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Monday, April 21, 2014

Free transit: Three reasons it is an idea whose time has come

On January 1, 2013, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became the largest city in the world to make mass transit free for its residents. While the effects of having done this are, of course, specific to the context of the city itself, it has shown that a major city can do it and that it is has been widely popular with its residents. It has also focused attention on a growing international movement of groups, activists and parties who feel that free mass transit in major urban areas is an important social and environmental goal to be worked towards in the near future.

In a culture such as ours, where cars are very deeply entwined with notions of personal identity and freedom, and where the right has convinced people (falsely) that government can afford to do nothing of any significance, free transit seems at first, no doubt, like utopian nonsense to many. But given the enormous amount government invests in subsidizing the infrastructure and gas that cars rely on, and given the environmental and social equality issues involved, this is not the case at all.

Free transit is an idea whose time has come and there are three truly significant reasons it needs to be front and centre as an ultimate objective in any left municipal agenda in Canada.

1) The environment and fighting car culture

It is impossible to overstate the devastating and ongoing effects that cars and fossil fuels have on the environment. A United Nations report released on March 31, 2014, painted a dire picture of the predicament we have gotten ourselves into globally and without immediate and drastic action it is only going to get worse.

Even setting future climate change aside for a moment, air pollution caused by cars is killing people in very large numbers right now. A University of British Columbia study in October, 2013 showed that car pollution causes the premature deaths of 21,000 Canadians annually; nine times as many as are killed in car accidents.

Writing yesterday in The Guardian, Desmond Tutu went so far as to call for an Apartheid-style boycott of the companies responsible for climate change and of the fossil fuel industry. He directly called for the ending of the massive government subsidies of fossil fuels that occur globally.

In Canada these subsidies to gas and energy consumption amount to $26 billion annually, which means that 4 per cent of all government revenues were spent on them. This is a staggering fact. It also clearly shows that claims that government lacks the money to finance expanded, adequate and free transit in major urban centres are simply not true.

When one factors in possible dedicated revenue streams like tolls, gas taxes or taxes on luxury vehicles, or the possibility of a dedicated income tax increase on people with incomes over a certain level, there is absolutely no reason that free transit is not a quickly achievable goal.

Our governments and parties lack the political will and have prioritized energy consumption, including fossil fuel consumption, as well as catering to the perceived needs of car driving voters, ahead of transit.

Car culture, admittedly, is deeply engrained in Canada. It is also clear that steps have to be taken now to change that. Free transit would play a direct and obvious role in getting people out of cars and onto transit and in changing our collective perceptions of how to get to work, schools, the grocery store and recreation.

2) Social inclusion

Since Tallinn introduced its experiment in free transit one of the most pronounced benefits of the first year has been a large increase in ridership in an outlying neighbourhood with high population density and poverty rates.

This makes sense. Free transit would be an obvious way to incorporate neighbourhoods with high poverty rates or population densities that are detached from the overall economic and cultural life of the city into the fabric of city life as a whole.

Museums, art galleries, cultural or political events, parks and waterfronts and so many other essential parts of the urban experience would be there to visit at no cost in fares. Fares can add up. A family of two parents with three kids in Toronto, for example, wanting to go to its iconic High Park on a weeknight or to the Art Gallery of Ontario (which unlike the park is not free) would pay $16.80 for the round trip by TTC. That is a substantial addition to any outing.

For workers whose incomes are already stretched to the breaking point by substandard and poverty level minimum wages, these kinds of fare levels are directly and demonstrably a contributing factor in social exclusion.

Beyond opening up the city to neighbourhoods excluded from full participation in it, the reverse is also true. It would open up neighbourhoods that few visit to new possibilities to host cultural or artistic events and to become destinations. This has profound potential economic benefits.

This is especially true when free transit is made a central component of transit expansion overall so that not only are fares free, but the routes are there to make the free fares effective and worthwhile.

3) Income inequality and economic justice

Free transit has a real role to play in issues of economic justice and income inequality.

As we have already seen, our government spends vast sums of money to subsidize fossil fuels and car usage. This does not even include the money that must be spent by municipalities and governments on the infrastructure cars require.

