In the fall of 1999 I participated in a rally in support of striking public school sanitation workers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, eastern Canada where I was then a member of the local branch of the International Socialists (IS). I held a placard in support of the sanitation staff union local as about eighty of us marched to a local city high school. We listened to firebrand denunciations about the plight of the workers that outlined an alarming story: where there was once salaried and unionized employees of the public sector, the school board had begun to “contract-out” the sanitation of its schools. Former municipal employees who earned a decent income were now either summarily dismissed (with compensation) or were compelled to join the private firm that acquired the sanitation contract. They were paid significantly less, worked longer hours, had fewer breaks, and were scheduled just short of accruing overtime hours. The rally took place at the same time that the “living wage” movement was just beginning to catch on in North America. After the speeches there was even an incursion into the high school led by some IS members who marshaled (they said “radicalized”) the students in support of the workers. It was a tactic I had argued strongly against but my protests had fallen on deaf ears. The debacle of dozens of high school students aimlessly streaming out of their classes with only a pretense of interest in the rally was more than enough to push me even further toward my exit from the IS. (It also didn't help that I later denounced my comrades as “paperboy Bolsheviks” before being escorted from a meeting … never to return.) But in the lead up and again on the day of the rally, I tried to understand why a show of solidarity and such provocation for this particular group of workers was so important to our IS chapter.

I raised this same question with a senior Marxist comrade (who was not an IS member) on the lawn outside the Halifax Citadel National Historical Site. His response was at once familiar and surprising.