Action Speaks Louder Winter 2012 by OPIRG Toronto

Your Campus Is A Battleground

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER OPIRG TORONTO’S FIELD MANUAL FOR THOSE WHO’VE HAD ENOUGH WINTER 2012

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. —Paulo Freire (1970)

In this issue: CUPE 3902 Steps Up to U of T Admin H Class Politics and Labour Struggles Today H Racism and the University H Divestment from Militarism H Occupy Toronto Redux H And More...

add it up Population of Canada in 2010: 34,108,752 Number of Canadian billionaires: 62 Number of Canadian billionaires based in Ontario: 30 Approximate combined value of Canada’s billionaires in dollars: 162,000,000,000 Value of David Thomson, Canada’s wealthiest billionaire, in dollars: 21,340,000,000 Approximate combined value of the 17 million least wealthy Canadians in dollars: 81,000,000,000 Approximate number of students enrolled in Canadian universities: 1,200,000 Percentage of Canadian university budgets funded by tuition fees in 1985: 17 Percentage of Canadian university budgets funded by tuition fees in 1985: 34 Percentage of all new jobs in Canada requiring an undergraduate degree: 70 Total value of student loans owed to the Government of Canada, in dollars: +13,500,000,000 Canadian military expenditures in 2010 in dollars: 20,164,000,000 Approximate number of prisoners in Canadian prisons: 13,000 Amount Harper government plans to spend on prison expansion over the next 5 years, in dollars: 2,000,000,000 Estimated number of barrels of oil in the Alberta tar sands: 1,700,000,000,000 Percentage of Earth’s entire fresh water reserves required to extract all oil from the tar sands using current methods: 10 Number of Canadian cities in which activists have participated in the “Occupy” movement: +20 Number of American cities in which activists have participated in the “Occupy” movement: +96 Number of cities worldwide in which activists have participated in the “Occupy” movement: +951 Approximate number of arrests incurred by the movement in North America since September 17, 2011: 5,546 Number of activists arrested during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement occupation of Sproul Hall in 1964: 773 Approximate number of Google hits for “Occupy” on December 18, 2011: 243,000,000 Approximate number of Google hits for “Britney Spears” on December 18, 2011: 323,000,000 Percentage of Canadian workers represented by unions in 1997: 33.5 Percentage of Canadian workers represented by unions today: 31.5 Percentage of Swedish workers represented by unions today: 78 Number of times back-to-work legislation has been passed in Canada since 1950: 33 Number of times such legislation has been used in the last five years: 6 SOURCES: Canadian Association of University Teachers, Canadian Business Magazine, Canadian Federation of Students, Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, Monthly Labor Review, cbc.ca, occupyarrests.com, Scapegoat: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy, The Toronto Star, World Bank.

THEN BREAK IT DOWN

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER

WINTER 2012 actionspeaksloudertoronto@gmail.com OPIRG-Toronto 101-563 Spadina Cres. Toronto, Ontario M5S 2J7 www.opirgtoronto.org opirg.toronto@utoronto.ca PRODUCTION Clare O’Connor AK Thompson EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE Simone Akyianu Clare O’Connor Erin Oldynski Safa Shahkhalili AK Thompson CONTRIBUTORS Ryan Culpepper Baolinh Dang Vivien Endicott-Douglas Lorenzo Fiorito Katie Mazer Will Nakhid James Nugent Clare O’Connor OPIRG Board Shaun Shepherd DESIGN AK Thompson COVER ART AK Thompson

TABLE OF MALCONTENTS Board of Directors

Occupying Space: Dynamics of Privilege in Leftist Organizing

A Modest Proposal

Action Group Listings

Shaun Shepherd

Access at What Cost?

Ryan Culpepper, Katie Mazer, and James Nugent

STRIKE?!

OPIRG et al.

Pull-out CUPE 3902 Solidarity Poster

6 9

OPIRG Staff

Lorenzo Fiorito Vivien Endicott- Douglas

The Working Class is Back Lessons in Deflection: Why We Must Divest from Israeli Apartheid

William Nakhid

Facing Reality: Leaders and Marshals in the Occupy Movement

Resources

IT’S TIME TO TAKE ACTION LAYOUT AK Thompson & Clare O’Connor Printed at Thistle Printing, Toronto, ON by Union Labour Produced by OPIRG Staff, proud members of CUPE 1281

Action Speaks Louder is the biannual newsletter of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group at the University of Toronto. We publish articles about social and environmental justice advocacy and activism, with specific focus on issues that affect members of the campus community. If you want to work on an activist publication, write to us: opirg.toronto@gmail.com. The newsletter collective will begin meeting in May 2012 to start work on our Fall 2012 edition. If you would rather just write for us, submit a pitch! The pitch submission deadline for the Fall 2012 issue is Monday, June 4th, 2012. Write about campaigns you’re involved in, or your thoughts on any political or social justice issue. Email a short pitch to actionspeaksloudertoronto@gmail.com.

