The Red Review
The Red Review
Radical Vancouver Politics — The Birth of Vote Socialist
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.
On May 1st, 2022, a new united front electoral alliance launched in Vancouver. With demands to defund the Vancouver Police Department, build public housing, and to tax big corporations, Vote Socialist ran a five month whirlwind of a campaign that netted its three candidates — Sean Orr for city council, Dr. Karina Zeidler for school board, and Andrea Pinochet-Escudero for park board — a combined 45,000 votes. This is the story of how Vote Socialist came to be.
We sat down with two core members of Vote Socialist, Yvonne Hanson and Mark Lister, who breakdown key demands, political stunts, and the future of this grassroots united front.
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Daniel Tarade
On May 1st, a new socialist party launched in the Vancouver landscape. With explicitly united-front tactics, the Vote Socialist party launched a campaign with three candidates — Sean Orr for city council, Andrea Pinochet-Escudero for parks board, and Karina Zeidler for school board. When the elections rolled around on October 15, only five months later, the three candidates repping this explicitly socialist party collected over 45,000 votes. Today's story? The birth of Vote Socialist and the return of radical united-front politics to Vancouver. Hi comrades. My name is Daniel Tarade. I use he/they pronouns. Emily unfortunately couldn't join us today. She sends her regards. All members of Socialist Action, the Vote Socialist party, the Municipal Socialist Alliance, we all work and live on stolen Indigenous land from across Turtle Island. So we echo the call of land back and declare that there can be no reconciliation without restitution, and that includes seizing the assets of the major resource developers and returning them to the commons. Today, I am joined by Mark Lister and Yvonne Hansen, both comrades from Vancouver, leading members of Socialist Action, who played core roles in the formation and operation of Vote Socialist. Welcome both of you to The Red Review.
Yvonne Hanson
Thank you for having us. It's great to be on.
Mark Lister
Thanks for having me.
Daniel Tarade
And so I want to get the timeline clear here. From what I recall, before Vote Socialist, there was another united front group that Socialist Action played a role in called the Socialist Unity Assembly. What was the story of the Socialist Unity Assembly? And how did that eventually merge or become or split off — or whatever it was — into Vote Socialist, the electoral front that we see today.
Mark Lister
I think the idea with the Socialist Unity Assembly was to get comrades from different socialist groups within Vancouver — so Socialist Action, Vancouver Eco-Socialists, Democratic Socialists of Vancouver — together to try to have listening circles, learn about different issues facing the city of Vancouver residents here, and try to work together on different actions. And I think as we were getting closer to the now past Vancouver election, deciding how we wanted to participate in that: if we were going to endorse any existing candidates, or if we wanted to be involved directly and run our own candidates, and ultimately, the latter is what we chose.
Daniel Tarade
And I remember some of the stories with the Socialist Unity Assembly, you know, meeting in parks, and it really seemed like quite a few groups came together. So which of the groups that were involved with the Socialist Unity Assembly formed the core of Vote Socialist, then?
Yvonne Hanson
Well, it's tricky to say because there's so many overlapping members. I'm sure it's similar in Toronto, but in Vancouver, the socialist scene like, you know, you'll have 25 people who go to every socialist group, and then kind of a periphery in those socialist groups. You know, there was three main groups at first. There was Socialist Action, of course, and the Democratic Socialists of Vancouver, and then the Vancouver Eco-Socialists. There was sort of this, like, almost spontaneous generation of the same idea in all three groups, and then when we all got together and started talking about it, we realized that we all sort of had the same intention. And that's sort of what catalyzed the actual formation of the party.
Daniel Tarade
Nice. And so where did the name come from then?
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah, that's a funny one. So we weren't sure if we'd be able to put vote on the ballot, like the word vote, right. But we figured that it would be like a cool kind of almost subliminal thing. Like somebody's like hmmm, I want to vote for a socialist, but who do I vote for? And it's just it's there on the ballot.
Daniel Tarade
I wonder if there's a party named Vote Socialist?
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah. It's like, oh, well, if I wanted to vote socialist, I guess I'll vote for this party, right. And I had a friend who didn't know that I was involved in this at all. And when I asked him who he voted for, he was like, Ah, I don't know, I voted for like the socialists. And then I was like, okay, so it worked.
