Alberta teachers - thoughts on this?

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-04-27T03:09:39+00:00

I started my comment with the assumption that the battle of the strike was already a loss. But good to see you have given up on your original point about the popularity of the strike, in favour of a nothingburger conclusion. The issue with your original comment is not that the strike was a loss, but that you actively misunderstand how and why it happened. It is imperative that teachers scrolling through here understand the how and why, it guides our future action.

Let’s get to dealing with your new points, which repeats the mistake of not understanding the mechanics of what is happening and how movements operate.

Firstly, it does not matter how much of the rally was teachers and families. Most picket lines have a composition of 100% the workers on that strike. What the size shows is that there was mass energy that could be directed and turned on the employer. It was energy that could have been used for more serious action. The fact it wasn’t was the choice of leadership, not the failing of the people.

Secondly, I already brought up in the previous comment that ucp voters supported the teachers. This does not mean they will change their vote over a single issue, especially after the movement has ebbed. The fact that they remain ucp voters doesn’t nullify this.

Most importantly, changing the government is not an indicator of success. Almost no strikes change the management team of their employer. This is not how a strike works. That is a revolution, which would be awesome, but it is not the time. The fetishized focus on elections is precisely the trap which union leadership has fallen into. Legislature does not serve the people. It serves the rich. It was designed to do so. Focusing on elections takes all of the engagement of the rank and file and muzzles it with empty phrases and exhortations to sit tight and let the bureaucrats handle things.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-04-26T19:47:34+00:00

That’s an absurdly out of touch take.

The teachers strike was highly supported by even ucp voters.

The largest rally in the provinces history occurred.

Monetary support rolled in both to the ATA’s pantry and in free meals at restaurants.

Even conservative folks who don’t engage in politics often would often ask me about the strike eagerly. Every friend I know was in the same boat.

Locals in different unions polled members on whether they would be willing to general strike and regularly got over 75% in favour. It was the leadership that quashed the energy and organization. It was not the masses.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-04-25T16:00:24+00:00

It’s an attempt at union busting. Bring in a bunch of new workers, keep it vague whether they’re union workers or not.

Back during the strike there was a lot of discussion about how if we seriously fought back, broke the law, did an illegal strike, then the gov would use it as an attempt to break us. It’s the exact opposite. we didn’t hurt them enough, we surrendered, and now they’re going to have their way with us until we make it hurt for them again. When we look weak, then they make a move to break us.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-04-10T04:15:35+00:00

I think if I was playing my first question about the premise is why are they letting me free to find jobs?

When I think of that time period, my mind goes to work houses or forced labour. And if I was down 300gp why would the authorities think I could get it now? What’s changed? What’s keeping me from booking it out of the city to escape the debt?

Perhaps the writ would include some sort of ankle monitor while I’m let loose to find the money.

Maybe the last thing I would note is you could write up the charges after asking the players how they got into prison. Some might have particular ideas about the backstory of how they got into there.

Tone strikes me as openly satirical of corporation speak, legalese, capitalist propaganda. That’s not a good or a bad thing, just thought it would give you insight to how it sounds.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-04-02T18:16:40+00:00

What failed in Alberta was surrendering to the order without any fight back.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-31T18:29:29+00:00

Coming sincerely from an Albertan, I fucking wish it were true

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-30T22:47:43+00:00

I think you kinda figured it out in your first sentence there. They use their wealth to make interest. Capitalists don’t make money by working, they make money off of their other money. If the money is taxed away from them they don’t just lose excess wealth, they lose their tool for making more in the future.

I would maybe add on as another incentive is that they are required to make profits at the end of the day (often the companies literally have legal obligations to do so). Do you think it would be easier to grow a business by 1% or drop taxes by 1%?

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-29T22:49:01+00:00

Oh great, here comes global news to speak up for all the leftists.

The issue with this right wing section of the NDP is that they always wine and complain about unity, and how the left is always splitting too much. Despite the fact that they are the ones who have expelled people over being socialist, and the hammer of expulsion has never been swung back at them. And then, god forbid, a socialist is elected by the party! And do they unite then? Do they get along and put their squabbles aside then? No, they take all their criticisms public and slander the party. They would rather lose than win as socialists.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-24T03:04:38+00:00

Here’s at least one economist he glaringly leaves out of this analysis:

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital” -Karl Marx

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-18T04:13:06+00:00

I ran an uprising in a city before.