OCCUPYING SPACE 2

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

DYNAMICS OF PRIVILEGE IN LEFTIST ORGANIZING Greetings from OPIRG’s Board of Directors

ver the past few months, we have witnessed the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to many sites across North America, only to be forcefully evicted. The OPIRG Board of Directors has supported and continues to support the right of Occupy movements to inhabit space, in order to grow, to imagine, and to enact the imagined. We are against instances of spaces being claimed by a repressive state, and stand in solidarity with those facing displacement by brutal police forces. But looking back, in an attempt to look forwards, we want to recognize that to give Occupy space demanded more generosity from some of us than others, simply because the movement did not seek to make space for us all. The Occupy movements emerged at a particular historical juncture. We live in a moment marked by challenges to how the West has historically secured prosperity and stability for its “rightful” citizens. People who have historically benefitted from capitalist and other hierarchies are now being denied what they were once entitled to; systems that have never worked for others are now starting to not work for the privileged. The Occupy movements arose as white, middle-class bodies started to face threats of economic and social precariousness that have always been realities for darker and otherwise marked bodies. Make no mistake: those among the “99%” are still not equal. Capitalism interacts with racism, sexism, and other structures of distinction to ensure that certain bodies will rarely, if ever, experience the full brunt of injustices. In Toronto, leftist discourse as well as broader mainstream rhetoric, have often exalted Occupy as unprecedented or newly revolutionary in its political potential – these sites are presented as unifying in a way that dismisses other forms of organizing as being “divisive.” This kind of rhetoric erases centuries of difficult struggle. Occupy has not been the only form of organizing happening in North America, nor should it be. Those who choose to struggle and resist in other spaces should be offered support and respect for the important work they are doing, rather than being asked to put it aside to be “included” in Occupy. That said, we do not mean to erase the presence and contribution of women, people of colour, and other “others” in Occupy spaces. We are humbled by the difficulty of their work. We respect their work by keeping in mind the potential for Occupy movements to evolve through experience and practice.

But these critiques are also more widely applicable, providing an opportunity to reflect on other spaces and struggles as well. At OPIRG, we strive to identify how cycles of oppression manifest themselves within our own circles of organizing even as we try to confront them in larger contexts. If the left focuses on actions like Occupy, what kinds of struggles become dismissed as unworthy of attention, validation, or support? When the left uses rhetoric of outreach and inclusion to extend into the spaces of other struggles, what kinds of politics do we (yet again) place at the centre, and what kinds at the margins? What is the place of the University in all of this? Universities have upheld wider patterns of marginalization; they have also hosted insurgent voices that uncovered and reversed mainstream erasures. Critiques articulated in universities have founded disciplines, tied livelihoods to radical knowledge production, inspired people to build community across the boundaries of the university, deepened and widened fronts of struggle. In this context, the battle being waged by TAs through their CUPE 3902 union is also a fight to defend campus as a space that nourishes wider movements for justice. This labour struggle is part of a broader fight, one that demands coalitionbuilding and attentive listening. For decades, OPIRG has stood at this interface of knowledge production and visible political action. As we face intensifying attacks on public education, how can we help to make campus a site for the founding and renewal of collective solidarity? If you too are asking these questions or having these discussions, then come and join us. This year is the 30th anniversary of OPIRG, marking decades of supporting various forms and sites of struggles across this campus and city. We look forward to continuing our work in solidarity with grassroots initiatives, to supporting our action groups’ important projects, collaborating with researchers, academics, authors and activists from across the city, and to providing the tools and space to continually improve the politics we practice. In Solidarity, Johanna, Juan Carlos, Safa, Simone, Will, Vivien, Zexi

A MODEST PROPOSAL OPIRG Staff Editorial

ecently, OPIRG came under fire from a radical fringe of the student body eager to hone their public persuasion skills. How, they asked, could an organization fighting for social and environmental justice purport to speak for the “public interest”? It was a tepid attack and we responded with measure and grace. However, since then we’ve had a change of heart. Why should we ask students to support our work? And what is this thing called the “public interest” anyway? This line of questioning made us realize that our detractors were in fact far too cautious. Defund OPIRG? That’s nothing. Let’s extend the argument to its logical conclusions and go after the real culprits. Let’s follow the money and do away with the myth of the “public interest” once and for all. In 2010, Stephen Harper demonstrated admirable leadership when he salvaged public funds that had been earmarked for special interest “feminist” initiatives. Most impressively, he managed to eliminate taxpayer funding to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) – an organization that, for almost forty years, was publicly subsidized to advocate on partisan matters such as day care, birth control, maternity leave, family law, education and pensions. Harper’s careful maneuvering retrieved millions of taxpayer dollars. This success story demonstrates that – when politicians stay focused – it’s

