Action Speaks Louder Winter 2014

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER OPIRG TORONTO’S FIELD MANUAL FOR THOSE WHO’VE HAD ENOUGH WINTER 2014

“The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.”

- Audre Lorde IN THIS ISSUE: • Building feminism(s) conversation • Solidarity with striking migrants • Revolutionary perspectives at the University • Sobriety as accessibility • And more...

ADD IT UP

Number of migrant prisoners on strike in Lindsay Detention Centre since September: 191 Percentage of migrant detainees imprisoned for reasons unrelated to Canadian security: 94.2 Number of people in immigration detention between 2004 and 2011: 82, 000 Number of people in immigration detention currently that have been there since 2011: 13, 000 Number of detainees in 2012 that were children (under the age of 10): 289 Percentage of detainees that are held in maximum security provincial prisons: 35 Amount of money spent on immigration detention in Canada every day, in dollars: 239 Amount of money made by private companies G4S and Corbel on providing immigration detention infrastructure 2004- 2008, in millions: 19 Cost to provide a unit of social housing, by day, in dollars: 31 Percentage of youth unemployed between the ages of 15-24, in Ontario: 17 % Average youth unemployment rate for Canada in 2013: 13.5-14.5 % Youth unemployment rate in Toronto, in 2013: 18.1 % Difference in unemployment rate of those with post-secondary degrees in comparison to those with more advanced qualifications (graduate school, etc): 17.1% higher for the latter Percentage of reported sexual assaults under the age of 18 that are committed against girls/females: 82 % Percentage of girls who are sexually assaulted who know their perpetrator: 75 % Percentage of women in Canada who have not completed high school: 35 % Median income for 72 % of these women who had not completed high school, in dollars: 13, 786 Percentage of women who are in the top 20% of Canadian earners: 11 % Percentage of women in Canada who are defined as living in poverty: 20 % Percentage of women of colour in Canada who are living in poverty: 37 % Percentage of indigenous women in Canada who are living in poverty: 43% Number of women in the paid workforce globally, in percentage: 40 % Amount of the global income that women in the workforce receive globally, in percentage: 26 % Average amount of money a woman earns in Canada for every dollar a man earns, in 2011: 70.5 cents Out of every 10 youth, number that continue to post-secondary education: 4 Budget for the Transitional Year Programme in 2013-2014, in dollars: 1,310,386 Allocated operating revenue for the Transitional Year Programme from the University of Toronto in 2012-2013, in dollars: 765, 150 Number of years the Transitional Year Programme can continue at the current fund allocation from the University of Toronto: 3

Sources: No One is Illegal Toronto, The Arthur: Peterborough and Trent Independent Press: “Migrant strike at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay” , End Immigration Detention website, CBC.ca: “ Ontario’s youth unemployment among worst in Canada” September 2013, CTV news: “Ontario youth unemployment report” The Young and the Jobless: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Sean Geobey, Canadianwomen.org: Canadian Women’s Foundation, Centre for Social Justice: Gender Inequality Overview, Women and the Economy: UNPAC, University of Toronto Item Budget Report: 2012 and 2013

THEN BREAK IT DOWN

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TABLE OF MALCONTENTS

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER

WINTER 2014 actionspeaksloudertoronto@gmail.com OPIRG-Toronto 101-563 Spadina Cres.

Toronto, Ontario M5S 2J7

OPIRG-Toronto Staff clementine morrigan & geoff

PRODUCTION ASL Collective

Anonymous

EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE Anupama Aery Fiona Del Rio Lindsay Hart Melody Lotfi Muna Mire Crystal Robitaille

Melody Lotfi Fiona Del Rio and Lindsay Hart

CONTRIBUTORS Anonymous Baolinh Dang Fiona Del Rio geoff Lindsay Hart Sharmeen Khan Kerri Kimoto Melody Lotfi Muna Mire clementine morrigan Revolutionary Student Movement

Revolutionary Student Movement Fiona Del Rio Muna Mire

DESIGN ASL Collective COVER Lindsay Hart Crystal Robitaille

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Building Our Fighting Spirit

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Community, Accessibility and Sober Spaces

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Where Occupy Brought Us

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Reading Between the Lines: Sexism in the Academy

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Why I’m a Feminist

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Proletarianize U of T!: The fight to save the TYP and democratize post-secondary education

Educated Unemployment and Generation ‘Y’: The Decline of the Yuppie 12 Notes from the Migrant Strike

Printed at Thistle Printing, Toronto, ON by Union Labour Produced by OPIRG Staff, proud members of CUPE 1281

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Action Group Listings

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Resources

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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.

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If you want to work on a radical publication, write to us: opirg.toronto@gmail.com. The newsletter committee will begin meeting in May to start work on our Winter 2014 edition. If you would rather just write for us, submit a pitch! The submission deadline for the fall 2014 issue is Friday, May 30, 2014. Write about campaigns you’re involved in, or your thoughts on any political or social justice issue. To send us a short pitch, please e-mail actionspeaksloudertoronto@gmail.com.

Look for our fall 2014 issue on campus next September! If you just want to meet and talk with some like-minded people, write to opirg.toronto@gmail.com, or drop by the office: Room 101, 563 Spadina Crescent (just north of College).

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BUILDING OUR FIGHTING SPIRIT

Baolinh Dang & Lindsay Hart, OPIRG-Toronto Staff

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usterity measures implemented by governments of the imperialist world order have ushered in a new era of cruel and unjust attacks on working people, particularly amongst the most oppressed and exploited of society.

The attacks against women and other marginalized people are increasing daily, whether in the form of claw backs of the gains won by previous labour organizing, the gutting of social services, regressive political policy or the reversal of hard-fought victories of social movements. A prime example of the latter is the recent efforts of Conservative MPs to recriminalize abortion in Canada, a right that feminists fought for and won. As staff at OPIRG, the question of building a fighting feminist movement capable of resisting conservative and pro-capitalist agendas has preoccupied our thoughts, especially after Men’s Rights Activists started their aggressive base building on the U of T campus last year. Furthermore, we have pondered what keeps the feminist movement fragmented, plagued by infighting, and unable to build a broad feminist base.

Women, along with other sections of the exploited and oppressed, have always been at the forefront of struggle. This is because they have the most to gain in fighting against the existing capitalist system, where working class women and trans people face oppressions their cis-gendered male counterparts do not encounter. We reflect on the many dedicated women and trans activists who are engaged in anti-capitalist political organizing and on how the contradictions inherent in the existing society, with respect to gender inequality, play out in our collective organizing spaces. We sometimes imagine that our organizing spaces are vastly different than mainstream society, but we often observe the same sexism and other oppressive dynamics that we experience outside of them. Our observation is that the majority of the work women, trans and gender queer people perform in our movements disproportionally relates to the emotional and care work necessary to sustain our comrades and collectives. We cook the food, bottomline peer support work and volunteer for child care. We disproportionately take up the practical day-to-day tasks, which ensure that things get done – work that is often unglamorous. As a result, women and trans activists are seldom recognized as leaders, strategists, and thinkers of our movements. This is hardly surprising, for most activists will name the great male thinkers and revolutionaries before they come up with names of key historical and political figures that are not biologically male.

None of this is meant to downplay the importance of care work; it is essential to building healthy, sustainable movements.

We only wish to point to the ways in which this work is 1) almost exclusively taken up by women and trans people, in lieu of other, more prominent roles in the movement and 2) undervalued in movements, much like the majority of organizing work that women and trans people do, along with the unpaid domestic labour they are responsible for on a daily basis.

Ultimately, this contradiction is rooted in the economic basis of the existing class society, where patriarchal ideas and values still continue to oppress women and trans people. It reflects the longstanding historical division between mental and manual labour. Historically, in previous modes of production, the division of labour between men and women was such that men engaged and were expected to engage in mental labour, to be active in the public and political life of society. Meanwhile, women were often confined to the domestic sphere, performing physical and unpaid reproductive labour.

In our society today, these patriarchal ideas and values still exist and they are reflected in activist communities and collectives, no matter how radical and anti-sexist they aim to be. While there are certainly very strong and politicized women and trans organizers, there is a tendency for people in these identity groups to experience a lack of confidence in their ability to be the strategists of our movements, often as a result of being raised female and socialized into thinking their contributions are less valuable than those of men.