These subsidies are made at the expense of those on lower incomes and those living in poverty. Directly. They use government funds that could be utilized by transit and any number of other programs to fund and facilitate a lifestyle choice that is of far greater benefit to the middle class, the upper middle class and the wealthy. In this sense they represent a redistribution of government revenue from those of lower incomes to those of higher ones.

Even the International Monetary Fund noted that "subsidies were expensive for governments, and that, instead of helping consumers, they detracted from increased investment  in infrastructure, education and health care, which would help the poor  more directly."

One way that those on lower incomes and living in poverty can be more directly helped is free transit!

As one Tallinn resident put it, "I live on a tight budget since I don't have too much work right now. I need to save money wherever I can, so I'm very happy with the free public transit scheme. This is a good thing for the common person."

Transit fares, for those who have work, cut into these often substandard, poverty wages themselves in the daily commute to work. Free transit would facilitate the search for better jobs (or a job at all) outside of local neighbourhoods and would allow all of those using public transit to keep more of their income by choosing free public transit as opposed to driving or having to pay daily or monthly fares. It would be especially beneficial for those on fixed incomes or relying on social assistance.

We should not underestimate the impact that this can have on the daily lives of millions of people.

It is also an issue of basic fairness. For many decades urban residents who could not afford to or who chose not to commute by car have been subsidizing those who did. They have been made to pay higher and higher fares on in many cases inadequate and overcrowded transit infrastructure while the priority has been given to cars, even in spite of the environmental repercussions of this. Most Canadian governments and municipalities have shied away from the use of tolls or the imposition of car pooling lanes, essentially facilitating the singularly destructive act of driving wherever one wants, whenever one wants, on one's own.

This has to change.

There are other reasons free transit makes sense. It would end the need to police fares and the daily confrontations between transit workers doing their jobs and some transit riders. It would signal a shift in our society's priorities. It would also, like free health care, be inspiring and transformative of how many look at the role of government and it would be very hard for even reactionaries to fully reverse once put in place in major cities.

Very recently the Coalition of Progressive Electors in Vancouver, one the country's largest municipal political formations, voted at a policy conference to make free transit a plank of their upcoming municipal campaigns. By doing so they have taken an important idea out of the "fringes" and put it into the civic discourse of the country's third largest city.

Hopefully this indicates a shift in thinking that will ripple through left-wing and progressive parties and municipal candidates from Calgary to Toronto to Montreal and to Halifax. A shift that will help to begin to make free transit the priority for our movements that it needs to be.

Gratuité du transport en commun : trois raisons qui en font une idée dont l’heure est venue

Gratuité du transport en commun : trois raisons qui en font une idée dont l’heure est venue

This translation is courtesy of Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit a Qubec City Free Transit Group. The website can be found at: http://www.rtcgratuit.ca/

Par Michael Laxer
(Rabble.ca)

Le 1er Janvier 2013, Tallinn, la capitale de l'Estonie, est devenue la plus grande ville du monde à rendre le transport en commun gratuit.  Bien que les effets de cette mesure soient, bien sûr, spécifique au contexte local,  cela démontre qu'une grande ville peut le faire et que c’est très populaire (1) .  Ça a également attiré l'attention sur un mouvement international grandissant de groupes, de militant-e-s et de partis qui estiment que la gratuité du transport en commun dans les grandes zones urbaines est un objectif social et environnemental important sur lequel travailler à court terme.

Dans une culture comme la nôtre, où la voiture est étroitement liée aux notions d'identité personnelle et de liberté, et où la droite a convaincu les gens (à tort) que le gouvernement n’a pas les moyens de faire quoi que ce soit de significatif, la gratuité du transport en commun semble être à première vue, sans doute, une aberration utopique pour plusieurs.  Mais, étant donné les sommes énormes que le gouvernement investit pour subventionner les infrastructures et le pétrole dont ont besoin les voitures et, compte tenu des enjeux d'égalité sociale et environnementale en cause, ce n'est pas du tout le cas.

La gratuité du transport en commun est une idée dont l’heure est venue et il y a trois raisons vraiment importantes qui font qu’elle devrait être mise de l’avant comme objectif ultime de tout programme municipal de gauche au Canada.
 
1) L'environnement et la lutte contre la culture de l'automobile
Il est impossible de surestimer les effets dévastateurs que les voitures et les combustibles fossiles ont sur l'environnement.  Un rapport des Nations Unies(2), publié le 31 Mars 2014, a peint un tableau inquiétant de la situation dans laquelle nous nous sommes globalement mis et, sans action immédiate et drastique, ça ne va qu'empirer.

