Left Queries

How to be Alone

2010-08-15T16:39:00.010-05:00

I recently watched a delightful new Youtube video, How to be Alone. I got it on Facebook, then shared it with and sent it to a bunch of friends, acquaintances and a couple nieces. We all found something so real, encouraging and relevant about it.

The today I received a link to a Globe and Mail article that slammed this vid. It is clear that Russell Smith, quite literally, does not get being alone.

Goodness, where does one begin? I may be a bit breathless, so bear with me. Smith finds Dorfman's and Davis' piece anti-feminist. Perhaps that's because he erroneously interprets it as "a melancholy monologue about being single." And perhaps that is because he assumes when a woman is exploring being alone that equals being without a partner (man?). Perhaps he cannot imagine anything with any kind of emotional content put out by a woman as either, a) generalizable, or b) not "weepiness." Maybe what he thinks he is critiquing he himself is actually reproducing: he has found thousands of women identifying with this piece incomprehensible and the text "bizarre" yet he proceeds to give us all a tongue lashing on what is wrong with it and us. Has feminism not at least taught him some better gender manners?

On that, as one comment at the bottom of his article noted, it is curious he's made this about feminism. He says, " Women all over the world seem enthralled by it" and that there have been "652,000 views." I don't know how he knows they are all women. I have found it to resonate with people of various genders. And if he's going to make it about feminism, geez, it'd be nice if he did a little research to find out exactly what it is. He makes somewhat arcane references to the 60s and "the sexual revolution" as the source of a liberation that he seems to think has been achieved for us. Women as a group (not racialized, without class location) who now apparently are so distracted by science, politics and the market that we have no time for weaknesses such as feelings. And I say arcane because it is 2nd and 3rd wave feminism that would be a much more relevant knowledge base from which to making such an "anti-feminist" argument.

The point he spectacularly misses is that this video is about being instead of doing. In a doing- and "FOMO"-obsessed society this is a message to value indeed. How many of those out-and-about women he applauds are ever without their iPhone or Blackberry at the gym and restaurant? How many people altogether really unplug, disconnect and just get with ourselves to see what our internal life is like, might be like, without all that eternal, external input coming at us? And how many of us wouldn't know where to begin if we tried? [I wonder what the stats are on the increase of 'mindfulness meditation' workshops in the last decade? I know it's all the rage. Hmm, why would that be?] Getting alone to just be certainly requires access to time and economics for a number of people; generally though, it is fundamentally about the way society in our time and place happens.

An aversion to solitude is not a "constitutional" problem of women, I agree. Rather, an aversion to just being is a social problem for people as a whole. And, really, it is too bad that some of us are disappointing him so much, with all that "backsliding everywhere around" him. But he would do well to explore that as a general societal question, to reflect on why all those "educated women" are writing Bridget Jones-type books. Are those multiple, individual, simpering anti-feminist failures or is there something more going on?

Shut off the cell Russ, close that lid on the laptop and go for a long slow walk. "Be" that a few times, reflect and bit, and it all may seem a little less bizarre.

Would they have us throw wildflowers at the banks?

2010-07-13T19:19:00.020-05:00

I've been thinking lately about my arrests a couple decades ago and how that (and a bunch of years of activism) lead to how I prepared for the G20. Well, that and other things too.

Before June 24 I had no illusions about police and protest arrests. Verbal abuse, derision, the mind-fuck of processing delays, never getting near a phone, unnecessary strip searches, shitty food and too little of it, and crowded conditions in detainment have been standard activist arrest experience for some time. And my experiences did not feature all of these things. But this G20 scene was a whole other order of abuse. In the hyper-security, anti-terrorist age there's a whole new level and ferocity of inhumanity for active dissenters, which is continuing to be eloquently and well-documented elsewhere. What we saw/experienced a couple weeks ago makes me terrified for people over-policed and -imprisoned 52 weeks of the year.

