Naomi Klein: The Leap Manifesto and De-Trumping

The Leap Manifesto brought down a federal NDP leader and left the same party with a void in its leadership until late 2017.  Following the 2015 Canadian election at the post election leadership review convention of the New Democratic Party (NDP) the membership passed a motion to adopt the Leap Manifesto as policy.  The same party, now under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh will have its policy convention in Ottawa in February 2018.  Will the party faithful tie their new leader with the manifesto as party policy for the next election? 

I need to take a step back.  In Naomi Klein’s book “When NO in not enough (resisting the shock politics and winning the world we know)” she provides the history of the Leap Manifesto, which was drawn up in Toronto in 2015. It would be as Klein calls it a ‘platform without a party’. Rather, for 2015 it was a guide for supporters of the “Leap” to challenge candidates and parties to adopt some of the manifesto properties as it had not been adopted as policy by any political party, large or small at that time.

In what would be a good read on the development of the Leap Manifesto on its own, Klein decides that for 75% of “NO is not enough…” She would rather focus on Trump, Pence and the billionaires that have seats around his cabinet table.

Reading this book, the process she describes as leaders from across Canada to think about a way forward was interesting and in my view would have been a better focus for her and book.  I mean could not ignore Trump if she tried -  but how she spent so much time on him was just inconceivable to me.  How each of these leaders came with their own ideas, how the ideas developed and how their questions would be taken and later developed into the Leap Manifesto was interesting, very interesting.  I do not profess to agree with a lot of what they would say, it’s the process and how everyone ‘bought in’ into it. The Leap Manifesto is an effort of collaboration, cooperation and patience of likeminded people willing to let smaller gains be forgotten for a larger purpose.

The difficult part of this book is Klein’s extreme dislike of Donald Trump.  Her tone towards the election and subsequent policy declaration of Trump remains on the verge of hatred.  She goes to great lengths to ‘almost’ single out Trump for the demise of the earth and the effects policy by previous Presidents have had on the speeding up of climate change.  Supporters of the President will blast it all as a figment of her imagination, but she does back up her statements and it is there where the reader needs to cut through the fog that is her distaste of Trump.

Klein’s tone softens a bit when discussing the Obama years, saying that Obama had the opportunity (and didn’t take advantage of it) to pass significant legislation to advance American actions to slow climate change.  She praises Obama for signing the Paris Accord, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline extension – only to rage back on Trump for reversing those decisions.  Klein expresses disappointment that Obama didn’t do more in the first two years of his first term when he had the benefit of a Democratic majority in the Congress.  It is difficult to comprehend just how challenging or easy it could have been for Obama (to do what Klein suggests) without any significant understanding of how the Obama White House operated at that time.

Klein always brings it back to Trump, his brand, his rich corporate friends that now hold cabinet positions.  She spills a lot of ink on Trump, and how she foresees the Trump brand taking hold of a government response to extreme climate weather clean up with ‘for-profit’ ethics and less than satisfactory results that will not meet the needs of Americans.  She cites the clean up of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush era republicans profiting while providing less than stellar security and clean up.  I have no doubt that had Klein waited and published this book to include the US government response to Hurricane Maria and the contracts awarded for clean up and restoration of power, she would have the first indication of how a Trump White House reverted to an establishment White House.  As I write this, Puerto Rico has been ‘dark’ for 117days – something that Klein would have a heyday over especially being under the watch of Trump.

With “NO is not enough…” Klein calls for the ‘de-trumping’ of America and her tool for doing this is the Leap Manifesto.  While the manifesto is not active with a political party (yet) others are embracing it. There is a movement in Thunder Bay Ontario to have a slate of candidates run under a municipal “Leap”.  Mid-term elections in the US are coming; will any candidate take up the Leap Manifesto?  Will the US Green Party take the “Leap”?

Under the friendlier name of the People’s Platform, Klein and company continue to pursue a worldly ‘Leap’.   In this exercise of living politically, Klein provides a view that needs should be heard. It is unknown if it’s a reasonable solution or if portions of the manifesto are to be lifted - but it was an illuminating read, a read that has opened a door for further investigation.

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