I was at a conference recently at which there was one of those meetings for white folks to talk about whiteness, being allies and what to do about racism, and all that. A couple decades ago we had slightly different lingo and we were much more full of angst about this stuff. But, these days the intellectual sophistication many of us have developed through the variations on the 'whiteness studies' theme has sure helped mitigate the nerves and tears.
But we're still baffled by the question of just what white folks are to do about racism. And the baffledom (?) is expressed in a number of forms:
- what is an ally and, how do we really be it?
- how do we deal with all that white guilt?
- how do we deal with the inescapable reality of our privilege?
I feel exhausted looking at these questions, because of how they endure and/or how they just aren't adequate for the problem at hand; but it's also because the assumptions that underpin these questions, the very way we understand what social problems are, is flawed.
And I think the problem with how white leftists who have some kind of commitment to anti-racism is the same problem with much of our social change activity: we have an insufficient grasp of the dialectical relationship between individual expressions of racism (behaviours, actions) and the systemic functioning of white supremacy. I would even say is that not only do we not grasp that complex relationship -- we actually dumb it down, artificially separating systems out from people, in our 'trainings' and meetings.
We're all for explaining colonialism, capitalism, and various forms of oppression, but we do that as if they are shadowy systemic figures that have been erected (by whom?) and now sit there, in the background, in all their power and glory. And then, in walks us, the individuals, somehow in the foreground of these all powerful, apparently inhuman, rigid constructions, we white folks with all the shit that we do, don't do and/or participate in, all that structural weight fed into each of our own little selves, so that being individually accountable for our own actions becomes implicitly synonymous with being individually accountable for the entire social history of white racism and supremacy. The power to change the world becomes conflated with some notion of our own particular individual ability to chip away at a scary, impossible system one strategic step at a time. So we choke on our guilt, avoid the whole mess, or we strive to become heros -- and, at the end of the day, we generally don't too well.
We do not exist apart from the societies we live in. These societies are us, not just us, as specific individuals from our time and place (ah, the insidious influences of capitalism) but the collective, historic us. We make society and society makes us. All at the same time, developing and evolving power relations, feeding back into each of us, influencing and challenging humanity, over time and space. It's not just a paradox; it's what a dialectical relationship is.
Looking at myself, racism did not start in 1963, when one white working class woman was born. It was thriving though and I was one more Canadian white girl born into a social environment (mainly white, working class Scarborough) that sure valued white domination and I was, albeit in a contradictory way, socialized into it. And anti-South Asian racism didn't have my little gang of faux thugs as its inventors in 1977, although each of us participated in it in our own way (I was the silent yet complicit type). We participated in the legacy of the white Canada policy, learning our own place in Canadian society while we helped reproduce white supremacy and assisted in harassing people of colour. And, as individuals who treated other individuals like shit we were responsible for those actions. Yet, if some form of multiculturalism had reached our public school to teach us to change those behaviours, while that would've spared our neighbours a form of racist traumatization, it would not have taught us kids that our attitudes were deeply interconnected with our neighbours' worse access to decent work or housing. And it certainly wouldn't have taught us all we had in common as working class people.
I think these days we are missing the impact neoliberalism has on the way we think about social change. If we accept a neoliberal individualistic model for change, then we're left with just trying to be a good white person. And that's not just ineffective -- it's really annoying. In that white folks meeting, with the possible exception of one "no one is illegal" member, I cannot remember hearing someone use the word "organize" in reference to strategies for white folks involvement in change. The discussion was all about what "I'm" doing, how my institution sees "me", how "I" need to be an ally, etc.
Some of the discussion does of course need to be about these things. But, the hyper-individualistic neoliberal model of functioning is the antithesis of both the collective approaches and dialectical thinking we need to make change happen and stick. Instead of coming up with organized instigation, people are focused on individual mitigation as its stand-in. It seems people are thinking of the latter really as the former. That if we get together at the odd conference here & there every year or two and talk about our ally and privilege challenges then that's collectivity. Well, it ain't.