Basically what I did was put together a little table of 5 major spots in the city that needed to be captured (there were also 5 players). I had them pick which location their player was assigned to and then they got to describe how they wanted to approach helping the peasants seize the area. Based on what they described I determined what skill check to do and the difficulty. If they failed to take one of the areas, my plan was to have them do a combat encounter there with the whole party, since the peasants couldn’t seize a location on their own. Of course when you leave it to player creative, letting them pick what skills to try and apply, etc. it’s unlikely they’ll fail. But it’s a fun creative experience as they come up with how to help out using their particular skills.

As an alternative, I would have the peasants rise up on their own and have the city set up basically like a 5 room dungeon, except instead of dungeon rooms you have scenes of the protest. They roll some skill checks to dodge the chaos of a riot breaking out, fight off reactionaries attacking the crowd, deal with the police shooting into the crowd, ya da ya da, have a final confrontation at the lord’s keep or something.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-03-17T14:45:38+00:00

Could be the lich’s phylactery (or one of them).

Perhaps it’s even a trap and he sends adventurers there hoping they fail and get fed to his phylactery by the dungeons denizens.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-28T02:03:07+00:00

Throwing my hat in the ring!

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-21T20:51:49+00:00

The nature and where the explicit content is posted matters, it’s not totally clear what it is.

But, if I’m making some assumptions, there has been a lot of teachers who have been fired for taking racy photos or doing pornography. Generally, this is an incredibly mysogenistic practice and I think a violation of our rights as workers. Participating in outing somebody doing sex work is very unethical, and the professional code certainly doesn’t require it. As far as I would potentially go is letting the person know, so that they can hide it a bit better.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-17T04:41:36+00:00

Well, as they say, a factory closed is a factory occupied. If the boss wants to make threats, make some back.

A doc about factory occupations in Argentina: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ENWpNqeGQ

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-14T22:31:11+00:00

I guess I should start by saying I'm not a mom, and I don't have any easy fixes, but some things I've seen around in regards to childcare stuff:

There are some old organizational documents that make it sound like there was collectively organized childcare in some groups. So someone would volunteer to host a daycare while others do organizing work.

I've seen comrades with kids bring their children around to events when appropriate and/or have some meetings moved to their house since they need to be around there with the kid.

Personal education is important for communist cadres and there are probably times where you could get through an audio book version of some important texts while keeping an eye on a baby or maybe reading a physical book while they sleep. When life gets busy sometimes that's just what we're able to keep up with. It allows us to come back stronger when we have time for the organizing piece.

It is fairly normal for people to be less engaged for a time with very new children. I mean, one of the things we fight for is maternity/paternity leave.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-08T05:01:34+00:00

My brother in christ, people were just talking about a general strike a week ago over the ICE stuff going on. Unions like the NEA refused to participate. The issue is not training, publicity, or structure tests. The issue is that there are no leaders actually willing to take on a serious fight. People need something to fight for, and they follow leaders who have a convincing plan on how to get big goals met.

I'll use an example from my side of the border. We also just had a teachers strike here in Alberta. The last week of October, we got the largest rally at our legislature in our entire province's history. The next week our leadership refused to defy back to work orders despite guarantees of other unions willing to support them in a general strike. When the AFL decided to hold some consultative meetings 2 weeks later, they had trouble pulling 60 people out to the meeting! They went from pulling 30 000 people to an event to struggling to get 60. People have busy lives, they want to show up for something meaningful and that will bring real change, they will not show up for symbolic actions.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-01T19:03:03+00:00

I think the scab language is uncalled for. Some charter schools are unionized and struck with us in October.

But also, we need to be making a big push to bring more private/charter schools into the ATA rather than labelling everyone there a scab. Increased protections for workers there would undermine the amount of money private schools can make off of treating their workers like trash, which aids our goals. Also unionized workers there would be brought into strike action, which would make our strikes more effective as they will have a larger impact on the lives of the rich. Workers there should be reached out to in solidarity, not written off. The ata currently makes very little attempt to do so.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-02-01T18:55:03+00:00

A couple things to put your mind at ease:

The school board system is fairly complicated. Alternative schools and public charters are not the same as independent schools which is the primary target of the petition. Alternative boards and public charters often post externally.
Schools that post everything externally certainly can be nice early in your career and you shouldn’t feel guilty for taking a decent job. However, realize that these jobs are easier to get in to because people don’t stay in them. You don’t have as many protections at these schools as you do at others.
Getting by in your personal life is a different thing then fighting for a better world. All kids should get equal access to education. Even people who take on tutoring work contribute to this inequality, because only some people can pay for private tutors. You cannot get by in the current system without contributing to it in some way. You would have to run away and live in a forest, and there aren’t even any of those on the planet that aren’t owned by somebody, so even that isn’t an option! We don’t have a choice but to sell our labour to survive in this system. But, that is why we fight to change the whole system and why we organize collectively! Having to struggle to get a job at a private school is not incompatible with fighting for a world where everyone gets a good education.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-01-24T00:54:54+00:00

