Dear donor,
Your generous support of the Centre for Social Justice in the past is deeply appreciated. Your contribution is of vital importance to the struggle for a peaceful world, and social and ecological justice in Ontario and Canada. Unfortunately, the world today is far from at peace, with a war in Ukraine pushing towards two years, horrific strife across the Middle East and genocide in Gaza, and a new Cold War with a massive armaments buildup unfolding in East Asia between the US and China. All this in addition to a new deployment of nuclear warheads and hypersonic missile systems of incomprehensible lethal power. The arms agreements the CSJ has struggled to uphold since the 1990s are now abandoned (with all but silence on these issues from Canada).
Military conflict is paralleled by a rise in civic conflict in the form of burgeoning far-right governments worldwide Their growing political strength stretches across Europe, from France, Germany, and Italy to Eastern Europe but also in states across the global South, most recently Argentina, and now the US with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Canada has not been insulated from these trends, with Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, and Doug Ford occupying provincial offices in Canada, and a Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre, with his mimicry of Trumpism, on the edge of power in Canada. It is alarming to see the rise of gross social inequalities and the acceptance of reactionary political movements. We have supported educational efforts and organizing on both of these issues for a long time, and this is a crucial time to redouble our efforts.
The rise of the far right and geopolitical conflicts continues to haunt the economic and political landscape of Canada. The cumulative impact of decades of austerity and privatization have left the healthcare system in dire straits. Already in the initial turn to winter, across Ontario shelters for the unhoused are stretched, encampments are spreading across parks, and hospital emergency rooms are busting at the seams. Our most vulnerable communities – the poor, the elderly, First Nations, and the racialized – remain the hardest hit. The UN COP29 Climate Change Conference this fall in Baku was alarming in its warnings. Canada remains stuck among the top group of countries for per capita emissions, and the global target set for 2030 to keep the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees is now soon to breached. In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has all but scrapped Ontario’s climate change policy with his unending support for renewable energy production. Every month, a new political scandal of insider dealing and ad hoc decision-making seems to erupt, from the Greenbelt and Ontario Place being handed over to developers, to pushing on with the insane Highway 413 expansion and the war on bike lanes. To top it off, the Ford government takes pride in Ontario having the lowest per capita support for education and social programs in Canada.
However, this has also been a year of a return of social justice activism after the pandemic. The protests for land rights and sovereignty by First Nations, notably the struggle of the Wet’suwet’en in B.C. and Grassy Narrows in Ontario, climate actions by senior highschool students, and the demands for a ceasefire in Gaza and peace through recognition of a Palestinian state are all struggles that are rebuilding our fight for social equality and global justice.
The CSJ has a long history of educational work and campaigning against war and for global arms controls, especially over nuclear weapons proliferation; for climate justice and expanded public transit; against austerity and tax cuts; and for de-commodified public services. More than ever, we need to continue to build these struggles.
We continue to collaborate in education and organization workshops with initiators in the logistics and warehouse sector, climate justice groups, Green Jobs Oshawa, and others. We continue to support converting the unused capacity of industrial plants and arms production to ecologically responsible production as central to climate justice.
We also have been lending our support to many other groups through the pandemic. The CSJ continues to operate as a strategic hub for community meetings and public forums, and offers meeting space and administrative support for initiatives such as Free Transit Toronto, research projects on Ontario politics and the far right in Canada, Amazon and other union organizing, and publishing projects such as the internationally-renowned annual Socialist Register. These projects all address the inequities of neoliberal policies and identify democratic, egalitarian, and de-commodifying alternatives. The CSJ also provides support for numerous social justice groups by helping organize events, subsidizing speakers, providing grants, and assisting in educational initiatives.
Over the last years, we have been helping build the Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education, in honour of long-time patron of the CSJ and a leading intellectual in Canada. We’ve supported public forums, reading groups, and workshops on Union Organizing at Amazon, Climate Change as Class War, Reinventing Work, Beyond Digital Capitalism, The Right, Social Movements, and the Ontario Election. We also supported book launches of the Socialist Register, The Fall and Rise of American Finance, Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada’s Origins; and helped with Film Social in screening socially-significant films and discussions. The CSJ will continue to collaborate with community groups and university labour centres to sponsor public discussions about Toronto, Canadian politics, and current developments in world capitalism.
We could not keep the Centre’s programs going without your financial support. The neoliberal austerity agenda is on the verge of taking another hard right turn with the rise of Trump and Poilievre, and with the Business Council of Canada demanding a massive ramping up of military spending well past even NATO targets. We need to join the growing protest movements against climate change and inequality and the New Cold War with its proliferation of spending on weapons. It is imperative to find new routes to peace, meeting human needs, and alternative political agendas. 2025 is going to be a crucial year for social justice.
We want to thank all of you who have helped us fund our programming to keep building a new politics in Ontario and Canada. Donations can be made online at socialjustice.org/donate. Please consider joining our monthly donor plan and subscribe to our weekly social justice newsletter.
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