Courage, my friends, 'tis not
too late to build a better world."
 -Tommy Douglas

Keep the "New" in New Democratic Party!

The Nova Scotia Young New Democrats agree that our party represents progress, leadership, fairness, and freedom. We have always been the voice of the marginalized- women fighting for pay equity and autonomy of their bodies, aboriginals seeking justice, queers seeking acceptance, disabled people battlling for accessability, the impoverished struggling for empowerment. New Democrats, in the words of Tommy Douglas, want a government made up of mice rather than cats. This is what makes us a unique party. That is what makes our ideas New! We are activists hungry for change, we want to see a new kind of politics and a new kind of democracy in Canada. An NDP government will mean economic fairness, social justice, peace advocacy and environmental sustainability. Our party may be 48 years old now, but our ideas are still as relevant, fresh and necessary as they were in 1961! 

Canada, along with the rest of the world, is going through a tough time.  Faced with a grave crisis in both the environment and the economy, it is our duty and responsibility to stop the problem from growing, and change the system so that such a catastrophe cannot happen again. Time and time again we have seen that both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party is unable -perhaps even unwilling- to make life better for working families in this country. The need for bold leadership falls to Canada's progressives to bring about the much needed social change which will create jobs, pensions, health care, social justice and economic fairness. Those progressives are us, the New Democrats!

This week, New Democrats from all over Canada will be coming to the capital of our beautiful province for the NDP's Federal Convention. Conventions are a wonderful thing, where the membership of the party propose, debate and pass resolutions which become party policy. It's why we have "Democratic" in our name! In the weeks leading up to convention, there's always an exciting issue being fiercely debated by party members. At our last convention in Quebec City in 2006, this issue was the war in Afghanistan, the result being the party membership overwhelmingly voting to end the war and bring our troops home.

This time, the issue that  has everyone talking is a lot less serious and meaningful. In a time of crisis, where over 414,000 jobs have been lost since last October, and the world's ecosystems are on the brink of collapse, all that the NDP can find time to talk about is whether or not we should be called "new" Democrats or just plain old Democrats.

Unfortunately, we cannot view the proposed name change to the "Democratic Party of Canada" as anything more than attempt to play along to the popularity of U.S. President Barack Obama. While he is inspiring in many ways -being the first black president is a huge breakthrough and a serious blow to racism- it should be noted that Barack Obama hardly qualifies as a progressive. Opposing the right for homosexuals to marry and dumping trillions of taxpayer dollars on the corporations who caused the same economic crisis which has vapourized hundreds of thousands of jobs are not values that our party holds. The rest of the democratic party is even worse, blocking universal health care and pro-worker legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act in congress. We do not feel that a comparison between our party and the current right-wing government in the United States is one that should be made.

We encourage our members as well as the rest of the NDP membership to oppose the resolution to remove the "New" from "New Democratic Party." There are other similar amendments, such as forming an exploratory committee to look into possible name changes and consulting with the membership, which we can support. We simply do not like this particular choice of name for the party.

See you at convention.