There are no clear-cut solutions to resolving these contradictions without a united fight against abolishing the current economic, social and political system that exploits and oppresses the majority of the human population. Calling upon people to ‘check their privilege’ only goes so far, and working in coalition would require us to acknowledge our differences while recognizing the struggles that we share. Feminist movements everywhere are fractured, many of them hung up on targeting other oppressed people like trans folk and sex workers in some skewed struggle for justice, instead of identifying the ways in which we are all oppressed by capitalism and patriarchy. In the meantime, just as women and trans people face both oppression and often a double burden as workers and caregivers, it will be necessary to wage a struggle on two fronts: the struggle to transform the existing social structure and struggle among ourselves to build our capacities and overcome the imposed feelings of inferiority, guilt and insecurity about our skills.

We understand that the fight against capitalism and patriarchy will be a protracted one, and that organizations which only seek to wage a class struggle without combating sexism and gendered violence exclude us. We’re not waiting until the day after the abolition of the capitalist state to start addressing these injustices. We need to build towards addressing all forms of violence, but especially those that disproportionately impact women and trans people, in our communities now. This is why we need to carve out a space within our movements to collectively support our efforts in these struggles for social transformation, but also for self-transformation. The spirit of rebellion and the feelings of rage and fury have ignited women and other oppressed people around the world and across historical epochs. We must uphold their works and visions, study them more and produce our own theoretical contributions to our respective movements.

COMMUNITY, ACCESSIBILITY AND SOBER SPACES clementine morrigan & geoff

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arm reduction and sobriety philosophies are often positioned against one another. Harm reduction refers to practices that reduce the harm of substance use, such as limiting or abstaining from particular substances, limiting the amount of a substance that is used, or using fresh, unused needles and pipes. Sobriety refers to abstaining completely from drugs and alcohol. Both methods are attempts at safer lives for addicts and alcoholics and people have different opinions about what works best for them. These two approaches are often thought of in opposition to each other rather than as equally valid. The real “drug war” is the criminalization and shaming of substance users.

This past March we co-presented a talk with our dear friend Amy Saunders titled “Sobriety as Accessibility: Interrogating Intoxication Culture.” In this talk it was argued that creating sober spaces is a way of creating accessibility for those of us that have non-normative substance use practices. Sober spaces primarily create safer spaces for addicts that wish to practice abstinence. Following this talk, we held a sober event with our dear friend quinto zazoe where we did not sell alcohol, but did not turn away anyone who might be intoxicated.

Still, the question arose: how can we as community organizers simultaneously support people that wish to practice harm reduction and people that wish to practice sobriety?

Zinester Nick Riotfag defines intoxication culture as “a set of institutions, behaviours, and mindsets centered around consumption of drugs and alcohol.” Intoxication culture shapes social gatherings; events and parties by default include alcohol.

Intoxication culture defines abnormal and normal substance use. It is quite normal to go to an evening party and drink alcohol in order to relax and have fun. It is not normal to get so wasted that you pass out or start causing conflict. On the other hand, it is also abnormal if you don’t drink. At sites of collective intoxication the expectation is to partake in consumption and have fun but not take it too far. In this way, the preferred form of substance use is alcohol consumption in a fun yet controlled way. This is the standard by which people are judged .

Normative drinking is a privilege. It allows the user to freely navigate spaces of intoxication. Substance use that falls short of this ideal is abnormal. This includes the type of substance used and the way it is used. Weed is considered socially acceptable, yet if you are smoking everyday it is thought of

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as problematic. Crystal meth, heroin and crack are substances deemed undesirable. Chronic and compulsive substance use is understood as addiction. As addicts in recovery practicing sobriety, at times we find it challenging to attend community events and parties that serve alcohol and promote intoxication.

We do not meet the expectation of normative consumption, nor do we wish to.

Intoxication culture is a system of regulation that defines certain behaviours as normal and desirable and other behaviours as abnormal and undesirable. This system divides our communities, privileging some while excluding others. Intoxication culture intersects with and strengthens other oppressive systems such as ableism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and capitalism. An expanded analysis of these relations can be found at livingnotexisting.org under the essay section of “Sobriety as Accessibility: Interrogating Intoxication Culture.” As communities who wish to promote a culture of accessibility and inclusion, it is important that we consider the ways that our uncritical acceptance of intoxication culture as a norm is exclusionary and divisive.

Instead of simply taking it for granted that drinking at social events is normal and desirable and that addicts and alcoholics (whether sober or in active use) are the ones who have a problem, we are asking our communities to consider what is constructed as normal and what is the impact of that construction? We argue that the prevalence of alcohol use at practically all social events makes our communities inaccessible and unwelcoming to those of us who are addicts and alcoholics.

Addicts and alcoholics who are practicing abstinence can be made to feel uncomfortable, abnormal, excluded and even at risk of relapse when attending events that encourage normative substance use. Organizing sober events is a way to promote accessibility and inclusion.

The promotion of sober spaces and events is not meant to further stigmatize alcoholics and addicts, whether we are practicing abstinence, harm reduction, or are in active use.

An analysis of intoxication culture reveals that all addicts and alcoholics, whether using or abstaining, are unable in various ways to live up to the standard of normative consumption of intoxication culture. The creation of sober spaces and events asks that normative users- that is, people who can partake in substance use safely and in a socially sanctioned way- consider their privilege. We ask that instead of taking normative consumption as a given, we recognize that not everyone is able to live up to this standard. For people who can take the drink or leave it, what is the harm in leaving it every now and again to take part in community building that is safer for and more welcoming to the addicts and alcoholics among us?

Asking non-addicted people to take part in sober organizing is not the same thing as shaming addicts and alcoholics who still use. If a person is unable to attend an event without using or drinking first, this person has failed at maintaining

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WHERE OCCUPY BROUGHT US A

fter the end 20 years of the large mobilizations that marked the anti-globalization movement, and, after following five hundred years of continuing anti colonial resistance, we came. Within 24 hours we erected a communal village, with homemade food, gloves and tents, toothbrushes and umbrellas, portable toilets, condoms, and books. My first week at the Occupy Toronto camp felt like a dream come true. From the time I awoke to the time I slept, I was engaged in deep political and personal conversations. The park was alive with conversation, awakened by the hope and ambition of people who had come together for systemic change. We didn’t know the best ways to organize ourselves, but the point was we were there.

“As a young homeless person,” Alice recalls, “I had no idea how to vent or discuss my feelings on the overall world situation, the Canadian situation, or the Toronto situation.

But when I arrived at Occupy I had the opportunity to hear what others had to say about the issues in the world and I had a chance to talk about the issues in the world. It was a very uplifting experience. And all the people I have met have made me not feel so alone in how I think…” Hundreds of people came together, and in that coming together we created a power I had never known. I felt revolution in the air, and it was exhilarating.

But Frantz Fanon was right: decolonization and revolution are violent. The embedded behaviours and values of a racist, capitalist, colonial world showed themselves with vehemence in people’s interpersonal relations. We were not free from racism, and a lack of understanding and action around

oppression tore us apart. If I had written this a year ago, it would have been filled with what we did wrong, what we did not know, and who we hurt in our attempt to heal. A lot of people left Occupy Toronto with anger, resentment, and heartbreak. It was hard to walk away.

Still, looking back I am inspired by the failures of Occupy as much as the successes; I learned through experience the importance of critical anti-racist education, and how much internal work we revolutionaries still must do.

The reason so many of us left scorned and bruised was due to all the positive relationships and the incredible spaces that were built inside Occupy that we were forced to leave behind. In the movement’s embrace I felt supported, safe, and loved, even in moments of tension. It was such a loving space that I had culture shock stepping out of the park and into the rest of Toronto.

The core of Occupy was the community, and the sense of belonging we created. As Maggie liked to say, we created a “small, flawed, partial, but still beautiful foreshadowing of an inclusive society where everyone could come and eat and be safe, where community was worked out through talking and listening, where material needs were stripped down to ‘enough’ rather than too much, and where all sorts and conditions of people managed, more or less, to live together.” The only way to rid the world of capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy is to create a new system of living as we destroy the current one, and Occupy sought to do just that.

