10/08/2025
Reflections on Drawing the Line, by a MAKK member
Kingston participated in the National Drawing the Line event, which brought together organizers for Palestine, migrant justice, Indigenous sovereignty and a variety of groups organizing for climate justice.
I was more interested in this event than other climate events because of its intersectionality. The 5 organizing demands are solid. We could argue about the framing, and that is important, but there ends up being variation from the national campaign messaging in the local, on-the-ground organizing. There will be variation between cities, but also within them. Some will more explicitly demand Palestinian liberation, and/or be explicitly anti-capitalist. Some wonder why the climate message is being diluted or interfered with. It is politically significant and essential that the campaign has incorporated in their national messaging the demand for “full immigration status for all, now”.
350 Canada wrote a public letter to J Trudeau “to express our strongest possible support for the regularization of all undocumented people, without delay or exception.” SCAN Canada has made similar statements. These are good starting points, and important for organizations , whatever their focus, to have as baseline principles. But we are moving deeper and faster into an era of xenophobia, and barreling recklessly into an era where there will be more migrants, displaced by fire, flood, famine, ecological collapse, economic hardship, and political and identity based persecutions. We, as the beneficiaries of a country that by its level of energy and resource consumption have disproportionately caused much of the climate chaos, must fight for a world where people are as free to move as money is now and where no amount of money or armament can take land from Indigenous people. We must provide the analyses, and do the relationship building necessary to build powerful social movements that demand national borders are broken, not reinforced.
For such a strong effort at combining movements, there was a surprising lack of analysis of gender. I understand you can’t put everything in the world that needs to be changed in your list of demands. Including an analysis of patriarchy, and that women and girls, trans people and gender diverse people are disproportionately affected in each of the areas of concern addressed by the 5 demands seems an essential addition to the list. A related but separate analysis must have us defending the most vulnerable from authoritarian forces seeking to accelerate climate chaos and social repression. Beyond migrants, this clearly includes unhoused people, and increasingly the 2SLGBTIA community.
Before we decide on next steps, the list of things that need to be clarified or more clearly articulated by the Drawing the Line campaign, are a clear analysis, strategy, and orientation, by which I mean what kind of world are we moving towards? What will be in place of the current order? I’m not suggesting a rigid plan, or end goal, I just don't want to put any time into an effort that will move towards electoral politics.
Margaret Cerullo said of the Zapatistas, “The first [ central idea] is this wonderful notion of “caminar preguntando,” we walk by asking questions; what that means is that the shape of the struggle, its demands, its goals, are not and cannot be and must not be set in advance, but they have to be shaped by those that one encounters in struggle along the way. So that's the idea of “caminar preguntando,” we advance by asking questions. I think that approach undermines a lot of the rigidity of traditional, sort of revolutionary movements, which thought they knew what the goal was, what the destination was, and pretty much how to get there.
The 2nd central idea of the Zapatistas, of the “idea of “caminar preguntando” is the “encuentro,” is beyond the scope of this piece.
Cerullo continues,”The third notion that you picked out is this idea of always “looking below and to the left,” which is simply I think a profoundly democratic principle of left-wing organizing. To the left in Zapatista terms means anti-capitalist. So they're not interested in listening to just everybody: they take their impetus, their inspiration, and their revolutionary imagination from those below.”
The Zapatistas incorporate both the idea of walking by asking questions, and having baseline principles, like looking below and to the left. For years, I’ve organized with people, who lay out their principles or basis of unity at the beginning. Without these concrete principles, organizing and movement infrastructure can be taken over by caution, and a diluted politic to appeal to a greater number of people. Worse, it can be co-opted or stolen by the right wing. It’s not hard to imagine a hard-right, eco-fascism with similar earth-protecting desires, but for “old-stock canadians”, and not the millions of migrants flooded from homes by the oceans we heated.
While we walk by asking questions, the numbers and variety of people who attended the Draw the Line in Kingston make me want to take next steps. My understanding of social change is shaped in part, by Poor People’s Movements, by Fraces Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, which wrote about groups of people without the power of the strike - the unemployed who could not withdraw their labour, and how it was the power of mass defiance and disruption that won more than traditional politics. An Indigenous organizer I used to know, used to tell people to look for the point of economic influence in their own community and go stand there. Stand in road, the free trade corridor, on the train tracks, across the bridge. Where can you affect the bottom line of the people making decisions and ravaging the earth? To be successful, our movements must have a strong analysis of power, of capital and the intersecting systems of oppression. They must also understand it will be a combination of mass defiance, disruption and the building of new emancipatory social infrastructure that can meet all of our needs that will move us toward collective liberation.
I’d like to see the national Draw the Line Coalition expand on their demands, which are a good start, and encourage building local coalitions of groups committed to disruptive direct action. In my opinion, it’s important to incorporate the lessons from other social movements, including the so-called anti-globalization mobilizations from the 90s and early 00s. Confrontations with power are necessary and needed. We need to create movements that allow people to participate in ways that make sense for them, understanding that family responsibilities, citizenship status, previous encounters with the (in)justice system and individual positionality all affect the risks we are able and willing to take. It is important not to publicly critique people for their choices, whether those are more cautious or more risky than our own. Part of building movements that can successfully challenge the array of monumental power is to create ways to engage at different risk levels, support people through stretching their own comfort levels, allow people to move to riskier and less risky ways of engaging without judgement, and understand that the logistic, support and care work that goes into movements is just as important as, and what makes direct confrontations with power possible.
Let us also consider the role of police at both the local Draw the Line event and their role with respect to social movements. For whatever reason, local organizers sought a permit and police es**rt for the march. This in no way impeded a driver from assaulting the tail end of the march with his car. The police es**rt at the front of the march actually demanded the march continue marching while they had stopped to check on and wait for the group who was assaulted. This prioritizing getting the streets clear above the safety of allies and comrades was not the mistake of a singular officer, but part of the structure of policing. The driver was eventually charged, but unlike every other crime, which has the names of alleged offenders published in local media before conviction, the police have refused to publicize the driver’s name. These complications exist even before a political action that actually tries to disrupt the smooth operations of an economy built on exploitation and ravaging the earth. Everyone reading this surely understands the role police will play in our efforts to address the 5 demands of the Draw the Line campaign. The police do not keep us safe. We keep us safe, and it is clear, after the incident with the dangerous car assault, that we have our work cut out for us, and must improve our tactics and vigilance.
MAKK members attended the local Draw the Line event, and played marshalling roles with banners and bikes. It was a meaningful way to contribute to the event, but kept us from creating the red and black contingent we had called. I think it is worth strategizing over the contingent idea, whether it is a useful idea, and if it is, have our propaganda to distribute, our own chant sheets and signs.
Let us keep walking by asking questions, supporting one another and keeping each other safe, pushing our individual and collective levels of comfort and building systems to both meet our needs and bravely challenge systems of power.
