A cab driver recently described the crisis of overproduction to me, without using those words. “They are so short-sighted,” he continued, “Who will buy anything if we’re all replaced by AI?” Another driver raged about the recent case of a man who died in an ER waiting room due to underfunding, saying, “Carney, Smith, all of them should go to jail. They killed him”. A former Alberta separatist told me he realized replacing the “Laurentian Elites” with Calgary oil barons wasn’t the solution. A neighbour blamed “late stage capitalism” and “exploitative” landlords for the fact that our apartment building is falling apart. A grocery store worker proclaimed that they, the clerks, could do a better job running the place than “the suits in head office”. An ironworker said, “You know, it wouldn’t be that hard to shut down the entire goddamn province”. Even the prospect of a new pipeline deal is failing to impress Alberta roughnecks. “It’ll never happen,” a man on the bus told me, “And if it does, we gotta admit that there’s something wrong with the weather and maybe we shouldn’t be doing this anyway”. Events – economic hardship, political chaos, and weak leaders – are educating the workers of Alberta. Consciousness is rising like steam from a pot of water set to boil, and revolutionary conclusions are bubbling up to the surface. People are only too happy to have these conversations – I never go anywhere anymore without a copy of the paper and a handful of stickers to hand out. More and more, ordinary people are willing to listen to our ideas. “We have to stand together,” one man told me. “That’s the problem with this country. Everyone’s in it for themselves and that means we fail”.
-Jillian G., Edmonton