Même en mettant de côté les changements climatiques pour un moment, la pollution de l'air causée par les voitures tue déjà des gens en très grand nombre.  Une étude de l'Université de la Colombie-Britannique (3) publiée en octobre 2013 démontre que la pollution automobile provoque le décès prématuré de 21 000 Canadien-ne-s chaque année;  neuf fois plus que le nombre tué dans des accidents de voiture.

Dans une tribune(4) publiée dans The Guardian le 10 avril dernier, Desmond Tutu est allé jusqu'à appeler à un boycott des entreprises responsables des changements climatiques et de l'industrie des combustibles fossiles comme celui qu’il y avait eu contre l'apartheid.  Il a directement appelé à la fin des subventions gouvernementales massives aux combustibles fossiles qui se existent un peu partout.

Au Canada, ces subventions au pétrole et à la consommation d'énergie totalisent 26 milliards de dollars par année(5) , ce qui signifie que 4 pour cent de toutes les recettes du gouvernement y ont été consacrées.  C'est un fait stupéfiant.  Ça démontre aussi clairement que les prétentions à l’effet que le gouvernement n'a pas l'argent pour financer un transport en commun gratuit et de qualité dans les grands centres urbains ne sont tout simplement pas vraies.

Lorsque l'on tient compte d'éventuelles sources de revenus dédiées comme l’instauration de péages, de taxes sur l'essence, de taxes sur les véhicules de luxe ou la possibilité d'une augmentation de l'impôt des personnes dont le revenu dépasse un certain niveau, il n'y a absolument aucune raison pour que la gratuité du transport en commun ne soient pas un objectif rapidement atteignable.
Nos gouvernements et partis n'ont pas la volonté politique et ont privilégié la consommation d'énergie, y compris la consommation de combustibles fossiles, ainsi que la satisfaction des besoins présumés des électeurs automobilistes, plutôt que le transport en commun.

La culture de l’automobile(6) est, certes, profondément ancrée au Canada.  Il est également évident que des mesures doivent être prises dès maintenant pour changer cela. La gratuité du transport en commun pourrait jouer un rôle direct et évident pour sortir les gens de leur voiture et les amener dans le transport en commun et changer nos perceptions collectives de la façon de se rendre au travail, à l’école, à l'épicerie et à nos loisirs.
 
2) L'inclusion sociale

Depuis que Tallinn a commencé son expérience de gratuité du transport en commun, l'un des avantages les plus marqués de la première année a été une forte augmentation de l'achalandage dans un quartier périphérique pauvre à forte densité de population.

C’est logique. La gratuité du transport en commun est un moyen évident d'intégrer les quartiers avec des taux de pauvreté ou des densités de population élevés, qui sont détachés de la vie économique et culturelle globale de la ville, dans le tissu de la vie urbaine dans son ensemble.

Les musées, les galeries d'art, les événements culturels ou politiques, les parcs et les secteurs riverains et tant d'autres éléments essentiels de l'expérience urbaine deviennent accessible, à visiter sans billet d’autobus à payer.  Mine de rien, les tarifs font monter une facture.  Une famille de deux parents ayant trois enfants à Toronto, par exemple, qui veut aller à High Park un soir de semaine ou à la Art Gallery of Ontario (qui, contrairement au parc n'est pas gratuite) paierait 16,80 $ pour le voyage aller-retour en transport en commun.  C'est un ajout important au coût de toute sortie.

Pour les travailleurs et les travailleuses dont les revenus sont déjà étiré jusqu'au point de rupture par un salaire minimum sous le seuil de pauvreté, ce genre de tarif de transport en commun est directement et manifestement un facteur contribuant à l'exclusion sociale.

Outre l'ouverture à une pleine participation à la vie de la ville pour les quartiers exclus, l'inverse est également vrai.  La gratuité du transport en commun ouvrirait de nouvelles possibilités d'accueillir des manifestations culturelles ou artistiques à des quartiers que peu de gens visitent et qui pourraient ainsi devenir des destinations.  Cela a des avantages économiques potentiels profonds.