At the camp, people came into their community roles with remarkable ease. It is true that many people in Occupy didn’t

“do any work” to sustain the camp, but I am proud to say that they too were supported and given room in the community to heal, rage, and just exist; I think this is revolutionary in a transitional space. Many others, though, did a lot to support everyone. Some built and managed a community library, others facilitated general assemblies, and some cooked and served food everyday.

Perhaps the most inspiring people were the marshals and the medics, who were dedicated to keeping us safe, kept watch at night, resolved conflicts, prevented assaults, and successfully lowered the crime rate in St. James Park to almost zero. Some, like Kristina, were inspired to make a career of helping the marginalized and disenfranchised. She told me she is now “in nursing school, prepping to work in harm reduction and street outreach, something I would have never done without living in that park for 40 days.” Maria, another Occupy member, has now moved to the US to attend law school and become a human rights lawyer.

This was my community; I am proud of the people who helped build and sustain it, and continue to be inspired by them.

In and through the creation of a small village in St. James’ Park, we became very aware of what is needed to create an inclusive and sustainable society. It is telling that the two groups to be sustained out of Occupy Toronto were free´Scool and Occupy Gardens: a liberatory education and anti-industrial, sustainable food project, respectively. During those 40 days of camping in the park, people found their roles in the community and, through this, found their purpose. Occupy helped us discover the meanings of our lives and what we can contribute to our communities and to the world. It set us on a revolutionary life path.

For Alice, Occupy “inspired me to follow my dreams no matter the cost, and to seek all forms of reparations to the world’s people…I got accepted into a beekeeping program… then, hopefully when I get back I can go straight into creating a resource-smart community.” Maria has now moved to the US to attend law school and become a human rights lawyer. For some, Occupy was many activists’ first introduction to social justice, and for veterans like Maggie, “Occupy came along at a time when I was pretty cynical and discouraged—still engaged, but not very hopeful. What I took away was a real sense of renewed hope, a new sense that there were other people out there who wanted to imagine new ways of being community on a genuinely transformative level.”

So where are the Occupiers now? We are everywhere, just as we were before, organizing in education, gardening, street nursing, immigration, and human rights law. We are at every rally and are organizing with multiple activist groups. But two years ago we came together - from disparate backgrounds and places in life - with determination. And, when we are once again united we will be wiser for it.

We have St James in our collective experience.

This article was written anonymously by a former organizer with the Occupy Toronto movement.

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“ SOBER SPACES ”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 >> the standards of consumption set out by intoxication culture.

Whether we are sober, practicing harm reduction or in active use, none of us are able to live up to the standard of normative intoxication. We cannot “take it or leave it.” Therefore, the critical analysis of intoxication culture and the deconstruction of normative consumption as a privileged position are of value to all of us.

Harm reduction and sobriety are often framed in opposition to each other. We find this binary destructive. What it does is pit two groups of addicted people against each other: those who use and those who don’t. The reality is that we are all different and we will all find different ways of trying to take care of ourselves. The goal should not be to try to convert one group to the ways of another. What we have in common is a shared experience of not having the privileges and social rewards that come along with normative consumption. The organization of sober spaces and events is just one part of the deconstruction of intoxication culture. It is not intended to shame use, especially the use of alcoholics and addicts. It is our opinion that people who show up to events drunk or high should not be turned away. Rather, people who don’t need to drink or do drugs (non-addicts) can refrain at certain events to take away the pressures of intoxication culture.

This is just one part of what we hope will be an ongoing discussion. We want to hear more from addicts and alcoholics, using and sober, about how to better support each other. We want to tear down the false binary between sobriety and harm reduction and reach out to each other as communities affected by addiction. We want to encourage non-addicted people to consider the impact of the prevalence of drinking at social events on our communities. In April 2014, we will be organizing another sober event and launching a zine which explores ways for non-addicted people to support the addicted people in their lives. More information can be found on geoff ’s website, livingnotexisting.org.

For community organizers and radicals that have the privilege to drink, we raise these questions: What do you do with this privilege? Do you use your privilege to bring our marginalized communities together or to continue to create inaccessible spaces?

clementine morrigan is a femme as fuck tomboy witch full-time multidisciplinary artist. her first book, rupture, came out in 2012. she produced her first short film, resurrection, in 2013. her work explores the intersections of trauma, addiction, recovery, gender, queerness and feminism. more of her work can be found at clementinemorrigan.com geoff is a rad queer anarchist that believes in creating communities of love and still dreams of smashing the state. he identifies as an addict in recovery. he wishes to politicize his experiences with substance use and sobriety while unravelling the limited representation of the addicted body. more of his work can be found at livingnotexisting.org

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READING BETWEEN THE LINES: Melody Lotfi

SEXISM IN THE ACADEMY

In September 2013, University of Toronto Lecturer David Gilmour stated in a magazine interview that he doesn’t teach the literary works of women or minorities in his classes because he doesn’t like those texts.

Following these comments, Miriam and Andrea, both graduate students in the English Department at the University of Toronto, organized a protest to voice outrage over Gilmour’s comments. In November 2013, Melody Lotfi interviewed them for Action Speaks Louder.

What propelled you to organize a protest after Professor Gilmour made his comments? Why was it an important issue for you?

Miriam: I have to admit, I actually laughed when I read his initial comments because they were so ridiculously offensive they almost seemed like parody. We all know people with those views still exist in the university, but it’s relatively rare to hear that position articulated so explicitly and shamelessly. It was when he tried to defend himself by explaining he hadn’t been paying attention to the interviewer because he was “talking to a Frenchman” and characterized her as a “young woman trying to make a little name for herself ” that I thought, okay, this isn’t just about who and what he likes to teach, it goes deeper.

Andrea: I was similarly upset, and Miriam and I had talked about a possible response but hadn’t settled on anything. Later that day, I was at the laundromat, and Miriam texted me to ask if I wanted to help organize the protest. When I got home an hour later, the Facebook event already had 50 attendees.

How do you think his comments and views are indicative of the larger academic and pedagogical structures? How and why are syllabi with a lack of diversity in authorship still being approved and taught?

Miriam: It’s important to note here that the department in which we’re doctoral candidates (the English department, with which Gilmour is not affiliated) issued a swift condemnation and was, as an institution and on the individual level, very supportive of our rally. So this became, for me, a positive example of the contrast between Gilmour’s comments and how many other instructors at U of T understand teaching. As we’ve emphasized all along, a big part of the issue here isn’t just that refusing to teach female writers, writers of colour, queer writers, etc. is symptomatic of broader oppressive structures, but it’s also a problem to base your pedagogy on what appeals to you personally. Someone like Gilmour offers an incredibly simplified view of how challenging it is to construct a good syllabus that does justice to a time period, a topic, a genre, or any number of factors that don’t necessarily involve diversity.

I’d also point out that syllabi generally don’t require departmental approval, and that’s not a bad thing from the standpoint of academic freedom. As someone who is interested in thinking about intersectionality in the classroom, I wouldn’t want to have to justify that decision to someone who might have a different way of thinking about the canon. However, those of us who work on a contract basis have to apply courseby-course, and that does involve submitting course proposals, though not full syllabi; I’d be very curious to know what that process looks like for Gilmour as a non-tenured or tenuretrack instructor, especially since there’s a gap between how his courses are described in the calendar and what he actually teaches. If his courses were presented from the get-go as, say, “Men and Masculinity in Modern Short Fiction,” it would be a different situation (obviously, female authors can still have things to say about men and masculinity, but that would at least be more honest).

Andrea: Gilmour’s comments were enraging but unsurprising.

What I found most interesting was the range of responses to them: the original interview and Gilmour’s follow-up ‘fauxpologies’ spurred some very important conversations about privilege in the academy, and I was thrilled when these conversations expanded to include class alongside race, gender, and sexuality as subject positions inhabited by readers, writers, teachers, and students alike. Miriam mentioned the difference between how tenured and sessional faculty design and implement their courses; Gilmour’s apparent employment status and educational background became for some people the primary issue even though, for us, they are somewhat beside the point. Nearly every undergraduate student at the University of Toronto will be taught by at least one sessional instructor at some point. That’s why our rally wasn’t intended to cost Gilmour his job: we want more, not fewer, voices to be heard, and we don’t believe that a person’s ability to teach is contingent on her or his employment status; we do believe that the ability to teach literature is contingent on the ability to think critically and read thoughtfully, which, unfortunately, Gilmour’s comments did not demonstrate.

