Presenting the Municipal Socialist Alliance — Sarah Szymanksi for Mississauga City Councillor

All the people who work on The Red Review live and work on stolen Indigenous lands across Turtle Island. There can be no reconciliation without restitution, which includes Land Back, RCMP off Indigenous land, and seizing the assets of the major resource corporations and returning them to the commons.

Join us this month for a new series, where Emily and Daniel introduce listeners to the Municipal Socialist Alliance (MSA) candidates running for mayor, city councillor, and school board trustee throughout Ontario!

Up next is Sarah Szymanksi, the MSA candidate for Mississauga Ward 2 city councillor.

Candidate Contact:
Sarah can be reached at: szym9409[at]gmail.com

Articles:
TTC gets mock award for ‘least funded’ transit system

Transcript

Emily Steers  
Hello everybody, and welcome to The Red Review, a Socialist Action podcast. Today we are continuing our series of interviews with the Municipal Socialists Alliance candidates. I'm your host, Emily Steers. I use she/her pronouns, and I am coming to you from the unceded territories of the  Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples known as Guelph, Ontario.

Daniel Tarade  
Hey comrades, my name is Daniel. I use he/him pronouns, and I'm coming to you from Tkaronto, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Huron Wendat. All members of Socialist Action, the host of this podcast, live and work on stolen Indigenous land from across Turtle Island, so we echoed the call for land back and Indigenous self-determination. There can be no reconciliation without restitution, and that includes seizing the assets of the major resource corporations and returning them to the commons.

Emily Steers  
Today, we are thrilled to be interviewing Sarah Szymanski. Sarah is a student and worker who is running for Mississauga Ward 3. She is a proud member of Unifor local 1285 and CUPE local 3906. Sarah works as a part time auto worker and as a teaching assistant, holding the position of recording secretary since January of 2022 for her CUPE local. Sarah has a BA in Global Studies and Sociology from Wilfrid Laurier University and a master's of Sociology from McMaster University. She's passionate about social research particularly in the fields of gender, sexuality, and work and is devoted to the labour movement and workers' rights. She has been involved in Toronto's Labour May Day Committee for the past two years and was a co-chair at its May 1st, 2022 rally. Sarah Szymanski demonstrated her commitment to working class solidarity at picket lines and rallies, such as in support of the locked-out workers at Molson brewery CUBGW, a local 325 and in aid of the peoples of Palestine and Cuba. Sarah will be a powerful voice for women, workers, and socialist policies on Mississauga City Council. Welcome, Sarah.

Daniel Tarade  
Here here. 

Sarah Szymanski  
Hello. Thank you. Thanks for the introduction.

Emily Steers  
Is there anything else you want to tell us yourself that we haven't already covered in your bio?

Sarah Szymanski  
I mean, that was a lot. I feel pretty new to the labour movement. I really just started getting more and more involved in the last two years, though, I have been interested in a lot of these ideas and social problems for quite a while now. Definitely, since at least the start of university, 2014. Yeah, I still feel pretty new. So it's an interesting and exciting position to be in right now, running for city council. It's definitely not something I anticipated myself doing for pretty much my whole life. And despite being a pretty political person since I was a teenager, I wasn't necessarily interested in like getting involved in politics. 

Emily Steers  
So what triggered the change? What made you decide to take that leap?

Sarah Szymanski  
I mean, I was approached by Barry from Socialist Action after having spoken at the Labour May Day event at our cultural event there, and we just kind of chatted about it. And it seemed like a really cool opportunity. Because I feel like I do a lot of reading. And in school, I did a lot of research. I am learning a lot of theory, but there is only so much sort of action stuff I do. I mean, the Labour May Day Committee is one of those things and like helping plan that event has been great. Having gone to some like picket lines and rallies, also great, but that again only happens every so often. Being able to even try at a campaign to kind of stir up something, stir up some social change or the possibility for it sounded really exciting for me and a good experience. 

Emily Steers  
Amazing.

Daniel Tarade  
Absolutely. That's how I've generally approached it. I mean, I don't have huge aspirations for this campaign. But the idea of starting to put theory into practice, to actually see what it's like to speak to someone you don't know about these ideas and see how you can try and connect with the broader working class, the various strata of oppressed people. I want to ask, I mean, we're very Toronto-centric, at least I am, and this podcast as a result. You know, I'm more familiar here, but what's the Mississauga side of things? What is the experience on the ground in Mississauga? Paint a picture of what the people of Mississauga need to change.