Monday, May 14, 2007
White Anti-Racism: Here We Go Again
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
It's May Day again & they still call it democracy
It's May Day, the real labour day* and 121 years later we need the struggle this day represents as much as ever. A key part of this struggle continues to be around true democratic functioning, of our societies but also in our community, union and activist organizations.
The hoisting of the democracy flag in the pursuit of social control is a time-honoured core part of capitalist and imperialist practice. From George Bush's "freedom and democracy" labeling of every violent and repressive move his government makes, to Margaret Thatcher's mobilizing of the term as the only alternative to the oppressive activities of a "communist" society, and way on back before them, democracy's reputation has been quite tarnished that people probably have a hard time figuring out just what it's supposed to do for them. It's not just the ruling class doing the damage though.
70 years ago this week a dedicated, under-equipped, under-organized largely working class group of revolutionaries was betrayed in a most deadly way for them (and ultimately for many others in Spain) apparently in the name of democracy**. It was in Spain, during the civil war there, and the Stalinist-funded and controlled Communist forces fighting against Franco and fascism smashed the POUM and Anarchist groups in Barcelona, in their attempts to turn the tide against revolutionary struggle and back towards their self-serving (for Stalin's project) yet myopic idea (since it was doomed to fail -- how do you mobilize working people to support 'democracy' when they need to fight for food?) of installing a limited kind of 'reformist' government that they might control. These so-called democracy standard-bearers completely perverted this ideal, as they labeled the POUM fascist-supporters, in the pay and service of Franco. Many were jailed, held incomunicado and many of these companeros were executed without trial.
The way 'democracy' is mobilized and/or applied by the left in our time and place is less deadly but often equally suspicious. At best, it's about getting out to vote for the good people with the gaudy orange signs. Or getting out to vote for union executives, community boards of directors etc. A whole lot of energy goes into mobilizing around the installation of a few people who are to be our social change designates. We vote for them then sit back and wait; our democratic rights are suspended until the next election.
On the far left, anti-democracy is happening in a different way -- we quite simply often just don't get, or even ask for, a say. Democratic functioning is de facto assumed so you better not ask for it. To be sure, we can participate in the social change three-step. It goes like this "meeting, postering, demo , 1, 2, 3, and again, meeting, postering, demo". Why does this organizing formula continue? Who's deciding what happens in the meeting, how do the decisions get made about the postering, who gets to define the target, contents, limits of the demo? Where is this three-step headed anyway? I'm sure you have even more questions. Who are we to put them to if not each other?
Anti-democracy is the air we breathe, in different forms, in almost every corner of society. it's an important feature of global capitalism; it couldn't survive without it. All of us, even leftists, are part of this system, breathing the same air; we're in it, not outside of it. So, on May Day, this is just something the think about for those of us who truly believe in the hard work of developing the power of human solidarity. Something very different needs to happen, soon.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day
** Check out the Ken Loach film Land & Freedom if you haven't seen it. I just finished reading a couple books about the Spanish civil war. Some will have read George Orwell's Homage to Barcelona but not so many probably Robert Brennan's The Spanish Labyrinth. The latter is an incredibly detailed commitment but it's worth it.
I mean, they were written by men in/of a particular time and place, so don't be surprised that you never get to know what Orwell's wife was doing all her time in Barcelona. You'd think she spent her whole time in the Hotel Continental from the complete lack of detail on "my wife's" activities. My guess is Eileen Blair (yes, she does have a name, probably even had a pseudonym to go with George's) had a little more on the go than it might appear.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
What's Next for the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign?
When I saw the Toronto Star headline on March 21 that said that the Ontario Liberal government was "fighting child poverty" by raising the minimum wage to 10.25 an hour in 2010 I thought both "gimme a break" and "there goes the minimum wage campaign". And reading a Toronto & York Region Labour Council communique that was passed to me few days ago only confirms that the demobilization has begun before the mobilizing even had a chance to really take off. The vagueness of the "what's next" says it all.