Have you experienced a lack of exposure to diverse voices and perspectives throughout your academic career (i.e. within syllabi, curricula, teaching instructors, etc.)?

If so, how has this impacted your learning experience?

Miriam and Andrea: This is one of the places where the degree of privilege Gilmour is operating from is most clearly illustrated: neither of us have expected to enter a classroom and learn only from and about people with lives like ours. It doesn’t work that way for most of us.

We also both made an effort as undergraduates to seek out courses and instructors offering syllabi with a range of writers and perspectives, so while we’ve both certainly had frustrating experiences, we’ve also had a lot of positive ones—otherwise we wouldn’t still be studying and teaching literature.

Do you think the University is continuing to direct funds and energy away from the social sciences and programs based in critical analysis and praxis? Do you see these changes taking place at the University of Toronto? What implications does this have for students upon graduation?

Miriam: The “humanities (and social sciences) in crisis” meme definitely has some basis in reality. To what extent there’s a deliberate move away from a focus on critical analysis and praxis is more difficult to answer, because various departments and programs would characterize their pedagogical goals and assumptions differently, as would individual professors. I also think it’s a mistake to frame the issue as a departure from some ‘golden age’ of a progressive university. These struggles take different forms at different times, but they never disappear entirely, because (and this is obvious) universities reflect their

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social context. Administrative decisions have always reflected different visions of what a university education can be or is for, and I think it’s important to have those conversations openly and explicitly.

Andrea: Pragmatically speaking, smaller courses and tutorials afford more opportunities for discussion, small group activities, and interaction with instructors, all of which can help students refine their critical thinking, writing, and speaking skills.

Of course, there are instructors who run large courses very successfully, and teaching assistants at U of T work incredibly hard for their students, regardless of a tutorial’s size. By and large, however, students benefit from more intimate learning environments (although not those that exclude perspectives other than the instructors’, of course.) I find it heartening that, following the last round of CUPE 3902 negotiations, U of T struck a committee to determine the role that tutorials should play in a university education.

How can we as students demand more diversity in our learning experience at U of T? (i.e. more intersectionality, new perspectives, etc.)

Miriam: Keep seeking out programs, courses, and instructors that offer the kind of learning experience you’re here for.

Think about not just what’s on the syllabus, but how it’s being taught; some courses will never be bastions of diversity for historical reasons (privilege, who has been able to produce scholarship when and where, and so on), but your instructor might put effort into contextualizing them in ways that open the door to thinking about what’s included and what isn’t.

Take advantage of assignments that offer you the freedom to research topics that are interesting or relevant for you, even if that’s more work sometimes. This might seem small, but fill out your course evaluations, especially when you have positive things to say, which is the opposite of what usually happens – for sessionals (like me!) they really matter, and the new online system has a ridiculously low response rate.

It means something for us to hear that it matters to students when we pay attention to questions around representation.

Andrea: I know that time is a very real issue, especially for students who are working to put themselves through school, but, if you can, attend your department’s student union meetings and speak up about issues that matter to you. Join clubs and societies. Organize. Show up at rallies – being a supportive presence will mean the world to the organizers. Volunteer for causes that matter to you: there’s a huge world outside the university, and one is not divorced from the other.

Don’t shy away from tough conversations: even telling someone that you think a racist/sexist/transphobic joke isn’t funny can go a long way: change is often made incrementally.

Melody Lotfi is a member of the Action Speaks Louder newsletter collective.

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Littlejohn.

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WHY I’M

A FEMINIST Fiona Del Rio and Lindsay Hart

What does is mean to be a feminist today? What are the challenges we face around organizing collectively as feminists? We sat down with two organizers to tease out some of the difficulties feminist movements are facing.

Kerri Kimoto is an orgnizer with the Revolutionary Student Movement and the Proletarian Feminist Front. Sharmeen Khan is an editor with Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action. She has a background in feminist organizing in activist media and is particularly fond of community radio. She is known to blab a lot about the Cuban Revolution.

1. Why is it important for you to identify as a feminist?

What do you think feminism means today? Why do you think so many people who identify with feminist ideas don’t identify as feminists?

Kerri: I think it is very important for me to identity as a feminist because the realities of being a woman in this world are pretty fucking horrific. It is really important for women to be aware of their conditions and positions within society and to be ideologically and physically equipped to fight back. Politically, it is very important for me to be a feminist - particularly, engaging in building a proletarian women’s movement - because I know that the liberation of proletarian women is essential to the liberation of all exploited peoples; until our line (as leftists) reflects these women’s lived experiences, we are failing as revolutionaries.

Sharmeen: Feminism is integral to my identity because it was one of the first philosophies or politics that really helped me understand and articulate sexist oppression. I truly believe feminism saved my life. I come from quite a traditional Pakistani family where women’s subjugated role in the family was not only an accepted norm but also a source of pride – where submissive women were held up and celebrated in terms of religious and national identity. So reading anti-racist and feminist

theory gave me the tools to not fall into the racist trap of Canadian nationalism while at the same time, still wanting to fight for change within the community I come from.

To think beyond my family, feminist liberation remains more relevant now than in the past. Even though there is an assumption that “feminism is over” because of number of women in the workforce, systemic violence against women a part of the fabric of our society – so much so, that it is often not named. There also remains insipid racism where the oppression of Indigenous women and women of colour is not seen as a feminist issue – given the Sister in Spirit campaign continues, I do not know how people can argue that feminism is over.

The feminism I identify with is one that has an analysis of capitalism and colonialism. One of the reasons many people think that feminism is over is because some women were able to make it and climb the class ladder, achieve empowerment and independence. But those women hold on to their position, and clearly they’ll exploit any women under them to hold on to it. That’s not the feminism I want.

I identify as a socialist feminist and see feminism as an incomplete politic without that analysis. This speaks to the issue as to why some may identify with feminist politics but not with feminism itself. The project of neoliberalism has been very successful in changing peoples’ consciousness and political narrative into one of ultimate individualism. So any popular feminist expression is often a marketing ploy to make individual women feel empowered. Yet, the concepts of collective organizing remain absent. And any struggles of the past are framed as being over – the goals were achieved, except more radical forms of feminism which were dismissed as being misguided. This idea that the struggles of feminism are over because some women occupy a different position than they did in the past is a particular story and not one that is universal – even if it is framed as such. Perhaps some people haven’t been exposed to the different feminist struggles that have happened, or been able to engage in debate around feminism outside of academia and in activist spaces. Feminist analysis has a pretty weak presence outside of the academy.

When social movements were larger feminism had a more mainstream platform, but that doesn’t exist anymore. Now we can listen to the news and we can hear about violence against women or about the wage labour struggle, but we won’t hear terms like ‘unpaid reproductive labour’, ‘patriarchy’ or ‘misogyny’. There will be no analysis attached to the reports, so people often see those things as individual experiences.

2. Cities across Canada seem to lack an organized feminist movement, especially with the loss of organizations like the National Action Committee for the Status of Women. What do you think are some of the challenges to developing a feminist base? How do you think such a base might organize to confront anti-feminist movements like Men’s Rights Organizations?

Kerri: The biggest obstacle to building an organized feminist movement today is the decline of the party configuration

since the early 90’s. Without correct political direction women’s movements in North America have been coopted by liberals, movementists, and opportunists. A central challenge in doing this work now is combating liberalism, identity politics, and the social brainwashing and individualism brought about by neo-liberalism. As such, it is important when dealing with Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) to consider where their concerns and deteriorating social and economic conditions they face are coming from. The blame they place on women for their struggles is disgusting and has a scary tendency to devolve into fascism - but we need to investigate where and why this movement has emerged and why the MRA’s have been successful in using the language of oppression to accuse women of mens’ hardships. In doing so we can shed light on the deteriorating conditions suffered by everyone, to then identify the MRA movement as completely reactionary.

