I’ve been thinking, this week, about how we, as Canadians, should be doing whatever we can to support grassroots struggles in the US.
Contrary to what you might think based on the tide of popular sentiment at the moment, the bad things that ordinary people in so-called Canada are facing are, first and foremost, brought to us by our own Canadian elites. Not all of them are equally awful, necessarily, but even those Canadian elites not actively aligned with the regime to the south are using this moment as an opportunity to implement a big business-friendly agenda, at our expense. They use nationalism to whip up support for what they’re doing, and then make changes that make their pals richer and hurt the rest of us.
That said, however, it’s also true that what’s happening in the US matters here – a lot. The threats of annexation matter. The tariff chaos matters. The changes in the global order matter. And both the example of the vicious far-right changes being made to the US state and pressure from the US state to do likewise here are creating space for Canadian elites to do bad things they’ve wanted to do all along but couldn’t, and that matters too.
So the question of what can put the breaks on the Trump regime is relevant not just to ordinary people in the US but to those of us here in Canada as well. Based on the behaviour of everything from elite law firms to elite universities to the Democratic Party, it’s clear that mainstream institutions and mainstream politics in the US are not going to do that. It’s possible some combination of international circumstances might do it, but it’s hard to imagine scenarios along those lines that aren’t horrific, so it seems both wrong and unwise to count on that. Which leaves popular, grassroots opposition in the US – at this point, it’s only just getting started, but it’s what has the best chance of stopping Trump.
So what that means is that it is in the best interest of those of us here in Canada to pay attention to and support that kind of grassroots political work in opposition to Trump in the US.
Now, it’s not necessarily clear what it looks like for us to support US movements. I think one great current example is the organizing to target Tesla and make its brand toxic. I think if you look at the drop in share price and also the efforts that the Trump regime is taking to defend Tesla, it’s clearly having an effect. And that’s something people can do and are doing in Canada too.
But in a more general sense, I feel less certain about what it will look like to act in support. I suppose it’s possible to donate to movement defence funds and so on based in the US, but movements are just as underresourced in Canada, if not more so, so it’s probably better to donate to grassroots groups here at home. It probably means building cross-border relationships with organizations and organizers down south, though again I’m not certain what that should look like.
I guess the place to start is dialing back some of the already-obnoxious “elbows up” rhetoric and being very, very clear that the problem we have with the US is the regime, not the ordinary people in the US whose lives are also going to be made worse by that regime – whatever else it ends up looking like, the first step is for us to see workers and communities down south as potential allies, even as we work to remember that those implementing big business-friendly policies up here most certainly are not, whatever political party they align with.