Mark Lister
Amazing.
Daniel Tarade
I love that. And so in terms of listenership, Vancouver is the second biggest city that listens to this podcast. But the municipal political scene in Vancouver is entirely foreign to me in Toronto, because in Toronto, the parties don't exist. You go to vote, and it's just a list of names, even though people organize in a bunch of different ways. In a nutshell, if you can explain how the Vancouver political system works, and really what the significance then is of being named Vote Socialist and how that actually is so visible in the context of elections there.
Mark Lister
Vancouver is what's called an at-large system. We don't have wards for specific parts of the city. So candidates who run, either as independents or more commonly under parties, run citywide everywhere from downtown in the West End to Kitsilano to Killarney, Downtown Eastside. It covers the entire city, and we're a bit unique in that the city is largely represented by parties. So some of the existing parties have pretty long histories running electorally. I think the right-wing Non-Partisan Association (NPA) has been around since the 1930s. The main left-wing party COPE has been around since the late 60s. And recently we've seen sort of splinters off of COPE to parties such as OneCity, which is sort of centre-left social democratic, if you will, and Vote Socialist, of course, which is even more to the left of that. There's also a difference in that we have have a park board, which many cities do not have. A lot of cities will roll that into the functions of city council itself, but here we actually vote on three different bodies — so city council, school board, and parks board. People tend to associate parties with their political leanings. So there does tend to be a bit of a brand association or the types of ideas that people are wanting to vote for, and that helps him decide.
Daniel Tarade
How'd it feel for the two of you to go into the polling station and be able to put a check next to a party called Vote Socialist?
Yvonne Hanson
Oh my God, so good! I wish I could have taken a picture, but it's illegal.
Mark Lister
It was a very cool feeling.
Daniel Tarade
Absolutely. Okay. And so y'all got started, campaign launch on May 1st, International Workers' Day, which I think sets a tone for a political campaign like this. It's symbolic in a lot of ways. You're here to represent the working class, the underclasses rather than the developer class, the capitalist class. So that energy, how did that kind of resonate throughout the campaign? How did you build that working-class energy and the working class demands?
Mark Lister
I think one of the key things that we did was when we were developing our program, our policies, we wanted to work very closely with groups and organizations on the ground to elevate the demands that they have, rather than, you know, trying to assume that we have the answers to what are the pressing issues for these groups. Some examples, we worked with a prominent disabled activist, Gabrielle Peters. We worked with VANDU, which is a Vancouver-area network of drug users. As you know, there are many issues with the toxic drug crisis in Vancouver and elsewhere, as well, the Vancouver Tenants Union. Of course, housing is incredibly expensive in Vancouver, as it is in many places. So housing affordability is a major issue. And I think working with those groups, elevating their demands, really, you know, reinforced the fact that we're a grassroots party, we're elevating the demands of grassroots groups.
Daniel Tarade
What was coming out of the work with the Vancouver Tenants Union? What were the demands around housing in the city that were included in the Vote Socialist program?
Mark Lister
We worked with a number of different groups; as I mentioned, the VTU. And the focus is explicitly on public housing. A lot of centre or centre-right parties will focus on affordable housing or below-market housing. But we as socialists know that that's not sufficient to meet peoples' needs. I read recently that the average rent for a one bedroom apartment in the city of Vancouver is $2,400. May have even gone up since then. So technically, you could have something less than that, and it would be considered, quote, affordable, which is not for most working people in the city. And we know that commodified housing tends to increase in price over time, you know, because it's driven by profits. So we really focused on avoiding evictions, right of return if tenants are evicted, vacancy controls so that rents are not raised in between occupancy. So if someone has been in a unit for a number of years, they move to go somewhere else, the unit has not drastically raised in terms of the rent. So really trying to push these measures that would make housing actually affordable, because it is a human right.
Daniel Tarade
Brilliant. One of the things that really jumped out at me, one of the ways I think Vote Socialist kind of got on the map was when Sean Orr disrupted the Vancouver Police Department meeting regarding their participation in the election. So what's the context there? How did Vancouver Police become such a focal issue with the election this year? And what was the socialist perspective then?
