WHO ARE THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF CANADA?

A new leftist group has recently paid its way onto the London Ontario organizing scene via a slew of sponsored ads on Facebook. They call themselves “The Democratic Socialists of Canada”, or DSC, and appear to base themselves off of the Democratic Socialists of America, though any connections between the organizations are unknown.

DSC was two entities, at first: The Emma Goldman Society, and the Democratic Socialists of Canada. The former was absorbed into the latter, and the resulting amalgam was dubbed The Emma Goldman Society: London Chapter of DSC. (The connection between Emma Goldman, noted anarchist, and an electoral lobbying group is unknown at time of writing.) Stressing that they are not a political party, DSC aims to establish 22 chapters across Canada, starting in London. To date, they have held two Socialist Social Hour events, one in London and the other in Toronto. DSC now plans to hold a “Bernie Sanders Victory Party” on Super Tuesday at Joe Kools, a local bar that last year held the campaign kick-off event for the PPC candidate Salim Mansur.

On their social media, DSC claims to stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in their struggle against the RCMP occupation. However, their website makes no mention of Canada as an ongoing settler-colonial project. In fact, there are no mentions of settlers on the site, and the only reference to colonialism is made to the Queen of England, “whose wealth is based on colonialism [and] doesn’t accurately reflect Canadian values.” Under the section “What We Believe,” the third sentence reads: “As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSC fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.” Under the header “Canada As An Open Society,” the opening sentence boasts “In many ways, Canada is already the first post-nationalist country in the world,” with no follow-up explanation or justification.

These glaring omissions, bizarre statements, and advertising blitz, did not engender any goodwill among activists to this hastily crafted operation.

WHO IS JOE ROBERTS?

The domain owner of democraticsocialists.ca is listed as Joe Roberts, resident of London, having created the website January 15th of 2020.

On his Twitter page, Roberts is a vocal fan of Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for US president. His pinned tweet is an endorsement for Kate Graham, a candidate for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party. His profile picture on LinkedIn is himself, wearing a poppy while speaking from a lectern, with the American and Israeli flags behind him.

Roberts went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, according to his LinkedIn. He worked from 2005 to 2010 in Dayton, Ohio as a political consultant and lobbyist, including a failed congressional bid for the Democrats in 2009. In 2010, Roberts worked in the Greater Boston area at Combined Jewish Philanthropies as a senior development officer, where he (sic) “lead strategic planning process for the department that supported the broader organizational strategic plan.” The following year, he was promoted to director. 2012 saw him move to California for a couple of years as Vice President of Major Gifts for The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, after which he moved back to Ohio for three years while he worked as Chief Development Officer for the Jewish Federation of Columbus.

Roberts moved to Washington, DC in 2017, where he began working as Global Chief Advancement Officer for The Israel Project, a pro-Israel non-profit. (The Israel Project was formed in 2002 during the second intifada, in order to manage Israel’s public image while Palestinian rights were being violated. It closed in 2019.) Presumably while working for TIP, Roberts replied to a tweet by the State of Palestine twitter account. On June 22, 2017, @Palestine_UN tweeted: #Palestine elected vice-chair of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination election! #CERD” Roberts, in his reply, said “#Antisemitism not high on their list of priorities.” In The Jerusalem Post, on July 24 of the same year, Roberts penned an opinion piece called “Kurds and Jews: Two peoples, bound by hope.” Roberts writes:

“What Israel represents to the Kurds is the realization of that dream. They see in us a people that endured a similar history of oppression and genocide. The Kurds, like Jews, have been subject to the rule of others for thousands of years, never fully being able to trust their neighbors and living in fear of the governments that have ruled over their people. They see what Israel has achieved, and they rightfully want it for the 30–45 million Kurds who live in the region and in the around the world.”

Roberts did not mention Palestinian people in this opinion piece, nor the Great March of Return that was, at the time, ongoing in Gaza. His sympathies extended to the Jewish and Kurdish people alone, indicated by his flippant twitter reply.

He then moved to London, Ontario, Canada in 2018.

Roberts’ LinkedIn lists him as a Organizational Development Consultant for Jewish London since 2018, but in an opinion article published in the London Free Press on May 3 2019, he is credited as Executive Director. In May 2019, he wrote an opinion piece for London Free Press, advocating for collective action in response to rising violence against Jewish and Muslim communities. The article lists Roberts’s credentials as the ED of Jewish London Ontario, as well as a “15 year veteran of Jewish communal work in the US and Canada.” In November 2019, Jewish London held a donation drive for “lone IDF soldiers.”

Displayed on his LinkedIn profile are two articles published in May 2019. The first is “Blind Faith in Nonprofit Pauperism,” wherein Roberts takes issue with his mentor telling him that having salaries above $80k in the non-profit sector is unethical. Roberts states:

“By limiting salaries, we are selling our missions short and preventing many of the best and most strategic minds from entering the field at all. Why go work for $80k at a nonprofit when you could go work for JP Morgan Chase and make $500k? You’d be foolish. Your gifts to charity now put you in directors chairs and wondering why we don’t get better performance out of the poor SOB making $80k a year.”

Roberts chastises non-profits for “not investing in proper compensation for development professionals,” finishing his anecdote saying he argued for a raise above $80k a year and won it. His previous LinkedIn article, published three days earlier, is titled “What Tim Horton’s New Lids Can Teach Nonprofits.”

Joe Roberts is an American liberal Zionist settler with no place at the head of an organization claiming to be radical. He claims in his twitter profile to be a recovering congressional candidate, but his uncritical support for the apartheid ethnostate of Israel should immediately disqualify him from speaking on the occupation of Wet’suwet’en territory by the RCMP, at the very least. The DSC is nothing more than a vanity project of a professional managerial class fundraising consultant. Joe Roberts is petite-bourgeoisie masquerading as proletariat, offering tepid reforms instead of substantive policy or calls to action, in order to divert energy away from revolutionary potential. He wants to be the CEO of Activism Inc. while collecting membership dues to produce anodyne videos featuring phrases like “Canada is a beautiful country.” He is a grifter looking for your donations. He is not your comrade.

FEB 26 2020 EDIT: A previous version of this story said that the DSC website makes no mention of indigenous people. This was inaccurate: there is one (1) statement expressing solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

REFERENCES:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/joeroberts001

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blind-faith-nonprofit-pauperism-joe-roberts?articleId=6534977139496890368#comments-6534977139496890368&trk=public_profile_article_view

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-tim-hortons-new-lids-can-teach-nonprofits-joe-roberts?articleId=6534016538209591296#comments-6534016538209591296&trk=public_profile_article_view

https://www.democraticsocialists.ca/

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Jews-and-Kurds-Two-peoples-bound-by-hope-498764

https://www.facebook.com/pg/jewishlondon/photos/?tab=album&album_id=299443700137911

https://twitter.com/NormatLFPress/status/172464415554281474

https://www.facebook.com/jewishlondon/photos/a.417665691649044/2790694534346136/?type=3

https://twitter.com/Joe_Roberts01/status/878079130301902848

https://www.facebook.com/102746104605454/videos/203552174160771/