Let's Rent a Train: A new documentary on the League for Socialist Action

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. The League for Socialist Action was a left-wing activist group, which was active in Canada in the '60s and '70s. While they did not achieve their ultimate goal, socialist revolution, the league was nevertheless instrumental in a number of campaigns and mobilizations. Members of the LSA were active within the NDP for a while and were also able to organize against the Vietnam War. Perhaps their biggest achievement had to do with their contribution to the movement to decriminalize abortion in Canada. Now, largely overlooked by historians and journalists alike, the LSA nevertheless leaves behind a powerful legacy. It's a reminder to all that even a relatively small organization can have a large impact through effective organizing. Today we discuss The League for Socialist Action. It's time to put your finger on The Pulse.
Hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI Audio. I'm Joeita Gupta and I'm joining you today from the Accessible Media Studios in Toronto. My hair is in its black bun. I have my headphones, which are black, and they go over the ear, and I'm also wearing a mustard yellow orange shirt, which has a V-neck, and the fabric is a little bunched up in the front of the shirt. That is intentional, I assure you. And the shirt has long sleeves that go just about to my wrists. It's a couple of inches away from my wrists.
It's really interesting to talk to you about this particular documentary, which the creator of the documentary was kind enough to approach me and pitch to me that I talk about the documentary, and we had a bit of a back and forth about whether we should talk about a documentary that dealt with The League for Socialist Action, which doesn't on the surface have very much to do with disability. But I am of the view that as people with disabilities, we are often locked in struggle for social inclusion, for justice, for greater access to services, government, you name it. I don't have to describe the good fight that we've been fighting for a very long time. And I think some of the experiences of the LSA, the lessons learned, might be very beneficial for people with disabilities to talk about as well. And so I'm really delighted that we're talking about this new documentary that looks back on the activism of The League for Socialist Action and its affiliated young socialists. Here is a clip from the documentary.

Doug Williams:
I have harvested tomatoes and tobacco, flipped burgers, and bolted transmissions onto engine blocks at Chrysler's Windsor Assembly Plant. And in 1970, I joined The League for Socialist Action, a radical Canadian political group. These were some of my fellow League for Socialist Action members. I believe that it's urgent that their story be told.

Joeita Gupta:
The voice you heard there is Doug Williams, who is the writer, director, and producer of this documentary film. It's called Let's Rent A Train! Life in the Toronto Branch for The League for Socialist Action, 1961 to 1977. Doug Williams joins me today to talk about the new documentary. Hello, and thank you so much for being on the program.

Doug Williams:
Hello, and thank you for a really lovely and comprehensive introduction to my film. I was active in the league, the LSA we called it, League for Socialist Action, from 1970 to around 1977 when it collapsed. And yes, I just wanted to say a bit about the background here. I'm involved in a tenant struggle in my building, and this is plastic here. We're having to deal with a renovation and we're going to have a rent rebate struggle of some kind. Anyway, sorry about the ugliness of the background here. However, over here is a poster for my film, Let's Rent A Train!

Joeita Gupta:
Do you want to try and describe the poster to us and tell us what is on the poster?

Doug Williams:
Yes. Let's Rent A Train! is an odd title. We could have given it a very dour title like, A History of the LSA, or some really cool title. But someone came up with, Let's Rent A Train! because it was something someone said back in 1966 in Toronto, in the group that was organizing Canada's first protest movement against Canada's involvement in the Vietnam War. Canada had a very negative involvement in the Vietnam War and it supplied all kinds of military material and so on, supplies to the Pentagon, to the immense profit of Canadian capitalists, Canadian manufacturers. Anyway, this group of people were sitting around saying, "Yes, let's have a demonstration. Why don't we go to Ottawa?" That's where the government is, of course. And someone said, "Well, how should we get there?" And somebody said, "Why don't we rent a train?" And of course, there was a big argument about whether you could rent a train or not, and finally, it was found out that you could indeed rent a train. They rented several cars, train cars, and carried some thousands of people to Ottawa.

Joeita Gupta:
Wow.

Doug Williams:
And that was in 1966, I think.

Joeita Gupta:
That is really gutsy. I have organized many a protest in my day, and been part of many a protests in my day, and never heard of anyone renting a train. It's such a smart idea. We should just do it more often. Before we get into talking about the documentary in-depth, for those of us who aren't familiar with The League for Socialist Action, what was it and how was it different from, I suspect, the many other left-wing groups that were active in Toronto and in Canada at that time?