Yvonne Hanson
Because the police union endorsed Ken Sim, and as far as I'm aware, it's never historically had such an endorsement before. Like No other mayor has received such an endorsement. Ken Sim's platform was all about public safety, quote unquote. You know, upholding the peace and restoring order to Vancouver, blah, blah, blah. He wants to put police officers in schools. He wants to hire 100 new police officers to roam the streets, all in the name of protecting safety. So when he got that endorsement, it was like a real like, just kind of a slap in the face to everybody who's ever been victimized by the police or feels unsafe around the police and is going to see their taxpayer dollars essentially going towards funding something that does victimize such large segments of the population. So I was really proud to see Sean do that. He obviously wasn't invited to that. It was a debate or a panel meeting. He hadn't been given an invitation, and so he took it upon himself to crash it, which I absolutely love to see that kind of — I don't want to say stunt, but yeah, that sort of stunt politics. That really like, you know, shows up even if you're not invited.
Daniel Tarade
What did his banner say that he unveiled?
Mark Lister
I think it was police out of politics, wasn't it?
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah.
Mark Lister
And he had a really good quote about it, too, that, you know, people with guns shouldn't be telling you who to vote for.
Daniel Tarade
Absolutely.
Mark Lister
I think even normies can agree with that.
Daniel Tarade
So Ken Sim, that was the leader of the ABC party, right?
Mark Lister
That's right.
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah. And they swept.
Daniel Tarade
Yeah, they basically swept almost all the positions available. So what's the primer on the ABC party? What did they stand for?
Mark Lister
Law and order I suppose.
Yvonne Hanson
Pro-law enforcement, pro-police. We did have a fairly pro-police council outgoing. There was a few quote unquote left wingers on it and even one socialist but no, the incoming Council is 100% or 95% right wingers, who are really upholding police violence.
Daniel Tarade
Yeah, I heard something pretty ridiculous recently. They're floating an idea of library fees funding police. Is that true?
Yvonne Hanson
Is that true?!
Mark Lister
Yes, I did read about that. It is true, it was floated. I don't know if it's actually going to go anywhere. But of course, you know, as socialists we're disgusted by the concept that a vital public service like libraries, that actually plays a very significant role in the lives of unhoused people as well, as you know, workers and other oppressed people, would be so starved for funding that they would have to resort to those sorts of tactics, you know, especially given that the VPD consumes 21% of the city's budget. It is the largest single-line item as it is in many cities. When there's money for police, there doesn't seem to be money for other public services, so that's problematic.
That's wild. And the library essentially is one of the only places you're allowed to exist without spending money, you know, and generally just a place, you're allowed to go and have access to community resources. Seeing that be turned into a funding source for the police seems very perverse.
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah, that almost sounds like it would be made up because it sounds like such a perverted idea of what libraries are supposed to accomplish in society.
Mark Lister
Moreover, I think it really epitomizes the type of business mindset of looking for revenue opportunities that seems to be creeping in with a lot of right-wing politicians, you know, whereas we reject that. You know, these are public services that should be run for the public good. They're not designed to raise revenue.
Daniel Tarade
No, absolutely. And, you know, one of the retorts that we got in Toronto with the Municipal Socialist Alliance is, well, all that sounds great, how are you going to pay for that, and they're referring to things in our platform, like free public transit, reducing class size, expansion of bicycling infrastructure, expansion of city services, like snow removal, so that it's more expedient and cities are accessible. And again, people are like, great, how are you gonna pay for that? You know, in this case, they're trying to fund the police by putting fees on library use, but for us, it was simple. Just tax the large corporations way more, you know. You have all these banks in the cities, all these massive corporations that don't pay very much in taxes for property tax, yet they use all the city resources. There such a drain. And so that was our answer.
Mark Lister
Absolutely. And I think to your point, Daniel, about property taxes. One of the things that came up in our research is that surprisingly, property taxes in the city of Vancouver are actually quite low relative to the assessed value. I think there were something like half what they are in the city of Toronto, so especially on very expensive properties, there's certainly room to tax more fairly to cover these services.