Sarah Szymanski  
Yeah, so I think Mississauga is a pretty interesting place and not a very easy place to organize in, in my experience. I've only been living here for about four years now, but I've always lived kind of nearby in the GTA. I feel like things are a lot less visible in a lot of Mississauga, at least in the ward I live in, Ward 3. I think a lot of people would say like, oh, there's no homelessness, or there's not as much hardship here. I mean, it's not necessarily like an upper class, sort of ward by any means, but you don't see the poverty. But you hear about it. And in talking to some people, I mean, even my own mom, who I live with in Mississauga, as well as my neighbors, housing was a huge issue. And even though we might not be like close to homelessness ourselves, I think people are very worried about rising house costs, rising interest. And it's a big issue for a lot of people. And you don't even have to get into like a specific or like political background for people to bring that up. When I was getting endorsements from my neighbors, and I was trying to have some conversations with people to see what the issues might be — I'm definitely not aware of everything — and housing was the number one thing. And I would bring that up as like, Well, I think this is important to me. I mean, the issue of homelessness is absolutely an important thing to me. But also the issue of people who should be able to afford to live under this system that supposedly, oh, well, you have a job, you've made your way up to the top or like, I don't know, you fought to survive, sort of, and you should be able to do so. But you're not, and it doesn't matter that these people have jobs, that they've maybe worked at these jobs for 15, 20 years and working their way to like a pension — they're still scared, they're still scared, like my mom is close to retirement in the next few years, but there are worries with how high interest is getting on the house, like will her pension be able to cover it. And she's a teacher, this is supposedly a well-paying good job with a very good pension. But there are worries around that. I know she's not the only one.

Emily Steers  
People are kind of accessing the issue of the housing crisis from really, really different layers. Obviously, we're concerned about people getting evicted and homelessness and the issue of renovictions and developers building  unaffordable new housing. Then that goes all the way up to the spectrum of people who have been landowners and landlords for a really long time suddenly not being able to afford to continue to own their property because of all of these different factors. It's really interesting that this has become kind of a flashpoint issue for everyone across class spectrum.

Sarah Szymanski  
Absolutely. I mean, even if I'm not also seeing homelessness directly in my ward that doesn't mean it's not there. It does certainly exist in Mississauga. And there was an event I went to with the other Mississauga MSA candidate, Mark Freeland, and I believe we were in Ward 7 for this, which is the ward he's running in. And it was like a community event. There was music, there's some food, and I mean, we're chatting with some people there, some like community organizers, and there were homeless people in that area. It was — it's called four corners. Maybe you've been in Mississauga, maybe not. But definitely some protests have happened and some community events have happened. When we were there, there were these benches. People were just sitting there. But I was talking to someone. She was saying that Mississauga is going to remove these benches very soon in the next like week or so because homeless people are sleeping on them. And that just seemed so ridiculous to me. Like this is literally a corner of like a street. And there's like a few businesses nearby, of course. It's kind of like a busy street, transit and stuff. But people sleeping on these benches are not hurting anyone. But I did drive by there a few weeks later — I didn't know for sure if this person knew 100% — but I saw that the benches were gone. I was like, oh my god, like why would they do that? I mean, they put money and resources into putting these benches there. And they definitely put money and resources taking them out. And it just seems like that money could have been better spent. 

Emily Steers  
Yes, but if we can't see the homelessness, then obviously we don't have to actually deal with it.

Daniel Tarade  
Is there a better example of treating the symptom rather than the root cause? You know, we don't like that there are people having to sleep outside, so let's remove the places that are convenient for them to sleep that are also visible. Let's make them invisible. Sarah, you mentioned the May Day Rally. That was a really brilliant day, the first time, from what I am to understand, you know, first time in decades that you had, you know, communists in the streets with revolutionary demands. And there were hundreds of us, even on that rainy, kind of dreary day. 

Emily Steers  
Yes. 

Daniel Tarade  
Do you see a path to connect the energy in that space to the general kind of apathy that we kind of see in larger sections of society where people really don't see a way forward? How do you take that revolutionary fervor and you bring it to the masses?