OPIRG ACTION GROUPS

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

possible to eliminate public funding for services that only some citizens use. After all, women constitute only half of the Canadian population; of these, only some relied on the advocacy and services that NAC supported (shelters, sexual assault crisis centers, subsidized housing). Why, then, should all of us have to foot the bill? The NAC success story reveals that, with persistence, userfee systems can be established for so-called “public interest” groups. And although impoverished families and the newly unemployed might win support by exploiting the sympathies of bleeding heart liberals, we can get that money back if we proceed with ruthless perseverance and a healthy disregard for reality. After all, why should people pay taxes to support those who have less money? And why would anyone invest in things that have no evident personal returns? Think of all the services you fund but don’t use. Why do you pay for roads you’ll never drive on, or for parts of the sewage systems that will never guide your shit to sea? Why are you paying for schools you don’t attend, to educate students you don’t even know? And what if these kids – using your hardearned tax dollars – finish school and become threats to your own financial and social stability? Maybe they’ll even outscore your own sallow children (now indistinguishable from somnambulists in their narcotized playstation stupor) and thereby get jobs that would otherwise support your family. To level the playing field, we should immediately begin the struggle to implement a national user fee system for all schools. Similar schemes should be considered for health care. Why should we take care of people who might not even be taking care of themselves? And why should we fund public transportation to save other people money to get to work? There’s nothing more suicidal than giving our opponents in this dog-eat-dog world a competitive advantage they clearly haven’t earned. These changes need only be the beginning. Ultimately, there’s no need for a “public” at all, and any discussion of “public interest” is clearly at odds with our shared objective of winning the race to the bottom. Barriere Lake Solidarity Toronto Disability Action Movement Now Environmental Justice Toronto L@tinas Canada Marxist discussion club Moyo Wa Africa No One is Illegal Toronto

Action Groups are at the heart of OPIRG’s work. They are volunteer collectives that organize autonomously for social and environmental justice. For more information, or to get involved, please check us out at

www.opirgtoronto.org

Progressive Filipino Canadians for Community Empowerment and Development (PFCCED) R3: Roots Rhythms Resistance Students Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto Bolivia Solidarity Toronto FreeSkool!

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

ACCESS AT WHAT COST? Shaun Shepherd

or almost everyone, post-secondary education in Ontario is marred by barriers. However, these barriers tend to be worse for racialized communities. As a result, racialised students tend to be underrepresented on Ontario campuses. Because Ontario has the nation’s highest average tuition fees, income disparities faced by racialised communities become a significant barrier to accessible post-secondary education. According to Employment Ontario, 70 percent of jobs in this province insist that employees have some form of postsecondary education. This number is likely to increase as Canada further entrenches itself as a “knowledge-based” economy. The impetus for students to acquire an education beyond high school is thus self-evident. Indeed, it has practically become a requirement for participation in the job market. Meanwhile, access to post-secondary education remains limited for many racialised students. Racialised communities that suffered the brunt of colonial economic plundering continue to be burdened by economic disparities. People in lower income brackets are consistently members of racialised communities. And though education has been recognized as a concrete means of overcoming the effects of colonialism, the cost of accessing such an education remains prohibitive in Ontario. The provincial government of Ontario contributes public funding to educational institutions at a level far below the national average. Since the mid-1990s, student loans have replaced grants as the primary source of student aid. To date, students taking out loans in Ontario have incurred more than $7 billion dollars in debt. This sum amounts to nearly 50% of all loans owed to the federal government.

These changes have exacerbated issues of access for racialised communities. Meanwhile, our provincial and national legislatures have done little to address the underrepresentation of racialized communities in post-secondary education. During the provincial election in October 2011, the Liberal party was elected on the promise that they would implement a 30% tuition fee reduction for all post-secondary students. This policy would significantly improve access for all communities; however, the Liberal’s current plan falls far short of their initial promise. Rather than a tuition fee reduction, the Liberals are currently advocating yet another grant scheme.The tuition fee grant will only be available to a third of all undergraduate students, exempting students in professional and graduate programs. The grant will also be administered through the Ontario Student Loan Program, thus adding further restrictions to access. If we are serious about improving access to post-secondary education for racialised communities, we need to rethink the framework of educational funding. We’ve seen that grants, incentives, schemes, and corporatization are neither sustainable nor effective options for overcoming financial barriers. We need real solutions that confront these barriers head on. The only effective solution is a tuition fee reduction and a restoration of public funding. Fully funded post-secondary education would be a substantial step in overcoming the economic consequences of a colonial history. On February 1st, students across Ontario will participate in a national day of action calling on the government and on university administrators to work with students to make post-secondary education fully accessible. The vision is shared by many, and I hope to see racialised allies leading the rally. Shaun is Vice-President External for the University of Toronto Students’ Union.

ALL OUT FEB.1ST

JOIN THE MOVEMENT and participate in a National Day of Action. Students are calling on the government to increase access and affordability of our education. In January weekly coalition meetings will be held on Tuesdays at 5pm in Sidney Smith.

STRIKE?!

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

Ryan Culpepper, CUPE 3902 Bargaining Team Chair, Katie Mazer, CUPE 3902 Internal Liaison Officer, & James Nugent, CUPE 3902 Bargaining Team Chief Spokesperson

ou’ve probably heard the buzz around campus: Members of CUPE 3902 are bargaining a new collective agreement with our employer, the U of T. Maybe you’ve even heard rumours of an impending strike. Well, we are bargaining, and we might strike, and we’re here to tell you more about it.