The Toronto & York Region Labour Council, representing 195,000 unionized workers in the Greater Toronto Area, threw it's weight behind the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour shortly after Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo had her $10 minimum-wage Bill 150 pass second reading. Third reading is still to come, notwithstanding the grand McGuinty government announcement to move to 8.75 in 2008, 9.50 in 2009 followed by 10.25 in 2010. Interestingly, when I emailed her office recently to find out what was up with third reading, the response I got was to stay tuned through the Labour Council campaign network. I thought she was in the opposition and they were participating an election on Oct 10? It's Sorbara and company who made this increased minimum wage promise, not the NDP. Who does she think will benefit from that?
This isn't the first time the Ontario Liberals have structured a phased-in minimum wage increase this decade. The first -- which had no NDP Bill or Labour Council-backed campaign behind -- was a 17% increase that saw the 6.85 per hour amount go up to 7.15 Feb 1 2004 and reach 8.00 by this past Feb 1. So, as the Labour Council press release points out, a 28% increase over three years is something to be pleased about, but we can't really call it a "victory" -- and we certainly shouldn't stop the organizing just as it's getting going.
There was a flurry of town hall activity this winter, with the Council taking the minimum wage campaign to communities all across the GTA and beyond. Many people attended and thoughtfully participated in those meetings, both listening to panelists and working in small groups. A good number of these people were low-waged workers themselves, people who probably aren't quite as excited as the press release is to wait 'til 2010 for their $10. And, where do their ideas, concerns and energy go now that we're just focusing on building the petition through the web-site and some nebulous "next phase" on employment standards?
I think a number of us are asking ourselves just what this is all about for the Council. True, Labour Council has been undergoing a reformation over the last few years, responding to calls from communities of colour for a more multiracial representation in the leadership. As the council got on board this minimum wage campaign, they were also saying their goal was to 'organize the organized', to reach out to the 195,000 workers, who are indirectly represented by Labour Council via their unions' membership, and, well, to do just that, to 'reach down to the roots'. What remains unclear is just what the leadership wanted to do with these workers they're reaching down to, let alone how they're going to do it.
I fear the perspectives and concerns of those folks have become symbolic with the demobilization of this campaign; without an true ongoing, grassroots campaign that is given financial, political and admin support for the grassroots to really direct and become the a key part of the working-class leadership, how is organizing the organized being materially connected to these community meetings?
Another example of how the campaign barely got out of the blocks was the important links that were made between striking CUPE 3261 workers -- part-timers at the U of T Press warehouse making $9.36 an hour -- and the $10 an hour minimum target. These folks were asking for a 2% increase (!) but were put on the picket line by typical corporate greed. They work alongside full-timers making $13 to $14 an hour, with benefits. Some of these full-timers, also in a CUPE local, were scabbing their brothers & sisters jobs to do voluntary overtime. Nice.
CUPE and Labour Council organized a well-attended downtown demo that made the links between the paltry wages of these workers and the campaign fight across Ontario. One of the 3261 negotiators was invited to speak on one of the town hall panels during the strike. These were uplifting and effective initiatives for both the workers and members of the broader community. Yet, it was only the beginning, the very tip of the iceberg. The workers -- who had high spirits and determination on their picket line the few times I was there -- have since settled for a contract that will get them to $10 "sooner" than minimum wage workers in Ontario. But they don't have it now, they don't have benefits and they're still treated as second class in relation to the full-timers in the warehouse.
These kinds of difficult conditions require a long-term, on-the-ground mobilization strategy that will bring low-waged workers together, within unions, amongst unions and within communities. Imagine stepping up the campaign now, rather than winding it down. Imagine expanding the focus to more folks who are in bargaining right now or about to go into bargaining. The minimum wage campaign could be a powerful catalyst to those workers to actually go on strike, which could in turn make this into a street-level movement by bringing out community people to the picket lines to really threaten the employers in hotels, factories, grocery stores and other low-waged service-work. Then community-based meetings could have a tangible, material link between the low-waged unionized workplace and where people, unionized or not, live and/or work. Then those 'town halls' could be truly organizing meetings that Labour Council puts its resources at the service of.