Sarah Szymanski  
Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely takes a lot of work. And it can be difficult. Most of the people I talked to were definitely not radical people by any means. A lot of them were parents, older people, many of them did not seem overly political either. But most of us weren't our whole lives. It definitely does take sometimes a certain event, something to trigger that. I think like, for example, like housing can be one of those events. My biggest fear sometimes is people falling into reaction because of that, because you are kind of feeling helpless. And you're not seeing much from the left like the NDP, perhaps — not to be too too critical. But there are definitely things that could, that could —

Daniel Tarade  
No, no, no, no, this is not an NDP space at all.

Emily Steers  
No. Love criticizing the NDP here. It's one of our favorite things to do.

Daniel Tarade  
If we couldn't criticize the NDP on this podcast, we would have to cut half of our episode content.

Sarah Szymanski  
All right. Well, yeah, I mean, people definitely don't see themselves represented by some of the political left. It's hard not to also be optimistic in the sense that I don't want to give up hope because yeah, like you said, there were hundreds of communists and socialists and other leftist people out on May Day, and it took a lot of work to bring our rally to fruition. There were a lot of other unions and groups that kind of had their own rallies that eventually went to Queens Park together. And you saw a lot of people there. Yeah, it was a rainy day, it was not an ideal day to be out. But people still came out, people still wanted to go out, I try to stay optimistic. Because of that, I try to have a lot of conversations with people, honestly. People who aren't necessarily political, a lot of it is I mean, my family are kind of. People around like some of my friends who are less political, and just trying to get them to understand the issues and get excited. And so those people will just kind of pick and choose certain things. Like there's a lot my mom and I don't see eye to eye on, for example, but we will agree on some small things and like, okay. Like, I don't know, we can sort of make things meet, in a sense. And I mean, not everyone's gonna be like a revolutionary or radical. But I think it is definitely possible that people will be opened up to the ideas, if you have that conversation, if you are putting those ideas out there and connecting it to their real world struggles, because people can see. Like, times are hard, prices are rising for a lot of things. Even if not everyone is maybe as sympathetic to the homelessness problem as I am, but I think everyone would say like, well, homelessness is bad. And they feel bad that that's something, and whether they have like their own ways of thinking that there's a better solution, they definitely don't want to see people going through that. I think most people are compassionate at heart and want a better future for us, just maybe don't always have the ideas on how to get there, which is totally fair. Like I don't know everything, either. I — sometimes people will ask like, oh, well, under a socialist society, like how do you think this will work? I'm like, I'm not — I can't tell you for sure. Like, we can only hope to get there.

Emily Steers  
That's the best part of the revolution is we get to figure it out. 

Sarah Szymanski  
Exactly. 

Emily Steers  
We get to decide. That's the beauty of it, it's not going to be imposed on us, it's that we get to make those choices that will make our lives better. And so well, you know, what would this be like under under a socialist society? I don't know. Let's build it and find out.

Daniel Tarade  
I feel like this is a great way to talk a bit about the MSA platform, then because that's what the platform we developed collectively is trying to do. By no means is what we're proposing a fully fleshed out workers' government. It's impossible to leap directly from where we are to something that's fully matured and beautiful and operating fully. But we're trying to feel out those steps and coalesce those demands that lead people in consciousness from accepting capitalism as normal and the status quo to maybe there's a better way of doing this. What are some of the things in the program that we've collectively developed that strikes you as the most exciting demand to put forward at this moment in history?

Sarah Szymanski  
I mean, on housing, I think that's important, but I've talked about that quite a bit. I think on schools as well, that like increased funding for schools, smaller class sizes — I may be a little bit biased, because again, I do see that with my mom, as a teacher. That's another thing I guess, like, she will complain about that. And I'll be like, Hey, this is in our platform. We also support like better conditions for teachers and for students. I think that's very exciting, honestly, because I don't know, I think that's something that a lot of people can get behind on.That, like childcare as well. And to me, also, transit, I think is so important, because it just gets to the heart of so many issues, I guess. Like free and accessible public transit, because we don't have that even close in Toronto, in Mississauga, probably anywhere in Ontario or Canada, unless I'm mistaken.

