The past couple days I was disheartened to see the language being used by mainstream media to talk about the BC NDP’s disqualification of Anjali Appadurai from the leadership race. For example, the CBC (reposted by local news outlets like Capital Daily) said that the disqualification took place after an “investigation”. What did this investigation entail? How is the BC NDP being transparent to its new members about what this decision was based on?

To counteract these biased accounts, we would like to share a message sent by Dogwood after Wednesday night’s decision:

“Tonight, the BC NDP’s executive council threw Anjali Appadurai out of the leadership race. They didn’t even allow her to speak.

In doing so, the party brass revealed their allegiance: not to their members, not to democracy, not to the thousands of British Columbians who flocked to their party to have a say over the crumbling systems that govern our lives – but to the oil and gas companies that are stealing Indigenous lands and taking over our democracy.

The NDP would rather blow up their own party than have a debate about this government’s ongoing support for new fracking and pipelines. A climate justice champion they didn’t see coming garnered enough support within the party’s membership to become premier – and that’s why they won’t let her run.

What’s next for the province’s climate movement? Join our town hall meeting on Thursday, November 3 to hear from organizers about our options now that the “No Democracy Party” has denied its members a vote.

I’m disappointed – and angry. I shelved my cynicism and joined the party during the leadership race out of hope for what the BC NDP could accomplish. But instead of welcoming their new members, the party called thousands of us ‘fraudulent.’

To be clear: joining the BC NDP to vote for the next premier is not fraud, whether or not you supported another party in the past. Dogwood’s activities during the leadership race followed multiple conversations with Elections BC compliance officers.

Third parties like unions, businesses, faith groups and NGOs like Dogwood are allowed to encourage supporters to join a political party. Social movements are core to grassroots democracy in B.C., and signup drives are part of every leadership race.

Attacking the climate movement and their own members is a sign of how desperate party insiders are to protect their own power.

So tonight, there’s plenty of cause for frustration.

But before any of us go ripping up our membership cards in disgust, let’s take stock of the moment we’re in. Groups like Dogwood reportedly helped sign up thousands of new members, which means the movement and values represented in Appadurai’s campaign are now a force to be reckoned with inside the party.

Join a town hall meeting after the dust settles, to discuss what comes next.

There are important battles ahead between the re-invigorated grassroots membership and the corporate lobbyists who currently control the BC NDP, including nomination races leading up to the next provincial election.

I plan to stay as a member of B.C.’s governing party and fight for my values to be reflected – and I hope you will too. Because if we abandon the field, we concede power to a tiny group of people who are taking this province in the wrong direction.

There are also plenty of opportunities beyond the NDP and the political arena to stop oil and gas expansion, and to fight the corporate takeover of our democracy. The important thing is not to let the grassroots momentum that has built up around this race fizzle out.

I hope you’ll join us on November 3 to talk about what comes next.”

I’ll add a personal reflection as a 23 year old born and raised in Vancouver, BC. It is truly ironic how in the same week the mayor in Vancouver was elected off of a campaign heavily backed by developers, the super rich and endorsed by the vpd, and a climate activist candidate for the BC NDP leadership race was disqualified because of a grassroots campaign that garnered endorsements from environmental organizations. I understand that the rules surrounding the processes for different levels of government are different but this doesn’t sit right with me.

I feel extremely cheated by the BC NDP as someone who signed up as a party member in hopes of voting for Anjali. I signed up because I remembered Anjali as a candidate in the federal election in 2021. I was familiar with her work and as two young women of colour who are climate activists, we share many people in common in our networks. I wanted to vote for Anjali in the upcoming leadership race because I know how many people in our community believe in her passion, vision and work ethic, and her determination to use an environmental justice lens to address issues that impact the health of people and our environment. Everyone who signed up in support of her campaign has now made the BC NDP richer without getting what we hoped out of joining. I have nothing against David Eby, I actually think he has stood up for a lot of important issues throughout his years in politics (he was one of the only politicians fighting to keep free youth clinics in the city open when I was in high school), however he has not proven to be the climate leader we need. I stood in his office with other youth as a part of Kids for Climate Action many years ago when he couldn’t promise us that he would stand against coal exports. I don’t blame him, it’s uncomfortable to take a stand against business-as-usual thinking. I genuinely believe that Anjali would have been willing to disrupt business-as-usual in ways we haven’t seen.

I know not all of the claims made by the party were unfounded but a bit of misspeaking should not have cost Anjali the race on top of the events getting misconstrued in the media. I genuinely believe that if it was another white man entering the race he wouldn’t have faced this kind of public scrutiny. I also believe that if the BC NDP didn’t see Anjali as a threat to the status quo, they wouldn’t have acted so quickly to disqualify her.

The saddest part to me is that I saw so many young people getting excited about this leadership race. It is extremely difficult to engage youth in politics to the degree I saw people showing up for Anjali and I hope that we can keep up that same energy come election time but this decision will discourage so many young people from voting for the NDP, let alone voting at all because they feel like their voices don’t matter. The BC NDP just isolated so many of their own voters and I am truly scared to see how the next election goes.

That being said, if you did join the BC NDP, you can still have a voice. What we can do now is hold our party accountable. We can demand transparency. We can voice our disappointment and our concerns at every chance we get. We can let it be known that our membership and our vote is conditional. We can still shape this party into what we had envisioned it could be. We have to try.