United in struggle: building a broad worker solidarity movement

I first became aware of United in Struggle (UiS) in January 2024. I had just moved back to Vancouver after spending four months in Saskatchewan. Wanting to get involved in organizing, I asked local activists their thoughts on which community groups were doing good work. I was quickly pointed toward United in Struggle, a organization getting workers politically active. After reaching out through their Instagram page saying I was interested in getting involved, I was put in contact with Martha Roberts, and we met up for coffee and a conversation. 

Roberts is one of the main organizers behind United in Struggle as well the coordinator of their MASS Movement and Struggle School, and has a long history of political activism in the Lower Mainland. Her own political journey started in the 1990s while working at La Quena Coffee House on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver, where she met refugees from Chile, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Exposed to Marxist politics here, she recalls having an “aha” moment, recognizing the need to look deeper at the root causes of societal problems. This is also when she started to learn the importance of praxis. The people she met were not “armchair Marxists just reading and writing” but were involved in revolutionary movements. Of this time, she says she realized “it wasn’t only possible to learn about revolutionary movements, but it was really imperative to apply what you learn.” 

So, in 2001, Roberts helped found the Vancouver Bus Riders Union to organize and educate around transit equity and build working-class solidarity. Through continued organizing and working together with Filipino activists in the Lower Mainland, she was able to travel in 2003 to the Philippines where she learned how to do mass line organizing; while there, she also started to really think about strategy and “linking theory to solid organizing practice.” When she came back to Vancouver, she co-founded groups like the Organizing Centre for Social and Economic Justice, and the Alliance for People’s Health. While participating in the leadership of these organizations, she was able to practise all that she had been learning. Echoing Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, “Theory’s cool, but theory with no practice ain’t shit.” This led her to conclude that, “it’s possible to have visions of what a society can look like and a strategy to get there [but] without application, it’s empty.” On the heels of this realization, in fall 2021, United in Struggle began to take shape.

As Roberts sees it, United in Struggle’s job is to “project a revolutionary horizon and say ‘yes, it’s possible to fight for a better world and it’s possible to win [and] connect the revolutionary necessity to the day-to-day struggles of workers.’” With this in mind, United in Struggle flourished and by 2023 they were able to launch the East Van Workers Assembly (EVWA).

Humble beginnings

United in Struggle started out as a small collection of experienced organizers from other groups in the Lower Mainland who wanted to evaluate their past work and study theory and strategy. After approximately six months of study, this small group decided it was time to combine this with social investigation and class analysis. This, Roberts explains, is when they actually went out to talk to workers in East Vancouver to get a better understanding of the struggles working-class people are facing. These were the first steps in their process of mass line organizing. Mass line is based on Mao Zedong’s methodologies which led to the participation of hundreds of millions of workers and peasants in a revolutionary movement. Of this, Roberts states, “regardless of one’s analysis of what China is […] they did manage to have a revolutionary process.” With this information, United in Struggle began to form a strategic plan to “reinvigorate [the] class struggle in [British Columbia].”

As Roberts sees it, United in Struggle’s job is to “project a revolutionary horizon and say ‘yes, it’s possible to fight for a better world and it’s possible to win [and] connect the revolutionary necessity to the day-to-day struggles of workers.’” With this in mind, United in Struggle flourished and by 2023 they were able to launch the East Van Workers Assembly (EVWA). 

The EVWA meets on the last Sunday of every month to build a democratic mass movement that is led by workers. I went to my first EVWA in February 2024 at the Strathcona Community Centre on Keefer Street in East Vancouver. I walked in not sure what to expect. There were EVWA posters and signs with arrows pointing past the open courts where people were playing basketball and up a flight of stairs. When I found the right door, I entered a crowded room of people making small talk, eating snacks (including homemade chocolate chip cookies) provided by UiS, and waiting for the assembly to begin. Workers gathered not only to talk about their grievances but to come up with plans to address them and to strategize ways to organize their co-workers. Many of the other attendees were fed up with the current political status quo and tired of parties like the New Democratic Party (NDP) only paying lip service to their issues. There was also a contingent of union members upset with union leadership who wanted their unions to take a more militant stance when it came to organizing. Unions are invited to attend all meetings to share their perspectives. Unorganized workers are also invited to participate in an effort by United in Struggle to bridge the gap between people working in all industries, rank-and-file union members, and union leadership, so all workers have an independent political voice. United in Struggle’s aim is to give people the skills they need to organize their own workplaces and increase worker organizing generally. Roberts categorizes the EVWA as “a space for workers to come together and talk about class struggle.”