Doug Williams:
Defining it is, of course, a big-ish challenge. It was a group that, unlike the Maoists, for example, we didn't wave red flags or chant "Smash capitalism," even though we supported that idea. But we said that what you had to do was build something we called, or what's known as, united front of disparate groups, church groups, peace groups in the case of the Vietnam antiwar movement, other political groups, uniting them in a mass movement under simple direct slogans, like in our case, "US Out Now" and "End Canada's Complicity."
Some people wanted to say, "Victory to the Vietnamese revolution," and all that stuff that leftists often say, but we said, "If you want to bring in church groups and liberal groups and NDPers and so on, you can't wave the red flag. You've got to just make a simple and direct demand that we can all agree on." And we all agreed on, "US out now," and our counterparts in the United States also use that demand to great success. That's one of the ways in which we were perceived as liberal and soft by the ultra-left. But the truth is, we were the most successful in building movements that achieved something and challenged the status quo in a very concrete way. "US out now" couldn't have been better because if the US got out, which they absolutely did, finally, the war ended.

Joeita Gupta:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Doug Williams:
But you could understand that demand, US out now.

Joeita Gupta:
Yeah, you can't get simpler than that, right?

Doug Williams:
And that was the key to our politics. It was also true of the abortion movement. There were many conflicting ways in which the abortion movement could be summarized or spearheaded. And we said, "Repeal the abortion laws." That's what had to be done.

Joeita Gupta:
Yes, that's it. It was the simplest debate because there was so many... And that's one of the most fascinating parts of the documentary. All of it was excellent, but just hearing about the debate about what should the slogan be and ending up with the simplest one because you wanted to be able to just make it very clear what it is that you're actually asking for. And there's one person in the documentary who says, "We were so successful that there's never been any pushback, that there are politicians who would quake at the idea," I'm paraphrasing, "Of ever trying to overturn the decriminalization of abortion in Canada and trying to put something like that back on the books." Now, when I was watching the documentary and my husband was watching it, we kept pointing and said, "Oh, oh, oh, we know this person," but that's because we live in Toronto and there are familiar faces. Who are some of the voices featured in the documentary?

Doug Williams:
Well, probably Judy Rebic is one of the most recognizable people. We had Don Tapscott, who was chancellor of Trent University. He was a member of the League. Alice Klein, the founder of Now Magazine, which was very big in its day. I think it's gone now. I'm not sure, maybe it exists as online, but it was a very big popular free paper in Toronto for many decades. And Mitch Podolak, who was a founder of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. We had many people who went on to be very successful in life because they were very, very capable people.

Joeita Gupta:
But here's the thing, you've actually anticipated my next question, because many of the people who were involved with the LSA did go on to become very successful activists and notable for their achievements. What sort of skills did they gain through their participation in there, and involvement in the LSA, that they were then able to take into other activist spaces and further organizing on a wide range of issues, to be honest?

Doug Williams:
They were taught how to intervene in meetings. Our entry into the NDP was a good example. We still have comrades who are active in the NDP, and the effort was to push the NDP to the left, which is a futile thing. But we managed to make the NDP an arena for social debate, political debate. And so we were practiced in speaking at public meetings and intervening and getting behind that audience microphone and really making a big [inaudible 00:12:07].
We also really learned how to the nitty-gritty of organizing demonstrations. Our feeling was that mass demonstrations were the key tool in moving struggles forward, that you could petition your parliamentarian, you could phone in and write letters and be on talk shows and so on. But the real strength of our approach was in building mass demonstrations, and that's where our focus was. And learning how to do that, how to deal with police, both as adversaries and getting permission and when to step outside their permission and so on, all these are skills that are acquired in the building of movements. And I guess that's...
We also became adept at organizational procedures, such as how to maintain a Democratic procedure in a meeting. We were always fastidious about democracy, about not shutting out contrary opinions. We got used to that because we had to demand the right to speak so often in the NDP, which tried to marginalize us all the time. They were always actually very hostile to us and would kick us out whenever they could. And we felt that the socialist voice, which we represented, was a legitimate current within the labour movement and that we had a right to speak at NDP meetings. And so we would carry on those kinds of political battles and those kinds of political fights harden you and give you confidence about your own ability to champion your views in often hostile atmosphere.

Joeita Gupta:
But you also develop confidence in your opinions that you feel that you have a valid point of view and you stick to your guns, for want of a better phrase, in the face of opposition. In the opening clip that we heard, you said that these are the stories of my friends from the LSA and I felt it was urgent to tell those stories. Why is there a sense of urgency, Doug?

Doug Williams:
Well, I think we're all very concerned about the successes that the right and the extreme right have experienced in recent years, especially in America. But it has its dimwitted reflection here as well. And the right, and perhaps even the fascist movement, are moving forward with great confidence and in a sense they've stolen some of the tools of the left. There was great frustration around the war and around women's oppression back in the sixties and seventies, and we channelled that into progressive political action. Well, right now, given what we know as neoliberalism and all the austerity and privatization programs, they are channelling mass anger, people's anger, into right-wing directions, making immigrants and non-white people the so-called reasons for all the problems in society. Whereas of course, we know that it's capitalism. That's our view, that profiteering off other people's work and all the tools that are needed to continue doing that are the enemy.

Joeita Gupta:
And the widening gap between, if you allow me a bit to use my limited marks between the haves and the have-nots. As we get towards the end of the program here, we've only got a few minutes left, and I would love to get your sense as someone who's lived this reality being involved with the LSA, and now you've gone back 40 years later and you've made a documentary about it. As you reflect on the LSA, was it a success or a failure?