Sharmeen: The main challenge I have experienced is the combination of social change with service provision where external or state funding is involved. I used to be a part of the National Action Committee [NAC] when I did feminist organizing in B.C, and its entire premise was faulty. It was based on a royal commission, so it was couched within the state and lobbying the state. This politically excluded the struggles of indigenous and migrant women. If we also look at other feminist organizations like women’s centres, shelters and so forth, where a need for space and services was needed, an unholy marriage was made between feminist organizing and the state around funding, and that reliance then downloaded a lot of service provision work onto feminists. The state now had all these feminist-run services they could refer women to, without having to invest much into them. Feminist organizing switched its focus to service provision because it was the only way to get funding, so long as you could prove to the state that you were providing some services that they were not. While there are examples of effectively combining organizing with service provision, I find in a lot of cases, the dependence on state funding prioritized service provision over community organizing.

One of the other challenges to developing a feminist base is that there are no spaces to talk about what feminism means to different people. While were a lot of splits in the NAC, at least that space existed on a national level for those debates. I think the challenge now is knowing how to develop autonomous feminist bases that can still work in coalition with others.

I’m not saying there needs to be one big organization where everyone fits in, but I think we can have autonomous organizing and then have campaigns that are based on coalitions; not just coalitions based on feminist organizations but ones that include other activist organizations such as unions, student groups and so forth.

Another challenge is this mass memory loss of feminist movements past, and the narratives that feminism is over. This is an issue of consciousness raising and education, and a lot of feminists don’t have the capacity for that. A campaign against men’s rights organizing is an opportunity to link both organizing and education, an opportunity for coalition. I admire the organizing to be a thorn in the side of these groups, but on the

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other hand, in a time when so many know little about feminism and feminist organizing, I feel more work needs to be done to formulate feminist responses and education. I am curious if more can be done than just responding to men’s rights groups and crashing their meetings.

To be clear, I am nauseated by mens rights organizations.

But I see their crux of their politics as misguided responses to capitalist exploitation. I am curious about a feminist tactic that would be able to address the oppression they speak of, from a feminist lens. This to me is where the hard work is - a willingness to unpack what their ideas are about. If it’s about labour, like suggesting feminists are taking their jobs, it means being able to unpack this complaint about unemployment or underemployment from a feminist lens. These are feminist issues as well and feminists have written about this! I know these events are incredibly hostile so I may be naïve, but to me this is a battle of ideologies, and I think articulating what a feminist politics can contribute to these issues might be powerful.

3. For you, how is feminism connected to anti-capitalist analysis and organizing? How are patriarchy and capitalism intertwined?

Kerri: Personally, I think gender liberation and capitalism are compatible. At this stage in our current economic organization, capitalism (in imperialist centers) has already absorbed women into the bourgeois class in order to sustain itself (this is why liberal feminism is so rampant and insidious). In imperialist centers, former feudally-influenced patriarchal structures are eroding and women are achieving a very high level of economic independence and are pushing away from formerly oppressive structures such as the nuclear family, romantic love, etc. For instance, this is happening in Japan. But of course in Japan, in Canada and elsewhere, we are still dealing with the horrific remnants of these structures, as I outlined in my response to the first question. This is why I know that a strong feminist political line needs to be anti-capitalist.

Sharmeen: When you look at economic growth markers like the GDP, it’s only based on wages and on how much labour has produced surplus-value to create profit. What is absent from the picture is the unpaid labour that women do to maintain the household. Going beyond that, because of pay equity struggles, it means a lot of the work they do is actually underpaid or non-paid. How is that evaluated in terms of economic growth?

So the very basic measure of a healthy economy totally ignores or leaves out the role of unpaid labour, which creates a great deal of wealth in our communities.

Understanding these forms of exploitation requires an analysis of patriarchy, capitalism and identity. I feel a lot of people dismiss this notion of “identity politics” without understanding how identity provides is an ideological basis for exploitation. I did not learn about capitalism first. Sexism and patriarchy was more of a contradictory experiential moment I was able to articulate because of both feminist and antiracist politics. Feminism is able to name that experience, in a CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 >>>

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PROLETARIANIZE U OF T! THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE TYP AND DEMOCRATIZE POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

Revolutionary Student Movement

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he education system in Canada is embroiled with contradictions. It purports to be equally accessible to everyone and yet out of 10 youth, only 4 continue to post-secondary education, and this rate is even lower amongst First Nations, Black, Latino and Filipino youth. It purports to serve the interests of the public, and yet those who attend post-secondary education are being plunged into deeper and deeper debt as tuition fees and student loans continue to rise at a rate faster than inflation. It purports to lead to a better career, but graduates at elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels leave school only to join the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed.

It is in this context that the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) is struggling to retain its funding and autonomy. TYP is a full-time, 8-month, University of Toronto access program for adults who lack the formal qualifications for university.

The majority of TYP students are First Nations, Black, single mothers, and other working-class people. A number of TYP students are also survivors of the criminal justice and psychiatric treatment systems.

Toward 2030 and the proposed elimination of TYP The social context in which the TYP is under threat of elimination is one of economic precariousness. Right now, U of T, like other post-secondary institutions in Canada, is half publicly-funded and half privately funded by tuition fees, and private donations. While post-secondary education has become the minimum requirement for a job in many sectors, proletarian youth – those youth who don’t own property and have to work for a living in order to survive – are at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to enrolling in post-secondary schools.

The number of university-bound youth in Ontario is expected to rise in the coming years, but U of T’s answer to this demand is not to expand undergraduate education. It plans to reduce its undergraduate enrollment at its St. George campus by 5000 students each year (p.28). By the time a small portion of undergraduates are ready to enroll in graduate school, U of T will welcome them with open arms. The majority, however, will be expected to attend either one of UofT’s satellite campuses, nearby universities such as Ryerson and York, or polytechnic institutions like Seneca and Centennial.

In its plan for the next 15 years, titled “Toward 2030”, U of T makes clear its intention to expand graduate studies: “Since the University of Toronto provides about 28% of all graduate seats as compared to 17% of all undergraduate education in the province, the rationale for the University to undertake differential growth in graduate enrolment is very clear.” (pg 8).

Again, on page 9, U of T states: “One can foresee that a baccalaureate degree will become ‘table stakes’ for young people wanting to enter the innovation economy. Master’s degrees will be commonplace, and the demand for PhDs will soar. Again, the implications for the mission and role of the University of Toronto are self-evident.”

While focusing on graduate and PHD studies will enable U of T to boast of the high quality of its research and the expertise of its faculty, emphasizing research and expert faculty-recruitment contributes to bettering education for the few, rather than broadening education for the many.

The squeeze on undergraduate programs also means that programs that derive most of their operating budgets from the university, as opposed to outside donations, fees, and tuition, risk being eliminated. Programs like the TYP, which was created in 1970 as part of a social pact to increase the quality of life for a small section of the proletariat, no longer suit the University’s needs to maintain profitability in the age of austerity, and hence find themselves on the chopping block.

Ultimately, it is not just UofT but also the government that is to blame for the plight facing proletarian students like those in the TYP. Its adherence to a set of values centred on the protection of profit has left essential social programs in the lurch. It is in the capitalist context of today that, as it has done periodically throughout its 43-year existence, U of T is attempting to eliminate the TYP. Revolutionary perspectives on the TYP and the university For the Revolutionary Student Movement, the establishment and existence of the Transitional Year Programme was an overt political effort to proletarianize education in a myriad of ways: by increasing the admission of proletarian students on campus, providing accessible and tangible support for its students, and designing and delivering a progressive curriculum.

TYP students have the option of taking courses from different streams – the majority of which are intended to relate to the students’ experiences of oppression and encourage

critical thought. Because of TYP’s autonomy over curriculum development and implementation, many courses study significant anti-colonial and anti-capitalist literature. While supporting students to successfully complete post-secondary education, TYP itself provides a temporary refuge from the brutal material conditions that its students struggle with everyday.

With the dismantling of the TYP, the university will continue to bar more working-class youth from entering its gates, and will continue to be influenced heavily by its corporate donors. While threatening the program’s dismantlement it has administered tuition hikes that either discourage poor students from applying or bury them in further debt.

Despite heavy student opposition, the university is moving forward with replacing the back campus with toxic astroturf in preparation for the PanAm games in 2015. At the same time, it has chosen to fund the parasitical expansion of the Munk School of Global Affairs, Rotman School of Management, and the Engineering department. It’s becoming more obvious that this institution aims to be the centre of knowledge production that supports and justifies military occupation, extractive industries, and imperialist expansion.