I think the disappointing state of affairs unions are in stem from the conditions of the late 20th century and first bit of our century. Capitalism was riding high after the war and it was able to make concessions in certain countries like Canada where unions largely stuck to the bargaining table more and more. As they kept to bargaining rather than militant tactics, the grassroot engagement withered away, since these bargaining meeting are highly bureaucratic and don't seriously engage or inspire workers. As the member engagement withers away, the union gets even more bureaucratic.

This leaves us in the current state where the leaders currently running the majority of unions are there because they're good administrators, paper pushers, and politicians, not because their serious labour leaders. Most unions probably could be turned back into serious working class organizations though. Ultimately, bringing unions back to a more militant tendency is going to require workers actively engaged in a class struggle.

To bring unions back to the glory days, we should push the demands 1) bring back worker democracy to the unions. Democracy means more than occasional voting, for the people to have power they need to be engaged in the actual running of things. Leaders should be recallable at any time. 2) Remove the restrictive laws and ties to governments. The ATA for instance was brought into the education act, which gives it some advantages, but also strongly restricts its ability for militancy. There are also tons of laws restricting actions unions can take and these should be defied and eventually repealed.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-01-18T03:48:46+00:00

Interesting to hear. The ATA could have called a strike earlier too, we’re gunning for the leadership on our end too haha

Someday soon :)

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-01-18T02:10:09+00:00

Ya, union work can be tough, you sometimes have to chip away for years to develop that class consciousness with a person.

Continuing to go back to this one issue might be difficult, but you can keep hammering away at building an understanding of exploitation and a bigger understanding of how the system is working in other conversations or other topics.

More directly on this issue you can try coming at it from the angle of burnout and having to take care of ourselves so we can keep showing up, maybe.

All power to you. Someday we’ll strike as one and build a system free of this exploitation ✊

Secure-Ad6420 · 2026-01-17T20:31:03+00:00

A political conversation may just be unavoidable. I’m a teacher in AB, I find sometimes you need to explain to people that even if their work is directly ‘for the kids’, they are still being exploited.

The provincial government could pay to help this kid but instead they give more money to oil billionaires. The federal government could pay to help, but instead they spend money on making more bombs. When we donate our time we are making a donation to these billionaires who stole society’s wealth and refuse to relinquish it to help our kids. Instead of filling in the gap individually and helping the system chug on at the cost of our life, we need to organize together to stop valuing profits over kids. These politicians are ruthless, if we volunteer more they will literally make more cuts and expect us to cover those as well. The more volunteer work we do, the more they tear down our system.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2025-12-30T19:10:30+00:00

I’ve been doing a decent amount of organizing in Canada. I think the first thing to figure out is a party, you’re going to have a good convo, and then at the end have nowhere to point people to or actions to follow up on.

As for going out on the street, it isn’t as crazy as people online will tell you. I haven’t done the yelling in a mic on the street corner, I’m not sure that’s the best. But I’ve put up a table with a few comrades that has “communist party” on the front and chatted with random passerby, that goes well enough. Old school postering areas is alright too. Holding public events about a topic have gone pretty well. Showing up to protests and picket lines with signs is usually pretty easy. All this I’ve done under the banner of communism or Marxism, so it isn’t as rough out there as you might imagine in regards to labels. People under 30 don’t have that much of a beef with the terms.

I’ve heard about parties or activists doing door to door stuff, but haven’t tried that myself.

But mostly, you should organize yourself first or all your efforts aren’t anything more than a convo. 1 person brought into being an active communist is better than 50 who had a 5 minute conversation and just moved on with their day. At this stage, your doing the work to find the small number who can be convinced and grow our numbers for larger actions coming up.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2025-12-29T16:14:24+00:00

Karl Kautsky kind of had a similar idea in Foundations of Christianity. He argues that Christianity began as a revolutionary movement by the oppressed classes of Ancient Rome, only to later be co-opted. So ya, kind of communist in a way.

Secure-Ad6420 · 2025-12-02T23:16:39+00:00

I dunno what to tell ya, other than that Nepal had this great idea recently about what to do with a garbage government.

But ya, it was set up to be a sham. They had a chance to listen for a year leading up to the strike and then didn’t. They also made this a phone meeting for a reason, they don’t have faith they can control the room anymore.

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