[mobglob-discuss] Election information!!

[Claudio Ekdahl]

Will Offley  - Left Turn's Candidate In Vancouver-Hastings

One year ago a group of left activists from a range of unions and
community organizations came together to discuss this year's provincial
election. During a series of meetings it became clear that there was a
burning need to begin to create an alternative to the bleak choices
offered to working people and the poor on May 17.  These discussions led
to the formation of Left Turn

I am happy as a result of these discussions to be running on as an
independent socialist candidate in Vancouver-Hastings supported by Left
Turn.

This is not a symbolic campaign.  It's a serious effort to begin to
articulate a different political vision and strategy than that offered
by the Liberals, NDP and Green Party.  It's a campaign based on the
realization that if we want to create a political alternative for the
future, we have to begin to do so now.

I work as an emergency room nurse in Vancouver.  Prior to training to
become an RN I worked as a bridge painter, a millworker in a MacMillan
Bloedel cedar mill, a truck driver and a first aid attendant.  I've also
had more than one occasion to be unemployed or on welfare in the past,
so I've had the opportunity of experiencing working life from a number
of different perspectives. I live with my partner Margaret in East
Vancouver, where I've resided since 1976.

My participation in left and social justice politics began forty years
ago when I became actively involved in the U.S. civil rights movement in
Virginia, starting with being a participant in the 1965 March on
Montgomery. Within a year I found myself caught up in the early
beginnings of the antiwar movement, and less than a year after that I
moved to Canada to avoid the draft.

My activities since then have included:

C                                 organizing in support of the 1970 Nova
Scotia fishermen's strike as a member of the N.S. New Democratic Youth;

C                                 becoming a member of the B.C.
Organization
to Fight Racism at its formation in the early 1980's;

C                                 twelve years' activity in the New
Westminster IWA local and as a steward, safety committee member and
plant secretary in my mill;

C                                 participating as a delegated member of
Solidarity Coalition in 1983;

C                                 many years of activity as a member of
the
B.C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics, and six years as volunteer security
coordinator at Everywoman's Health Centre;

C                                 twenty year's as a member of the
Vancouver
Folk Music Festival Medical Committee;

C                                 participation in the formation and
work of
the Vancouver First Aid Network (VFAN) in providing free first aid
coverage to demos and rallies in the Lower Mainland;

C                                 several years as an active member of
the
Lower Mainland Coalition for Social Justice, a group dedicated to
fighting Campbell's privatization agenda and (more recently) the 2010
Olympics;

C                                 more recently, I helped form the
Prepare
The General Strike Committee, which in 2002 successfully fought for the
B.C. Federation of Labour convention to adopt a perspective for
organizing a general strike against the Liberal government (despite
being adopted unanimously, this policy was never implemented by the Fed
brass);

C                                 last year I participated in the
formation
of the Fightback Solidarity Caucus.  The Solidarity Caucus is a
cross-union grouping of activists from 17 public- and private-sector
unions committed to creating a militant union movement based on
democratic membership control. The caucus came into being following the
sellout of the HEU strike in May 2004, and is fighting to ensure that
such a disgrace never happens again.

C                                 Currently I am an activist in the
British
Columbia Nurses Union, a steward at my workplace, and a BCNU delegate to
the Vancouver and District Labour Council.


Fighting for genuine, deep-going social and economic change requires all
of us to become active, in our unions, in our community groups, and in a
whole rainbow of coalitions and issue-specific organizations.  It also
poses the necessity that we organize on a more global level as well -
the issues central to this election are not unique to Vancouver, or to
British Columbia, or for that matter to Canada.  Most, like
privatization, poverty, government attacks on unions, the erosion of
democratic rights, environmental degradation and the growth of racism,
sexism and homophobia, are problems confronting working people around
the world.  These are problems that can only be effectively confronted
by developing a comprehensive vision of the sort of socialist society we
want to build for the generations to come, and that in turn means we
need to build a political alternative - a political programme to
articulate this vision, and a political organization to implement it.
This is the reason why for most of the last forty years I have been a
militant in a series of revolutionary socialist groups, and am proud to
be a member of the Vancouver branch of the New Socialist Group.


I strongly urge you to read our programme and other materials, which are
available on our website at www.leftturn.ca, or can be obtained in hard
copy by phoning us at (604) 773-8393.  More than that, if you agree with
the political vision contained in these documents, I urge you to join
with us. Another world is possible, but only if you make it so.


In solidarity,

Will Offley








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/mobglob-discuss/attachments/20050427/eebed848/attachment.html>