WHO IS CUPE 3902? CUPE 3902 is the union representing 7,000 sessional instructors, TAs, and other contracted education workers at the U of T. The collective agreement for students who work as instructors and TAs expired on April 30, 2011, and we have been meeting regularly with U of T to negotiate a new collective agreement. At the end of November, to demonstrate our seriousness to our employer (who was stalling at the bargaining table), we held a strike vote. It was one of the strongest strike votes in the history of Canadian higher-education unions, with 91% of our members supporting a strike mandate. On December 5th, the University walked away from the bargaining table and filed for conciliation. Because of the University’s intransigence, most of our key bargaining proposals have yet to be discussed at the table.

labs lectures. This is great. But what happens when tutorials begin to look more like lectures than discussions? Or when your lab demonstrator is so overexerted that you can’t get her to your lab station when you need her? There is currently no limit to the size of labs or tutorials at this university. Almost half (42%) of tutorials at U of T have more than fifty students. Over one hundred tutorials on our campus have more than one hundred students. Good teaching becomes impossible with tutorials this big. Your TAs are often forced to work extra hours without pay in order to offer even the most minimal support. TAs and students have a shared stake in ending huge tutorials: If it’s a bad place for you to learn, it’s also a bad place for us to work. EUGENIA TSAO

WHAT ARE WE BARGAINING FOR? LEARN MUCH? The University of Toronto has some of the biggest classes in the country. To deal with these huge classes, the University has often hired TAs to run tutorials alongside lectures, giving students a chance to learn in smaller groups with knowledgeable instructors. In the sciences, TAs with the skills you’re trying to develop run labs to supplement

GLOSSARY

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8>> Union: A democratic organization that uses its collective power to win better working conditions and compensation for its members. Collective Bargaining: Negotiations between a union and an employer, aimed at establishing workplace standards like non-discrimination policies, wages, safety provisions, and benefits (health, childcare, etc). Strike Vote: A vote asking union members whether they grant authority to union leaders to call a strike in the case that negotiating fails. A strong strike vote can pressure the employer to negotiate more seriously because it makes clear that the membership stands strongly behind the bargaining proposals.

Conciliation: When a union or employer asks for a government-appointed mediator to help them to reach a collective agreement. It is required that the negotiating parties go through a conciliation process before a legal strike or lockout can happen. Strike: A workplace action in which workers stop working, the strike encourages an employer to listen to workers’ demands. By stopping production, strikes highlight that it’s really the workers who generate money for the employer. Strikes can be effective because they cause the employer to lose money or present them with a public relations disaster. Lockout: Sometimes, rather than letting workers strike, an employer will lock them out. In most workplaces, this literally means that the doors are locked and workers cannot work. It also means they don’t get paid.

We can prove them wrong.

BETTER FUNDING!

FAIR COMPENSATION!

SMALLER CLASS SIZES!

At a time when the labour movement is under attack across the country, the University of Toronto Administration thinks it can get away with denying U of T students and workers 6

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012 2011

CUPE 3902!

SUPPORT

FIND EACH OTHER | STICK TOGETHER | FIGHT TO WIN

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

STRIKE?!

>>CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

We’re proposing to reduce tutorial and lab sizes through a “cap” system. Under our proposal, tutorials would have a “soft cap” of twenty students. If a tutorial exceeds twenty, the University would have to offer the TA extra paid hours for the extra work required. Absolutely no tutorials would be allowed to have more than 50 students. Labs would require one lab demonstrator for every 20 students, period. So far, the University has just said “No” to our proposals. In fact, they’ve stated that they don’t think that tutorials at U of T are too big! Undergraduates should simply, in their words, “adjust their expectations.” THINKING OF GOING TO GRADUATE SCHOOL? The U of T used to guarantee graduate students a minimum funding package composed partially of a fellowship for our research and partially of wages for our work as TAs. Now, the U of T is moving toward eliminating research fellowships entirely. Our fellowships ensure that we have enough time to do the research that brought us to graduate school in the first place. Unfortunately, fellowships don’t satisfy the Administration’s desire for measurable (i.e. profitable) “outputs.” Although our funding packages are currently structured so that the total amount remains unchanged, a greater percentage of the total amount comes from wages and a smaller percentage comes from fellowships each year. At this rate, we’ll eventually be teaching for 100% of our funding and have no fellowship—no compensation for our research—at all. We are increasingly required to work more hours, often for as little as $12 an hour – on research tasks unrelated to our dissertations. The wages for this new kind of work are often calculated against our guaranteed funding, which means we do the work but never take home a dollar for it. Meanwhile, the funding we were promised for carrying out our research continues to disappear. This would be bad enough for any employee; however, it’s particularly bad for us because we’re trying to complete degrees while the funding clock is ticking. Most PhDs take about six and a half years to complete; at U of T, PhD students are funded for only four or five of these years. When we entered U of T, we were told that a guaranteed Doctoral Completion Grant would sustain us after the four to five years of guaranteed funding. Last year, the Administration eliminated that Grant without consulting or even informing us. Now, in the last years of our PhDs, we’re left with nothing. For the international students who make up 25% of our membership, it’s impossible to accept work off campus or even to take on loans. Without work or funding, these students face deportation. CUPE 3902 members love our work. We just want to be given the tools to do it well. We also want U of T to live up to the funding commitment they made to us when we entered so that we can finish our degrees. We want graduate school to be a viable option—with meaningful work, reliable income, and

adequate support—for future students. If you’re thinking of going to graduate school, this means you. We’ve proposed fixing the broken structure of graduate student funding. The U of T has refused even to discuss it.