There's a fundamental challenge here for official labour with this kind of thing and I'm quite sure official labour is well aware of it: the union officials and staff who control bargaining, service provision and the whole union environment for most workers would not exactly be ecstatic about their memberships being so politically organized, about them taking control of negotiations, directing bargaining and actually going on strike. That is not generally the way the business of unionism is done these days, and it hasn't been for a long time. This is the kind of stuff that threatens bureaucrats' power, control and, ultimately, salaries.
But you can't seriously change top-down functioning to bottom-up without taking such risks. And, while it is important that all our organizations have leaderships representative of our populations, if a few workers of colour are just being elected to higher-up union positions here and there -- albeit often doing very hard and important work -- without the majority having real decision-making power in their work or community lives, then anti-racist organizing is stopping at much-needed yet quite limited anti-racist reforms.
So, let's be glad that folks will get .75 more an hour in March 2008. More is definitely better. But let's not thump ourselves on the back too hard. Let's not pretend this isn't all part of some kind of election jockeying for position that has little to do with concern for low-waged workers. And for solidarity's sake let's please stop calling them "living" or even "liveable" wages. You do the math; it's quite simply offensive.
This article was written for http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/.
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"A thousand day wait for ten dollars?
But nagging questions remain unanswered. Why do politicians think it is alright that wealthy companies pay poverty wages to a million Ontarians? Why do so many people have to juggle two or three jobs to make ends meet? Can’t there be any constraints on those who direct the Walmartization of our society?
So the minimum wage campaign will continue, and we want everyone to keep signing petition cards, and turning them back in. In the next phase of this effort we won’t just be talking about a minimum. We will be talking about fixing employment standards and need for people to have collective rights at work. We will be developing key demands for government action to address the impact of global economic forces in the 21st century.
Livable wages, decent working conditions and basic benefits are key to our quality of life, and the future of generations to come. The principle that work should be rewarded is one worth fighting for. "
Sunday, March 25, 2007
A Snapshot of Ontario Midwifery, 14 Years After Regulation
In 1993, after and still amid much controversy within the existing midwifery community in Ontario, midwifery care was legislated, regulated and funded. Much of the internal debates centred around the pros and cons of going professional, there being quite a number of both.
Midwives in Ontario are now licensed to provide primary care to low-risk women for their pregnancy, the birth and to care for mom and baby six weeks postpartum. In its fourteenth year since turning pro, the three Midwifery Education Programs (MEPs) will graduate more midwives this year than ever. And, at great personal expense and challenge, internationally trained midwives continue to graduate from the accreditation program, the IMPP. And, most importantly, an increasing number of women across the province, from a range of class and cultural backgrounds, are able to access to midwifery care than ever before 1993. From the outside, it looks like a resounding success.
As someone who worked as a non-midwife in clinic administration for more than three years, I can tell you that, from the inside, it looks a little different, for many interconnected systemic reasons. But a few of these include: the structure and implementation of state funding and micro-management; the for-profit, business model that was state mandated and agreed to at regulation; the legacy of sexist valuing of obstetrical care by doctors over care by midwives; and, how midwives themselves are grappling with all these interwoven dynamics.
The state administers midwifery care through the Ontario Midwifery Program, a sub-bureaucracy of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. Negotiated through their professional association, the Association of Ontario Midwives (AOM), midwives are now in their second year of a three-year funding agreement, due to expire in 2008. While this agreement has seen midwives salaries and operational funding for clinics increase significantly, this has come at the price of increased administrative burdens due to intensified micro-management (such as, reporting on every midwives' 2-hour attendance of a meeting, at a given place, on a given day, and what the mileage and parking costs were for that). And they still generally make at best about 1/5 the salary of OB/GYNs.
And how they get paid is rather appalling actually. These women work their butts off for their 'clients' (while better than 'patients' it's still social worky lingo). This often involves complex hospital negotiations to demand and keep privileges there, negotiating with nurses and doctors to back off or get involved as required, to access community-based advocacy to hook socially-marginalized women up with other support services, and a bloody awful lot of time on-call and working at all hours of the day. For this, an entry level midwife gets $1840 for a "course of care", with a maximum billing of 40 per year allowable. What that means is that she must care for the woman for 12 weeks and/or be at her birth, and there must be a second midwife with her (or they ax $200 off the fee). This disrespectful, devaluing, nickel-and-diming can have quite a divide-and-rule effect on midwives, as they end up spending hours of internal dialogue on how to divide up this paltry $200 amongst themselves, they who are doing something as socially important as assisting in birthing a baby. That's not how doctors get treated or paid. They get to bill for each bit of work they do.