Daniel Tarade
When you're taking transit everyday to go to your job, I feel like it should be the burden then on the bosses to pay for you to get to and from work, you know. Instead they're shirking on these responsibilities, passing off the buck. So Vote Socialist launched on May 1st, International Workers' Day, you disrupted VPD meetings, you worked with the tenants, you worked with the drug users, you're building something from the grassroots up. So what were the stories from being on the campaign trail that showed to you that you're connecting with people, and you're actually maybe in the early stages, but nonetheless, in the process of building a mass movement to reclaim the city. On the one hand, it might be disappointing that the ABC party nearly swept, but 50,000 votes spread across three candidates after five months of existence as a party is nothing to dismiss, from my perspective.
Yvonne Hanson
One of my favourite moments from the campaign trail was when we were trying to get our final signatures in Vancouver. You need — I can't remember it's 50 or 100 — you need a set number of signatures in order to get somebody on the ballot. We collected a bunch of signatures, and then one of our candidates had collected signatures from outside the municipality, so they weren't valid. And so we were about to go into our appointment for you know, getting their name on the ballot and registering them as candidates, and we realized that we were short by like 12 signatures. And so we were in a populated area. And so all of us with like 12 minutes to spare, took clipboards and like ran out onto the street to start like harassing passersby, like, oh my god, please sign this. And we were having complete shit luck. People were like turning the other way. You know, it was like this bougie area, people with yoga mats and tiny dogs, and we're like, oh my God. And then in like, one final act of desperation, like, I can't remember if it was Derek or mark or somebody was after this one guy, like, please sign this, please sign this. And finally, I'm just like, Are you a socialist or not? And he turns around, and he's like, Wait, yeah, I am! He's like, oh sure. And then, of course, we try it on the next person who walked by, and it's like a soccer mom. She like wouldn't give us the time of day. But it was just such a great moment of just brute forcing your way onto the ballot.
Mark Lister
And that was such a cool thing. Because I noticed too, that, you know, we did a bunch of campaigning and tabling at some of the car-free day events in Vancouver. So sections of major streets were blocked off, you know, different tents were set up by other political parties as well. Different groups could campaign for their causes. And a number of people we talked to said, Oh, are you guys really socialists? We're like,Yes, we are. And they were like, Heck yeah. So that was really cool to see.
Daniel Tarade
Even in Toronto, it was the vibe I was getting. Not that the majority of people necessarily identified as a socialist, but definitely a not insignificant chunk of people already felt entirely comfortable with the label, with the principles, even with all of the baggage that comes with the term after, you know, years and years of attack. It does feel like the tide is starting to shift. What was the voter turnout for the Vancouver election?
Mark Lister
It was unfortunately pretty poor, as I recall, somewhere around 38%. So actually lower than what we'd had in previous elections and not entirely sure what the reason was for that. We were trying to get out the vote to the demographics and groups that we expected to be our supporters, so people living in co-op housing, students, working people, but there's no denying that overall turnout and participation was not where we'd want it to be.
Daniel Tarade
I mean, the 38% is higher than the 29% we had in Toronto.
Mark Lister
Oh, my goodness
Daniel Tarade
Or the 21% in Mississauga. The 21% Mississauga had a caveat that was very structural, at least on the surface. Our elections in Ontario took place on Diwali. Mississauga is quite racialized. I wouldn't be surprised if that contributed to the difference between Toronto Mississauga, the eight-point gap, but it seems across the board in Canada, voting turnout has been plummeting. We saw with the last federal election, lowest voter turnout ever. It seems people are somewhat disillusioned with the status quo. Was that your perspective?
Mark Lister
I agree with that. I think people are feeling disenfranchised. They're feeling that they're not represented, whether that's [at] the local level or in provincial or federal, and that even if they do vote, you know, what sort of say do they have on the day-to-day decisions and policies that come out of elected government? You know, one of the concerns we hear all the time is that, well, you can participate in city council meetings, but a lot of times they are during the day when people are working. So it tends to be only retired folks who have the time to show up and make their voices heard. And that's just not representative of broad diversity of views.