WE DON’T WANT TO STRIKE BUT WE WILL We have explained all of this to the Administration. We’ve made reasonable, common-sense proposals, and we’ve conveyed the strength of our resolve with a 91% strike vote. The ball is now in their court. They have the power to get us to a new collective agreement in January. If we strike, it will be because we have no other option. Just as students hate the academic disruptions caused by a strike, unions also hate being forced to strike. It disrupts our lives, too, and we’d rather be in the classroom. Our strike will be in defence of good education, public services, and jobs for all. Our own livelihoods are under threat, but we don’t live in a vacuum. Conditions on our campus—the growing disparity, the attempts to squeeze more from workers while paying them less, and the demand that we “adjust our expectations” of public services—reflect broader trends. At the same time, our response reflects the broader global resolve to fight against austerity, unemployment, slashed wages, forced debt, rolled-back services, and increased fees. Our members have stated loud and clear: We don’t want to strike, but we will.

EUGENIA TSAO

5 WAYS TO SUPPORT YOUR TAs & COURSE INSTRUCTORS 1. Talk to your friends about what you learned from this article! 2. Spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media magic. 3. Write something for campus media. 4. Gather a few friends and go hand out flyers explaining our bargaining proposals. 5. Use your creativity: make stickers, speak in your classes, write letters. Don’t let our list hold you back! For ongoing updates and more information visit: www.cupe3902.org

THE

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

City staff met on the morning of June 15 to discuss concerns that Canada Post picketers might interfere with public areas set up for people to watch Game 7 of the Cup final….

In October, the same Conservative government used legislative means to prevent airline attendants at Air Canada from taking strike action and thus interfered in the workings of the free market in favour of the employer. Clearly, class matters to the government, just as it matters to the employers that government represents. The postal strike was preceded by months of unofficial job action in cities like Winnipeg and Edmonton. These actions were not sanctioned and sometimes were even discouraged by postal union officials. Union brass tried to restrain the airline workers from striking, too. But, “Two people who said they are junior flight attendants told CBC News that a petition is being circulated to remove union management.” CBC quoted one flight attendant who explained, “I don’t think they get us. I don’t think they get what we’re fighting for.” So, class also matters to the people who work at these jobs. If labour has been a conservative force, this is not something that is eternally true: it’s the product of specific social and economic circumstances that are now changing. With these changes come shifts in the behaviour of organized labour. Really, the only people who need to be convinced that class exists and matters are those who have been socially isolated from struggles like the ones recounted above. These are the members of that much-talked-about middle class. It is therefore common to say that the middle class is not oppressed. Really, this is false. Their denial of class masks an inability to organize against the disappearance of their own livelihoods and professions, which were destroyed by people far more powerful than they. This lack of power is, in turn, an effect of the fragmentation, isolation, and competitive nature of middle-class life. It’s true: the labour movement, and the radical organizations and networks that seek to change society, are ridden with the social ills they claim to combat – racism, sexism, homophobia, and class prejudice. Nevertheless, working-class politics are now more relevant than ever. This is not because of any inherent moral superiority of workers, but because the creation of wealth depends on their activity. As this never-ending global recession shows, if the social wealth is not redistributed, then Europe and North America will no longer be able to support the standard of living we’ve grown used to. These economies are in serious crisis, because the capitalist class who currently manages the economy has proven incapable of doing its job. Meanwhile, as economies crumble, jobs disappear, and poverty increases, corporate heads actually continue to increase their own salaries. Why shouldn’t they? We haven’t yet done anything effective to stop them. You can’t redistribute what you don’t own and control. Every strike is a lesson in how to take the power – and the money – from those who misuse them, and to put the product of our labour back into our own hands.

Clearly, peacefully striking workers frightened the Harper government far more than did a large group of people seeking to express its repressed psychological anger. That should tell us something.

After completing a BA in Political Science at the University of Alberta, Lorenzo Fiorito got a political education in the garment factories and machine shops of Montreal. Presently an editor with radical journal Upping the Anti, he has returned to studies at U of T, Scarborough.

WORKING

CLASS IS BACK

Lorenzo Fiorito

hy talk about class in the twenty-first century? Supposedly the organizations that workers created to defend themselves against bosses, established labour unions today have adapted to capitalist oppression and then mouth abstract worker-friendly rhetoric while helping employers exploit actual workers. Historically, North American racial pogroms (like those in Vancouver in 1907) were often union-led: first they excluded non-White workers from membership, and then they went on the rampage, killing and beating the “scabs” they had created. Since the era of globalization, manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to the emerging economies, and the sector has shrunk dramatically. The service sector now accounts for three-quarters of the jobs and 71 percent of Canadian GDP, says the CIA World Factbook. So why talk about class today? Does it really exist anymore? If it does, isn’t it a conservative force and not a progressive one? At 11:59 PM on June 14, Canada Post Corporation locked out all postal workers across the country. According to the CBC, “Vancouver officials were more concerned with striking Canada Post workers than any potential violence in the hours leading up to the Stanley Cup riot, documents released by the city reveal.”

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

LESSONS IN DEFLECTION WHY WE MUST DIVEST FROM ISRAELI APARTHEID

Vivien Endicott-Douglas

n November 2011, the Graduate Students’ Union Council voted down a motion encouraging U of T to divest from three of the world’s largest military manufacturers and one of the world’s largest information technology suppliers. In what follows, I consider the most common arguments advanced by the motion’s critics.

