I just came back from a newspaper sale at UQAM and I wanted to share with you my impression of the people who came to visit our kiosk.
It seems that more and more “normal” people are becoming interested in communism. This is very different from last year, when almost everyone you met was dressing in, for example, “alternative” or even “bohemian” clothes. Just now, at the university, I met a working mother who told me that she was interested in communism “because she had seen the communists fighting at the forefront of the struggle for Palestine.” She subsequently bought our newspaper and will try to attend our lecture next week on the myths of communism.
Another journalism student described to me how the contrast between the so-called journalistic neutrality she was taught in class and the false coverage in the newspapers of the war in Palestine is what led her to anti-capitalism.
When we say that events shape consciousness, I think that’s exactly what we see at UQAM (and probably elsewhere too!): the horrors of war and the complicity of our governments awaken normal workers and students to political life. It’s very motivating to know that more and more ordinary people are taking a serious interest in communist ideas.