I've also been thinking about the issue of tactics and violence. This is especially because I became a militant in the mid/late 80s when, while I was still quite politically green, I came across the "Alliance for Non-Violent Action." ANVA was a group dedicated to a combined political/strategic/tactical non-violent orientation to social change. In this group, as often is the case when these layers get so implicitly intertwined, the belief system and activities were profoundly morally driven. All group conversation was oriented to or simply reflected the selflessness of that approach to struggle and practice. Leaders were revered for the number of times they'd been arrested, the extreme personal sacrifices they'd made, and for the full degree to which their lives were organized around the next action. These include actions like the ones I was involved in: ARMX '89 (bi-annual international weapons fairs), a women's day protest at Litton (weapons' manufacturer) and an anti-apartheid protest at the South African embassy in Ottawa.

And in that morally-driven conflation of philosophy, political vision, strategy and tactics was lost the possibility for both independent thinking and self-expression, as well as a collective critical assessment of real, existing social conditions and what the nature of the possibilities were for change within them. What did we understand about what was going on in the world in relation to the actions? Was what we were doing working? To what degree? Were we building something, getting more people involved? Was this the right moment for this or that action? Why were only non-violent methods okay when history has shown us that others are most often needed? No disrespect to the leader-activists who did indeed sacrifice enormously for that project but these were not askable questions. The space was just not there for it.

I've thought of this around the G20 protests, during and after that weekend, when some people wanted us all to sit down (the most annoying being Sid Ryan president of the Ontario Federation of Labour on July 10, as he stood in the bed of a pick-up truck!). While for me the sit-down now feels like submission and can also be dangerous, others use it to show their peacefulness, to demonstrate we are bringing the volume down on our rage, that we will - by being good and gentle people - model for you cops and ruling class how to be so too. No way was I sitting down. And good thing too because it seems many protesters who did were in a much more vulnerable position when the time came for the cop beating and arresting on June 25/26 that they were determined to make happen.

And as I keep hearing everyone from Harper and his cronies to labour officials in Toronto and beyond using the phrase "violent vandals", I imagine a non-violent vandalism. Masked youth throwing wildflowers at the TD bank, others grinding lavender into the locks of Starbucks' doors. Wow, that'd be an effective way to turn a march-to-nowhere around, to let the elites know you are done with them, to let out your rage. Nose pressed to the glass, saying softly to an American Apparel mannequin "don't hurt me, I'm not hurting you" (a non-violent mantra to the cops some 20 years ago).

The point I am arriving at here is that we - those who would seek some serious social transformation - would do better not to advocate for or condemn any particular tactic in and of itself nor exalt one method over another. And we'd also do better not to create any more exclusive morally-driven projects on this basis either. No matter how much we like and respect the people in them. Instead we need a lot of us to be really working together (even if sometimes separately), across political differences and those in social location and experience. Which probably sounds eye-rollingly trite at this point, given the fact that many of us want this but are collectively not "making" it happen.

We live in very complex times and yet we seem to want to make our programs and activities to be so simple, in terms of what they all ought to add up to. I am not discarding the thought, writing, and organizing of a lot of dedicated people. And I recognize many people are doing that with an urgent present level of need which I do not have and live with. This is not a blanket condemnation of current struggles. I am though trying to point out that there is a yawning gap between all that sophisticated hard work and what we are achieving, and that we're generally not discussing this. As I say, I know the urgency is real, for many of us quite literally more than for others. But without some hard, ongoing conversations on the left about how the general balance of forces (the power elites have and are able to use in relation to ours) are so out of our favour, and why this continues to be increasingly so, I cannot see how we can find a way forward. Hard work, dedication and good politics does not seem to be enough.

I know a lot of people will not be happy with me should they read this. Again, no disrespect. I locate myself in this problem too. And I don't pretend to have anything figured out. I just need to talk this reality and sure am hoping more and more other people do too.

July 1, 2010 G20 rally

2010-07-01T18:15:00.019-05:00

I just got back from the Queen's Park "Inquiry into G20" rally. I guess there were 500+ people there. I didn't stay for the march so I can only comment what happened in the take-back-the-park piece. Tommy Taylor, sort-of-average guy arrestee proposed to his girl which was fun. Here's what he is about: illicitpopsiclecollective.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/tommy-taylor-how-i-got-arrested-and-abused-at-g20-in-toronto-canada/

The militancy volume dial was definitely turned down from a couple days ago and there was a real Canadiana vibe to it all. I don't think it's just the day. The MC who was clearly in the trenches on G20 weekend (bruised arms) kept emphasizing rights violations of peaceful protesters. And despite Sharmeen Khan's (Toronto Community Mobilization Network organizer) great speech that located us on Indigenous land, that being terrorized by the cops & prison system is everyday life for a lot of racialized migrants, and focused on the injustice of dozens of people still being detained, not as much of the crowd got into chanting "free free the detainees" with her at the end as we did earlier this week.