C‘est particulièrement vrai quand on fait de la gratuité du transport en commun un élément central de l’amélioration globale du transport, de sorte que non seulement l’absence de tarif, mais aussi les trajets sont là pour rendre la gratuité efficace et utile.
 
3) Inégalité de revenus et justice économique

La gratuité du transport en commun a un véritable rôle à jouer dans les enjeux de justice économique et d'inégalité de revenus.

Comme nous l'avons déjà vu, notre gouvernement dépense d'énormes sommes d'argent pour subventionner les combustibles fossiles et l'utilisation de la voiture.  Cela ne comprend même pas l'argent qui doit être dépensé par les municipalités et les gouvernements sur l'infrastructure qu’exige l’automobile.

Ces subventions sont accordées au détriment des personnes à faible revenu et des personnes vivant dans la pauvreté.  Directement.  Elles utilisent des fonds publics qui pourraient être utilisés pour le transport en commun et un certain nombre d'autres programmes pour financer et  faciliter un style de vie qui profite beaucoup plus à la classe moyenne et aux nantis.  En ce sens, elles représentent une redistribution des revenus gouvernementaux de bas en haut.

Même le Fonds monétaire international(7) a noté que «les subventions sont coûteuses pour les gouvernements, et que, au lieu d'aider les consommateurs, elles nuisent à l'augmentation des investissements dans les infrastructures, l'éducation et les soins de santé, ce qui aiderait les pauvres plus directement».

Une façon d’aider plus directement les personnes à faible revenu et vivant dans la pauvreté est la gratuité du transport en commun!

Comme un résident de Tallinn(8) l’a dit : «je vis avec un budget serré puisque je n'ai pas trop de travail en ce moment. J'ai besoin d'économiser de l'argent partout où je peux, donc je suis très heureux avec le système de transport en commun gratuit. C'est une bonne chose pour le commun des mortels».

Les tarifs de transport en commun viennent souvent réduire, par des déplacements quotidiens pour aller au travail, des salaires sous le seuil de la pauvreté.  La gratuité du transport en commun faciliterait la recherche de meilleurs emplois (ou la recherche d’emploi tout court) à l'extérieur de son quartier et permettrait à ceux et celles qui utilisent le transport en commun de conserver une plus grande part de leur revenu en choisissant le transport en commun gratuit au lieu de conduire ou d'avoir à payer des tarifs tous les jours ou une passe mensuelle.  Ce serait particulièrement bénéfique pour les personnes à revenus fixes ou en s'appuyant sur l'aide sociale.

Nous ne devrions pas sous-estimer l'impact que cela peut avoir sur la vie quotidienne de millions de personnes.

C'est aussi une question d'équité fondamentale.  Pendant plusieurs décennies, les citadin-e-s qui n'avaient pas les moyens ou qui choisissaient de ne pas se déplacer en voiture ont subventionné ceux et celles qui le faisaient.  On leur a fait payer des tarifs de plus en plus élevés pour, dans de nombreux cas, une infrastructure de transport inadéquate et surpeuplée alors que la voiture avait la priorité, en dépit des répercussions environnementales.  La plupart des gouvernements et des municipalités canadiennes ont hésité à utiliser le péages ou l'imposition de voies de covoiturage, ce qui facilite essentiellement l'acte singulièrement destructeur de conduire où l'on veut, quand on veut, seul.

Cela doit changer.

Il y a d'autres raisons qui rendent la gratuité du transport en commun logique.  Elle mettrait fin à la nécessité de contrôler les tarifs et aux affrontements quotidiens entre les travailleurs et les travailleurs des transports qui font leur travail et certains usagers qui ne veulent ou ne peuvent pas payer.  Elle serait le signe d'un changement dans les priorités de notre société.  Elle serait également, comme les soins de santé gratuits, une source d'inspiration et transformerait la vision de plusieurs du rôle du gouvernement et il serait très difficile pour les réactionnaires d’inverser totalement la tendance une fois la gratuité du transport en commun mise en place dans les grandes villes.