We are not fooled by the Boundless campaign’s promises for the community: its aim of “exploring the University and its community for global leadership” means nothing but dedicating the university to reproduce the next generation of defenders, functionaries and sentinels of an oppressive, classist society.

For years, the university’s top administration at least tokenized the TYP, referring to it as the “jewel in the crown of the university.” Now they deem TYP too costly, and have slowly reduced its budget to the extent of compromising the success of its students. When asked why the TYP has not seen any money raised from the Boundless campaign, we were told that TYP should hire its own “fundraising agent.”

What seems to be hypocrisy from the university is no surprise to proletarian and racialized students. We know the TYP doesn’t fit into the university’s renewed commitment to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie.

What needs to be done A closer look at the history of TYP reveals its revolutionary roots. It was an initiative that was started by proletarian students who recognized the colonial and capitalist ideology propagated in the university, which at the same time, barred racialized and poor students from accessing resources that would allow them to engage and produce critical thought and pedagogy.

For us, then, there is no better time than now to preserve and ultimately, expand the Transitional Year Programme. It must be once again led by its founders - the students, serve as an access program for proletarian students, and be at the forefront of the production of revolutionary thought and practice.

In the words of one of its founders, Horace Campbell, “The success of the TYP should result in the removal of the

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need for TYP when the school system and university are at the base of the struggle for democracy.”

The particular campaign for the expansion of the TYP is in line with RSM’s larger struggle to proletarianize the university. The role of the Revolutionary Students Movement is to take education back into the hands of the proletariat by demanding that U of T: 1. Increase the admittance rates of proletarian youth via programs like the TYP with full state subsidy.

2. Uphold the democratic process by abolishing the Governing Council, an undemocratic body, and replacing it with a democratically elected body, representative of the students, staff and faculty, for decision-making.

3. Revolutionize its educational content, so as to expose: first, the role of Canadian imperialism and capitalism in the genocide and oppression of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples, as well as proletarians of the third world; and second, the way by which oppressed people have gained liberation through struggle.

Ultimately, these demands cannot be achieved under capitalism. Thus, these demands serve as a preliminary program for educational reform after the capture of state power and during the transition to communism. The capitalist system cannot satisfy the needs addressed by these points, which reflect the advanced aspirations of proletarian students, and that conflict must ultimately come to a head.

In order to win this struggle, we urge all proletarian, progressive and revolutionary students to join our fight in the expansion of the Transitional Year Programme, and waging a campaign to further proletarianize the campus. We want to lead the transformation of the university into a site of revolutionary class struggle!

In the 2013 fall semester, the Revolutionary Students Movement (RSM - a communist student action group at OPIRG), initiated a campaign called “Proletarianize the University”. Proletarianize means that we want the university to serve the interests of the working class! To do this we demand a series of educational and accessibility changes at U of T. At the forefront of these demands is that U of T keep its hands off of the Transitional Year Programme (TYP), an important access program for working-class, racialized students to the university and a program that the administration badly wants to cut. In fact, we think the whole of U of T should be like the TYP! The RSM believes that these liberating changes to our school - and our whole education system - can never be realized under capitalism. These changes could only be gained through a revolution for communism! To strengthen our understanding of communism, we have been hosting a series of “Communist Schools” to look at key issues like revolutionary attitude, how to combat liberalism, and the meaning of Marxism-Leninism-Maosim - our plan for the revolution! Come join us at these (info at our website: rsmtoronto.wordpress.com), or e-mail us at revolutionarystudentsto@gmail.com to get more involved!

Works cited: A Third Century of Excellence at the University of Toronto: Synthesis Report. Published by the University of Toronto, 2008. Retrieved online at www.towards2030.utoronto.ca/ files/2030_REDUXv7.pdf

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EDUCATED UNEMPLOYMENT AND GENERATION ‘Y’: THE DECLINE OF THE YUPPIE Fiona Del Rio

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f you are a recent graduate of a post-secondary institution you may be struggling to find your dream job. If you can afford to you might join the thousands of graduates working in unpaid internships with the hopes of gaining the experience and/or exposure that would lead to a better career opportunity. Unfortunately, even if you are lucky enough to land one of these internships you will likely find yourself doing the same work as a paid employee (a form of exploitation that is actually against the law) for a few months before being shown the company door.1 If you are among the 60% of Canadian students who graduate with, on average, $27,000 in debt and cannot afford to work for free you could end up joining the 1.5 million Torontonians – primarily immigrants, people of colour, women, students and University graduates – working in low-skilled service sector jobs for minimum or near-minimum wage, no benefits, uncertain hours, low job security and little hope of advancement.2 Or you may simply delay the tedious struggle of finding work by enrolling in another post-secondary institution.

254,000 graduands will emerge from colleges and universities across Canada in 2013, the recent CBC documentary “Generation Jobless” tells us; but is this staggering number of well-educated new job seekers actually prepared for the changing employment landscape?

If you are the child of baby boomer parents you have 1 A.-M. MacDonald. (2013, Aug 21). Generation Jobless.

[Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ ID/2330990900/ 2 Flavelle, D. (2013, Oct 3). Tough to get ahead in Toronto. Toronto Star, pp. B1, B

likely been told the same story your entire life: Work hard, go to university, and someday you will have a career you love, your own home (mortgage), car (lease) and loving family. You will have a salaried position (with benefits!) and the job security to not have to be continuously worrying about your next source of income. In short, you would be among the next generation of yuppies – young, well-educated, urban up-and-comers – and be ready for your perfect life to unfold.

What your parents couldn’t have known as they tucked you in at night is that while the recent graduates of their generation found entry level jobs with the potential for upward mobility the young professionals of ours tend to serve coffee for a living. Routine service work in industries like retail, hospitality, administration, telemarketing, childcare and security is the largest employment sector in the Greater Toronto Area, accounting for nearly half (45%) of its workforce.3 Jobs in this sector tend to fall into the category of what is termed “precarious employment” because of their low pay, part-time hours, lack of benefits and temporary nature. Of Canadian university graduates aged 25 to 29, one in three work in the lowskilled service sector due to being unable to find work in their respective fields.

Yet, despite the fact that it’s becoming less and less likely that your Social Sciences or Humanities degree will land you a job outside the Eaton Centre, tuition fees to post-secondary institutions have risen substantially in recent years, driving students into pointless debt. Still, students continue to be funneled out of high school into post-secondary arts and science 3 Martin Prosperity Institute. (2013, Oct 3). Untapped potential: Creating a better future for service workers. Retrieved from http://martinprosperity.org/media/Precarious%20Employment%20Insight_v01.pdf

programs with the faulty assumption that there will be a career waiting for them on the other side. In the end, only the universities’ financial stakeholders seem to benefit.4 Meanwhile, many crucial sectors of the job market are being deemphasized, deregulated and devalued by both the government and Canadian society. In many cases migrant workers step in to fill Canada’s childcare, sanitation, telecommunications and computer science needs and are more easily exploited and underpaid due to lack of citizenship status or, if they are working from another country, the looser industry regulations of their homelands. Over the past few decades jobs in the Canadian manufacturing industry have been increasingly automated and exported overseas, exploiting foreign workers while depressing the Canadian economy. Yet there is a near total lack of job creation through business or government programs to fill the void left behind.

Employers only profit from the hostility of the job market by offering fewer entry-level jobs with decent salaries and refusing to invest in job skills training (even though such investments generally see a return of $1.47 for every dollar spent). Workers are retained on part-time and contract bases so that employers can evade having to provide benefits, job security or promotional opportunities. At the same time, companies promote the spurious belief that working for free in unpaid internships will give young workers the skills, exposure and experience to advance at their company or another. But with the competition for such opportunities so high, and overqualified, well-educated, experienced workers so abundant in the job market, what we are actually witnessing is the decline of entry level jobs that provide a decent living wage and the loss of potential for upward mobility.

Central to the problem of youth underemployment in Canada is the lack of a national ministry of education (we are one of the few countries in the world without one) and the need for a national strategy for tracking the ratio of programs of study to available jobs. The federal government relies on independent studies by industry-led councils made up of business, labour and educators who provide labour market information on a project-by-project basis. Thus, the country ends up overproducing what it doesn’t need and under-producing what it does. In Ontario 67% of teachers cannot find work; yet, educational institutions continue to pump out 8000 new teachers each year, in addition to 3000 who train out of province, while only 4600 retire annually. Meanwhile, employers looking for computer engineers and technology developers cannot find enough skilled workers.

