Why You Don’t Know About the Uncut Movement


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We all need to read up on the Uncut Movement. Canadians, Americans, British, Australians, whoever. But the first rhetorical question is why hasn’t the corporate media been promoting it as a significant populist movement?

Or maybe you like public spending cuts? You don’t think high quality public education and healthcare, and treated drinking water and sewage aren’t actually human rights for all, rich or poor?

You maybe think tax cuts and domestic tax havens and no BC tax on the first $500,000 of corporate revenue starting January 1, 2012 is good because you are winning the class war?

If so, we outnumber you. Significantly. And we’re mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.

Deadbeat dads are increasingly vilified in our society. Why not deadbeat corporations? Technically, they aren’t deadbeat corporations because the cronies they fund who get elected set up the rules so that tax cuts are God’s Divine Plan[tm] and perfectly legal. And when you think about it, weak or unenforced laws create deadbeat dads too.

Then from tax cuts, we get crippled governments forced to cut public services.

The Uncut movement is my kind of tax revolt. It recognizes that society functions well when we have fair taxation that can provide basic human rights for everyone, rich or poor. It recognizes that things are cheaper and better when we buy them together as a society.

Why do you think people want a national pharmacare plan? It’s cheaper to buy things in bulk and if the nation bought our drugs collectively, we’d get a better deal. Why don’t we have it? Big Pharma and the politicians they fund to get elected don’t want to lose out on profits if we starting buying for 34,000,000 at a time.

That is also why the BC Liberal party cancelled UBC’s Therapeutic Initiatives program that independently examines drugs to see what works and what is a waste of money, in part because federal regulators have had their regulatory teeth pulled. The program costs $1,000,000 annually and saved $53,000,000 last year. Hello Big Pharma.

Deadbeat corporations. Deadbeat, greedy, tax-avoiding people. They’re becoming social pariahs. It’s about time.

So read up on the Uncut movement. It’s on fire in Twitter. You can see it in national movements for Canadians, Americans, British, and Australians.

And you can probably now understand why the mainstream corporate media is not showering you with the movement. This is a do-it-yourself movement, like democracy ought to be: by the people, for the people.

We see Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and a host of repressive, anti-democratic middle eastern states awash in people’s democracy movements. We see regressive, anti-worker legislation in Republican dominated Wisconsin and Ohio. And we remember how Gordon Campbell was ahead of the curb in cancelling public sector worker collective bargaining rights 9 years ago despite it violating our Charter rights.

Now you’ll see that this is a class war: the rich and the corporation directors, who are looking to cut taxes and privatize public services to pad their profits, versus real working people who are having services, wages and benefits cut to pay for the bailouts for the irresponsible corporations.

And while we’ve been afraid of a North American Union that would be a corporate haven, we should actually be mobilizing for a North American Union whose principles are to unite for a better world for real human beings, especially the poor, and not those fake human beings called corporations.

It’s time to get Uncut!

Be an evangelist. The poorest 95% of our society needs us working together on this. But it demands solidarity!

Let’s make 2011 a massive re-democratizing year all around the world.

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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun
Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

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6 thoughts on “Why You Don’t Know About the Uncut Movement”

  1. Thank you for mentioning Canada UnCut. In Toronto we are mobilizing for March 21st in Toronto and another NationWide action with Canada UnCut on March 26th.

    We are going to be nautical. Bring your Captain’s hats, whistles and other supplies, TOUncut sailors! Every year billions of dollars of Canadian corporate income is shipped to offshore bank accounts to tax dodge. We’re going to offer Canadians the opportunity to send THEIR money on an offshore cruise of Panama, the Carribean and as a final stop, we’ll take their money skiing in the Switzerland for the low, low price of $500. So Ooey Baby–Let Us Take Your Money on a Sea Cruise!

  2. Inspired by Canada Uncut and the global Uncut movement, we’ve devoted the latest issue of X-Ray eMagazine to the movement. As the editor, I wanted to expose more people to Uncut, and writer and Canada Uncut activist Anne Marshall provided an excellent introduction. The issue also features the abridged version of How to Build a Progressive Tea Party, as well as Michael Moore’s speech to 50,000 in Madison, WI. Please feel free to check out X-Ray magazine!

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