Yvonne Hanson
This particular election season for me was a bit of a slap in the face because we had the BC leadership election as well for leadership of the NDP. And as you may know, that the election, in my view, was basically bought. There was a former oil lobbyist, who was one of the people who was recommending that this sort of inquisition into Anjali Appadurai's supporters go ahead. And as I understand it, she played quite a large part in Anjali's disqualification. So I mean, as far as I'm concerned, that election was bought by big oil. And then at the same time, these are like weeks apart, Ken sim, he was funded by local billionaire Chip Wilson. His campaign was extremely well funded, which is the reason why he won. It was a brand new party, fresh on the scene, with $34 million in funding. So yeah, it's gonna happen.
Daniel Tarade
Nothing suspicious about that.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, nothing sus there. But you know, looking at that being like, okay, so it actually doesn't matter, like, how much effort people put in, like, you know, Anjali ran an incredible campaign and had incredible support from incredible people and putting all this effort and did everything right and didn't buy it, so she didn't win. It's like — I can see why people would feel extremely disenfranchised at this point, when it's so obvious that politics are just pay-to-win.
Unknown Speaker
Chip Wilson's group, that Pacific Prosperity Network, they funded a far-right, I would argue fascist, propaganda film called Vancouver is Dying. And this was created by someone named Aaron Gunn, who was a BC Liberal candidate, who was actually ejected from the leadership race because he was deemed to be too extreme for a conservative party here in the province. But that just fed into the fear and poor bashing and that sort of rhetoric that Vancouver is a dangerous, unclean place; it's being taken over by unhoused folks. And I think unfortunately, that propaganda did have an effect on people.
Daniel Tarade
That seems explicitly like it's trying to create an other; a group that can be scapegoated for the ills of a city that's really being pillaged by a capitalist class. you have this money being leached from the working and oppressed peoples upwards, and yet the most vulnerable people, the most victimized people then are in turn blamed. It seems like a very effective strategy to try and divide up classes and leads to a lot of people voting against their own interests because they vote for the ABC party, even though their policy of increasing police funding and cutting other services hurts the majority of people. So how do you try and counter that? What kind of message are you spreading to try and create unity amongst the lower classes against our common enemy, which is the exploiter class, the capitalist class?
Mark Lister
One of the key planks of our platform was defund the VPD — defund the Vancouver Police Department. We as socialists know, and there's plenty of research and evidence to back this up, that the police don't solve the issues of crime. They tend to react to them. We know that a lot of crime is underpinned by material conditions, specifically poverty — so people who don't have housing, don't have food, are unemployed, can't get work or disabled and can't work. Really to solve these problems, we need to invest in social services, we need employment. We don't need police because they don't address those problems. Instead, they consume resources that could be used to address those issues.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And then just you know, not getting discouraged and having those small conversations with family members and loved ones. I know this is kind of like a cliche, but that's the kind of organizing that we can do as individuals between elections is continue to ask informed questions. When people have these really strange beliefs, ask for them to sort of interrogate their own beliefs, and always in like a non-confrontational way. It's an important strategy, and the holidays are coming up. If politics happen to come up around the turkey at Christmas, just approach it from a place of wanting to understand their position. And that's I think, honestly, how we will kind of overcome this kind of rhetoric is through having a better understanding of what kinds of triggers make people so afraid of unhoused populations. Why are they so afraid of being victims of crime, right, when statistically, it's extremely unlikely to happen to them, especially violent crime?
Daniel Tarade
It seems like propaganda films might have something to do with that.
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah.
Daniel Tarade
I wonder, I wonder if there's a connection. And I wanted to ask. I mean, there are so many really obvious ways that maybe don't seem so obvious when you're not involved with a campaign like this, but as soon as you start trying to run a legitimate political campaign, and to rip some power from those with power, just how stacked the deck is against any grassroots group trying to compete, and we might think we're better than the United States where presidential campaigns spend billions of dollars, but it is pay-to-win. And so what was the most overt example of this?
