Mike Luff on Canada’s vacillating solidarity
In the last Quote of the Day message, a Globe and Mail article on Canadian solidarity and the right to health care ended with: “When they came to take away the rights of the destitute, I was not destitute, so I did not speak out. Then they came to take the rights of the ill.”
My comment following the quote posed the question: “Whether in the United States or Canada, is it solidarity that is vacillating, or is it merely due to our all too feeble efforts to involve ourselves in the political process?”
Mike Luff, National Representative for Canada’s National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) responds:
With respect to your question (above), I would submit the following response: it’s not an “either/or” issue. The problem is both diminishing solidarity and confidence in the political process. But I believe we can change this. By honestly answering two deceptively simple questions: If not us, who? If not now, when? Allow me to elaborate, please.
Conviction and courage are almost nonexistent in politics in Canada and the US. It’s so bad we even tell jokes about it. One I heard goes like this.
Question: Why is a politician like a banana?
Answer: Because he starts out green, turns yellow and then goes rotten. But it is no laughing matter. The problem is not that politicians don’t live up to our expectations – the problem is that they too often do live up to our expectations and behave like politicians. They too often show no conviction and courage. They too often play us for suckers. This is what we’ve come to expect from the “people’s representatives” in Ottawa and Washington. It’s very dangerous. Because it pushes most people to give up on politics. To throw our hands up and follow the famous bumper sticker advice: “Don’t vote. It only encourages ’em.” That’s the real danger. Because the more people give up on politics the closer we edge to giving up on democracy itself.
But we do have the power to stop the drift to democratic despair. To do this we must come on strong. Remind people that to give up on politics is to give up on ourselves – and that we are not about to do that. We must rally regular, everyday people with the conviction they can hold out for themselves and we must give them the courage to use their ballots to finally do it. We must state and restate our conviction that it is regular, everyday folks who make history every day when we shut off the alarm clock, get the kids off to school and go into work. We must have the courage to say this is our world and we are not about to throw up our hands and lose it by default to the fools in Ottawa and Washington – elections will be won and lost until we get what we want.
The example of how we got Medicare in Canada in the first place should give us strength. The people that thought up and fought for Canada’s Medicare didn’t put their faith in politics or politicians. They put their faith in people, in each other. There were 105 people at the founding meeting of the movement to fight for Canada’s Medicare. There were 20 construction workers; 19 unemployed men and women; 15 farmers; 12 members of Parliament; six housewives; six teachers; six railway workers; six nurses; three journalists; two lawyers; two union leaders; two steam engineers; one miner; one professor; one hotel keeper; one retired minister; one merchant; and one motion picture operator. And not one stuffed shirt in the lot. They were all regular folks. They had nothing much going for them except their belief in themselves, their common desire to make the world into a better place and their faith in the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
It is what made them strong then. It is what makes us strong now. It is what will keep us strong in the future.
It’s just a fact that civilization doesn’t happen because we leave it to other people. We have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on each one of us, because it really does! We must make it plain that we are going to hold out for what is right and just and ours. We must do this because we owe it to ourselves and to all the other women and men of good will who came before us and all those who will follow. We must be, as they were and will be, the change we wish to see in the world. Let us together openly declare that we are the ones who will lead by example, with conviction and courage, and we will do it now!
Mike Luff
National Representative
National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE)
NUPGE is Canada’s second largest union.)