A country whose education system is fragmented at the provincial level cannot compete in a globalized market economy. But, as “Generation Jobless” points out, it would take a 4 New U of T president and former dean of arts and science Meric Gertler, for instance, made over $336,000 last year and stands to make close to $400,000 as president. Ministry of Finance. (2013, Mar 31). Public Sector Salary Disclosure for 2012: Universities. Retrieved from http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/pssd/ orgs.php?pageNum_pssd=9&organization=universities

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“ Of Canadian university graduates aged 25 to 29, one in three work in the lowskilled service sector due to being unable to find work in their respective fields.”

strong political will and coordinated effort between businesses, governments and educational institutions to change this. In countries like Switzerland that do employ national education strategies, only the top 20% of students are permitted into universities while the rest go into trades, business, or other kinds of work. The result is a youth unemployment rate of 2.8%. By comparison, Canada is a country weakly managing the decline of its employment sector. Rather than invest in its young workers, the government relies on the power of market forces to pave the road to prosperity, as is the case in all neoliberal economies.

In a world where the average CEO earns 250 times more money than the average employee,5 where social media companies like Groupon, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are collectively worth more than 250 billion dollars but employ fewer than 20,000 people worldwide and where our parents’ baby boomer generation runs the country but refuses to invest in its children’s livelihoods, we have to wonder what the future will look like for the youth of today.

To ensure a prosperous future for the next generation of workers several steps must be taken. First, the federal government must erect a nationalized body to coordinate the activities of industry and education. Second, the country must invest substantially in job creation programs targeted specifically at young workers while requiring corporations to make jobs in the trades and service sector into viable employment options with benefits and job security. Finally, the youth of Canada must get organized; we must build workers’ organizations to fight for a substantially higher minimum wage, increased regulation surrounding unpaid internships, and the power to dictate the conditions of daily work. With 43.5% of Toronto’s youth aged 15 to 24 unemployed, and close to 300 million unemployed youth worldwide, the time for action is now.6 5 Mcguaig, L. (2013). Reducing the Gap. Canadian Dimension Presents Toolkit for a New Canada, 15-18.

6 Geobey, S. (2013, Sept 27). The Young and the Jobless: Youth unemployment in Ontario. Retrieved from http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario%20Office/2013/09/Young_and_jobless_final3.pdf

Fiona graduated from U of T this past November. She works at Hudson’s Bay Company doing lighting maintenance and organizes in activist networks around campus.

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NOTES FROM THE MIGRANT STRIKE Muna Mire

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group of nearly two hundred immigrant detainees being held at the Central East Correctional Centre (CECC) in Lindsay, Ontario, some of whom have been indefinitely held for as long as seven years, are on strike. They are calling for their release as well as an end to indefinite detention and maximum security incarceration of migrants. Detainees have been on strike since September 17 in protest of their conditions and Canada’s unjust adjudication process around indefinite and arbitrary detention for status offenses.

The people locked up in immigration detention are not there because they are “criminals” in the sense we typically think of (and if they did commit a crime, they have already served their sentence prior to being detained in Lindsay), but because they are undocumented and in the country without having obtained status. What’s worse, Canada is exceptionally cruel when it comes to detaining immigrants on status offenses (e.g. being here without papers) indefinitely. The U.K. and the U.S. abide by an international legal standard that dictates immigrants either be deported or released within a presumptive period of ninety days. Striking migrants and activists supporting them have specific demands, the most important of which is the immediate implementation of the U.N. recommended ninety day limit to arbitrary detention. One of the migrants held at CECC, Michael Mvogo, has launched a complaint with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at the UNHCR, demanding an end to his indefinite detention.

The historic strike is supported by a grassroots network of activists that have banded together and are calling themselves End Immigration Detention, alongside other groups operating in the GTA including No One Is Illegal Toronto and Fuerza/ Puwersa in Guelph. The strike has received widespread media

coverage in both alternative and mainstream press and is backed by many prominent allies, including Dr. Tarek Loubani and filmmaker John Greyson who were themselves famously detained in Egypt and visited the correctional centre in November to show support for the migrant detainees.

So far this fall, detainees have been on hunger strike (with two inmates fasting for longer than 60 days), with many refusing to attend their hearings or go back into their cells. In response, a number of detainees have been placed in solitary confinement – euphemistically referred to as “segregation” by employees of the detention center. Striking migrants have faced further reprisals such as deportation, being transferred to other prisons, or being denied access to legal counsel in an already deeply flawed adjudication process.

“Migrant detainees in Lindsay are standing strong on the inside despite increased violence. Even with strike organizers being deported or shifted to different jails and hunger strikers locked up in segregation without communication and healthcare, migrant detainees continue to take action,” said Hussan, an organizer with End Immigration Detention Network.

Nevertheless, momentum has been building, due in part to the work being done on the outside to promote and support the actions of the striking migrants. Saturday, December 14th marked a high point in the trajectory of the movement to support the strike, as activists planned a rally to coincide with jailed migrants restarting their fast after a brief reprise with a 24-hour hunger strike. Many activists on the outside also fasted in solidarity, and created a viral campaign where they took photos holding signs proclaiming their 24-hour hunger strike in solidarity with detained migrants.

The idea behind the rally was not only to create visibility and press with the action, but also to buoy the spirits of

detainees and remind them that their strike was not only publicly witnessed – it was celebrated and supported by many.

Against all odds, the rally took place in the dead of a winter snowstorm on a Saturday afternoon, outside the massive grey facade of Central East Correctional Centre. The turnout was uncharacteristically large, given the weather and the inaccessible location, and many local residents as well as people from all around the GTA gathered for the noise demo. People on the outside chanted and made noise using homemade noisemakers, so that detainees would hear them.

The effort was hugely successful and paid off on the inside too, as organizers would later learn. A statement posted to the Migrant Strike page on Facebook described the effect of the noise demo on the migrants held at CECC: “A full hour after we left the inspiring demonstration outside the Central East Correctional Centre, we received a call from a detainee, a man from Liberia who has lived in Canada for 20 years. The background noise was deafening, and when asked what was happening inside, he responded, ‘They’ve been yelling freedom in unison for hours.’ It took a few more moments over the poor prison phone connection until we could hear the reverberation of ‘Freedom, Freedom, Freedom!’ For us on the outside, it was humbling to know how meaningful it is to simply bring our voices to say, ‘We hear you.’ With every word yelled, and every person on the outside spreading the struggle to end immigration detention, these prison walls get a little weaker.”

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The striking migrants, newly inspired and invigorated by the love shown by those organizing in solidarity with them on the outside, have no plans to stop until their demands are met.

Meanwhile, the strike itself is gaining wider exposure and has resonating with more and more people. Many are asking that Canadians take a long, hard look at our immigration and incarceration systems.

“Demands for an end to indefinite immigration are resonating across the country. Artists, musicians, labour and civil society organizations are insisting that Canada stop being a rogue country and follow international norms to establish a limit on how long migrants can be held pending deportation.

Many are insisting that the lock up of migrants in max security prisons must end, and the entire detention and deportation system overhauled,” said Hussan.

The growing list of organizations and prominent individuals that have endorsed the migrant strike can be found on the End Immigration Detention Network’s website and ranges from the likes of Naomi Klein, to Judy Rebick, several big unions, and the Council of Canadians. What’s next? A benefit concert will be held as the Great Hall in Toronto on December 28th as part of the Long Winter event series.

For more information and to get involved in this campaign, visit www.endimmigrationdetention.com.

Muna Mire is a writer, organizer and a Black girl from the future. You can find her writing at Youngist.org.

Photo credits: No One is Illegal Toronto, End Immigration Detention

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“ROUNDTABLE ON FEMINISM” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 >>>

fundamental and real way that speaks to many people even if those experiences are very diverse. But that realization based on identity is just the doorway. When you experience oppression because of your identity, because of something you can’t change, it often opens a doorway, and that doorway is obviously within the logic of capitalism. We live it. We embody that politics all the time, and we need to be able to develop narratives that build different intentional communities and ways of being, that can fight against capitalism and patriarchy. But the fight against sexism and racism is a fight against capitalism. While many movements have fought for equality within capitalism and have made some gains for some – as long as capitalism and colonization exist, the progress of feminism is always limited and stunted, and never complete.