Yvonne Hanson
Well, I think actually Kennedy Stewart's campaign versus Ken Sim's campaign is like the most stark kind of area where that wealth gap, or funding gap stood out because Ken Sim's campaign just kind of made up this thing. They called it the road tax. Nobody had any idea what that was. I have no idea what that is. At no point did they ever explain what it was, but then they bought like dozens of billboards around town that were up for months and months and months that said, Stop Kennedy Stewart's road tax, and they were on the edge of these roads. And no other campaign can afford to buy two dozen billboards. Every time you drive your way to work, you see Ken Sim's face a couple of times, and you see the word road tax, and you get scared.
Daniel Tarade
Yeah, that's a lot of money. On the topic of road[s], in terms of some of the ridiculous stuff I'm hearing out of Vancouver, are they starting to roll back some of the bike lanes now?
Mark Lister
Unfortunately, yeah. So one of the things that our park board candidate Andrew Pinochet-Escudero ran on was accessibility and inclusivity in the parks, including not only maintaining the Stanley Park bike lane, but also improving bike and expanding bike infrastructure throughout the city. And unfortunately, despite all of the ABC park board candidates being on record as running to protect the Stanley Park bike lane, one of the first things they've done since coming into office is trying to remove that and to revert Stanley Park Drive to two lanes of automobile traffic.
Daniel Tarade
That's — it's just one of those things where going backwards, sliding backwards on this just feels so frustrating. Some of the rhetoric I heard around it was they were trying to justify it from an accessibility point of view, saying that if you're disabled, you need to drive on the roads. And so therefore, removing bike lanes would give you more space to drive on the roads. And it seems one of those ways in which identity politics can be really weaponized because more cars on the road I don't think makes our society more accessible. Investing in accessible public transit and livable spaces and walkable spaces is more accessible than just adding another lane to the roads.
Mark Lister
Of course, and statistically, people with disabilities are less likely to drive. And we also know that driving is the most expensive form of transportation and the most exclusionary. So when you expand cycling and walking infrastructure, public transit, this opens up public spaces to more people than if you just restrict it to driving.
Yvonne Hanson
Not to mention the fact that like once you get a lot of those unnecessary car trips off the road from people who are able bodied and could otherwise take multimodal transportation, then the roads free up so that they're more accessible to the people who actually need to take cars.
Daniel Tarade
See, and you talk through the problem, and it very clearly falls apart so quickly. And yet the election is designed in such a way — there's no depth to these conversations intentionally. The Ken Sims of the world benefit from an election where the voter turnout is less than 40%. Whereas a Vote Socialist party, the ideal world would be one where everybody votes because again, a lot of those people that aren't voting are going to be some of the people pushed to the very margins of society who don't see themselves represented at all in the discourse.
Mark Lister
That's right. And I would say as well that many oppressed people don't have the same opportunities to be involved in the election, whether that's running as candidates or trying to research the issues or trying to work with groups to advocate for the causes that are important to them. They're just marginalized in so many ways, and their voices are not heard in the same way.
Yeah, what's the voter registration fee in Vancouver?
Yvonne Hanson
To register as a candidate? It's 100 bucks.
Daniel Tarade
So that's the same in Toronto. And even that seems unnecessary. I don't know what the city's really gaining through that $100 that it couldn't fund some other way. And it just creates a barrier. Literally, for some people, $100 on a campaign that you feel is a long shot anyways, when that $100 represents a couple of weeks of groceries.
Yvonne Hanson
For somebody who's making minimum wage, after taxes and everything, that's like almost a full day's work that they're spending on that — if they're able to do a full day's work while they're running a campaign, right. And keep in mind also that this is a city where the average rent for one bedroom is $2400 a month. So that extra $100 is very hard to find for some people.
Mark Lister
Makes a big difference.
Daniel Tarade
So the election came and it went. And for me following from outside [in] Toronto, it was just a glorious result. Rven though the road ahead is long, what a start! What a foundation to grow off of. Where has the momentum been since the election has finished, given that it's only been a few months? But what does the path forward look like? How is Vote Socialist going to keep building on this, keep connecting with other groups, and continuing to make an impact even before the next election comes around? Because I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the focus is explicitly elections. It is socialist revolution.