Très récemment, la Coalition of Progressive Electors à Vancouver, une des plus grandes formations politiques municipale du pays, a voté en congrès(9) de faire de la gratuité du transport en commun un des thèmes de leurs campagnes municipales à venir.  Ce faisant, ils ont sorti une idée importante de la marginalité pour la mettre dans le discours civique de la troisième plus grande ville du pays.
Espérons que cela indique un changement de mentalité qui se répandra à travers les partis progressistes ou de gauche et les candidats municipaux de Calgary à Toronto et de Montréal à Halifax.  Un changement qui permettra de commencer à faire de la gratuité du transport en commun la priorité qu’elle doit être pour nos mouvements.
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Michael Laxer vit à Toronto où il dirige une librairie avec sa partenaire Natalie.  Michael a un diplôme en histoire du Collège Glendon de l'Université York.  C’est un militant politique, il a été candidat à deux reprise et organisateur électoral pour le NPD, c’était un candidat socialiste aux élections municipales de Toronto en 2010 (il se présente de nouveau) et il est membre de l'exécutif du Parti socialiste nouvellement formé de l'Ontario.

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Publié à l’origine le 11 avril 2014 sur le portail d’information de gauche canadien rabble.ca. Traduction : Nicolas Phébus pour RTCGratuit.ca

Texte original : http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2014/04/free-transit-three-reasons-it-idea-whose-time-has-come
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Notes :
(1) http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/01/largest-free-transit-experiment-world/8231/
(2) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-threat-food-security-humankind
(3) http://www.vancouversun.com/health/pollution+nine+times+deadlier+than+crashes+study+finds/9061897/story.html
(4) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/10/divest-fossil-fuels-climate-change-keystone-xl
(5) http://www.desmog.ca/2013/05/10/just-how-much-exactly-are-you-paying-subsidize-fossil-fuels
(6) http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/10/it-time-war-on-car
(7) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/imf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html?_r=1&
(8) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/estonias-capital-introduces-free-public-transportation_n_3014589.html
(9) http://www.vancouversun.com/news/COPE+puts+free+transit+tenant+protection+platform/9679373/story.html

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Left behind: Ontario's politicians are abandoning minimum-wage workers and people living in poverty

Ontario is on the verge of indexing minimum-wage workers into perpetual poverty.

This is a political choice being made by politicians in the province. The Liberal party is calling for an $11-an-hour minimum wage indexed to inflation. The ONDP is calling for a $12-an-hour minimum wage two years from now also indexed to inflation. The Tories would simply leave workers exactly where they are.

Poor.

Both of the Liberal and ONDP proposals start well below the poverty line and this directly means that minimum wage workers will be, by any reasonable standard, indexed to stay below the poverty line forever. If it is pegged to a below poverty rate to begin with and then tied to "inflation" it makes it so that the minimum-wage workers can never, by definition, climb out of poverty.

This is why many business groups support this idea. Why wouldn't they? It allows them to pay poverty wages in perpetuity by law!

Meanwhile, social assistance rates remain at levels that are incomprehensibly sadistic and wrong.

Given this willingness to index poverty into law and to ignore the vicious reality of where social assistance is at, it seems worth noting that the inequality that exists between those in office making these decisions and those they are condemning it to is truly profound and obvious.

Even assuming that one can get full-time work, a worker working a full-time job at the new minimum-wage proposal of the Liberals would make a pre-tax income of $22,880 a year. A worker under the ONDP proposal would make $24,960 a year in 2016, even, again, assuming they got full-time work.

These are astonishingly low wages that are impossible to live on in Ontario, especially in a major city like Toronto.

A $15-an-hour minimum wage allows for a full-time income of $31,200 a year. A dramatic improvement that would have a clear and obvious impact on the lives of workers. Especially given that now the pre-tax income of a full-time minimum-wage worker is at most $22,360.

Meanwhile, a single person on welfare in Ontario receives, $7,512 a year.

Seriously. $7,512 a year.

Who is making these decisions about the minimum wage and welfare? Given that it is a minority parliament that has allowed this to continue for three years, all the parties have made this decision.

And not one of them is claiming to want to do anything differently in this regard.

So the people making the decisions are Kathleen Wynne who made $198,521.29. Tim Hudak who made $180,885.60. Andrea Horwath who made $158,157.96.

Rosario Marchese who made $129,720.00. Ted McMeekin who made $165,851.04. Peter Shurman who made $116,550.00.

Every single person making the choice, and it is a choice, to continue to legislate poverty for those on social assistance and working for the minimum wage made in excess of $100,000 a year. Every single MPP.

