How can the left fight back in the age of austerity? This is a clear and constant question being posed by and to people on the left. When the worldwide economic crisis hit in 2008, it was clear there would not be an immediate shift toward radical alternatives to capitalism. Still, five years into the crisis there has been little growth or development in the position of the anti-capitalist left.

There has been slew of recent news stories in the press about how the austerity experiment in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America has utterly failed. Left-wing economists, such as Dean Baker and Paul Krugman, have repeatedly hammered home that the economic rationale behind austerity is baseless. The New Yorker even just published a story declaring austerity has failed.

On March 27 of this year, two workers were fired from a local Halifax café. They were actively trying to organize a union in their workplace. Their café is part of a larger co-operative in Nova Scotia called Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op.

Since the summer, the Ontario Liberals have been engaged in a campaign to limit bargaining rights and implement concessions across the public sector. They started with teachers and school support staff in the province by introducing Bill 115. The Liberals were planning on expanding this attack to some 400,000 public sector employees before the legislature was prorogued. Ostensibly, this campaign was undertaken to balance the $15-billion budget deficit, but in reality this has been nothing but a crass ploy to curb the power of organized labour.

Yesterday the Michigan legislature passed “right-to-work” legislation that would ban unions from collecting dues from all those covered by union contracts via paycheck deductions. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has said he intends to sign the bill into law. Michigan will now join 23 other states in America that have similar anti-union laws. The psychological blow of Michigan, a union stronghold, passing right-to-work will have on the U.S. labour movement can’t be overstated.

On November 14, the streets of southern Europe will be full of people saying no to austerity. In Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Malta and Cyprus, unions will be conducting a co-ordinated general strike. This one-day strike comes on the heels of numerous demonstrations and labour actions across the region in an effort to resist government imposed austerity and privatizations. Last week in Greece they had a 48-hour general strike; the 20th in the last two years. This is precisely the type of action and co-ordination that the Canadian left must engage in to defeat Harper’s austerity. We need a national day of action against austerity of our own.

So Omar Khadr is finally back from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and in Canada, or to be more accurate, a Canadian jail. The Conservatives, after years of vilifying him as a terrorist and stating he was not welcome back, were forced to accept Khadr into Canada by the United States. Judging by Public Safety Minister Vic Toew's barely suppressed indignation when announcing Khadr’s return, the Conservatives are none to pleased about it.

The supporters of Khadr have been quick to jump to his defence upon learning of his return. Anyone who was following the Khadr case in the media this week was treated to endless storylines about a divisive figure who some saw as a terrorist and others saw as an exploited child soldier.

Recently I attended the funeral of one of my relatives and while we were at the gravesite the minister read aloud the opening lines from Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and so forth. The minister explained that these lines captured the complexities of the process of mourning. We both grieve for our loss and appreciate our time with the departed.

On Labour Day weekend a friend of mine asked me, in regards to the labour movement, what can people do to fight back against the social injustices in our society? How can people effectively implement change? The directness of this question made me think that too often we are focused on analytical questions and not enough on what to do about all the terrible things in this world. So I quickly came up with four things you can do to start to fight back.

If any of you have traveled out to the East Coast recently you have probably stopped by Peggy's Cove to snap a picture of its famous lighthouse. If you have gone in the last year or two you undoubtedly noticed the lighthouse looks less like the idyllic postcard image you had imagined. Its chipped and faded paint caused by rough Maritime weather and federal neglect has left the lighthouse in a state of disrepair.