March, Rally, Meeting, and Fundraiser!

May Day March & Rally!

We encourage everyone to join in this event being organized by the Vancouver & District Labour Council...

International Day of the Worker
MAYDAY
One Movement - One World

Sunday, May 1
Gather 1 pm
Clark Park (13th & Commercial)
March 1:30 pm

Rally 2:30 to 3 pm
McSpadden Park (5th & Victoria)

Join with unions, community groups and individuals to march and call for the protection and advancement of workers' rights. Bring your banners & signs.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=176916119024211

Mothers Day Pancake Breakfast - People's Voice Newspaper Fundraiser
Come join us fo r a delicious pancake breakfast on Sunday, May 8th, from 10 am - 1 pm. Last call for pancakes is noon.

All you can eat for $12.00 each. Kids under 12 are $8.00. Pancakes, sausages, and lots of other delicious breakfast goodies.

For information or directions, call (604) 294-6775.

All funds go to support the People's Voice newspaper - Canada's Communist Newspaper. http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/

Organize by the Burnaby Bolsheviks Club, Communist Party of Canada.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=211002098927161&ref=mf

YCL Vancouver Meeting

Join us for our monthly meeting. May 2nd, 7pm, 706 Clark Dr.


Draft Agenda

Roll call
Previous minutes
Membership

Old Business
- We Are One Rally
- People Power Not War rally
- May Day march & rally
- Federal Election

Standing Items
Student movement
- Post Secondary
- High School

Peace & international solidarity
- Report and updates

Young workers movement
- Report and updates

Rebel Youth
- Subscriptions update
- Update on next issue
- Plan distribution

Culture & Agit-Prop
- Left Film Night
- Postering

New Business
- Summer Camp

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=141061995965223

May Day March & Rally!

We encourage everyone to join in this event being organized by the Vancouver & District Labour Council...

International Day of the Worker
MAYDAY
One Movement - One World

Sunday, May 1
Gather 1 pm
Clark Park (13th & Commercial)
March 1:30 pm

Rally 2:30 to 3 pm
McSpadden Park (5th & Victoria)

Join with unions, community groups and individuals to march and call for the protection and advancement of workers' rights. Bring your banners & signs.

Left Film Night: Inside Job - April 24

(Urgent note: Stephen Harper is coming to Burnaby on Saturday. StopWar is calling an emergency picket at Harper's campaign rally, 3 pm, Sat., April 16, at 3030 Gilmore Diversion, off Canada Way. Please help spread the word!)

LEFT FILM NIGHT

"INSIDE JOB"
(Written & directed by Charles Ferguson, 2010, 120 minutes)

Sunday, April 24, 2011, 7 pm
Centre for Socialist Education, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver

Inside Job unravels the derelict capitalist morality at the heart of the global financial crisis, and picked up an Oscar for Best Documentary. After opening with Iceland’s disastrous experience of deregulation, the film switches to the USA, examining the get-rich-quick bubble that grew from 2001 to 2007, and the crisis of 2008. From there, the documentary looks at the greedy foxes in charge of the chicken coop - the bankers and investors who benefited from the bubble and the collapse, and still run the financial services sector. Inside Job is a call for action against those who are clearly responsible as they drive the capitalist system towards yet another crash.

"This is a work of sustained, nonpartisan rage. Its anger is always simmering, never all-consuming. Ferguson knows what it is he wants to say, and the movie goes about its point-making with lawyerly precision. The result is a masterpiece of investigative nonfiction moviemaking—a scathing, outrageous, depressing, comical, horrifying report on what and who brought on the crisis." (from a Cascadia Weekly review)

Left Film Nights are presented by the Centre for Socialist Education, Young Communist League, and the Vancouver East and Montivero Clubs of the Communist Party of Canada. Admission free, donations welcome, coffee and refreshments available. Call 604-255-2041 or email for further information.

People Power, Not War!

forwarded from Stopwar:

People Power, Not War!
Part of a Pan-Canadian Day of Action to End the war in Afghanistan

Every Saturday since January, Vancouver has seen solidarity rallies outside the downtown public library, in support of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and many other countries in the region. Now People Power is spreading beyond North Africa and the Middle East and it's capturing the world's imagination. Let's help make April 9 a show of People Power across Canada - our own Day of Dissent!

Spread the word and make plans to join StopWar:
Saturday, April 9, starting at 1 pm
outside Vancouver Public Library downtown

YCL BC eBulletin - April 2011

Check out the April 2011 eBulletin available online here.

On the Announced Increase to the Minimum Wage

Young Communist League BC Provincial Committee
March, 2011

The Young Communist League British Columbia Provincial Committee welcomes the recently announced increase to BC's dismally low minimum wage. At the same time, we note that the increase is far from adequate and does not represent a change in policy or direction on the part of the BC Liberal Party.

Any increase to the minimum wage is undoubtedly positive in terms of the immediate economic situation of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are youth, who are currently working for wages that put them well below the poverty line. We note that action around the minimum wage issue has ebbed in recent times, it was the work of the BC labour movement, especially the young workers movement, which applied pressure to the anti-worker, anti-youth Liberal government around this issue and stimulated public outrage around the Liberal's shameful wage freeze. We are proud that some of our members were part of that work as well.

However, the minimum wage increase is designed to protect the interests of the BC Liberal Party's corporate backers. The increase is much lower than needed and is spread out over the course of more than a year; $8.75 this may, $9.50 on November 1st, and $10.25 in May 2012. But a worker would need to earn no less than $11.11 today to merely straddle the poverty line, and with inflation that number will increase even more by the time minimum wage workers achieve $10.25 next Spring. Keep in mind that this is merely the poverty line. An actual living wage would be around $18.81 in the Metro-Vancouver area, or $18.03 in Victoria. To make matters worse, the Liberal government has introduced a "server’s wage" which will put those who serve liquor on a second wage tier where they will make only $9 by next May. The Liberal strategy is one of keeping BC's workers, youth, and students, at sub-poverty level wages in order to ensure tidy profits to their corporate masters.

In this respect, it is clear that the minimum wage increase is no more than a public relations stunt by a new Liberal leader who is trying to re-brand and re-legitimize her party in preparation for the next round of elections. Clark's wafer-thin claims about a change in Liberal policy and "putting families first" are belied by the fact that she has the very same policies of her predecessor which led to his dramatic decline in voter support and eventual resignation. As the Communist Party's recent statement indicated, Christy Clark merely represents "the same club led by a different smile and a different gender."

The Young Communist League supports the ongoing efforts of young workers to fight for better wages, employment standards, and workplace safety. We demand an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $16 per hour and the elimination of the server’s wage. We oppose all forms of tiered wage systems such as "training" or "student" wages. Ultimately believe every worker deserves a living wage.

The BC Liberal Party will never offer a real alternative to the legacy it has left during the Gordon Campbell era. We call on youth, students, workers, left and progressive forces, and all those negatively affected by the results of Liberal corporate rule to come together and fight for a people's alternative to the anti-worker, anti-youth, and anti-student legacy of the BC Liberal Party.