“This motion singles out Israel. Why shouldn’t we also target companies complicit in human rights violations in the United States, the DRC, Darfur, Haiti, Canada or Afghanistan?” Good question. The second clause of the GSU divestment motion explicitly demanded that the university divest from all companies in violation of international law. Never have I met a Palestine solidarity activist who would argue against an end to exploitation, occupation, and human rights violations worldwide. Israel’s supporters assume that if anti- apartheid activists don’t single out all guilty states, then there must be some reason that they single out Israel in particular. However, this position ignores the fact that the Canadian state, our politicians, and our university have already singled out Israel. Canada has now usurped the US as Israel’s top friend and is increasingly contributing to protecting its impunity. Recently, while discussing a number of defense co-operation agreements with Israel, defense minister Peter Mackay made it clear that Israel “would not find a more supportive country on the planet.” “The GSU is not a political body” and “this is a divisive issue. Some members oppose it and therefore we shouldn’t accept it.” Fearing backlash and dissent, the GSU Councilors who advance this argument seem to believe that, by not supporting this divestment campaign, students can somehow “remain neutral” on the issue. However, claims to “impartiality” fail to recognize that even our inaction carries political implications. By investing in these companies and overlooking their complicity in crimes, the university becomes complicit in these same violations. By extension, as tuition-paying students, we too become invested and complicit, and the issue becomes DEMAND THAT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 1. Immediately divest from and refuse to reinvest in BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Hewlett Packard and Lockheed Martin 2. Refrain from investing in all companies involved in violations of international law and; 3. Work with students, faculty and staff to undergo a democratic and transparent process to ensure accountability to principles of social and economic justice.

explicitly political. Are we going to continue to side with war profiteers and multinational corporations by choosing to maintain the status quo, or are we going to support collective action in solidarity with those struggling against violence?

“Even if this motion does not include the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid’, it’s put forth by Students Against Israeli Apartheid and therefore implicates us in their campaign.” The term “apartheid” understandably strikes fear into the heart of anyone who grew up hearing about the horrors that took place in South Africa. Once the official apartheid regime in South Africa fell, international law defined apartheid as a crime against humanity. The term is used to describe situations exhibiting similar forms of racial segregation and discrimination to those practiced in South Africa. According to the recent Russell Tribunal, Palestinians are “… subjected to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid.” Dismantling these policies, ending the occupation, and recognizing the right of return for all Palestinians is the precondition for a level playing field between Palestine and Israel. Renowned individuals like celebrated intellectual Judith Butler, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former US president Jimmy Carter have all written extensively on Israeli Apartheid and have contributed to the wide acceptance of this analysis. As the anti- South African apartheid struggles of twenty years ago make clear, student mobilizations have been important pieces of the overall struggle for change. Yet, it is a little known fact that the U of T was the last university in Canada to divest from the South African apartheid regime. Today, the international community has once again been called upon to divest from corporations responsible for human right’s violations. And, as Palestinian academic Omar Barghouti has made clear, the international BDS campaign against apartheid South Africa was “the straw that broke the camel’s back … without it you could not have ended apartheid.” Now, twenty years after the fact, these tactics remain more relevant than ever. Vivien is a student of Equity, Drama and Film Studies at U of T. THE COMPANIES: BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin through their respective production of F-3 and F- 16 fighter jets, Longbow Hellfire 2 missiles, and Apache Helicopters (along with other weapons technologies) are all directly implicated in war crimes committed against the people of Gaza during the 2008/09 attacks that killed 1,400 Palestinians, a majority of whom were innocent civilians (300 of whom were children). Hewlett Packard contributes to the collective punishment of Palestinians by developing, installing and maintaining monitoring systems used at checkpoints, managing the Israeli Navy’s IT infrastructure, supplying the Israeli military forces with PCs, servers, and virtualization systems, and outsourcing IT services to its subsidiary, Matrix, which operates out of the illegal Israeli settlement Mdi’in Illit.

FACING

REALITY LEADERS AND MARSHALLS IN THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT William Nakhid

ven before the first general assemblies in St. James Park, Occupy Toronto activists asserted that theirs was a leaderless movement. At a general assembly during the early days of the occupation, someone made an announcement for facilitation committee meetings. Inviting us to the facilitation training, the individual suggested that all of us could lead or facilitate discussions. In the middle of their announcement, someone participating in the general assembly interrupted by yelling “we have no leaders!” The sentiment was met with cheers and applause. In response, someone else in the crowd yelled back “we are all leaders!” which was met with even more cheers and applause. But was this true? The idea of a leaderless movement is valuable. Striving to realize it can be rewarding and can help to create welcoming and safe-spaces for all peoples to participate and be empowered. But while a non-hierarchical structure is important, it takes more than shouting comments at a general assembly to make it a reality. During Occupy Toronto, the distinction between the ideal of anti-authoritarianism and the strategy required to actualize it remained unclear. Anti-authoritarianism is not something we’re taught by our society. Making it a reality demands constant education, skill building, and skill sharing. These things take time, and are a lot of work. Creating a leaderless movement requires more work and attention from individual members than having a leader does. While chanting and shouting can be important, vocal appeals to movement ideals are not substitutes for creating antiauthoritarian structure. An examination of responses to conflict at the occupy site clearly illustrate this distinction. Throughout the initial General Assemblies onward, the movement trumpeted its commitment to non-violence; however, the idea remained undefined. Violence occurs in countless ways