There was lots of tapping into the "Canadian values" business to justify decrying civil liberties and human rights violations. And given the national imaginary - that absurdly endures - of the safe, polite and peace-loving nation, tapping into Canadiana sends us down a slippery slope. The ideology of politeness has a palpable nexus with that of private property here in post-G20 Toronto.

We're seeing some unions & unions federations that have realized they've got to get behind an inquiry because even people who went out to go shopping at the Queen West Lululemon on Sunday ended up in freezing cold overcrowded paddy wagons for the afternoon and evening with their hands in twist ties instead. Take the Toronto & York Region Labour Council (TYRLC) for example and how their position changed from the weekend to today. Actually, you can't see what they first said because they seem to have taken it off their site: labourcouncil.ca. But it wasn't good. it was kind of link the abhorring and condemning message on the Canadian Labour Congress site: canadianlabour.ca/national/news/labour-s-g20-rally-and-march-drew-thousands.

So, John Cartwright TYRLC president spoke today, mobilizing multiracial working class history in Toronto to buttress his support for an inquiry. Which is fine - he's very good at that - but it also seemed to help smuggle in three key points to a largely cheering audience: that the inquiry must look at the unjustified use of police force (i.e. unions are ok with cops going at some of the people, some of the time?), all the sources of violence/vandalism (read, get those hooligans?) and also why the police didn't intervene on the property destruction (I yelled out "cos they were having too much fun participating in it").

We've got to get back to where we were this past Monday night at the cop shop protest. Do we have to have riot cops beating their shields, marching on us, beating us, then standing on every street corner, to actively undermine that not being polite and not protecting corporate property is not the greatest violence in our lives? I hope not. Let's make sure that $1.2 billion dollars was not completely wasted wasted. Let's make sure that along with Starbucks, Scotiabank and Nike windows some illusions got smashed - like ones about how fundamental social change happens slowly, if we're patient and we wait nicely for our chance to speak out.

More of a crazy notion than a ‘Crazy Heart’*

2010-05-09T19:03:00.004-05:00

This seems an odd and sudden way to re-start a blog. And I will admit up front that this is more of a movie rant than a movie review. But I feel so compelled. Maybe Harper and company’s escalating anti-women attacks had me already revved up when I saw ‘Crazy Horse’ last night, which the box it came in reported as Jeff Bridges’ best yet. I woke up this morning with a hangover. Never mind that supposed-southerner Colin Farrell as 'Tom' has zero idea how to lip sync or that, as usual, his Irish accent keeps creeping in. What had me yammering at my sleepy guy this a.m. was that the core of what carries the film is a preposterous premise: young 30something Jeanie (Maggie Gyllenhaal… ) gets all hot for - sorry no, falls quickly in looove with – a whiskey-chugging, chain-smoking, frequently vomiting, almost 60 something ‘Bad’ guy (seriously, his stage name in the film).

All kinds of people can find all other kinds of other people fascinating and sexy. I am into that and I think it’s awesome. But a little bit of plot development to justify Jean’s dubious swoon would not be too much to ask. Nowhere is found an explanation for why that fanciful character, the hot, single mom in a great job and beautiful home would give, um, Bad a second look… never mind trust her kid with him! And the couple of women closer to his age in the film are portrayed as one-dimensional bar sluts (and not in a good way), bit players ‘til he meets the real deal. I think all this is because the film is an example of an aging-male fantasy, de rigueur these days from Hollywood to real-life online dating.

