It's Time to Rise Up Against the Cons

In the last few days I've been urging Canadians to start showing their opposition to Stephen Harper and his Cons, by taking to the streets, like people in other western democracies do when confronting other right-wing regimes.

Instead of just sitting on their asses, and whining and wailing, or pounding their keyboards, or playing a tiny violin, as their country burns.

So needless to say, I thought this was excellent. 

Scores of labour activists and seniors started occupying the offices of Conservative MPs in Ontario Thursday afternoon to protest possible changes in the retirement income system.

“Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper will soon know he will have the biggest fight of his life on his hands if he tries to go forward with any of this,” said Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan, who joined a sit-in at Flaherty’s office in Whitby, east of Toronto.

Because with the Cons making a mockery out of our democracy, closing down debate, and ramming through one reactionary bill after the other, as Gerald Kaplan pointed out the other day, the opposition in this country is missing in action.

Whatever vocal opposition exists outside the paper tiger of parliament does so in small bites, in isolated silos, through indignant tweets, letters to the editor and op-ed pieces in newspapers. This is known as militant Canadian activism. It’s the Canadian equivalent of the Jon Stewart strategy. While conservatives use every vile trick in the book to undermine American democracy, Mr. Stewart pokes fun at them on cable TV. He gets the laughs, they get the country. Here too.

Millions of Canadians have serious grievances against this government. Yet beyond sharing their frustration with pollsters, the world would hardly know it. Isn’t it about time they came together to demonstrate their deep anger at their government?

Surely the answer is YES. And the only question is how do we do it? 

We can derail the Con's deranged agenda, we can slow them down, we can unite to eventually drive them from office. But only if we come together now to show those sinister right-wing ideologues that we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore, can we hope to save our beautiful country.

Anyone who thinks differently is either a Con, and idiot, or a Con collaborator. And history will not be kind to them.

Those seniors and union members showed the way today. Good for them.

Now it's up to the rest of us. For some things are for sure eh?

Canada must be saved.

The Cons must be STOPPED.

And we HAVE done it before...