As the dust settles, what does Brexit mean for Canadian progressives?

6 ideas on where we go from here

The upshot, for all you TL;DR folks: Middle class Canadian progressives need to engage with disaffected, less educated, less urban, mostly white communities. If we don’t, we ignore their issues and cede their political power to conservative, right wing, xenophobic populism. Here are some ideas about how to do this work.

Watching the Brexit campaign from Vancouver, I wanted to believe that I was getting over-magnified news of the nasty, xenophobic spewings of Nigel Farage and the Leave campaign, just as I want to believe that our neighbours to the South will never elect Donald Trump. As a first generation white settler Canadian born to British parents, I was paying vague attention to British media, but as someone without a vote, I was focused on other things. Then MP Jo Cox was murdered, and my British identity came racing to the fore: bloody hell, what is happening over there?

Now the Leave vote has gone through, and around the world progressives are alarmed by what this means for the most vulnerable in the British, European, and global economies. We’re worried about the frightening rise of right wing populist and nationalist currents and the racist, bigoted violence and harm they can and do create. We’re terrified of a Trump victory in November.

And some of us are bemoaning the necessity of a well-educated public in important decisions like this, or calling all Leave voters ignorant racists, or generally doubling down on the massive cultural rift in which the UK finds itself.

A friend and former colleague began a discussion thread yesterday about what this all means for progressive politics:

If you look at the Brexit vote through a class lens — as an anti-establishment vote by working class people who have seen their communities become less prosperous and their society become less democratic — then what are the next steps for progressive politics in England?

I’m not knowledgeable enough about English or British politics to weigh in there, but I couldn’t help but weigh in from a Canadian context. Here’s what came tumbling out:

When the progressive left relies more on the narratives and arguments of highly educated intellectuals and on coalitions of middle class, urban NGOs and politicos who are mostly talking amongst themselves to the exclusion of really learning how to bridge cultural differences and figure out how to journey with disaffected white working class and less educated, less urban people, you shouldn’t be surprised when those people pick xenophobic populism — at least that lets them feel justified in their anger rather than patronizingly telling them they’re wrong and bad.

In my opinion, white progressives need to figure out the work of meaningfully shifting xenophobic attitudes of these white folks — not with what feels like being attacked by the political correctness police, but in ways that acknowledge their fears (and realities) of economic insecurity and a sense that things are getting worse rather than better, and replace the racist/immigrants-taking-our-jobs narrative with something more compelling (culturally resonant stories, not just stats about how these things aren’t true).

So:

• learn from people who know how to organize rural and working class folks (and not just through the labour movement)
• diversify the strategic voices in the room to include people who understand (and preferably have personal lived experience of) these currents and feelings
• be mindful of the limitations of urban-dominated digital engagement and of manifestos endorsed by the who’s who of the progressive establishment — these *must* go hand in hand with real ground organizing that reaches new people in ways that change stories
• get serious about anti-racism organizing; figure out the bridge and transformation pathway as I mentioned above

As we know all too well from our last federal election, we too are home to xenophobic dog whistle politics targeting disaffected “old stock” Canadians (“barbaric cultural practices” hotlines, niqab debates, and all). And I’m not convinced that progressive politicos in Canada have any real idea what to do about this; I fear that the Conservatives failed to win with this strategy primarily because of Justin Trudeau’s charisma (and boomers’ nostalgia for his father), and not because Canadians are somehow “nicer” and “less racist” than the Brits or Americans.

A charismatic Liberal leader might protect us from some of the most overt racism for a couple of terms, but it’s sure not a robust strategy to prevent these currents coming racing back to centre stage in answer to the next Liberal scandal or a change election where people want to “throw the bums out.”

Canadian progressives will not successfully combat xenophobic populism with more coalitions of organizations based in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver who predominantly know how to talk to themselves and their existing supporters. We will not overcome disaffected white fear with compelling videos, social shares, and dogs-at-polling-stations memes (much as those are cute). We will not replace an immigrants-are-stealing-our-jobs narrative with vague slogans pasted over aspirational windmill graphics. We will not overcome these currents by admonishing people on social media, telling them they’re ignorant, backward, racist, or stupid.