In our general part of the world, public feminist movements have eroded over the last decade and a bit, and any semblance of real freedom for women has become many of us learning to be superwomen. Meanwhile, many men of my general generation seem to be challenging mortality, fighting the wages of time (by trying to get) on the backs of sisters 15 to 20 years younger than me. Online dating profiles of my male contemporaries are often testaments to this. One almost 50 year-old guy who messaged me when I was on POF last year stated in his blurb a preferred age range as 26 to 33. I sent him a note asking if it was a slow week because I sure didn’t make the age cut….It’s all very annoying, like more and more things these days.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1263670/

New Blog Support Team

2008-07-06T18:08:00.005-05:00

As I seem to have been unable to post anything intelligent ( or at all for that matter) for a year now, I've added two companeras to the editorial team... I know they appear to be livin' the vida floja but they can hardly make matters worse (as long as I don't leave the laptop unattended while I'm out). Please welcome Scrumble and Rory to leftqueries.

Credit goes to http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com/ for this stupendous idea.

White Anti-Racism: Here We Go Again

2007-05-14T18:04:00.000-05:00

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.

It's May Day again & they still call it democracy

2007-05-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

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.

What's Next for the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign?

2007-04-03T18:28:00.000-05:00

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/.

---

Here is what was sent to me, although I can't locate it at www.labourcouncil.ca.

"A thousand day wait for ten dollars?

The provincial government has finally bowed to public pressure on the minimum wage, but their plan leaves over a million people working at poverty wages for at least three more years. Finance Minister Greg Sorbara announced the phasing in of seventy-five cent annual increases starting next March 31st with the rate becoming $10.25 in 2010.

Even though it will be delayed far too long, winning a 28% increase in the Minimum Wage is a great victory. It would never have happened without the tremendous mobilization of labour and community activists, and the willingness of ordinary people to use their voice - and their votes - to send a message to the McGuinty government.

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. "

A Snapshot of Ontario Midwifery, 14 Years After Regulation

2007-03-25T11:24:00.000-05:00

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.

Multiculturalism, Racism and 'Integration'

2007-02-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

Jakeet Singh writes on rabble.ca on Feb. 26 (www.rabble.ca/everyones_a_critic.shtml) about a racist backlash being fuelled in the pages of the Globe and Mail, under the guise of a critique of multiculturalism. He seems to be quite correct because not two days later, in the same paper, does a G&M reader write in (on the topic of the Tories' introduction of their partisan appointment system for the Immigration & Refugee Board appointments) to complain about the very existence of the IRB, or even of immigrants & refugees, saying there continue to be "costs to taxpayers of multiculturalism and all that goes with it."

What is this 'thing' called multiculturalism these days, this 'thing' being used to smuggle in racism? It sure sounds like a thing when it gets talked about. It's definitely no longer state-funded institutions or programs. Those got fully retired in the early 90s. And in this anti-terror, intensified them-and-us era, it does float out there vaguely, like a thing.

What it actually is now is still as contradictory a social relation as ever, even though it's more officially implicit. Successfully integrated into the imagined Canadian national identity, it's a race relations add-on to the polite, kind, peace-loving gentle folk image. Except, people of colour better bloody well be kinder, more peaceful and more gentle, as they will be monitored on this by white folks, from the working class right on up to those who run the show.

A contradictory thing from the start, multiculturalism is just as much about food, dance and apparently living in harmony through these cultural pursuits, as it is about facilitating business access to global commercial relations. It's supposed to be something for everyone. And, importantly, it also has a legacy of giving some breathing space -- some -- to people of colour, breathing space from racism.

As Singh points out on rabble.ca, it's hard though for the positive bits of this mutliculti thing to withstand the creep of the anti-terror hysteria that is seeping into every crack of social life. As he points out, the Globe & Mail journalist is actually blaming multiculturalism for preventing immigrants from attending ball games & the like.

Now, that's quite a test for fitting into the social fabric, isn't it? Let's have some fun and apply these integration standards to other members of the population. Say, for example, people like me. I don't attend over-priced ball games; in fact, I've had a personal boycott of the Skydome since it was built because of the city prioritizing sports-based corporations over homeless people and housing. In fact, I don't buy tickets for any of those big business money-making activities. Not only is it friggin' expensive, it just isn't my thing; it's not part of my own culture.

