What We Do

The Democratic Socialists of Canada (DSC) is building working-class power by organizing our communities, workplaces, and homes. We’re helping people acquire training, resources, and confidence to join forces with their neighbours and win material improvements in their lives. We do this through organizing.

The DSC believes that structure-based organizing is the key to changing society. The strengths of organizing are that it focuses on:

  • specific established groups of people (structures) who have a connection

  • common experiences—such as being a tenant or worker in the same place—that allow people to identify issues and act collectively to help each other

  • building a consensus within a group—not only calling on people who agree with you or the general public

  • determining the specific strategy and tactics the group will use

  • creating a crisis for a landlord or employer and disrupting the capitalist order

Our organizing model ultimately understands that ordinary people have power, not only property and business owners.

“Organizing places the agency for success with a continually expanding base of ordinary people, a mass of people never previously involved, who don’t consider themselves activists at all.”

—Jane McAvelry in No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Guilded Age

Tenant Organizing Program

Is your rent too high?

Do you have a negligent landlord?

Are you worried about corporations hoarding all of Canada’s housing?

What is Tenant Organizing?

Tenant organizing is the process of making connections on an individual level at tenants’ homes, discovering issues or grievances that they may have with the property where they live, and bringing them together in solidarity to form a long-term tenant association/union as a counter to the power of their landlord.

National Labour Organizing Program (In Development)

Is your pay too low?

Do you work full-time without benefits?

Is your workplace physically or psychologically unsafe?

Labour Organizing is Our Next Goal

As the DSC expands, we are developing our ability and creating programming to take on organizing training and support for people to run workplace campaigns. We are working hard to make this happen in the near future.