This was a rare document that could be signed by large organizations such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (the largest in the country), the head of the Canadian Labour Congress (the union of unions), as well as truly grassroots groups such as Black Lives Matter–Toronto and No One Is Illegal–Coast Salish Territories and the country’s largest membership-based advocacy organization, the Council of Canadians. Original endorsers included supporters of all parties, and some who support none. All shared the belief that if the major political parties weren’t offering voters a plan commensurate with the multiple crises we face, then it would have to come from outside electoral politics.
Within days of The Leap’s launch, thousands of people had added their names, soon tens of thousands, and well over two hundred endorsing organizations. We were stunned. It was clear that a whole lot of people, after decades of fighting against what they don’t want—tar sands pipelines, money in politics, corporate trade deals, draconian security bills—were ready to rally around the world they do want. The outpouring reminded me of a slogan I first heard in Argentina, during a raucous election campaign: “Our dreams don’t fit on your ballot.” That’s what people were saying by signing The Leap: Yes, I am going to cast a ballot in this deeply flawed and constricted electoral system, but do not mistake that vote as an expression of the world I want. The Leap was creating a space in which to register that electoral politics at this point in history so often fails to reflect both the dreams and the very urgent needs of huge numbers of people. (But the real trick, in Canada, the United States, and everywhere else, is going to be to get those dreams on the ballot with a winning strategy as quickly as possible….)
Exploding the Box
The reaction from the corporate press ranged from confusion (how can there be a platform without a party? why drop it in the middle of an election campaign?) to rage. One of Canada’s national newspapers declared The Leap’s call for a country based on caring for each other and the planet “madness”; another one deemed it “national suicide.”
We weren’t surprised. We knew that what we were proposing did not fit inside the box of what is considered politically possible in mainstream political discussions. But what we are trying to do with The Leap—quite explicitly—is explode the box. Because if the box doesn’t leave room for the safety and possibly the survival of our species, then there is something very, very wrong with that box. If what is considered politically possible today consigns us to a future of climate chaos the day after tomorrow, then we have to change what’s politically possible.
And many clearly agreed. Despite some mystified mainstream reporting, people kept signing, kept asking us for Leap lawn signs, kept self-organizing local Leap chapters in their cities, towns, schools, and unions. And they kept sending us photos of their Leap teach-ins, sit-ins, and rallies—even audio of the songs it was inspiring. A national poll found that a clear majority of supporters of all three center and center-left parties—the Liberals, the NDP, and the Green Party—were in agreement with The Leap’s key demands. Even 20 percent of Conservatives said they were on board.
In the end, Canadians did vote out Stephen Harper, but the biggest loser in the election was the NDP, our center-left party. It had run an extremely cautious campaign and been outflanked on the left by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals (who made up for what they lacked in specifics with dazzling progressive PR). At the NDP convention a few months later, young delegates led an internal revolt: convinced that the party could have won if it had gone bold, they called on delegates to officially endorse the spirit of The Leap Manifesto. The resolution passed—a rare example of a major political party even considering a platform offered by outside social movements.
The Living Leap
In the months since its launch, The Leap has become a living, evolving project, with an ever-growing community of supporters constantly enriching and revising the work. Our team is also working closely with organizers around the world who are kicking off similar experiments—from the Australian group I met with on the eve of Trump’s election win, to a coalition of green parties in Europe who have written their own Leap-inspired manifesto, to communities from Nunavut in the Arctic to the US Gulf South and the Bronx that are exploring how to adapt the document’s framework to their local needs and most pressing crises. There is even a community of “Leapers” in prison: at a Connecticut detention facility for teenaged boys tried as adults, a group of incarcerated students has been exploring ways that a justice-based transition off fossil fuels could be part of a process that keeps young people like them out of prison.
My favorite example of what our team now calls “the Living Leap” involves the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Like postal employees around the world, these workers have been coping with a push to shut down their workplaces, restrict mail delivery, and maybe even sell off the public postal service to FedEx. In other words, austerity and privatization as usual. But instead of fighting for the best deal they can get under this failed logic, they worked with The Leap team and a group called Friends of Public Services to put together a visionary plan for every post office in the country to become a local hub for the green transition. Combined with the union’s long-standing demand for postal banking, the proposal, called “Delivering Community Power,” reimagines the post office as a twenty-first-century network where residents can recharge electric vehicles; individuals and businesses can do an end run around the big banks and get a loan to start an energy co-op; and postal workers do more than deliver the mail—they also deliver locally grown produce and check in on the elderly. In other words, they become care workers, and climate workers—and they do it all in vehicles that are electric and made in Canada.
At first there was a lot of pressure on The Leap team to start our own party, or run candidates in existing ones, using the manifesto as its platform. We resisted those calls, wanting to protect The Leap’s movement roots, and not wanting it to be owned by any one party. The vitality of The Leap today, especially since Trump’s election, lies in the people, inside Canada and out, who are using it more and more as the basis for their own local work and electoral platforms. For instance, in Thunder Bay, a northern Canadian city with a long reliance on logging, a local Leap group has decided to run a slate of candidates for city council, writing their own version of the manifesto and using it to lay out how their city could be a hub for green manufacturing while battling homelessness and defending Indigenous land rights. And in March 2017, in a hard-fought campaign for state representative in Pennsylvania, legendary housing and anti-poverty activist Cheri Honkala ran on a pledge to create “a platform derived from the Leap Manifesto,” citing the need to address the “crises of climate change, inequality, and racism together.”
Utopia—Back by Popular Demand