(Originally published at The Media Co-op.)
Emma Jackson is an organizer, trainer, and occasional writer based on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta. She first began organizing over a decade ago in the student fossil fuel divestment movement and has since become involved in climate, migrant justice, Indigenous rights, and Palestine solidarity organizing.
Interviewing and building relationships with migrant workers as a student led to her becoming involved in Migrante Alberta — a chapter of Migrante International, a global alliance of over 200 member organizations that defend the rights and welfare of overseas Filipino migrant workers. She sits on the board of the Alberta Workers’ Association for Rights and Education, a workers’ organization committed to improving the lives and working conditions of migrant workers across that province. She is also involved in building an International Migrants’ Alliance chapter there.
Jackson is also a senior organizer at the global climate justice organization 350.org, and is a co-founder and member of a new national base-building organization called Common Horizon, which is organizing young workers to build power through their workplaces and communities to take on the billionaire class and win real solutions to the climate crisis that secure good work and a dignified life for all.
Since fall 2023, she has been on the national coordination team of the Palestine Solidarity Network, an emergent network of over 40 riding-level groups across the country that are base-building in their neighbourhoods in order to pressure their federal Members of Parliament to end Canada’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. She also does work supporting the national coordination of the Arms Embargo Now campaign, a cross-sectoral effort calling on the Canadian government to impose a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel.
The Media Co-op: What are a couple of important things you’ve learned from struggles that you are not directly involved in, and why are they important?
Emma Jackson: For most of my life, my dad worked for the Canadian Labour Congress, and so I grew up in the Canadian labour movement throughout the 1990s and early 2000s — which, at the time, mostly meant spending time in Ottawa office buildings and rarely standing on a picket line. As I became politicized around the climate crisis and the anti-fracking movement in my late teens and early 20s, I was deeply disillusioned by the labour movement and its power and ability to effect change.
However, over time, like a lot of people of my generation, I’ve come to understand that the labour movement has been deliberately hollowed out by decades of neoliberalism, but is still an invaluable site of struggle that we cannot afford to overlook. It’s only in organizing through our workplaces that we can build and wield the material power necessary to ultimately transform our living and working conditions.
The most effective unionization drives and labour struggles of the 21st century have taught me that we need to get crystal clear about the difference between organizing and mobilizing, and develop a credible plan to win that is rooted in an honest assessment of our opponent(s) and their power. The labour movement has also taught me that the more we erode our own social ties to people, the more we undermine our ability to build lasting power. Our job as organizers is to actively resist insularity and re-politicize the everyday social spaces and institutions we occupy.
While I’m now a member of a migrant justice organization and involved in the struggle against forced migration, I learned key lessons from the migrant justice movement before I was involved. The migrant justice movement — and specifically migrant-led organizations and alliances like the International Migrants’ Alliance and Naujawan Support Network — have taught me the importance of not letting your opponent dictate whose field you’re playing on, nor the rules of the game. So instead of getting caught up in legal battles or fighting one deportation at a time, it’s necessary to directly confront those responsible for our exploitation on our terms, not theirs.
Finally, the migrant justice movement has also taught me the importance of confronting racism and xenophobia head-on, and calling out the divide-and-conquer strategies of the right and the many ways in which the centre capitulates to them.
Right now, for example, migrant justice organizations across Canada are calling out Pierre Poilievre and the Liberal government for using immigrants as a scapegoat for the housing crisis. They’re countering this myth head-on and placing the blame where it rightfully belongs — squarely at the feet of the corporate landlords and negligent governments that are deliberately pitting us against one another to distract from their culpability. I believe the climate movement has a lot to learn from this approach. Instead of giving into rhetoric that places blame for the climate crisis on developing nations, we should confront this scapegoating head-on, and reveal the ways in which it’s ultimately the global billionaire class that is responsible for torching our planet for profit.
TMC: What are a couple of sources related to struggles that you aren’t involved in that you’ve found to be particularly useful or important?
EJ: There are so many to choose from. But for understanding how neoliberalism has hollowed-out our “infrastructure of dissent,” I recommend reading Alan Sears’ The Next New Left: A History of the Future. I’ve also learned a lot from reading all of Jane McAlevey’s books, but No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age stands out in particular for how concisely it breaks down the difference between mobilizing and organizing, and offers a practical guide for how to do the latter.
For specific struggles that I was never involved in but have found particularly instructive, I’d recommend reading How We Get Free by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor about the Combahee River Collective, which makes clear why successful working-class movements must centre the experiences of those most oppressed by racial capitalism if we’re to truly get at the root of the systems we face.
For less theory and more contemporary learnings, I love reading and listening to organizers reflect on lessons they’ve learned through hard-fought campaigns. In particular, even though they’re largely rooted in the U.S. context, I regularly read Convergence Magazine, The Forge, and Waging Nonviolence. I love the depth of analysis and strategic debate they offer.
