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1) The Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice Basis of Unity
2) Our Action Program
3) Public Announcement of our Formation
4) Original Action Program
1) The Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice Basis of Unity
Humanity today is threatened by war, economic crises, starvation, poverty and crime: all created by the drive of capitalists and imperialist powers to maximize their profits at the expense of the people of the world. To oppose each of these crimes against humanity, we must focus all of our work and action to build a foundation to advance the interest of an overall struggle of working and oppressed people against international capital, its tools of dividing the working class, and its local oppressive institutions. The fundamental principle of the Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice is to promote in action the unity and active solidarity of all poor and working people, locally and internationally. We must recognize that this principle is meaningless without active struggle, because the pursuit of this principle goes sharply against the interest of the ruling capitalist class and they will use whatever means they have at their disposal to keep us divided and hostile amongst ourselves.
Fire This Time is a revolutionary socialist movement for dismantling capitalism and imperialism with a mass majority of working and oppressed people to create a world without oppression and exploitation. We are a politically based action organization committed to building the social and political power of poor and working people in BC, Canada and internationally. We believe the only way to effectively challenge the capitalist and imperialist states and governments and their corporate agenda is through the organization of masses of people in motion in workplaces, communities and in the streets. We are dedicated to mobilizing and unifying poor and working people against the all forms of capitalist governments and their anti-poor, anti-working class legislation and policies. We are committed to organizing with working and poor people from the most attacked and exploited communities in Canada and beyond: communities of colour, immigrants, refugees, “illegals”, low-wage workers, people with disabilities, queer people, indigenous communities, unemployed people and low-income families. We oppose all forms of oppression and exploitation: from sexism to racism, from homophobia to colonialism and all other institutions, thought, beliefs, actions and behaviors that humiliate and demean people to bring hostility and division amongst us.
Our movement must be integrated in the wider revolutionary context of international struggle against capitalism and imperialism; although we are mainly engaged in local politics, in essence the scope of our work is internationalist. Supporting the struggles of oppressed people abroad weakens the hegemony and power of the capitalist class in other lands and consequently weakens their rule at home, therefore aiding the battles of oppressed people in Canada against their own government. In addition, the practice of international solidarity solidifies the co-operation essential in building a world movement for social justice. We must expand on this both implicitly and explicitly to make the connections relevant to people’s daily domestic struggle, to overcome geographic division, and to make it clear that when we engage in struggle we do not struggle alone but alongside millions of working and poor people around the world. Within capitalist and imperialist global domination there is no local struggle that does not have an international character. Every international is local and every local is international.
The Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice will support and engage with other progressive and revolutionary movements and struggles whether for immediate or long-term demands, locally, nationally and internationally in united front or any other united effort and organizations. Our main goal is to end poverty and injustice through education, participation, agitation and direct action. We seek to reach a collective level of mass consciousness that allows oppressed people to think socially and act politically to achieve social justice locally and internationally by any means necessary.
2) Our Action Program
This Action Program serves as the foundation of Fire This Time, and contains the political and organizational strategies that we see as necessary to build a broad-based, militant mass movement in BC.
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3) Public Announcement of our Formation
Announcing the formation of the
Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice
January 10th 2003
Fire This Time is a politically based action organization committed to building the social and political power of poor and working people in BC. We believe that the only way to effectively challenge and threaten the Government and their corporate agenda is through the organization of masses of people in motion in workplaces and in the streets. We are dedicated to mobilizing and unifying a broad range of poor and working people against the Liberal Government and their anti-poor, anti-working people legislations and policies.
We must work together with a wide range of people and organizations to build a movement for social justice. We undertake popular education through forums, classes and other sorts of gatherings to educate ourselves and the communities around Vancouver about the issues we are all faced with. Poor people, working people and people of colour all engage in struggle for survival on a daily basis. These many struggles are all part of one unified political struggle. Poor and working people understand these politics, our responsibility as organizers is to break down the barriers that have been constructed between us by centuries of governance by parties like the Liberals, by colonialism and by the many oppressions that push poor and working people apart. We are committed to organizing with working and poor people from the most attacked and exploited communities in the lower mainland: communities of colour, immigrants, refugees, “illegals”, low-wage workers, disabled people, queer people, indigenous communities, unemployed people, and low-income families in the outlying districts of Vancouver. The Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice will defend ourselves and our communities against Government and Business attacks by any means necessary. Fire This Time formed out of the political split in the Anti-Poverty Committee in December of 2002. The members of Fire This Time resigned from the Anti-Poverty Committee to build a serious disciplined organization to work with the diverse communities of poor and working people in Vancouver and throughout British Columbia. It is not possible for the APC to pay heed to its own self-criticisms. The APC had become trapped in its own successes, pigeonholed by its activist credibility and the strain of living up to its own reputation. The people who left the APC felt that the only way to work genuinely with organized and unorganised working and poor people in Vancouver was to leave the APC and begin a new organization. We felt bound by the activist community building and isolated individual actions that the APC prioritised and is trapped within. We started the Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice to fight alongside the people and communities most deeply affected by Gordon Campbell; to organize with people whose lives are an every day struggle for survival. We will work to expose the politics of those daily struggles and to bring these communities together into the streets to fight back.
Four Fire This Time members were elected to the steering committee of the APC and then resigned three days after the election with the understanding that the APC was not capable of undertaking the work it had set before itself. Those four resigned steering committee members and three APC general members formed the APC Members for Restructuring and Reorganizing and put an Action Program before the APC with the concrete necessities for the changes needed in the group vital to the viable struggle against the Liberal Government. The APC not only rejected this program; they refused to with us and attacked us personally instead. These actions taken against the group finalized our conclusion that the ultimately undemocratic character of APC made it impossible to change the organization. Despite our willingness to support the APC in the future we believe that they are not currently capable of undertaking a serious struggle against this government. Eight people (Mike Krebs, Shannon Bundock, Marwan Marwan, Nasim Sedaghat, Ivan Drury, Ali Yerevani, Vero Methot, and Laura Cartwright) resigned from the general membership of the APC on Tuesday December 17th to form the Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice.
The Liberal Government has already been in power for a year and a half and no effective, unifying force has taken shape to oppose Campbell. Fire This Time is committed to creating and being part of a movement to defeat the Liberal Government and build a foundation for the long struggle ahead for the rights and dignity of all poor and working people in the province and around the world. We are inviting all people who share our vision of a broad based mass movement against the Liberals to join us.
We Will Win
The Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice
4) Original Action Program
This original Action Program was put together by members of Fire This Time while we were still members of the Anti-Poverty Committee (see 'Public Announcement' above for more information on this).
View pdf Here