategies matter. All your good intentions and your good heart do no good to people you say you are fighting for if you don’t have a correct analysis of political forces, social forces that are involved in the struggles and if you don’t have a correct strategy for fighting based on that analysis…. The idea that you can win big gains for those who are at the bottom by just sneaking them past big business without antagonizing big business is just a utopian idea. Don’t waste time to curry favour for them but instead empower people who will stand with you.”
To make sure that those attending realize that the election is only the beginning of making change, Sawant asked people to raise their hand if they will continue to struggle for change. Allie Pev, Vancouver Socialist Alternative member, said “it was inspiring to see people from the movement come together and to see their enthusiasm to continue the struggle past election day.”
At the end of the night the volunteer sign-up sheets were full and the finance appeal had brought in $8,500 mainly from a working-class and low-income audience. Bill Hopwood, Vancouver Socialist Alternative member, reminded people that “rich people never donate, they buy power and influence. That’s why they give money to political parties. We don’t want their money.”
COPE is heading into the final week of the election with more momentum and energy than ever before, poised to bring a passionate, engaged, and unapologetically class-conscious brand of left-wing politics to city hall and to build the city we all need. As the audience repeatedly chanted at the end of Sawant’s talk, “Yes we can, yes we can!”
Click here for video of the COPE Rally