Emily Steers  
No, Toronto is the worst funded transit system in North America. 

Sarah Szymanski  
Yikes. Not totally surprised, unfortunately. 

Emily Steers  
All of our sources, we'll link them in our podcast description. But no, so most transit systems operate on a two-thirds funding, one-thirds fare model. So one-third of the revenue that they collect from fares, you know, your PRESTO Card, your tap, your tokens, whatever goes towards funding, and then two-thirds would come from the city and the state or province. Toronto operates on the inverse. It operates on a two-thirds fare, one-third funding model that is fairly unique in North America. And I think most other places have, as I say, the one-third, two-thirds split is the most common, fifty-fifty is also pretty common, but Toronto is the only one with two-thirds fare, one-third funding. 

Daniel Tarade  
That's unfair. 

Emily Steers  
Isn't it just. And given that it has also one of the higher riderships of transit in North America, it's absolutely ridiculous. The amount of weight being put on the people who require transit and maybe can't afford transit versus what we know other municipalities, other regions are able to pay for. 

Daniel Tarade  
What are some of the specific transit dilemmas in Mississauga? I mean, you have a pretty different system. I know when I commuted to University of Toronto Mississauga, I had to pay fare twice — 

Sarah Szymanski  
Oh!

Daniel Tarade  
— because they're not connected. 

Sarah Szymanski  
That is part of it. I feel like there should be maybe like some sort of GTA bus system. I think it's difficult and expensive if you are traveling anywhere outside of Mississauga. I think Mississauga and Brampton might be kind of connected, but Toronto definitely is not. So I do also have to pay that extra fare when I'm going to Toronto, so it's like a $12-ish round trip, a little bit more actually.

Daniel Tarade  
I hated it so much. I worked there for two months during the summer paying 12 bucks each day. 

Sarah Szymanski  
Yeah — 

Daniel Tarade  
to get screwed over by two poorly run transit agencies.

Emily Steers  
I will also jump in with my little KW-Guelph rant. It's that if I want to take transit to Kitchener-Waterloo, a town that is a 30 minute drive away, not even, it would cost me $16 roundtrip on transit. 

Daniel Tarade  
So dumb.

Sarah Szymanski  
It gets unaffordable. Like a lot of politicians do talk about the environment and sustainability. And Mississauga did recently, this year, get some money to be spent on transit funding from the Trudeau Government as well as the Minister of Transportation. And that was largely to replace the diesel vehicles and develop some more rapid transit, which sounds great and definitely ideal. We'll see if anything actually comes out of that. But even if that does happen, people are still paying exorbitant transit fares, especially to get into the city. I'm sure a lot of people in Mississauga work in Toronto or vice versa, and it just becomes unaffordable. And I mean, owning a car is definitely expensive. I'm sure people would have to like add up their own cost with how often they be traveling to see what is more worth it than not, but the transit always comes up being less worth it because of how much longer it takes. So it's like, okay, maybe it's a little bit cheaper than owning a car, but not enough to make it worth it. To drive, it takes about 30 minutes or less even to end up in downtown Toronto. Like Dundas area, Dundas square. It takes a little over an hour taking [transit] from where I live in, and I live pretty close to Etobicoke. Like Ward 3. I'm always so disappointed that it takes really long to get into Toronto, whenever I look up the time to get pretty much anywhere, it's like 45 minutes to an hour and more if I'm trying to get kinda into like the East End. So I feel like there should be more of a connection there. Cheaper transit, just to make it more accessible to people. I mean, I can afford it, I do work. But there's definitely people who can't afford that, who have a hard time using transit getting anywhere. I feel by improving transit, we can tackle more environmental issues, we can tackle issues of helping people maintain jobs even. Maybe people don't have a reliable way to get to a job. Transit is unfortunately not always reliable. I like to say that it kind of is. And I would argue that to an employer, certainly because it is my only option right now. And it's many people's only option, but it's not always reliable. Sometimes the bus just doesn't come and that's so frustrating, or it comes really late. And that's also frustrating on top of the expense. So I think reevaluating our system and making sure that availability is there, that there are enough jobs, that there are enough drivers and having a better system honestly, because Mississauga is such a spread out kind of suburban-ish city, which is difficult to get around in if you don't have a car, but it shouldn't be. It's so close to Toronto. I feel like why isn't it better living right next to the biggest city? 

