WUP Organizing Committee
The following is a document written in late August of 2025 for the founding congress of the organization the Workers United Front, which our organization is working with. The document is meant to be a brief outline of the conditions and attitudes of the working class in so-called Kelowna B.C., and what the WUP and WUF can do to begin building an efficient and competent organization in the biggest city in the Okanagan.
For as long as people can remember, Kelowna has been at the heart of British Columbia’s conservative right, with it being home to politicians such as W.A.C. Bennett of the Social Credit Party. Right wing politics have remained prevalent in the interior to this day, with little to no resistance from the left apart from the 1983 Solidarity Movement, which was present throughout the whole province in protest to neoliberal policy. While the right continues to dominate politics in the interior, progressive elements, mainly in the youth, have begun to build some momentum. While the road ahead towards building something like a new Communist party is long and daunting, foundations for a stronger movement are building, class consciousness is rising, and the blinding ideals of conservatism are quickly slipping away from people’s eyes. In this statement, we hope to communicate the main issues in Kelowna and how we can organize around them to offer people solutions and build a revolutionary movement.
1: Labour
Conditions for the average worker in Kelowna are similar to workers across the whole country, facing rising expenses in food, shelter, utilities, and education. Kelowna is one of the most expensive cities in all the country to live in, and with prices rising every year, it is difficult for the average worker to live in the city. Unfortunately, without much of a strong left-wing movement to counter conservatives and the far right, the average politics of the working class drifts further to the right every year. These right wing attitudes make it next to impossible to organize these people, because instead of wishing to improve the lives of everyone around them, including themselves, they would rather compare with other workers how bad they have it, how hard they are squeezed by capitalism. This phenomena can be observed generally throughout capitalist neoliberal countries like the USA, Canada, and the UK, but workers in Kelowna continue to hold onto notions of the “American” or “Canadian” dream of “being your own boss” or starting a business, where in other cities across the country, workers have realized the dream is bunk and they must organize if they want a chance at improving conditions.
Overcoming these feelings will not happen overnight. What organizations like the WUF (Workers United Front) and WUP (Workers Unity Party) could focus on in the near future is building up a strong revolutionary organization that has an effective propaganda wing to counter right-wing talking points. It could also be valuable to create spaces for left wing and progressive workers across all industries to gather, talk of their grievances, and offer ways the organization could assist in actions like unionization drives and creating grassroots resistance to bureaucratic and corrupt unions. According to a fellow comrade, the Kelowna International Airport luggage staff have the vast majority, if not all employees, onboard for unionizing, the only thing that is stopping them is fear of backlash from bosses and higher ups. This is something that the WUP is very interested in helping pursue, and would be a historic first win for our organization and airport workers, potentially showing workers around the city that the WUP is ready to come to the aid of all workers in struggle.
2: Gentrification
Piggybacking off of the last point, the cost of living in Kelowna is getting out of control for a large part of the population. One of the main parts of the problem is the city’s increasing gentrification problem. Instead of building new affordable housing for the working class, they continue to build expensive condos and flats, destroying old neighbourhoods in the process. The last bastions of old, affordable, community oriented neighbourhoods in Kelowna, the North End and parts of East Kelowna, are under attack by real estate developers. Specifically in the North End of the city, the city government is using the excuse of heavy traffic to create a bypass to the W.R. Bennet Bridge, the only bridge across Okanagan Lake, which will run right through the North End, displacing its residents and threatening the unhoused population at Tent City.
Apart from this, Kelowna tenants face similar problems to tenants throughout the country; abusive landlords, high rents, and low quality housing and utilities. The first course of action to combat landlords and real estate developers is to form a militant tenants union, which the WUP and other locals have expressed the will to create and/or get involved in. The tenants union must be ready to face full retaliation from landlords and the city government, which is in landlords and developers pockets. Small victories from a tenants union will begin to add up over time, with more tenants seeing what good being organized can bring them. A tenants union with several victories and militant actions under its belt can be a massive force for radicalizing residents across Kelowna and the Okanagan as a whole.
3: Homelessness
Homelessness in Kelowna is seen in the same light as it is seen throughout the rest of the country; that it is the unhoused person’s fault that they are in their situation. With what we have seen above, it becomes clear that for many workers, they must make a horrible choice between having a roof over their head or having enough to eat. Many unhoused people in Kelowna have never used drugs in their lives, but simply cannot afford to pay rent in this city, pushing them onto the streets, forcing them to live at a friend’s house, or forcing them to live in their car. Most people in Kelowna have little empathy for unhoused people, with people thinking it is ok to treat them as less than human. City policy towards the unhoused population continues to make life a constant struggle for unhoused people, with the city utilizing state thugs (bylaw and RCMP) to destroy their belongings, verbally and physically abuse them, and push them to inconvenient areas all across the city.
The first step to building solidarity between workers and unhoused people is to show how unhoused people are workers too, not dangerous outlaws who want to live that way. Everyone faces rough spots in life, and some may use drugs to cope with their conditions, further outcasting them from society. WUP already wishes to work with USCO (Unhoused Solidarity Collective Okanagan) to plan actions, distribute propaganda, and build better relations between workers, students, and the unhoused community. The WUP is willing to help with whatever the unhoused population may need with the aid of other local organizations.
4: The Broader Political Scene and the General “Left-Wing” Movement
As stated in the beginning, Kelowna has always been at the heart of BC’s right-wing. With the genocide being committed by the zionist state of Israel in Palestine, however, locals from all walks of life have rallied behind the cause for Palestinian liberation. This is a big radicalizing event for many and has led to many comrades coming together to build connections and new organizations. While the movement created out of the Pro-Palestine movement is still in its infancy, this will hopefully be a spark that will expose many more people to radical politics.
Before October 7th, the communist movement specifically remained a very small part of the community, being represented mainly by Trotskyists and the Communist Party of Canada, which both had a small presence in Kelowna before dissolving and becoming irrelevant. What remains today of radical politics is Solidarity Sundays, founded 2-3 years ago, but which has degenerated politically throughout the years, USCO, which was created sometime within the last 1-2 years, and which seems to remain radical, and the WUP, founded in November 2023, and which has not much of a presence outside of radical circles, and which is going through major changes and rebuilding.
What are the main goals of the WUP, both long and short term? The short term goals of the WUP are to, 1) set up ideological training and study groups for workers and students, 2) build connections and alliances with radical groups in the area, 3) recruit new leaders to fulfill tasks necessary to building the organization further. Our long term goal is to ultimately build a national political party capable of waging struggle against the state and waging revolution to overthrow settler colonial capitalism.
We realize that our end goal of revolution is difficult, and we know we will never be able to achieve it on our own. This is why we have remained flexible when it comes to tendencies within our movement in the past, while also adhering to Maoist principles in organizing work. While we classify ourselves as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization, we are willing to work with groups across the revolutionary left to achieve our goals. We wish to do what we can to aid the WUF in building a presence in the Okanagan and more broadly in B.C. and the rest of Canada. We hope this short statement, while vague, can give a better understanding of local conditions of the working class and the revolutionary movement in Kelowna.
- Workers Unity Party
Workers United Front Kelowna 
Leave a comment