All out for May Day in St. Catharines!

(This editorial is from the April 1998 issue of People's Voice,
Canada's monthly communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted
free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada:
$21.40/year, or $10.70 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US
per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $30 CDN per year. Send
to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

The labour and social justice movements in Ontario have put out the
call for a massive May Day of Protest and Action against the Harris
Tories, and their kissing cousins the pro-corporate, Liberals in
Ottawa.
Never in the two-year history of the Days of Action has there
been more to fight for than today. Medicare is on the verge of a
fatal breakdown. Public education is being systematically starved
and strangled. Affordable public housing is on the auction block,
along with publicly owned Ontario Hydro and various publicly owned
municipal utilities. Democracy, even the most limited labour and
democratic rights, are being stripped away by regulation and
non-elected bodies, and by fiat.
Unemployment and insecurity are the order of the day. Our
children's future - their lives, their environment - is on the
line. Poverty and misery and discrimination are our new growth
industries. And now they want to make it global, nailing down this
agenda with the MAI and the still unnamed but deadly new western
hemispheric agreement.

LABOUR CAN WIN!

The Days of Action and Protest have shown the Ontario government
that working people have no intention of lying down - we can and we
will fight back. United, and organized, working people can defeat
the Tories and set out a People's Agenda for a new government to
act on and answer for.
Despite the reluctance of the right-wing leadership of the
Ontario Federation of Labour to escalate the anti-Harris,
anti-corporate fightback across the province, the delegates to last
November's OFL Convention forced the issue onto the agenda,
obliging the leadership to commit to strike and protest actions
building up to the October Day of Protest this fall.
There is a groundswell for mass protest and mass action
amongst working people across Ontario. There is no reason to sit
out this historic struggle, though some may wish otherwise.
Labour's Call to Action in St. Catharines needs to be heard in
every workplace and every community across the province.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Call your union, talk to your local President, organize your
stewards, order your buses. And when you get home, call your social
justice organizations, coordinate your buses, get your phone trees
humming.
Write a letter to the Editor. Talk it up with your friends and
neighbours. Pass a resolution, make a resolution. Car pool! Be
there! Don't miss it!

A PEOPLE'S AGENDA

Millions of Ontarians are united by their opposition to
Harris, his thugs, his corporate backers, and his record of
destruction in Ontario.
But millions more can be united and mobilized in the fight for
a better future - for an agenda to put Ontario back to work... to

save and expand our hard-won medicare system, our hospitals, public
schools, colleges, universities, and child care centres, and social
programs... for environmental safety and security... for fairness
and equity... for social justice, and social progress.
That's the battle that needs to be picked up on May 1 in St.
Catharines, then built up in June in Kingston, and delivered to
community after community in the province wide shutdowns in
October. United, a single stream becomes a torrent!

GET ON THE BUS!

Members and friends of the Communist Party will be there in
St. Catharines. Please join us on the bus from Toronto early on the
morning of May Day. Call the Ontario CPC office at 469-2446 to
reserve your seat now. Everyone's welcome - donations will be
gratefully accepted!

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