For the last few years, I’ve written an article each December looking back at social movement victories in so-called Canada over that year. In the last week or two, I’ve been working on the version for 2024.
As is true every year, I’m finding it inspiring. Even though this is something I track throughout the year, I always find when it comes time to go back through the list of wins that I’ve compiled that I’ve not only forgotten about a lot of the specifics, but my overall sense of the world has inevitably reverted to the default but-what-can-we-possibly-do-in-the-face-of-it-all instinct that the hegemonic institutions of our society work so hard to instill in all of us. Looking back at what movements have managed to achieve over the year jolts me out of that, at least for a little bit, and allows me to feel more deeply in my body the truth that if we fight, sometimes we win.
It’s complicated, though. That’s true in lots of ways, I suppose, but I’ve been particularly thinking about it this year with reference to the problem of scale – yes, the fact that we win victories is proof of principle that investing energy in collective struggle is worthwhile (and in fact is the only plausible path to make things better), but most of the time these days, the victories we win are far smaller than the victories we need.
That’s true every year. What we need is a world that has been liberated from the shackles of capitalism, white supremacy, ableism, patriarchy, heterosexism, settler colonialism, and so on. Sure, it’s a good thing if a few of us get together and, say, mount a campaign that results in our school board changing some shitty anti-trans policy, or that gets our union to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement – or even if we manage to stop a climate-frying pipeline from being built or raise the minimum wage for an entire province. All of those things matter, and each little bit of space we win that makes today and tomorrow more livable for more people is worth celebrating. At the same time, though, it’s easy to feel like none of them, even the big ones, are even close to enough.
It feels particularly stark this year. In less than a month, the forces of reaction will be in control of every branch of the federal government in the United States. It’s hard to predict exactly what that’s going to mean – because the soon-to-be man in charge is a relentless blowhard who spews bullshit like some sort of demented firehose; because, as his first term demonstrated, inciting fear, chaos, and uncertainty is a central tool in his approach to governance; and because grassroots resistance, institutional obstacles, and the laws of physics really do matter to how it all plays out. But while we can’t know which terrible things will happen, or how, or what the inevitably uneven impacts will look like in different places and among different people, we can be absolutely certain that terrible things will happen. People will die. People will suffer. Conditions will be created that mean that there’s more of both of those things in future years. So without a doubt, in 2025, things will get worse.
As the proverbial mouse on the elephant, this would have plenty of consequences in Canada even in the absence of any other changes. But we are going to have a federal election in 2025, and right now, at least, it is looking like the forces of reaction are set to win here too. It’s not certain – it’s hard to predict how the inevitably vile antics of the new Trump regime down south might shape the mood of the Canadian electorate – but given polling numbers over the last year and the utter chaos inside the governing Liberal party at the moment, I think a Conservative majority is by far the most likely outcome. And this is a version of the federal Conservatives in which the scarier side of their base has more influence than at any point in my lifetime. Again, it’s hard to know exactly what that’s really going to mean, but I think we can be absolutely certain that it means nothing good.
In the face of what already is and of what’s coming next, we obviously need more wins, bigger wins. More of us need to recognize that no one is coming to save us, and we have to do it ourselves. More of us need to realize that change happens when we work together, so we need to find ways to reject the neoliberal pressure towards atomization and isolation, and do that. More of us need to commit to refusing to normalize – in how we feel about and talk about and act in the world – all of the horrific violence brought to us (in Gaza and far beyond) by the neoliberal centre, and refusing to normalize the new and more terrifying layers that will be added to it in the next few years by the triumphant right.
And, honestly, more of us need to refuse to fall into that trap that still often manages to catch me, despite the fact that I’m always on the lookout for evidence to the contrary – that is, the trap of forgetting that when we get together and fight for justice and liberation, sometimes we win. Not always, not enough of the time, but way more than if we just give up, if we depend on external saviours, if we delude ourselves into thinking that elite leaders and powerful institutions are somehow other than they are, if we try to pretend that ignoring it all will make the bad stuff go away. And the only way we get to victories on the scale that we need is if we keep grinding away and accumulating more and more of those little victories that we know we can win.
(My 2024 movement victories piece will be out at the Breach on December 20, so please read and circulate it. I won’t be doing a Creating Through the Crisis post for next week, but I’m aiming to be back to a weekly schedule on January 2.)