Who are we?
We began as an online reading group of Christian abolitionists, academics, activists and clergy in Winnipeg at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. Our readings of writers such as Amaryah Shae Armstrong, James Cone, Dorothy Day, Frantz Fanon, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and others, along with documents such as Justice for Black Lives Demands to Make Winnipeg Safe for all BIPOC, have inspired and sustained us in these dislocated times. We have been involved in hosting and participating in several events, which you can read about on the News and Events section of our website. We hope to amplify and provide solidarity for local movements of decolonization, liberation and transformation.
Why Treaty One?
We organize out of Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.​
Naming Treaty One is an attempt to acknowledge and respect the place and relationships in which we live out our faiths. We recognize the unreasonable patience that Indigenous people offered European settlers reflected in the making and keeping of treaties. We acknowledge as apocalyptic the event of foreigners coming unannounced, taking natural resources, bringing deadly diseases, proving untrustworthy in negotiations, violently relegating Indigenous people, their geographical movements, access to land, their cultures and practices, and attempting assimilation with any given benefit to Indigenous people seemingly clawed back when inconvenient or perceived as a threat. We recognize the integral role Christianity has played in these histories of violence.
We recognize that this apocalypse continues as many Indigenous people now live under unnecessary economic hardship, carceral surveillance and pervasive discrimination. We recognize too that Christian institutions and Christian logics continue in many ways to subjugate Indigenous people's on Treaty 1 territory.
We acknowledge that these realities will be experienced and responded to differently, as we do not gather with unified histories in relation to Treaty One territory. We acknowledge that the apocalypse of European colonization was also made possible by the enslavement of Black people and the subsequent anti-black order of its wake.
We gather acknowledging that these and many other wrongs persist, and so it is necessary to be reminded that we are on Treaty One Territory, and the work of truth and justice we are called to.
Why Christian?
We join together as Christians from several sects and denominations to draw on (but not limit ourselves to) the explicitly Christian traditions that can inform our work for economic and social justice on Treaty One, while also attempting to hold Christianity accountable by naming its past and present injustices.
We locate ourselves within the broadly abolitionist theme which Jesus used to summarize their ministry (in turn quoting Isaiah), which was to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, heal the sick and let the oppressed go free.
Such a vision is directly connected to the Israelite tradition of Jubilee, which is meant to restore an equitable form of life that all might share in the blessings of a given age.
Why Socialism?
First, we are convinced that the current order of neoliberal capitalism is violent both to humanity and to the earth. With capitalism, all of life is brought under an unrelenting demand for growth and profit, which accelerates environmental degradation, exploits labour through low paid and precarious employment (especially for racial minorities and newcomers), and erodes the possibility of shared common goods.
Finally, we do not believe in the incremental improvement of capitalism and so wish to align with an alternative approach to economics and politics such as socialism.
Fundamentally we understand socialism to be an ongoing, collective commitment to providing the broadest base of life-sustaining resources for all, modelled for us in the life and teachings of Jesus and practiced by the early church, as recorded in the book of Acts.