Mark Lister
Yeah, I definitely see it as a dual power strategy. You know, not only participating in electoral politics and trying to get our candidates elected, but also building support, building movement for socialism, for revolutionary socialism, and getting those ideas and showing people that there is a different way that we can address the real problems that they're experiencing under capitalism, and there is a different way to do things.
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah, I just want to say, you know the DSoV, the Democratic socialists of Vancouver has been working on sort of integrating a lot of the people who are hung out on the Vote Socialist campaign with kind of the DSoV apparatus at large. And I know Socialist Action has been doing something similar just to make sure that we don't all splinter off and kind of fall apart into our, you know, less associated groups inter-election. And I mean, I know that a bunch of excellent Vote Socialist activists have joined up with Socialist Action. And we've been having chats in the DSoV about how we can like kind of incorporate the Socialist Action electoral work in with our regular kind of community-based and mutual aid work. So there is a pretty big future for Vote Socialist. I'm pretty stoked about that. And definitely, there's like this pretty mutual agreement that we want it to be something that doesn't just spike up during elections and then die off.
Daniel Tarade
And I think that's part of it. There's a cynicism I think, when you only show up when there's a vote to be won.
Yvonne Hanson
Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Tarade
I was gonna say as well, I took some inspiration from the MSA in Toronto. As I understand, you're going to be running a shadow council and holding the elected parties to account, which I think is a brilliant idea. I've suggested that we do that with Vote Socialist here.
You know, the shadow council first got floated on The Red Review in our interview with Mark Freeland. He mentioned this offhand at the end of the interview, saying, you know, when I lose this election, or you know, 99% chance I'm going to lose this election, I'm gonna start a shadow council on Twitter and just like, follow whoever gets elected, and just basically comment on whatever they're doing, and to provide a voice for the working class. And I just remember being struck by that thinking, Oh, that actually just sounds like a great idea that would exponentially become more powerful if you had multiple people working on this. And you can actually not just follow a single city councilor, but actually look at the entire composition of the city council, you can integrate then a critique of the status quo at city council with the work you're doing building your own base between elections. I mean, we'll see how it goes. But I like the idea of a shadow council and a way of trying to build trust and to bring people back to the politics that actually has such a huge impact in our lives. Municipal politics, probably more so than provincial or federal politics, has like such a direct say in our lives, yet most people couldn't be bothered. And it's not their fault. The system is made in a way that it's meant to be boring. It's meant to be disengaging, so that all these decisions that impact us could be made in the shadows. So the shadow council will try and take that out of the shadows, bring it into the light, and offering an alternative, even if we don't yet have the power to enact it.
Mark Lister
Absolutely agreed.
Daniel Tarade
Next election is what? In four years for Vancouver?
Mark Lister
Yeah, that's right.
Daniel Tarade
Where do you want to be in three years from now, let's say going into your election year? What do you hope for in terms of number of candidates to be fielded? And number of groups that are formally involved in this grassroots [movement]? What's your vision? If everything went according to plan, what's the vision?
Yvonne Hanson
What I really liked about our slate this year was that if you're a socialist in Vancouver, you're able to vote for all of the left-wing political parties without having any kind of fear of vote splitting. You know, there was literally only one slot leftover after voting for all of the candidates on COPE, on Vote Socialist, and on OneCity, which are largely considered like the three left-wing parties, right. So that was nice. And I would like that to be the case at some point again, in the future. You know, if we can get two Vote Socialist people on council, that's phenomenal. I think running a full slate would just spread our resources too thin, and also, like, the supporters of those other parties were willing to support us because there was no vote splitting and votes splitting is such an annoying argument on city council elections anyways, but regardless, I think that worked out really in our favor.
Mark Lister
I agree. Yvonne, I think it's important, under you know, unfortunately, first-past-the-post electoral system as we have at other levels, to not vote split. And I think that was our strategy trying to get our candidates elected so that we can work collaboratively with those other left parties, at least where we align on policy. One of the things I'd like to see and unfortunately, we didn't make it happen this time, is to have a mayoral candidate. I did notice that the other parties that ran a candidate for mayor definitely got more media exposure than we did. And so that would definitely help to raise the profile of Vote Socialist. And who knows, it is a registered party provincially with Elections BC so there's always the possibility that in other cities, Burnaby, Surrey, Victoria, who knows, we may be able to start up Vote Socialist campaigns in those other cities with comrades there.