Doug Williams:
Well, I think it was a great success. We didn't make the revolution. We were young and the spirit of the time was really defined by descent, but it was a cultural descent in large part. People were smoking marijuana, dressing in styles that were a departure from 1950s styles. Hair was a big issue. There was even movies called Hair and Broadway shows called Hair. The Youth Rebellion was defined very much in cultural and lifestyle terms. But of course, it had its expression also in things like the abortion movement and the anti-war movement and many other struggles, the Black movement, Black power movement, and all kinds of movements. Our participation in that helped define those movements politically and helped them, particularly the abortion movement and the anti-war movement, helped them achieve success. Did we make the revolution? Well, it was an exciting time. It was unprecedented in Canada as far as we knew by and large. And a lot of us thought, wow, the revolution can't be that far off given how exciting and successful this is.
But we in a sense underestimated the power of the movements of dissent. We overestimated those dissenting currents and we underestimated the capitalist ruling class's ability to reindoctrinate people. I mean, after the communitarian movements expressed in the sixties' rebellion, everywhere, the media started promoting something called the me generation to get people to stop thinking communally or sociologically and start thinking about their individualism instead. And they pushed libertarian ideas and all kinds of ideas about getting a life. And if you look at all the advertising slogans of the period, they were all in reaction to the 1960s communitarian and rebellion movements. It was a massive propagandistic effort on the part of the ruling class to change people's minds and get them to distance themselves from the dissent of the 1960s.
We were doomed to fail because the capitalist class as infinite resources in order to indoctrinate people. I mean, Noam Chomsky says that Americans, and he means Canadians as well, are the most indoctrinated people in the world. And when you look at the right wing and apolitical confusion in America, it's horrible. And so was the LSA a success? I think it was. Was there going to be a revolution? Revolutions aren't dependent on one little group like ours. Revolutions are dependent on mass consciousness and mass changes in consciousness. And in many ways, I think the consciousness is higher now than it was in the sixties. Whereas the typical hippie wanted peace in 1960, in the sixties. Now people really... And that hippie didn't want to talk about capitalism. We'd go around and try and sell our socialist paper and people didn't want to talk about capitalism. They wanted just to end the war. Now, if you talk about capitalism to people, they're totally open to it. They know what it is. The 1% changed all.

Joeita Gupta:
Yes, the occupy movement really changed all that dialogue. Yeah.

Doug Williams:
Yeah. They did something utterly great by raising consciousness around the rich and the idea that the rich really control everything.

Joeita Gupta:
The fact that everyone's just talking about the 1% as though it's just a part of your everyday language. I mean, you see the 1% sprinkled in news reports and everywhere, and nobody questions that we're talking about the 1% anymore. Listen, speaking about the talking, unfortunately, our time to talk is just about at an end. And so before I let you go, it would be a grave mis-justice if I didn't ask you where we can get your documentary because I wanted to ask you about so much more. We don't have the time, in which case I would encourage everybody to check it out. Where can we find it?

Doug Williams:
If you Google, Let's Rent a Train!, you will find it. There are train rentals, but they usually appear further down. Let's Rent a Train! seems to be right at the top with two or three things. And we have a website that... And we've had nearly a thousand viewers so far, and it's only been up for six or eight weeks.

Joeita Gupta:
A wonderful documentary and thank you very much for talking to me about it, and good luck with your tenant struggle. I hope you are able to fight the good fight.

Doug Williams:
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you, and thanks for the opportunity.

Joeita Gupta:
Doug Williams is the writer, director and producer of Let's Rent a Train! Life in the Toronto Branch in the League for Socialist Action, 1961 to 1977. And that is, as we say in this business, a wrap. It's been really interesting talking to you about this. We don't often get a chance to deviate from the, and talk about things that don't normally ping on my radar. And so this documentary, if you have a chance to check it out, please do.
Although there isn't a description in the documentary, what was really enjoyable and enriching is that the documentary is just people talking. I mean, there are photographs and visuals, but you get so much out of it just listening to the conversation, being a part of the dialogue between people. It's a really wonderful experience and I hope you will Google Let's Rent a Train! and watch that when you have a bit of free time. It's about an hour and a half, an hour and a half well spent in my opinion. If you like to dive into ideas and think through concepts and you think about some of the debates that people had, this is definitely worth a watch.
All right, well, I have got to run. Today, if you have any feedback about this episode or anything else you heard on the program, you can always give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave permission to play your voicemail on the program. You can also write us an email, write to feedback@ami.ca, or you can find us on Twitter at AMI-audio. Use the hashtag #PulseAMI and you can track me down on Twitter at Joeita Gupta. The videographer today has been Matthew McGurk. Mark Aflalo is our technical producer. Ryan Delehanty is the coordinator for AMI-audio's podcast, and Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio. And I've been your host Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.