Call to the 6th Pan-Canadian Congress of the RSM

http://mer-rsm.ca/sixth-pan-canadian-congress-of-the-revolutionary-student-movement/
The Revolutionary Student Movement is pleased to announce our Sixth Pan-Canadian Congress, to be held in Montreal on November 19 and 20, 2016!
We invite all interested people and organizations to attend, to help build the revolutionary movement among students!
Since our last Congress in Ottawa during the fall of 2015, the Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM) has continued to grow. Multiple new sections have opened across Canada: our expansion has been particularly notable in Western Canada and in the Maritimes. Our work as also developed: as part of our last Congress’ focus on consolidation and “digging-in”, nearly every section of the RSM has engaged in meaningful mass work. Our mass work has included: the fight against school closures in Vancouver, solidarity work with indigenous activists across Canada, serve-the-people programs including the “bouffes populaires” in Montreal, radical sex-education in Peterborough, the successful fight for access to abortion in PEI, solidarity with striking newspaper workers in Halifax, the campaign to remove the racist former police chief from McMaster’s campus in Hamilton, and the continued struggle against men’s rights fascists particularly in Ottawa. These are just a few of our activities; the sum total would be too great to list.
However, while the RSM has grown and our work has improved, we have also made errors. Chief among these errors was a failure to really specify what we meant by “consolidation”. Because of this, in some locations the RSM sections turned inwards, rather than orienting toward the masses of proletarian students. In turn, because of the speed at which the RSM has grown, we have often had difficulty leading an organization of our size: leadership development has not always kept pace with the growth of the RSM. On a political level, despite the last Congress adopting a comprehensive political report, the line has not always informed nor translated into the work of local sections. Further, the RSM has not moved forward in its plans to develop a comprehensive program for proletarian students across Canada. While the period between our Fifth and upcoming Sixth Congresses has been generally positive, there was certainly room for improvement.
With this in mind, the Coordinating Committee has identified the following focus areas for the Sixth Pan-Canadian Congress of the RSM:

• Leadership Development: The RSM needs to better develop its middle-leadership. Given the size of the RSM, there needs to be a focus on building structure and an “internal staff” of sorts tasked with helping the work of the organization as a whole.
• Further Consolidation: We need to grapple with precisely what it means for RSM sections to consolidate, and to really “dig in” to the mass struggles in their respective areas.
• Strengthen Organization: We need to pay more attention to spreading best practices across different RSM sections. To that end, we will create a series of “organizational documents” – a guide to revolutionary work – in order to help the work of current sections and also to help build new sections.
• Deepening Perspective: We invite updates to the political report which was agreed on at the last Congress.
• Against Tuition Increases in Ontario: There is a strong possibility that Ontario will deregulate tuition fees in 2017. The RSM should initiate a mass struggle against the deregulation of tuition fees, pulling together a broad based campaign across political lines.

To this end, the Coordinating Committee invites all sections of the RSM to prepare resolutions dealing with these themes or others, and submit them for discussion at the Congress.
The Coordinating Committee invites all RSM sections to send delegates to the Congress. Details will follow regarding delegate selection procedures.
The Coordinating Committee invites all supporters of the RSM to form new sections of the RSM before the upcoming Congress, and apply to send delegates.
The Coordinating Committee invites existing groups to vote on joining the RSM to participate in the upcoming Congress, so as to strengthen the movement of revolutionary students.
And finally, the Coordinating Committee invites anyone interested in our practice and political line to send observers to the Sixth Congress so as to better understand what we’re about.
The development of the revolutionary movement in Canada –both among students and among workers more broadly- is advancing by leaps and bounds. We invite you to become a part of the struggle.
If you or your organization is interested in participating, email: info@mer-rsm.ca.
See you in Montreal!
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The RSM is the Canada-wide organization of revolutionary and anti-capitalist youth and students. We first came together as a collection of small groups from Ontario and Quebec in December of 2012. We now exist in every region of the country, with over 15 different sections. We organize in CEGEPS, colleges, high-schools, and universities. We are against exploitation, alienation, and oppression in all its forms; in short, our goal is to contribute to the struggle against capitalism by organizing working-class students towards revolution.