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

and is committed by all kinds of individuals. Through the course of the occupation, it became clear that it would be practically impossible to make St. James Park completely violence free. Although the movement had expressed commitments to non-violence and antiauthoritarian politics, it remained to be seen how these ideals would be realized in the nascent community in the park. One answer to this was marshalls. Marshalling took place at Occupy Toronto from day one. Trainings were set up, and marshalls moved through St. James Park 24 hours a day. However, it quickly became apparent that there was not a consensus about what marshalls should do or how they should do it. When problems arose, it was up to those present (marshalls or not) to figure out a solution. As a result, responses to issues of violence were often slow and marked by conflict. Vocal proclamations that “we have no leaders” did not make it so. Leaders naturally emerged in situations where swift action was needed, as conflicts often require quick and timely responses in order to guarantee the safety of all. In the case of Occupy Toronto, there was little time for genuinely antiauthoritarian responses to conflict to emerge. As a result, individuals stepped into leadership positions when things needed to get done – especially in response to violence. One response to this dynamic was for people to assert that “we are all marshalls.” At one point, marshalls were even formally disbanded by the general assembly; however, the notion that “we are all be marshalls” reflects the same kind of thinking as the idea that we can simply proclaim ourselves a “leaderless movement.” Abolishing marshalls by proclaiming all of us to be marshalls fails to acknowledge the actual work that would need to take place for marshalling to be done collectively. These idealistic proclamations often obscure the actual work required to create non-hierarchical responses to conflict. Ideally, we should all be marshalls; however, thinking that we can collectively perform this role without training and group discussion repeats the tendency we see in proclamations like “I don’t see colour,” “our movement is inclusive because people of colour are here,” or “we have no leaders.” Vocally proclaiming ideas without doing the work to transform them into reality will never yield the intended results. Simply declaring a space to be free of sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and other oppressions does not make it so. To fight these forms of oppression, we need to take actions beyond making romantic declarations. How can we create an environment where anti-authoritarian responses to violence and safety are effective? Idealistic proclamations are important as expressions of values that can orient us toward our goals. However, unless we use them to inform our actions and strategy, they become mere slogans. By thinking critically about whether or not our proclamations are true, we’ve already taken the first step. William organizes with the U of T General Assembly and spent many days at the Occupy Toronto site this past fall. He is an Equity Studies student and a member of OPIRG’s Board of Directors.

U RESOURCES 12

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER WINTER 2012

SPACES ON AND AROUND CAMPUS

ACTIVIST NETWORKS AND ORGANIZATIONS

519 Community Centre Bike Pirates: DIY Bicycle Shop Centre for Social Justice Centre for Women and Trans People at U of T Native Canadian Centre of Toronto Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/ Multicultural Women Against Rape Toronto Women’s Bookstore

LOCAL

www.the519.org www.bikepirates.com www.socialjustice.org womenscentre.sa.utoronto.ca

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid Low Income Families Together (LIFT) No One is Illegal-Toronto Ontario Coalition Against Poverty Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Sikh Activist Network Toronto Stop the War Coalition Toronto Vegetarian Association Toronto Worker’s Assembly OPIRG-York

LOCAL

NATIONAL AND GLOBAL

BASICS Newsletter Toronto New Socialist Ryerson Free Press subMedia.tv The Dominion Toronto Media Co-op Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action York University Free Press

www.ncct.on.ca www.trccmwar.ca www.womensbookstore.com

basicsnews.ca www.newsocialist.org www.ryersonfreepress.ca submedia.tv www.thedominion.ca www.mediacoop.ca www.uppingtheanti.org www.yufreepress.org

NATIONAL AND GLOBAL Al Jazeera Democracy Now! Independent Media Centre Infoshop News Rabble.ca Socialist Project Z Communications

english.aljazeera.net www.democracynow.org www.indymedia.org www.infoshop.org www.rabble.ca www.socialistproject.ca www.zcommunications.org

www.caiaweb.org www.lift.to toronto.nooneisillegal.org www.ocap.ca www.queersagainstapartheid.org sikhactivist.net www.nowar.ca www.veg.ca www.workersassembly.ca www.opirgyork.ca

Animal Liberation Front www.animalliberationfront.com Assaulted Women’s Helpline www.awhl.org AW@L peaceculture.org Canadian Haiti www.canadahaitiaction.ca Action Network Canadian Tamil Congress www.canadiantamilcongress.ca Defenders of the Land www.defendersoftheland.org INCITE Women of www.incite-national.org Color Against Violence Indigenous Environmental Network www.ienearth.org Jews Against the Occupation www.jatonyc.org Justice for www.justicia4migrantworkers.org Migrant Workers North Eastern Federation www.nefac.org of Anarchist Communists International Jewish www.ijsn.net Anti-Zionist Network Palestinian Campaign for the www.pacbi.org Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel Prison Justice Action Committee www.pjac.ca

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GET INVOLVED WITH OPIRG!