It's not just appalling because they're underpaid relative to the other baby-delivery professionals and not just because of the workload; it gets more appalling when you see what they don't get paid for. For example, if a woman miscarries. Yes, that's right, as soon as a woman miscarries, she's out of care. No six weeks post-care for her. The state figures she's done at that moment. And, of course, many midwives being who they are will of course continue to see a woman and support her for that time. But unless that woman was in care for more than 12 weeks, that midwife won't be paid a dime for her services.
So, what is the day-to-day service delivery context this is happening in? Since the beginning, midwifery care has been for-profit health care. Midwives must practice in clinics with other midwives. They can't just hook up with a naturopath, a massage therapist or even get a job at a community health centre (CHC). They must either work for existing clinics or submit funding proposals to set up their own. And these clinics are almost all set up as business partnerships. Until 2005, collective incorporation was not even allowed, and non-profit incorporation is still not. So, generally, two midwives get together and open their baby-delivery business and after paying the bills and the fees the other midwives bill for, they can do whatever they wish with the surplus.
I believe this systemic piece to be one of the greatest barriers to a socially-conscious, grassroots-oriented evolution of midwifery. Combine these restricted practising and practice structures with the business orientation that professionalized classes get marinated in, and you have a recipe for a deployment of midwifery care in a manner that is in complete contradiction to its historical values. And this isn't just speculation -- all you have to do is look at a good number of midwifery practices to see this is the case.
Some do manage to run their clinics with the partners as partners-on-paper only or by making everyone a legal partner and so sharing power officially equally. Others function as many feminist organizations did in the 80s and 90s, under the benevolent-dictatorship-cum-feminist-collective model. That is, where explicitly we say we're all equal and all participate in decision-making but implicitly one or two people are running the show... and, in this case, making the profits. This deployment of power in a top-down, self-interested way under the guise of 'power sharing' has proven time and again to make people unaccountable, feel unsafe and untrusting, and so stifle the healthy, sustainable development of groups and organizations.
And some clinics do re-direct some of their profits to translation services, internal professional development and support funds for clients without OHIP. This is positive and important but it's generally related to the deep concern for trying to provide clients the best care possible, where there are no other services to meet these needs for free. It doesn't seem to arise out of a systemic critique of the for-profit system and so can be ultimately limited in its effectiveness and scope.
Business models for doing anything aren't a whole lot interested in anti-oppression politics either. This reality doesn't do much to challenge the whiteness of Ontario midwifery, and that connection with class location. There are a lot of discussions and activities within the MEPs around identity, difference and access. There are also some on racism. And, more and more women of colour are getting into the MEP programs yet many struggle with racism through their program and once they start practising. Almost no clinics have any kind of equity policy and practice (on any basis) and most don't even have an informal orientation towards seeing power relations amongst them. The failure to see and/or act on the social injustice in their midst is not doing any favours to their evolution either.
As midwives head into the negotiation of their next funding agreement, I think they'd do well to do at least a four things:
1. Fight to ditch the business model. It's a systemic contradiction that's often strangling midwives relationships with each other and separating them from communities as a whole. As is true for many community services, there needs to be a more flexible, non-profit way of practising and of constituting midwifery organizations.
2. Develop an anti-oppression, anti-class-bias framework for practice functioning that the AOM provides ongoing training and support for putting in place. This needs to be made a collective social priority within midwifery and so internally funded as such.
3. Fight to be paid for the work they do. They shouldn't be solving the obstetrics crisis on their own dime.
4. Ensure the AOM has a transparent, democratic, grassroots approach to negotiations. Mobilize communities around midwives' and clients' demand for a real socially-conscious Ontario midwifery.
The AOM can be contacted at www.aom.on.ca.