Yes, I just hang out in my largely, white, kinda punky, kinda trendy neighbourhood, doing my own thing. Eating samosas, making mole con pollo -- good multiculti eating activities -- reading or writing on Saturday nights when well-integrated Canadians are at the theatre, clubs or wherever they/we are supposed to be to demonstrate being well integrated. And that's the 'funny' thing: I can live as a home-grown white anglophone with a decent paying job, here in my own urban enclave, a failure of mainstream social integration. And no one thinks I'm going to blow them up. Or that my reclusive pursuits and occasionally odd social behaviour are a threat to world security. I just have to navigate an increasingly individualized, privatized and profit-driven society that increasingly allows fewer & fewer socially-sanctioned options on how & who we are to be. And, while detesting this, I just get to be; I just get to be left alone.

And my being left alone has just about everything to do with racism and the flip side of the coin, the perverse social 'privilege' I'm given through whiteness. That's all about this ongoing white domination of the running of society, of who gets to just be and who must be forced to figure out some way to 'integrate', to become one of 'us'.

So, I have an idea. It's not an expensive one either: if white folks would generally stop treating people of colour like shit -- through ignoring, silencing, suspicion of terrorism, angry treatment when 'they' get 'our' jobs, cultural romaticization et cetera -- then maybe we could all integrate with each other a whole lot better. I mean, I don't think think the rulers of this fair nation will get on the band-wagon or anything but starting with social integration failures like me, and then expanding into the rest of the working class, well, that'd be a good start, no?

Toronto Labour Council, the $10 Minimum Wage & 'Organizing the Organized'

2007-02-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

The Toronto & York Region Labour Council, representing 195,000 unionized workers in the Greater Toronto Area, is throwing it's weight behind the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour which has ebbed and flowed over the last six years. Their decision to do so comes as Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo had her $10 miminum-wage Bill 150 pass second reading. Third reading is set for March 19, and the provincial elections are coming on Oct 10, 2007. So, there are a couple upcoming political flashpoints for the Council to organize around.

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 gets on board this minimum wage campaign, they are also saying their goal is 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 wants to do with these workers they're reaching down to, let alone how they're going to do it.

Take the $10 campaign for example. The council has a whack of 'town halls' planned for different Toronto neighbourhoods over the coming weeks. According to the Labour Council President, John Cartwright, they are educational opportunities for community people, as well as a chance to have their voices heard. What's not at all clear -- to me or, as Cartwright admitted in a recent meeting, to him either -- is how low-waged community people will become involved the campaign, in an organizied way that is not just symbolic but has the financial, political and admin support behind them so they actually direct and become the campaign leadership. In my experience in the early days of the $10 an hour campaign a number of years ago, low-waged workers don't need a whole lot of education that their situation is unjust and untenable; they need a solid social movement behind them to organize to change it.

What is also not clear from Cartwright or campaign materials is how the links are being made between these town halls and the low-waged unionized workers that make up a chunk of the 195,000. Just imagine if efforts went into mobilizing any unionized worker in Toronto, hell, in Ontario, who makes around $10 an hour or less. Imagine focusing on those 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. Active relationships could also be developed with the Workers Action Centre (www.workersactioncentre.org), a grassroots, non-unionized, low-waged workers' rights organization. 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 Labour Council with this kind of thing and I'm quite sure Cartwright 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. So, if Labour Council were to take such militant steps to link their $10 online petitions, press conferences and town halls with organizing the organized, they could well find some very pissed off officials threatening to pull their support -- that is, their unions' dollars -- from the Council.

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 council here and there, 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.

And if we want to win this campaign -- which we must -- and we think it's unlikely that the bill we be passed on March 19 -- which many of us probably do -- it's a bottom-up, community & workplace-based strategy that's going to get us there.

Here are some upcoming Town Halls in Toronto if you want to talk with folks or get involved:

· Etobicoke North Community: Saturday February 17th, 2007 @ 1:00 p.m.

Microskills, 1 Vulcan St., (corner of Martingrove & Vulcan)

· Thorncliffe Community: Tuesday February 20th, 2007 @ 7:00 p.m.

18 Thorncliffe Park Dr., Youth Centre
(behind the mall, Thorncliffe & Overlea Blvd.)

· Jane - Finch Community: Tuesday February 27th, 2007 @ 7:00 p.m.

San Romano Way Revitalization Association Community Centre
10 San Romano Way, ground floor, north wing

· Malvern - Scarborough Community: Tuesday March 6th, 2007 @ 7:00 p.m.

