It's hard to create a community based on love and compassion in the middle of a society based on greed and fear. The hippies tried it without much success even in the backwoods. We tried it in the women's movement but even in all-women groups, the training we received in a patriarchal society restricted our ability to achieve it. The Occupy camps are the closest I've seen to that beloved community that has so escaped our grasp.

"I've seen the glass ceiling and it's made out of golf balls," Nancy Riche told a women's conference of the Canadian Labour Congress in the 1990s when she was secretary-treasurer.

That combination of wry Newfoundland humour and telling it like it is was Nancy's trademark. She was a fierce fighter for women and for workers. She stood up against all odds to become a major figure in Canada's labour movement. Nancy died on Saturday in Newfoundland, her home. In typical Nancy fashion, she volunteered to do phoning for the NDP during the Newfoundland election from her hospital bed.

Almost everyone I've talked to since what seemed like the sudden announcement of Jack Layton's death had the same experience that I did. It hit me harder than I expected. I've lost other comrades, many closer than Jack was to my politics and my practice but his death hit me harder. I've been thinking about why.

Maybe it was because we all believed with him that he could beat the cancer. And it seemed so cruel that just at the moment of his greatest triumph, it took his life. Such an archetypal tragedy. It might have left us in despair except for his amazing open letter to us.

It is time to stop talking about what went wrong with the left that was so effective in the 20th century and identify the forces that are leading change in the 21st century. Primary among these, in my view, are indigenous peoples and movements.

In Canada, the most important new group is one that many readers may not even have heard of: Defenders of the Land. I will let them tell you who they are, as they explain on their website:

In an unprecedented protest Parliament page Brigette Marcelle (aka Brigette DePape) holds up a "Stop Harper" sign during the throne speech. Below is her explanation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, June 3, 2011

Senate Page disrupts throne speech Harper's disastrous agenda needs to be stopped with creative action and civil disobedience

Ottawa -- During the reading of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's throne speech today, a young page was yanked from the Senate Chamber as she tried to hold up a stop-sign placard reading "Stop Harper."

Travellers at Terminal 3 in the Toronto airport were astounded Tuesday morning to see Gandalf the Grey and several hobbits march their handcuffed prisoner Stephen Harper, dressed as the evil lord Sauron, into a Syncrude Ltd. recruiting meeting. They demanded that Synacrude take him back to Mordor aka the Alberta tar sands, "the hell on earth that he created."

Caroline Castonguay-Boisvert was one of several Quebecois to respond to my blog agreeing with much of my analysis of the Quebec NDP vote and welcoming the invitation to work more closely together. Here is her response:

Hi Judy!

I see you have received a lot of attention from us, people who live in Quebec. I agree with what you say, and I wish more people outside of Quebec would understand it. It saddens me that Harper didn't get the message, when really, he should listen for the sake of Canadian unity.

We vote NDP because we were (and are even more now) scared of a Harper majority. We wanted to stop the Conservatives so that all we love about Canada is not taken away, as some of it is already gone.

It was an extraordinary election. Both Stephen Harper and Jack Layton got the results they were aiming for. Stephen Harper got his majority and Jack Layton replaced the Liberal Party not only as the Official Opposition but quite possibly as the only federal alternatives to the Harperites. Canada now looks like so many other countries with one party on the Right and one on the Left. So why do I feel so bad?

"We're going to win, Judy," Stephen Lewis told me over the phone a few days before the 1990 Ontario election.
"C'mon Stephen, you guys always get a little delusional as the election approaches," I replied.
"No, really, we are going to win."

It is beyond belief that a broadcast consortium that no one appointed has decided to exclude Elizabeth May from the leaders' debate. That a handful of TV executives can wipe out the clear voting preferences of almost a million Canadians and exclude the only woman leader from the debate is an egregious example of how our democracy is dying of a thousand blows.

It is time for the people of this country to stand up and let the media and the politicians know that an election is a time for people's voices to be heard and Elizabeth May speaks for a lot of people in this country.

Here is what you can do:

- Sign petition