Sherron and I hosted a fund-raiser for NDP leadership candidate Ryan Meili last night at the Gog.

The atmosphere was terrific, the audience engaged and appreciative of the opportunity to meet and question a man who could well be the premier of our province in 2-3 years.

Ryan, I think it’s safe to say, is on the progressive side of the party and so I felt comfortable in my preamble excoriating the stupidity, cowardice and arrogance displayed by “center-Left” politicians and (gritting his teeth) liberal democrats.

I loathe both vile species, will never forgive them for the betrayals they’ve perpetrated on the people they purport to be serving.

I’ve posted the text of those remarks below and, as always, encourage readers to respond to or debate with any of my points and assumptions.

The evening began with my friend Laird Brittin performing a rousing rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”.

Here’s what I said immediately following the song:

 *  *  *  *

Thank you, Laird.

And thank you, thank you, thank you, Woody Guthrie.

Does anyone happen to remember what Woody had printed on the body of his guitar in big, block letters?

“This Machine Kills Fascists.”

Woody wouldn’t have had much tolerance, I’m afraid, for those people who like to refer to themselves the “Alt-Right”. He was well-acquainted with the danger they represent and I have no doubt he would have called them by their real name.

I also think that Woody, if he was alive today, would be disappointed by the state of the political Left, how muzzled and tamed and tepid it is. And how sadly compromised, its program and rhetoric in many instances almost indistinguishable from the Tories and neo-liberals it allegedly opposes. In the name of expediency and electability, the Left has abandoned its most basic principles and lost its historical solidarity with the working class—also known as the “precariate” or “anxious class” among certain contemporary sociologists and commentators.

Our fellow citizens are disillusioned, depressed, indebted, cynical, lacking any kind of hope for a better future, the scantest possibility for improvement. They’re losing faith in notions like “social mobility” and, yes, “democracy”.

Woody could have predicted that. In the midst of the Great Depression, experiencing the horrors of the Dust Bowl firsthand, he witnessed people giving up, the light in their eyes going out as they watched their livelihoods, the very source of their identity, swept away by powers beyond their control. Such men and women are easy prey for demagogues and dictators, anyone who’s quick to supply easy answers to their questions (along with a convenient scapegoat or two).

And so it is today.

Vulnerable workers, people in low-wage jobs with no benefits, men and women one paycheck away from a repossessed car…or a notice of eviction. Folks who look around and don’t see their lives getting any better…and no one addressing their fears and anxieties.

As the saying goes, a drowning man will clutch the point of a sword.

Especially if that’s all they’re being offered.

Clearly, progressives have been doing a poor job of presenting a relevant, well-articulated alternative to the neo-liberal/corporate agenda and we’ve failed to connect with people who are at the end of their rope and desperately in need of some relief from the constant strain and pressure of daily existence.

From their point of view, we’ve abandoned them—and did so once we started spouting the same jargon as the other guys and kept gutlessly tacking to the middle of the road in the hope of making our policies more palatable to international money markets and guys in suits worshipping at the altar of the Chicago School of Economics.

We need to spare struggling citizens our rote sympathy and manufactured outrage and, instead, help them better cope with a fluid, volatile world that, without some kind of outside intervention, will treat them like chattel, while reducing our environment to the equivalent of a smoldering rubbish tip.

Our counterparts on the Right are quick to put forward solutions that promise the electorate the efficiency and rigorous structure of a Toyota factory floor. Conservative ideologues–many of them, not coincidentally, wealthy businessmen—cannot conceive of why every government service can’t either be privatized, down-sized or delivered in a manner that conforms to sound management practices and tried-and-true business methodologies.

But do we really want the profit motive and neo-liberal economics applied to our education and health care systems?

Doesn’t that kind of top-down, austerity-driven model lead, in other spheres, to boom-and-bust cycles, insolvency, mass layoffs, cronyism, corruption…and is that the mindset we want to embed in our hospitals and schools?

Tariq Ali calls it “tooth-and-nails capitalism” and I think he’s bang on.

And since I’m tossing quotes around, I’ll throw in another one, this one from Terence McKenna:

“Gradual change is a luxury of the past.”

Because the future is rushing toward us and it is a future for which we are wholly unprepared. We approach dangerous new frontiers in almost every branch of science and find ourselves confronted with technologies that will alter our conception and definition of humanity. Genetic engineering and the development of artificial intelligence present us with extraordinary ethical dilemmas. And if we prove to be unable or incapable of facing up to our responsibilities, others will be more than happy to make critical decisions on our behalf.

But these are huge issues and so we feel helpless and stupid when we try wrapping our minds around them. How can we manage?

May I remind everyone that we live in the birthplace of the cooperative movement? At one point in time, we were the bellwether as far as the socialist experiment in North America was concerned.

Individually we might feel overwhelmed, but by acting in concert, with a shared vision and a shared sense of urgency, we might have a chance to slow this juggernaut down and introduce some kind of sustainability and human compassion into a world-spanning ideology that is starting to eat itself.

We need people in the vanguard who are willing to defy the status quo and resist the temptations and blandishments offered by the ruling class.

Dr. Meili’s prescription for a healthy society requires that we recognize the role of scarcity and insecurity in undermining wellness in all its guises.

It acknowledges that without a strong social safety net, too many will founder when faced with the innate indifference of market forces and rampant consumerism.

Any government that refuses to protect its citizens from unemployment, social exclusion, inequality and marginalization based on race, class or gender, has abdicated its constitutional responsibilities and is unfit to represent the people who mistakenly elected it.

Tonight, we’re dreaming big.

We’re looking down the road a few years when there will be an opportunity to show the people of Saskatchewan that there is a real alternative, another course to choose.

It will involve innumerable challenges and it will ask each of us to contribute what we can toward forging a brighter future…for us, and generations to come. A participatory, grassroots-oriented democracy that values the ideas and input of one and all, harnessing the tremendous creative and entrepreneurial energies of our people.

A special kind of leader is required for a movement like that—someone who understands the enormous potential that exists when we pool our collective resources, achieving more in concert that we ever could have alone.

Since announcing his candidacy, Ryan Meili has impressed many of us with his composure, his candour, his comprehensive understanding of the vital issues facing us…and the personable, thoughtful manner in which he responds to them.

It’s my pleasure to welcome Ryan to the Gog tonight and invite him to step forward and present his platform to you and, later, take your questions.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce our special guest and featured speaker, Dr. Ryan Meili.