On Tuesday November 27th, Alliance Against Displacement organized a panel discussion to analyze the 2018 civic elections in Metro Vancouver. The panel was called: “About that White Progressive Sweep: Understanding the Vancouver election and revisiting electoral politics as an anti-capitalist/anti-colonial strategy.”

About 40 people came out to hear speakers and discuss problems that arise with the electoral strategy at the centre of new progressive movements in cities like Vancouver. The feeling in the room at the end of the night was that critiques of how electoral politics uphold white supremacy, foreclose prison abolition, and fail to protect our most vulnerable community members are crucial to strengthening the left—and that there is much more to discuss about how to build movements that are both pragmatic and uncompromisingly anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist.

In order to broadcast the important critiques made that night, The Volcano is publishing a selection of articles based on the presentations at the “White Progressive Sweep” panel. We think that, taken together, these contributions set some basic terms needed for an analysis of today’s progressive electoral movement, which some people refer to as “municipal socialism.” There is still more work to do before this analysis will be comprehensive, and we welcome responses from proponents of progressive electoral groups.

Collection of articles

See the video of the full panel here

listen chen, Anti-Chinese racism at the root of Vancouver’s progressive City Hall: White race power, the new yellow peril, and the electoral left

Ivan Drury, Vancouver’s referendum on Sinophobia: Another “socialism of fools” in the shadow of a rising China

Cecile Revaux, Politics are happening in the streets not in city hall: Lessons from Burnaby’s anti-demovictions election

Lenee Son & Isabel Krupp, We can’t vote away police violence: Elections and policing in Surrey

Finally, the election statement from Alliance Against Displacement takes up all these themes and more: Alliance Against Displacement, They get elected, we get evicted: Going beyond the inoffensive reforms of progressive parties and the politics of the professional managerial class