Transforming the City: Municipal Politics, Socialist Strategy, and Organizing to Win

The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is pleased to present “Transforming the City,” a discussion of municipal politics, socialist strategy, and organizing to win.

From unprecedented Palestine solidarity actions and struggles against police violence to massive climate strikes and marches against healthcare privatization, recent years have seen a growing number of people taking to the streets, causing Toronto to re-emerge as a site of popular struggle.

The buildings, roads, and sidewalks of the city itself are what’s seen in news coverage and by those on the ground, but what of the institutions and municipalities that often go less noticed? What makes city hall different from provincial or federal governments, and does this change how we organize for transformational change? How should the socialist movement relate to electoral politics at the municipal level?

0:00 Introduction, land acknowledgement

4:54 Steven Tufts is an Associate Professor of Geography in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. His recent research focuses on the links among organized labour, urban economic development, and populism.

21:59 Shelagh Pizey-Allen is the executive director of TTCriders, a membership based organization of transit users in Toronto.

32:55 Jonathan Rosenblum is a Seattle-based union and community organizer, and the author of Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement (Beacon Press, 2017). He worked as a community organizer for Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and has a forthcoming book on the 10-year Seattle experience of Marxist political struggle inside the modern-day capitalist state (OR Books, to be published in 2025).