Malvern Youth Community, Scott Westney Community House
180 McLevin Ave.

Childcare is available. Please call a couple of days prior to the meeting to
advise if needed.

Contacts:
Julius Deutsch, Labour Council, (416) 441-3663 ext. 225 or
jdeutsch@labourcouncil.ca
Judy Vashti Persad, Labour Council, (416) 441-3663 ext. 224 or jpersad@labourcouncil.ca

Unsafe or uncomfortable? Conflict, Disagreement & Oppression on the Left

2007-01-20T18:32:00.000-05:00

One of the most important concepts that came out of late 20^th century feminism is “safety”. And that isn’t just to mean women being secure from invaders in our homes or attacks on the street. The concept of safety is about being free from emotional and physical violence, from any kind of oppression or abuse that undermines our dignity and sense of self, wherever any of us is working or spending our time.

In my experience, however, after a number of years of its use, this definition is not at all clear to many on the left. In fact, I find that people in what are understood to be socially progressive environments often say they feel unsafe when what they actually feel is uncomfortable. This can cause problems when the group gets re-directed into trying to deal with a personal attack that hasn’t happened instead of focusing on the source of the political disagreement to understand it better. That can lead to stalemating decision-making in the short term, or can become part of an unspoken backdrop that makes it hard to develop trust and solid political relationships. The unspoken, stagnating question in some people’s minds can be “will I be called racist/sexist/transphobic every time I disagree with her/him?”

This is a difficult idea to swallow, for sure. I mean, suggesting that we’re not always right about our feelings of lack of safety maybe seems too risky. And it’s hardest to swallow because of the harsh reality that most people of colour, queer and trans people, working class folks and/or women spend a lot of time in hostile environments, where racism, sexism and other forms of oppression are systemically endemic. Our workplaces, community groups, schools, and even our unions are places where our emotional and physical safety is often put at risk, both due to a variety of types and levels of harassment, and due to the multiple ways we are marginalized in those organizations and in society as a whole.

So, stepping forward, whether individually or collectively, to verbally denounce heterosexist remarks in a meeting, or make a formal complaint against the racism that so permeates an office that it becomes the air people of colour must breathe, are necessary and just acts, that are needed all too frequently and are indeed about people’s safety.

But when there is a sharp disagreement or a conflict that does not involve abuse or harassment but does make people feel insecure or uncomfortable, many often still say they feel unsafe. Sometimes, some people are actually triggered into having feelings of past-abuse experiences, such that certain sources of discomfort (such as a loud, insistent male voice) seem like an immediate threat to our safety. But that doesn’t mean that these behaviours or forms of self-expression are always, actually threats. Such conduct may just require a collegial “Dave, could you dial it back a bit?” rather than an emergency women’s caucus meeting. In a trusting, politically mature setting, Dave may well just smile, and start to speak a little more quietly.

Nor is it inherently a bad thing, or inherently a threat to our selves, to feel uncomfortable, frustrated or upset when politically challenged in a collegial environment. Our ideas are not separate from who we are; indeed, for those of us who hold passionate beliefs about social change, and often feel somewhat outside of society for it, our ideas can feel like some kind of sacred core of our being. But being so protective of our beliefs does not really help move us closer to our social change goals. So, being respectfully, directly challenged on our ideas or suggestions can well mean we are being treated as valued equals within a positive, politically-engaging environment.

Yet, part of creating such an environment means we all need to grasp the difference between treating someone in a way that compromises their dignity, in a way that tactically seeks to belittle their humanity in order to win a point, and treating someone we disagree with respectfully even while we may be vigorously challenging their idea. The former creates a lack of safety; the latter often discomfort. The latter also requires a degree of collective political maturity that seems not that easy to come by.