Unfortunately, in Canada, we have fewer publications that have the resources and capacity to publish organizing and social movement analysis in as much depth and detail. But I turn to The Breach, Briarpatch, and Canadian Dimension for social movement analysis.
TMC: What are a couple of key things about struggles that you are involved in or about your approach to activism and organizing that you would like other people to know more about?
EJ: I believe wholeheartedly in building mass movements and think that mass action is the only way we’ll transform society. This requires fundamentally believing in the power and capacity of everyday working people, no matter how much our opponents try to turn us against each other or encourage us to treat one another with contempt.
I also strongly believe that the best way to learn and sharpen our understanding of the world is by being set in motion. We learn through struggle. I started off as a young climate activist concerned about sea-level rise and tar sands pollution. Over time, becoming involved in the anti-fracking movement at 19 exposed me to how settler colonialism enables extractivism and the destruction of the planet, and how Indigenous sovereignty is key to a climate-safe future, and so on and so forth.
TMC: I think the idea that we “learn through struggle” is really important, and often underappreciated. How else have you seen learning through struggle play out, for yourself or for those you work with? And what do you think organizers can do to facilitate learning in the course of struggle – again, for themselves and for those they work with?
EJ: There are four key ways that I think we “learn through struggle.” The first, and perhaps most obvious, is growing our strategic capacity. With this one, I’m thinking about all the ways we expand our knowledge and hone our skills as organizers through the process of struggle. With every new campaign or organizing effort, we become better at things like recruiting and welcoming new members, more effectively structuring teams, supporting and building up new leaders, planning and executing direct actions, sequencing tactics to grow our power, creating welcoming organizations, mapping the power of our opponents, etc. Importantly, I think we become better at these things by making mistakes and learning from them, and we can’t make mistakes when we’re just sitting on the sidelines.
The second key way that I think we “learn through struggle” is through political education. In doing the work, we come to better understand the systems we’re up against and how they all intersect. For example, while I’ve known about Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine for many years now, it’s only in becoming more involved in Palestine solidarity organizing over the past year that I’ve come to better understand how deeply complicit Canada is in Israel’s genocide over the Palestinian people.
The third way I think we learn through struggle is that we come to better understand our own stake in collective liberation. Fighting against systems like capitalism and white supremacy forces us to look in the mirror and reckon with all the ways that these harmful systems also live within us, and have robbed us of our own humanity and ability to live joyful, dignified and interconnected lives. The beauty of this is that when we’re able to deeply (and often painfully) identify how these systems have harmed us, we’re able to organize not from a place of charity, but rather from a place of mutual interest because we understand that our freedom is bound up together.
Finally, I think a critical and often overlooked way that we grow through struggle is that it forces us to expand our political imagination. As Mariame Kaba says, “hope is a discipline.” I think it’s through collective struggle that we practice this discipline and create new possibilities.
One of the most important things that I think organizers can do to facilitate learning in the course of struggle in all of these ways is to actively seek out coaches, mentors, and training programs that are designed to support and facilitate praxis. It’s often difficult in the course of organizing to step back, reflect, and integrate learnings, especially when our struggles feel so urgent. Having people and processes in place that force us to reflect are crucial. For me, this has looked like setting up peer-to-peer coaching relationships, asking experienced organizers who I admire deeply to mentor me, and participating in organizing cohort programs that are designed to facilitate reflexivity and iterative learning. For all organizers, I highly recommend Powerlabs’ Nerdy Movement Study Group, and for white anti-racist organizers, the Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Program.
TMC: What are a couple of sources related to struggles that you are involved in or to your approach to activism and organizing that you would want other people to read/watch/listen to/learn from?
EJ: For sources that I return to often when I need to be re-grounded in the work of building mass movements, I would include Peter Camejo’s 1970 speech on “Liberalism, Ultra-leftism or Mass Action,” and Kwame Ture on “Mobilization vs. Organization.” I also often re-read passages from Hegemony How-To by Jonathan Smucker to remind me that being “right” wins us nothing if we have no power.
For how to build inclusive and transformative movement cultures capable of helping us meet our goals, I turn to Kai Cheng Thom, adrienne marie brown, and a podcast episode with the Wildfire Project on transforming toxic movement culture.
For moving through grief and despair, and being reminded that hope is a discipline we cultivate everyday, I return to this beautiful essay by Yotam Marom on “What To Do When the World is Ending.”
For critical sources on climate justice organizing, I’d recommend The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada, Jen Gobby’s Decolonizing Climate Action: A Toolkit for ENGOs in So-Called Canada, and Climate Change as Class War by Matthew T. Huber.
In terms of migrant justice organizing, Border & Rule by Harsha Walia is essential reading for all those who want to end forced migration for good, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move, the freedom to stay and the freedom to return.
Talking Radical: Resources is a collaboration between The Media Co-op and the Talking Radical project. In these interviews, activists and organizers from across so-called Canada connect you with ideas and with tools for learning related to struggles for justice and collective liberation. They talk about how they have learned, and about ways that you can learn.
Scott Neigh is a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