(Before you get defensive, dear reader, of course there are great people and organizations doing good, smart work and the above paragraph is hyperbolic. But I hope you get my point.)

We need to be smarter than that. We need to learn, and learn quickly. And more than anything, we need to feel a whole lot more compassion and empathy for people who are different from us.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who winces when progressives trumpet their disdain for and intellectual superiority over the masses who disagree with them. It reminds me of this episode of the West Wing (yes, I’m writing mostly for white progressives politicos, and yes, this is almost fated to include some West Wing references):

And so, in this age of listicles, I offer you six of the thoughts that have been racing through my mind, that woke me up this morning and dragged me out of bed before my partner was awake.

1. Compassionate narrative-shifting with less progressive white folks is part of “doing our own work”.

As progressives grapple with how to truly work for reconciliation with Indigenous communities, we end up talking about “doing our own work” — settlers educating other settlers so that the burden of that work doesn’t fall to Indigenous folks who are already dealing with the myriad impacts of colonization. To the young urban progressive, it may feel a lot less appealing/cool/edgy to sit in a rural resource town talking with older white folks than it does to walk in solidarity with First Nations communities on the frontlines of an extractive project, but I think both are deeply needed.

Part of this must be starting from a place of compassion and recognizing that these communities don’t think of themselves as xenophobic, inhospitable, or close-minded. Good reads to revisit:

• Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person
• The Distress of the Privileged
• Opinion: Why the poor ‘vote against their own interest’
  (many other articles on this topic — please send me your better ones!)

We also need to remember not to tokenize people who come from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, just as we hopefully are aware that we shouldn’t tokenize POC and Indigenous voices. Sometimes the people we are closest to who can speak to this experience are the ones who fought hard to escape into the middle class, and sometimes having suffered within working class communities, they may have even less compassion for folks still in that struggle.

Just because you have a token grew-up-poor friend who thinks all the Brexit voters are ignorant racists who should pull themselves up by their bootstraps doesn’t mean you should agree.

2. Now is the time to invest in persuasion organizing.

In the age of Stephen Harper, there was an argument for economically efficient organizing based on voter ID and strategic GOTV — getting existing supporters to the polls rather than persuading new people to support you. That meant mostly urban centres with some core existing progressive organizing muscle (or at least strong progressive interest).

So when do we get to do persuasion organizing? To focus not on the choir, but on shifting people who could have common cause with progressives, particularly on economic issues (minimum wage, diversified and green economy, economic safety net, etc). To meaningfully moving public opinion, and working on the cloudier side of the spectrum of allies.

After all, if we finally get a certain kind of electoral reform, their votes may matter to the progressive cause in new ways.

What does it look like to shift Ganzian snowflake organizing into compassionate, narrative-shifting work? What would that mean for volunteer screening and training, and how would some volunteers’ own anger or despair be both validated and overcome in order to make this possible?

What does real investment in movement infrastructure outside of BC, Ontario, and Quebec look like? And when will we get around to figuring out how progressives in Quebec and progressives in the Rest of Canada can effectively work together?

When will national organizations consistently have founding teams drawing from the Prairies, the North, and the Atlantic Provinces, as well as leadership of Indigenous and POC folks? When will cross-country tours consistently stop in small towns as well as cities?

3. We must hold the powers that be on our own side more accountable.

There seems to be general agreement that a significant part of the Leave vote was an angry protest aimed at “the political class” and elites in general.

If the rules of the game are stacked against you and nothing you do seems to affect them, it’s not surprising that you don’t listen to all the warnings of economic and political elites about the potential turmoil of voting against them — how satisfying to give a big “up yours” to the likes of David Cameron! Alternatively, you may think your vote won’t matter, so it might as well be a protest vote.

There is no incentive for people to “be reasonable” in order to preserve a system that doesn’t serve them.

You need only look at Metro Vancouver’s failed transit referendum for a clear example of how unresolved anger at an insufficiently accountable transit authority combined with an insufficiently inspiring campaign leads to a self-defeating result that sets us back years in the effort to build robust mass transit infrastructure. When progressives are in charge, or championing a cause, we need to practice what we preach re accountability of those in power.