Revolutionary possibilities

While at the EVWA, I met Zachary Williams. Williams got involved with United in Struggle in fall 2022 and is now the co-leader of the committee that runs the EVWA. His own political story starts in the early 2000s, when his mother went back to school to become a teacher. At the time, the B.C. Liberal Party (now B.C. United) was in power and made cuts to the public sector, including education. He remembers joining his mother on the picket line at the age of 13 during the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation strike and considers it his “first exposure to class politics,” though he didn’t become serious about politics until university. Not wanting to be just another “armchair Marxist” he joined the Young Communist League (YCL) – the youth wing of the Communist Party of Canada. The YCL provided Williams with a political home for seven years while he bounced between school, low-wage retail work, and a stint as a janitor. Eventually, Williams went on to pursue a master’s degree in communication at Simon Fraser University and was on the executive of the Teaching Support Staff Union. Williams came into the YCL with high hopes, but ultimately left with nothing but disappointment. Of the YCL, Williams says many of the people involved were insightful and had good political instincts, but lacked the know-how and skills it would take to turn the group into a vehicle for political change. “We could talk socialism, we could talk class struggle, but there was no way to connect it to actual concrete organizing. It ended up being more of a social club,” he says.

I was also a member of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) before I found United in Struggle and much of Williams’s experiences reflect my own: stale and directionless leadership mixed with a strong hesitancy to do on-the-ground organizing. I eventually left for reasons similar to Williams’; I wanted to be involved in something tangible, something material. Despite being the second-oldest active party in Canada and a member of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, the CPC was simply not up to snuff for either of us. 

In United in Struggle, Williams found others who wanted to do the kind of organizing he had hoped for in the YCL. Along with the Workers Assembly, United in Struggle has many avenues for people to participate. In winter 2023, the EVWA launched what they call the Solidarity Workers Action Team (SWAT). This initiative is meant to mobilize people who come to the EVWA picket lines around the Lower Mainland. SWAT is important for United in Struggle for two reasons: first, it’s meant to build solid, supportive relationships with unions and unionized workers – such as by showing up on picket lines – and second, it gives unorganized workers a taste of real working-class power by showing what can be accomplished when we have class solidarity. Though their actions are currently confined by labour law, United in Struggle wants to show that workers can have power when they get organized. Roberts states that as labour activists with revolutionary politics, “it’s imperative that we struggle to expand and democratize the worker’s movement,” a sentiment also voiced by Williams. 

Democratic decisions

This is what makes United in Struggle special: they are not bound to a political ideology or socialist tendency, nor are they meant to be a big-tent party. Their goal is to get people organized to advance the workers’ movement in a way that the members democratically decide. It doesn’t matter if you only have the capacity to put up some posters around town, or if you’re ready for more and looking to build your organizing skills – you will find a political home filled with workers who are just as fed up as you are and are ready to fight back. Discussion is the basis of their democratic decision making. When I go to EVWA, the people in United in Struggle are not trying to push their own politics (as members come from different political backgrounds themselves); rather, they want to provide a vehicle that allows workers to get into the driver’s seat. If you’re not a socialist but you care about working-class issues, that’s fine. Your voice will still be heard and your opinions respected. This approach to organizing resulted in the creation of the Workers Platform to offer a basis of unity for members. 

United in Struggle gathered the opinions of those who attend EVWA as well as workers they’ve met on picket lines, union organizers, people they’ve spoken to while canvassing, and from a broad online survey they conducted. This platform was created so workers have a set of demands to fight for and agitate around that represent their actual material interests. From December 2023 to August 2024, they gathered this information, and the platform was formed after rounds of amendments stemming from democratic conversations. This Workers Platform, as Williams explains, functions as “a roadmap for directing [the] class struggle against the big monopoly capitalists” and presents a vision of what the economy and the government would look like if the balance of power was tipped in favour of the working class rather than our bosses and landlords. It includes things like public ownership of the means of production and worker control over that production, production serving human need and ecological sustainability, and eliminating anti-worker and anti-union legislation. As Williams puts it, “Mainstream political parties like the NDP claim to represent us but all they do is constrict our imagination and restrict our political action. They try to sell us political platforms that are designed to pad the pockets of the rich while at best leaving a little on the side for the rest of us so we can divvy it up and say thank you.” For example, before the last federal election the NDP promised to provide renters with up to $5,000 a year to mitigate the housing crisis. Though this may sound good at first, it'd actually mean the public would be giving renters money to pay for rents that are already too high – essentially a subsidy for landlords, funneling cash from the government into the pockets of landlords while renters act as the go-between. 

If you’re in the Lower Mainland and you’re tired of being exploited by a boss who doesn’t pay you a living wage, hounded by a landlord who keeps jacking up your rent, exhausted by a political establishment that only cares about you when election season comes around, and you want to organize to do something about it, reach out to United in Struggle and get involved. I’ll see you at the next East Van Workers Assembly.