Central Executive Committee, YCL-LJC

May, 2013

Capitalism IS Crisis

• 868 million people globally are go hungry. Global food production can feed 1.18 times the global population.
• For every homeless person in the United States there are 5 vacant homes.
• The global corporate class has $32 trillion hidden in off-shore tax havens
• In Canada, over the last 50 years the share of taxes for individuals has gone from 50% to 92% while corporate taxes have declined from 50% to 8% of total government revenue. We have some of the lowest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world.
• The average undergraduate student graduates with more than 30 000 dollars of debt.
• Cost of a jail cell: $250. Cost of a homeless shelter per night: $85. Cost of supportive housing: $35.
• Almost 75% of drinking water systems on-reserve pose health and safety risks to Aboriginal communities.
• Youth unemployment hit a 30 year high during the current recession. Unemployment among youth remains double that of the overall population.

May Day Greetings – Struggle is the way forward!

May 1st is the day of celebration and struggle for the working people of the world. It is the day we hold high the red flag of socialism.

By its very nature, capitalism generates and intensifies mass unemployment and poverty, national chauvinism, racism, gender inequality, environmental collapse, and war.

Socialism remains the necessary next step in Canada’s historical development. Only socialism makes the needs and aspirations of the people its highest priority. Only socialism can put people and nature before profits.

The achievement of socialism, based on working class power in Canada and internationally will mark a real advance towards true democracy – the rule of the people, by the people and for the people.

There is no impermeable firewall dividing the struggle for immediate social progress, or reforms, and revolutionary change for a socialist Canada. This May Day, the Young Communist League of Canada calls to unite the growing threads of resistance among the youth and student movement together, and defeat the pro-war, anti-people and anti-environment offensive launched by the Harper Conservatives and reactionary governments. In this direction we put forward the demands of a new Charter of Rights for the Youth. A people’s coalition can rout this attack, and put our struggle on the offensive!