Daniel Tarade  
Yeah, Mississauga is so sprawled. And coming from Windsor, very similar experience, where it's just expected that you have a car. The city is built around it. And so the congestion of all the cars becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You build a city around cars, and everybody gets a car. And you know, you can't make a city big enough to accommodate all the cars just for how inefficient they are. Unless you want everything to be parking lots, but then who wants to live in that city of just parking lots? I like trees, personally. 

Emily Steers  
Yeah.

Sarah Szymanski  
Yeah, that's so funny. Mississauga is a lot of parking lots.

Emily Steers  
And so just thinking about the current makeup of Mississauga City Council. What voices are missing there? And what are you going to bring to city council that is not currently there?

Sarah Szymanski  
I mean, I think a lot of workers' voices are missing. I mean, I don't know the entire makeup of city council. But I know there are a decent amount of small business owners. The Ward 3 current city councilor is the wife of a Liberal MP. I think she's also a business owner as well on top of that, so I think currently most of the people on City Council are — I don't want to say that none of them are workers. But there doesn't seem to be many workers, certainly no socialists that I know of. The fact that anyone and you know, I guess I can't say for sure that this was 100% city council's decision to remove those benches, but if it was, the fact that anyone would make such an out-of-touch decision just boggles my mind. So clearly, not a lot of people who have the interests of those who are most vulnerable in our community are sitting on City Council, which I mean, unfortunately, makes sense, because homeless people probably don't really vote. They don't have an address, so they can't vote. And so they're not really represented or cared about by most politicians, because they're not going to vote for those politicians.

Daniel Tarade  
There's actually a recent development with MSA campaign out in Scarborough, and we already interviewed Kiri, so unfortunately, he can't talk about it. But the disenfranchisement of people who don't have a permanent address is very real. You can vote. You just have to register yourself, and you can just basically say any intersection that you spend time at, you can vote in that riding. But it's a very opaque process. There's no real supports to make sure these people register. Corey's campaign in 2020, the by-election that kind of was the seed that grew into this coalition, actually did a voter registration for people living in one of the pandemic hotels that they set up for the increase in homeless people. So we've been keen on that issue. But Kiri recently tried to go door knocking at one of these homeless shelters, and he was denied access. And he followed up and the City of Toronto literally sent an email even to all the candidates because Kiri stirred up so much shit, saying that these residences in particular are not covered by the legal protections because normally access to an apartment building complex, to a condominium, to even a gated community is guaranteed. And it's meant to be an act of enfranchisement, meaning like politicians are allowed to come and speak to you, they are allowed to hear your voice, but the City of Toronto was saying, for the people that don't have their own home, they don't get that protection. They're going to be completely shuttered away during the process of this election and made completely invisible and disenfranchised. 

Sarah Szymanski  
Yeah, I think the difficulty in getting people to even be aware of that, like, Yeah, I did not know that. I'm sure that someone who is in a much more vulnerable state than me probably does not know about that. Or even if they do, maybe just doesn't have the time or energy to go through that process. It does sound frustrating and tedious. I would definitely like to bring awareness to that issue. I think it'll be difficult. If I am on city council, I feel like I'll be arguing with a lot of people. But I wouldn't want to back down from any of our positions, because I think they're all very important. And having someone to even say that and represent a ward with some of these ideas, to kind of fight back against the sort of status quo of things I think is very important, even if it is just stirring up some trouble. But maybe it will cause people to see differently, whether on city council or people in the community. I hope to get even closer with people in the community should I get elected. I think that'd be really cool. I know, there's a lot of different political views across Ward 3, many that I probably don't agree with. I hope to find some common ground because most of us are workers. And I think that's the biggest connection you can make with someone. A lot of people maybe don't realize it because they don't view the world that way, which again, fair, but I would like people to know that we're not enemies, because we do have some different political opinions — that ultimately, I am fighting for the well being of people because I care. Because I do truly believe in a better future. And I don't think capitalism is part of that future at all. I would try to connect with people on that basis, certainly.

Emily Steers  
Amazing. All right. So we are about 10 days at time of recording away from e-day. How's the campaign going?