2012 is OPIRG’s 30th Anniversary! We’re celebrating with a full year of research, education, and action for social and environmental justice. OPIRG provides students, workers, and members of the U of T community with opportunities to develop skills and analysis for effective advocacy against injustice and oppression. SUBMIT TO OUR NEWSLETTER! Action Speaks Louder is OPIRG’s bi-annual newsletter. Authors analyze important and timely social and political issues, and reflect on their own activism. Pick up our latest issue!

JOIN AN ACTION GROUP! Action groups are the heart of OPIRG. These small groups undertake research and organize educational events, public lectures, film screenings, concerts, and demonstrations about anti-racism, Indigenous sovereignty, gender equity, free and accesible education, immigrant and refugee rights, labour rights, anti-war politics, anti-poverty activism, and environmental justice.

USE OUR LIBRARY! The Dr. Chun Resource Library is a collaborative initiative between OPIRG and the Centre for Women and Transpeople.This free library allows for U of T students and community members to access factual, critical, and alternative books, tapes, zines, CDs and other resources.

ATTEND A WORKSHOP! Tools for Change is an annual, free series of skill-building workshops on media strategy and journalism, public speaking, print making and design, research methods, community organizing strategies, facilitation, publishing, decisionmaking methods, rally organizing, and more!

Come by the office! Please contact OPIRG for more information about our initiatives.

Ontario Public Interest Research Group - Toronto 563 Spadina Cres. Suite 101 416-978-7770 www.opirgtoronto.org opirg.toronto@gmail.com g

TOOLS FOR CHANGE Activist Skills Workshops | January-May 2012 TOOLS for CHANGE is a series of free skills-sharing and skills-building workshops designed to help you gain the tools for doing research, education, and action for social and environmental justice. This series is collaboratively organized by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, Earthroots, and Greenpeace. To register for a workshop, please write to tools.change@gmail.com. Most workshops take place in downtown Toronto. All venues are wheelchair accessible. For more information, please contact tools.change@gmail.com.

January 19 >> Training for Trainers. 6:30 pm

January 29 >> Self-Defense Politics and Practice. 1:00 pm

March 3 >> Great Meeting Facilitation.1:00 pm

Planning on leading a workshop in the future? Then this workshop is for you. This training will cover the basic principles of workshop design and delivery including how to create a comfortable learning environment, manage workshop logistics, pay attention to power and process, choose content that will fit your group’s different learning styles, and look after yourself in the role of facilitator. You’ll have the opportunity to create a simple workshop design and get feedback, so please come prepared with something in mind.

Our experiences of violence impacts our lives, and our activism. To challenge patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism we need to be able to defend ourselves and our communities. Join us for a physical self-defense workshop and a discussion about gender norms and the right to anger, to healthy aggression and to countering the pathologizing of women who fight back.

A major part of social change work is lots of meetings. Meetings can be inspiring, hellish, or somewhere in between. The quality of a meeting depends a lot on good facilitation. Facilitators aren’t supposed to run the show, and they do more than keep track of who wants to speak. In this workshop you’ll learn and practice some steps, tools, techniques and approaches that can help you effectively facilitate meetings—and that includes those difficult meetings.

January 22 >> Group DecisionMaking Workshop.1:00 pm How movement groups make decisions has a big impact on our politics, our effectiveness, and the quality of our activist experience. It can be a major challange to find the model that has the right mix of inclusiveness, accountability, and efficiency for your group. This workshop will explore different decision-making and organizational models used by activist and advocacy groups, such as consensus, voting, spokescouncils, and hybrid varieties. We will also use tools and exercises to help you identify and address solutions to some of the decision-making challenges your group might be experiencing.

January 26 >> Avoiding Activist Burnout. 6:30 pm An activist culture that emphasizes passion and unwavering commitment can be alienating to those members who have lost some of that initial spark. This workshop aims to break down the stigma surrounding activist burnout, offer some constructive solutions for how to get back from the brink of burnout, and tips how to prevent it in yourself and members of your group.

February 5 >> Web Research Skills for Activists and Independent Journalists. 1:00 pm This workshop presents the skills and techniques that investigative journalists and private-eyes use to do deep digging research on the Internet. It show people how to use google in ways most people are unaware of and how to access the wealth of information on the Internet that Google can’t find. Jammed packed from edge to edge, this session will be a chance for novice and expert researchers alike to pick up skills they can use everyday. The last hour of this workshop will be tailored to using Access to Information laws to get government records.

February 12 >> Grassroots Financial Management.1:00 pm

March 17 >> Direct Action Workshop. 11:00 am Direct action has played an integral role in most movements for social change, from the civil rights era to the suffragettes, and from forest defense to worker justice movements. This workshop is for people who are newer to direct action and are interested in learning about different kinds of direct action, as well as the basics of when, why and how to integrate direct action into your campaigns. Topics to be covered include: campaign strategy, choosing an action that suits your goals, building your action team, common roles in a direct action, decision making at actions, basic safety considerations, and escalation and de-escalation during actions.

In the whirl of everyday demands, it’s easy to loose track of our finances. The consequences are bad enough when we mismanage personal money,and the stakes are just as high when we’re dealing with the limited budgets of grassroots activist organizations. Come learn about the basic steps you must take to manage your group’s finances, including an introduction to bookkeeping.