Daniel Tarade
That's goosebumps right there.
Yvonne Hanson
Hear hear!
Daniel Tarade
I love that! A Vote Socialist candidate in every municipality.
Yvonne Hanson
Absolutely fantastic.
Daniel Tarade
At some point — because we've got to keep growing, we got to keep working together, developing those connections with other groups, build the United Front as big as possible, so that revolutionary possibilities don't seem so far fetched. We need to be able to galvanize the support of people by showing that there is a viable path forward for us to be able to seize power from our common oppressors. And so the idea of one day, you know, MSA and Vote Socialist kind of like spreading across the country, and eventually meeting in the middle, somewhere in like Saskatchewan or something. And then we just confederate and join forces, and all of a sudden, you have whatever name gets decided at that point, running a candidate at every level, wherever possible, on an explicitly socialist platform for the working and oppressed classes with absolutely no whiff of class collaboration with the bosses. That's, That's my dream.
Yvonne Hanson
Hear hear!
Mark Lister
That resonates with me, too.
Daniel Tarade
I was really impressed with what was happening there, and Socialist Action and Democratic Socialists of Vancouver were able to work together in a really great way, putting aside whatever differences there may be. That hasn't really been the case everywhere else. So I think it's a model for socialist groups everywhere that if you want to make a difference, you can't just silo yourself. you need to be able to work with other people, at least on the socialist left. No one's saying that you have to work with liberals, heaven forbid, just work with the other socialists that are around so that we're not wasting all of our energy sniping each other, but we can actually focus on what we need to be focusing on.
Mark Lister
Absolutely! Class struggle and not class collaboration.
Daniel Tarade
As we start to wrap up here, you're both in Vancouver, and I mentioned that Vancouver is our second biggest audience for this podcast. So for the Vancouver — Wait, what's a person from Vancouver called? Are you in Vancouverite? Vancouverian?
Yvonne Hanson
Vancouverite, yeah.
Daniel Tarade
Vancouverite, okay. So all the Vancouverites listening, what's your one minute pitch for why they should join Vote Socialist and get involved even now even if the next election seems so far away?
Yvonne Hanson
Well, why you should get involved right now? I mean, we're in very isolating times. And it can obviously be really heartbreaking seeing a lot of things that are going on the news and kind of processing them internally. And when you're processing them alone, it can be a lot harder than when you have a group of like-minded comrades who are all acting together towards a common goal. And knowing that you yourself are doing everything that you can to advance that goal can be a lot more empowering mentally than you think. It may not be the election now, but you have this opportunity to come and join us and help us do something really, really exciting and help build that momentum towards the next election. And beyond electoral politics, that opportunity is open all year round. So we'd love to have you.
Mark Lister
I'd say to folks here, you know, we're living in times of overlapping crises. We have [a] pandemic, we have climate crises and ecological degradation, we have a housing crisis, toxic drugs, healthcare issues. And the root of all of these is capitalism. And so we know that when we work together, you know, in United Fronts with other comrades, we're much stronger than we are working individually. And there's no better time than now to take action to work together to raise up our power, to raise socialist ideas, and to work together for a better future for people in Vancouver and beyond.
Daniel Tarade
I love it. How best can people reach y'all?
Yvonne Hanson
votesocialist.ca. Go and check us out. There's a contact page. There's a join page. There's a Donate button. There's a lot of ways that you can get involved. Go check it out, votesocialist.ca
Daniel Tarade
See, and it's a great URL as well. I feel if there was a fusion of MSA and Vote Socialist, I might go for the vote socialist name.
Yvonne Hanson
Thank you for another great podcast. Thanks for hosting.
Daniel Tarade
Comrades, thanks for listening in. As always, we appreciate you. As we go towards a new year, Emily and I will be coming back with a year-in-review and maybe some predictions for 2023. Until then, take care, stay safe.