Sarah Szymanski  
Honestly, it's it's been a really busy time. And I appreciate this question, actually, because I was thinking about this a lot recently, and actually reading about Cuba's new sort of like family referendum and everything and kind of how involved people are getting there, kind of about the difficulty of how people get involved in Canada. I thought it'd be a lot easier to run for city council. And it's not the most expensive thing on like a base level, the $100 you pay, that's fine. But to get posters out, to get the signs out, to even have the time to go like door knocking takes a lot of time. I currently have two jobs. And I have a position at the union, which is a bit of a job too. So I have not maybe had as much time as I've wanted to spend on the campaign honestly, as much time as maybe some of my opponents have because I don't have that time and I don't have that money. I have spoken to people for sure, in my community. I brought up where I can. And I hope to do a definitely kind of like a last big push before election day. I think it is really difficult as someone who is a worker, and unfortunately, there's not always that like time, I guess, because you have so many priorities. And also not as much money, like. It really, even on a municipal level, it really does cost a lot of money to win a campaign, I think, which is unfortunate for working class people and why I brought up Cuba. I know it's a bit different. You don't need money to win a campaign and people will criticize that as not a democracy. And I don't think it's very democratic that you need a lot of money, that you need so much advertising, that you can't connect with people in certain ways. Because just the loudest people will always be the ones whose voices are being heard through their sort of financial situation typically.

Emily Steers  
Yeah. 

Daniel Tarade  
Money and time. One of our candidates, Danny Drew, they mentioned the only reason they could run for mayor of Guelph in this cycle was because their dad died, and they got some inheritance and they're currently then unemployed, which is such a dystopian sentence to say— the only time I could be in franchised and have the possibility of participating in the so-called legitimate political system was when some sort of tragedy befalls you and you get, you know, a momentary windfall. Windfall, in quotation marks. Same way students sometimes like pray to get hit by a bus or something and you can sue them. It's disgusting that our freedom is contingent on, on that.

Emily Steers  
Well, you know, this is why there's so little worker and tenant representation in politics. And this is why we see so many landlords in politics is because when you've got this quote unquote passive income, the stolen wages of the working class, that's the only time you can afford to get involved in a meaningful way in politics, in a way that is going to yield a win. And it's absolutely dystopian. Okay, Sarah, you've got one minute. Imagine you are speaking to every single person, every undecided voter in your ward, one minute, what would you like them to know?

Sarah Szymanski  
I mean, I would tell people that really up until this year, I didn't have that much interest in municipal politics, either. I voted once in a municipal election when I lived in Waterloo as a student at Laurier. And that's just because my friends were voting, and it was very easy to do so on the university campus. I was like, oh, vote as well. I have not voted in Mississauga before. I have not voted the city I grew up in or town I grew up in either. So I'd say I totally understand where you're coming from, because it can feel hopeless. But I don't think it is ultimately. I mean, I hope that I can be a great voice. I hope that I can provide a change and something different to city council that maybe hasn't been seen before. Because again, I don't think we've seen many or any socialists on Mississauga City Council, certainly not in recent years. I mean, things aren't going that great. Like when people bring up housing crisis for sure. Public transit not being the best, our schools definitely needing improvement. So maybe trying something new is what we need, because our system is not working. Capitalism is not working. And anyone defending that system, any politician defending that system, they're not doing the work that is needed for the people. So I would tell people to take that chance. And I would try my best to do what I can to help and to do something to change as much as possible for people, for workers and for families.

Emily Steers  
Here here. All right. And Sarah, where can people find you?

Sarah Szymanski  
I'm not a huge social media person, but I have been directing people to my email. If they want to email me, I am happy to connect that way. It's szym9409[at]gmail.com. And yeah, I would be happy to answer any questions or just to chat or connect with anyone. 

Emily Steers  
Amazing. Well, best of luck.

Daniel Tarade  
Thanks so much, Sarah, for coming on, for chatting with us. Again, I liked learning more about Mississauga. We're neighbors and solidarity knows no boundaries, least of all between Toronto and Mississauga. So good luck with your campaign. And as we've been saying, this is not the end of our campaign. This is just the beginning. Until revolution, let's keep going. Until next time, everybody, stay safe and solidarity.