If you weren’t able to make it to our 2019 Vancouver Intensive, you can check out video from the panel “Insurgent Campaigns and Building Movement Power: An Ecology of Tactics.” Featuring City Councillor Jean Swanson and COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) activists Shawn Vullliez and Derrick O’Keefe, the panel explores the interrelation between social movement organizing, electoral work, and a broader strategy of building popular power. It asks how we can think strategically about the strengths and weaknesses of these various modes, and how they can be used together to create an ecology of tactics.
Jean Swanson speaks about her experience as a lifelong anti-poverty activist who entered city government, and the institutional challenges she faces in this role. COPE organizer Derrick O’Keefe discusses the formation of the Vancouver Tenants Union in 2017 and the two subsequent electoral campaigns at the municipal level by the Coalition of Progressive Electors Party (COPE) and how this experience relates to municipalist politics. Shawn Vulliez talks about synthesizing prefigurative, electoral/entryist, and revolutionary politics in B.C. and beyond.
Jean Swanson speaks about her experience as a lifelong anti-poverty activist who entered city government, and the institutional challenges she faces in this role. COPE organizer Derrick O’Keefe discusses the formation of the Vancouver Tenants Union in 2017 and the two subsequent electoral campaigns at the municipal level by the Coalition of Progressive Electors Party (COPE) and how this experience relates to municipalist politics. Shawn Vulliez talks about synthesizing prefigurative, electoral/entryist, and revolutionary politics in B.C. and beyond.
Watch the full video here.