4. How can feminists work to build stronger, more inclusive movements? What are the criticisms of feminism(s) in the current moment that should be taken up?

Kerri: We need to know the history and theory of what we are doing; we need to work for more than our own personal liberation, and we need to genuinely be interested in doing the work we are doing for the people. Today’s feminists need to move beyond the goal of surviving under capitalism by creating our own organizations and communities (though these are important first steps) and start considering what it would take to actually militantly combat the state - this has happened before and can happen again.

Sharmeen: The first thing that comes to mind is that trans activism and sex worker activism has to be integral to any feminist movement. Trans oppression and oppression against people in the sex trade is often perpetrated by people who claim to be feminists. I can’t believe I continue to hear some feminists blame them for their oppression. I think it’s so hard to move forward and to even talk about unity and working in

OPIRG ACTION GROUPS

coalition when that continues. Yet, I remain a bit lost with how to address it. Either we ignore certain “feminists” or keep telling them they’re wrong until eventually they realize they are on the wrong side of history. I don’t know, but I think those issues have unfortunately been taken up by some feminist movements in really negative ways, that has been divisive, and set us back. I see having an anti-racist and anti-colonial analysis towards this issues as integral, so considering how transphobia and hatred towards sex workers disproportionately impact those based on race and colonization; it is amazing to me that this remains a controversy for any movement fighting for liberation.

Feminists can work initially to build stronger, more inclusive movements, in conjunction with this analysis, by just organizing more. I feel like there’s a huge lack of activism in more privileged spaces that have a form of funding.

For example, it was disappointing to me the lack of feminist response during the Rana factory tragedy. This is the quintessential feminist issue. We had majority young women locked into work for low wages and they died producing goods for the West. And I barely read any feminist responses. I feel sentiments and organizing in the name of international solidarity is absent. I find that a lot of feminists are more excited about the new Kathleen Hanna movie than they are about thinking of labour and colonization. But why do those cultural expressions get so much feminist attention, rather than issues like women’s labour? It’s just bewildering to me. And for me, I think maybe people don’t have that anti-racist or anti-colonial analysis I thought we had, but so many organizations are in a position to do activism around this, and instead those stores like Joe Fresh continue to sell their shit clothing, and face no opposition. I feel like feminists need to create more tension around that.

Tension raises awareness, and it does definitely create backlash, and it’s scary, but we have to create more tension, and we have to fight back more. Cultural expressions of how some girls are awesome may make some of us feel good, but it is not the path to liberation.

Lindsay is the Programming and Volunteer Coordinator at OPIRG-Toronto.

Fiona is a board member at OPIRG-Toronto.

Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance Mining Injustice Solidarity Network Prisoner Correspondence Project Revolutionary Student Movement Rising Tide 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

Students Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto Queer Zine Fair Collective University of Toronto General Assembly Women’s Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu

U RESOURCES SPACES ON AND AROUND CAMPUS

ACTIVIST NETWORKS AND ORGANIZATIONS

519 Community Centre A Different Booklist Centre for Social Justice Centre for Women and Trans People at U of T First Nations House U of T Native Canadian Centre of Toronto Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/ Multicultural Women Against Rape

LOCAL

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

www.fnh.utoronto.ca www.ncct.on.ca www.trccmwar.ca

NEWS AND ANALYSIS LOCAL BASICS Newsletter Toronto basicsnews.ca New Socialist www.newsocialist.org subMedia.tv submedia.tv Toronto Media Co-op www.mediacoop.ca Two Row Times www.tworowtimes.com Upping the Anti: A Journal www.uppingtheanti.org of Theory and Action York University Free Press www.yufreepress.org

NATIONAL AND GLOBAL Al Jazeera www.aljazeera.com Briarpatch Magazine www.briarpatchmagazine.com Democracy Now! www.democracynow.org Earth First! Newswire www.earthfirstjournal.org Independent Media Centre www.indymedia.org National Film Board of Canada www.rouge.onf.ca Quebec www.rouge.onf.ca Rabble www.rabble.ca Socialist Project www.socialistproject.ca Youngist: young people powered media www.youngist.org Z Communications Magazine www.zcommunications.org/zmag

AIDS Action Now www.aidsactionnow.org Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid www.caiaweb.org End Immigration Detention Network www.endimmigrationdetention.com Fightback www.marxist.ca Jane & Finch Action Against Poverty www.jfaap.wordpress.com Low Income Families www.lift.to Together (LIFT) No One is Illegal-Toronto toronto.nooneisillegal.org Ontario Coalition Against Poverty www.ocap.ca Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network www.pasan.org Queers Against Israeli Apartheid www.queersagainstapartheid.org Sikh Activist Network sikhactivist.net Toronto Anarchist Black Cross www.torontoabc.wordpress.com Toronto Drug User’s Union www.tduu.blogspot.ca Toronto Stop the Cuts Network

www.torontostopthecuts.com

Toronto Worker’s Assembly

www.workersassembly.ca

OPIRG-York www.opirgyork.ca

NATIONAL AND GLOBAL Assaulted Women’s Helpline www.awhl.org Canadian Tamil Congress www.canadiantamilcongress.ca Defenders of the Land www.defendersoftheland.org Earthroots www.earthroots.org Greenpeace www.greenpeace.org/canada INCITE Women of www.incite-national.org Color Against Violence Indigenous Environmental Network www.ienearth.org Justice for www.justicia4migrantworkers.org Migrant Workers Native Youth Sexual Health Network www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com Palestinian Campaign for the www.pacbi.org Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Come by the office! Please contact OPIRG for more information about our events and projects.

Ontario Public Interest Research Group- Toronto

563 Spadina Cres. Suite 101 • 416-978-7770 • www.opirgtoronto.org • opirg.toronto@gmail.com

TOOLS FOR CHANGE

Activist Skills Workshops January - May 2014 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-Toronto, Earthroots, and Greenpeace.

Registration takes place online at toolsforchange.net. Most workshops take place in downtown Toronto. All venues are wheelchair accessible.

University of Toronto students, community sponsors, OPIRG-Toronto volunteers, Greenpeace, and Earthroots members can attend all of the workshops for free.

For more information, please contact tools.change@gmail.com.

JANUARY 18>> Setting Up and Improving Your Group’s Structure 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM

Who is part of your group and who isn’t?

How do you make decisions? Is it working for you? This workshop explores how small groups can establish and improve systems to integrate people into the group and effectively make decisions. Topics covered include: membership types and different styles of decision making, from hierarchy to consensus.

JANUARY 25 >> How to Make your Online Petition Campaign Successful 1:30 PM- 4:30 PM

This workshop will outline basic best practices for setting up an online petition, how to build support and get your signature counts climbing, and finally how to use your petition to escalate your campaign for victory.

JANUARY 26 >> How to Organize a Great Direct Action 1:00 PM- 6:00 PM

Direct action is a crucial tool used by many social movements. Learn the skills necessary for organizing and participating in a direct action.

The workshop will cover basic action strategy and planning, group decision making, roles and responsibilities, execution and post-action follow up.

FEBRUARY 8 >> Avoiding Activist Burnout, Cultivating our Collective Resiliency 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’ve suffered from burnout at some point in your life. Perhaps you have also witnessed friends, colleagues or even whole organizations in various levels of exhaustion.

Drawing from the collective wisdom of all participants, we will examine what burnout looks like, how it can be prevented and ways it can be addressed. On the flip side, you will be invited to look at what resiliency looks like for you. Together we will explore various tips and tools to ensure that when things get rough, we can all bounce back a little faster.

MARCH 9 >> How to Host a Workshop 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM

This training will cover the principles of workshop design and delivery including how to create a comfortable learning environment, manage workshop logistics, and choose content and tools that cater to different learning styles and levels of participation. The workshop will explore strategies to deal with common challenges workshop leaders face. Participants will have the opportunity to create a simple workshop design and get feedback.

CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE FOR A FULL LIST OF TRAININGS THIS WINTER!

WWW.TOOLSFORCHANGE.NET