4. We need to break down movement hierarchies that keep relationship-building energies focused internally.

All too often, social hierarchies within movements foster a culture of more-radical-than-thou calling each other out and/or self-worth based on how connected you are to particular influential thinkers or charismatic campaigners. While this may contribute to message discipline, encourage people to rapidly deepen their analysis in order to fit in, and in some circumstances can create more space and safety for marginalized voices, it can also waste energy, erect barriers to entry, and cause movement attrition and burnout.

We need enough space, energy, and self-acceptance in this movement to fuel outward-seeking, compassionate organizing. We need to be grounded enough to learn from others’ experiences without feeling the need to shout down different opinions before they can threaten our carefully crafted activist identities. We need to protect ourselves from the false heroism of overwork that diminishes our resilience to being challenged, that makes us more likely to be defensive, territorial, and reactionary.

We need deeply transformative analysis, effective messaging, principled solidarity, and safer spaces, and we need pathways into the movement for people who didn’t grow up in a progressive family, study political science or philosophy at a progressive post-secondary institution, or otherwise learn all the terminology and attitudes that are the passwords to so much movement organizing.

This doesn’t mean that people are let off the hook when they perpetuate problematic dynamics, but it does mean we need to invest in calling people in rather than policing and excluding them. Here again is an opportunity for white progressives to do our own work.

As Ngọc Loan Trần writes:

The first part of calling each other in is allowing mistakes to happen. Mistakes in communities seeking justice and freedom may not hurt any less but they also have possibility for transforming the ways we build with each other for a new, better world. We have got to believe that we can transform.

Political organizing is a huge endeavour in community building, and a lot of community building is bridging cultural divides. If we’re progressives who believe deeply in social justice, we have to believe that we can win over new hearts and minds.

5. Professionalized movement organizations need to figure out who they’re trying to be accountable to, and then actually do it.

There can be a tension between the need for fair movement wages and the danger of out-of-touch movement organizations.

Fair wages recognize the value of movement work, reduce burnout, and enable people with expertise, dependents, and diverse backgrounds to focus on movement work full time. Yet middle-class dominated movement orgs whose staff have typical middle class aspirations may lose touch with working class struggles (even if some staff members have lived experience of those struggles).

We need to think about who we’re trying to be accountable to, and how we make that accountability tangible in the daily experience and decision-making of our staff. How are we recruiting people from diverse backgrounds (including minimizing formal education requirements)? Does advancement within our organizations require the ability to pass as part of the professional middle class? What more can those of us working fairly paid movement jobs do to leverage our own privilege and our organizations’ resources and clout?

A few gut checks that scratch the surface on economic class in your organization:

• How much do you expect your staff to be able to front in terms of out-of-pocket expenses, and how long does it take you to pay them back?
• Do you assume that “early career” staff members don’t have dependents and therefore will be able to work for lower salaries? (Think about what that assumes about the families they come from and their likely choices — or accidents — in having their own kids.)
• Are you clear before a work event whether the organization or the individual is paying for food and drink?
• On a more cultural level, what percentage of your staff know exactly how much money is in their bank account at any time?
• What is the marginal decision-making cost that your staff members use to decide on a personal expense — e.g. how many people would pay $2 for a coffee? $4? $6? $10?
• What do your staff think of as a normal part of daily life? What is a luxury? Butter? Kleenex? Mushrooms? Wine? Scotch?
• Who on your staff has access to the safety nets of loans from family members?

6. We need to get better at narrative campaigning, full stop.

This is an obvious statement that I won’t go into too much, because it seems like we’ve been saying it a lot as we lament uninspiring campaigns leading to recent electoral failures. We need to keep getting better at telling compelling, tangible stories that will make a real emotional difference to the people we’re trying to reach.

Well, that’s the most I’ve written in this vein for a very long time. Many thanks if you read this all the way to the end. No doubt as this tumbled out of my brain I’ve overlooked some angles, made some mistakes, and chosen some words poorly. If you’re happy to call me in on something, please do!