The contrast is very stark and very clear.

The question, in the end, is how many people in Ontario have to be working for the poverty wages that are less than $15 an hour or "living" off of cruel social assistance rates before any political party or MPP making over $100,000 a year cares?

What is the perceived electoral risk versus big salary for themselves ratio that is required before any MPP in Ontario will actually do something to prevent the indexing of poverty wages into law or before they will stand up for meaningful increases in what human beings on social assistance are forced to subside on?

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Less than zero: Living in the 'real world' of the Left's retreat.

In Ontario another election season is at hand. A provincial election seems likely and municipal elections are occurring province wide. We have a bizarre situation where the Liberals are forcing the NDP to shift "left" on a number of issues like the minimum wage and now possible taxes, where "left wing" candidates for mayor in Toronto feel the need to couch policies in fundamentally reactionary anti-tax rhetoric, and where even what would a generation ago have been perceived as mildly social democratic notions like living wages, the idea of direct government intervention in the economy, new universal social programs or a comprehensive tax program to fund critically socially significant initiatives like transit, are now seen as incredibly "radical" and as hurting the "left's" chances of "winning."

But winning what, exactly?

After 25 years of constant retreat one might imagine that the left might think a new strategy is in order. Despite all the concessions to "reality" or doing what it supposedly takes to get elected, where are we? Does anyone seriously believe that we are better off than when we had an actual socialist political force in the country that advocated for demonstrably interventionist and meaningful social and economic policies?

We are in a society where poverty and inequality are at levels unparalleled in decades and where any possible or obvious solutions to deal with this are deemed to be fanciful or unrealistic. Often they are presented as if they are simply intellectual exercises that are encumbrances to supposedly "realistic" agendas aimed at making "practical change." Agendas floated by very well compensated elected politicians who, it would seem, equate what is beneficial to their careers with what is socially progressive or with what constitutes a "progressive" agenda.

The very idea of socialism has been framed as some kind of intellectual exercise that "academics" indulge in while the elected "realists" are out there getting results that never really seem to happen. "Radical" ideas are portrayed as little more than hopeless ideals that we know would be positive, but that we don't really think there is anything we can do about.

Often leftists are told in condescending ways that we have to live in the "real world."

But here is the thing. Making this political choice to get elected, and it is a choice, does have real world consequences.

When we toss aside our commitment to the idea of a society based on equality and social justice, when we abandon calling for an end to capitalism, it is not just abandoning an intellectual construct.

There are direct results that are not in anyway an abstraction.

Real people in the real world are suffering, living in or living on the edge of poverty, and facing grotesque exploitation directly due to corporations and the capitulation of the liberal left to the basic ideas of the right.

The new universal mantras of "tax relief" and "fiscal conservatism" or "responsibility" embraced by "progressives" have real world consequences that are not slogans, not ideological, but fact.

The fact is that poverty kills people and renders the idea of equality of opportunity a joke.

The fact is that millions of people are forced to work for wages that they cannot live on without assistance.

The fact is that social assistance rates are not just inadequate they are cruel.

The fact is that the minimum wage now is a poverty wage and we are about to index people into poverty under provincial plans.

The fact is that climate change may yet kill us all and we are doing next to nothing to combat the suicidal consumptive consumerism and car culture causing it.

The fact is that ideas like free education and transit will allow for far greater social inclusion and for a clearly better society.

The fact is that possible programs like Pharmacare or free dental care would make life demonstrably better for millions of people in very direct ways.

The list could go on and on.

But what it comes down to is that if we are not fighting for these things, if we are not standing up front and centre for them, they will not happen.

All the time we hear that talking about socialism and being "radical" is somehow quaint and silly while these appalling oppressions, as well as oppressions like patriarchy, colonialism, racism and homophobia endure, and while the insanity that is austerity and environmental catastrophe continue unabated.

These vicious real world cruelties and injustices happen every single day. The lack of new and serious social programs impacts the lives of real people every single day.

This is exactly why socialist ideas and leftist campaigns matter. Why they are not an intellectual exercise.

They matter because if they do not happen, these actual, real, demonstrable cruelties, injustices and oppressions that impact real people in the real world will simply continue.

It is the guaranteed outcome of not fighting for "radical" change.