It is really important that I ground this process of differentiation in people’s very real, lived experience of oppression. Being challenged may well remind us of the feelings we have when we hear racist remarks on the picket line, or when our co-workers sigh in frustration at having to find an accessible meeting room because “just one” colleague is in a wheelchair, or when men in an office joke about the “cougar bar” they went to last week. But these are different types of challenges: the unsafe one is a very real challenge to our well-being; the uncomfortable one a potentially valid questioning of our perspective. Discomfort isn’t the same thing as an emotional or physical threat. And it doesn’t advance our struggle to eradicate oppression if we cannot distinguish between the two types of situations and respond differently in each one.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to do this if guys would finally actively challenge each other on sexism, white people would intervene in a generalized and functional way on racism and straight folks would stop tolerating heterosexism amongst each other. It would sure be easier to deal with sharp feelings of discomfort when we could be assured of having a safe and supportive environment to go to school or work in, with trusted, solid allies to collectively organize with against the systems of injustice. Absolutely, the one needs to other. We still have too few environments in which, when asked, Dave will calmly take the feedback, recognize what is being asked of him and all that it means, and indeed dial it back. Unfortunately, this guy is still often quite likely to be defensive and respond in a way – along with silence from other men in the room -- that might well make women want to caucus.

But, if we could start by understanding this difference for ourselves and then naming it when it happens, if couldn’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t get this difference, and respond to dissent by mislabeling the dynamic, it can make it difficult to recognize and build relationships with allies. If I completely objectify Dave as a loud, controlling sexist guy when he is really just mostly a loud guy who has in fact been supportive in the past when we tried to get funding for an anti-racist women’s conference, then I’m missing an opportunity as a white person to develop a political relationship with another white anti-racist. I don’t need to feel excessively grateful for his better politics or invite him to my next potluck dinner. But I can see him a little for fully as someone who is an ally on issues of racism and sexism, even if he at times fumbles around when interacting with women.

People may also be using the term “unsafe” not just mask their own discomfort but to counter-act their own insecurity. If I was upset by a guy who’s aggressive in a meeting, who keeps pushing his perspective forward, disregarding women’s points of view when they speak, and no one is responding, this was most likely an environment made unsafe by sexism. But, if there was a guy who was taking some time to draw out a political point, a point which I strongly disagreed with, and I said it’s sexist to take all that time and he needs to be quiet, I could well have been using a charge of oppressive behaviour to mask my disagreement and/or maybe even insecurity at not knowing how to respond to the ideas he’s put forward. I know I have done this in the past, and I have seen others do it too, albeit unconsciously.

I have also seen and experienced this dynamic between women, across race and sexual orientation. I personally have had interactions with women who are the gentle, caring kinds of feminists --rather than the militant types like me -- who tell me I am making them unsafe every time I communicate to them my analysis about what is going on, rather than express an emotion about the situation. Prioritizing feelings over ideas, continuing to treat feeling and thinking as separate ways of operating, but giving priority to the former, can also be an effective way of shutting people down and saving face in the moment. However, it’s not effective beyond the moment, for political or personal development, or even for basic problem solving. It is not even in women’s interests to not take up the challenge of developing the confidence to operate at an abstract level of thinking. We have a right and ability to do this, and to do it in a way that is also emotionally grounded. And we deserve to have the support that figuring all this out requires.

Obviously, it’s not that it should be all the responsibility of people in oppressed groups to appreciate the all too rare opportunities to find allies and build the kinds of political relationships I am suggesting here. People in privileged groups still have a lot of work to do to develop the skills and understanding of the uncomfortable/ triggered/unsafe dynamic and monitor the social barometer in a room to know where we’re at within it. We all need to be working on this, from our different social locations.

Many of us on the left are engaged in social change work – in community organizations, in our housing, in unions – with a commitment to building representative projects and movements from the ground up. Given that, taking the lead in building this understanding around comfort and safety is just another part of moving us towards our goals. It is a key part of our own political development, of bridging political differences and sectarian barriers that often suffocate our efforts. From my own experience, I’d also say it’s also a key part of building our own self-respect and dignity.

The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign -- 5 Challenges as We Do the Right Thing

2007-01-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

This past Fall, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign was launched to attack what many are now quite legitimately calling "Israeli Apartheid". Given the intensification of military occupation and enclosure of Palestinian lands and people, of murderous attacks, of destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, of control of movement in and out of Bantustan-style areas byIsraeli check points; that is to say, intensification of the minority colonizing force's overtly racist dispossession of a local population, the analogy with South African apartheid is astute.

This campaign needs our active involvement and support. Palestinians must be allowed to live with peace and dignity, in their homes, on their land. Their lives are the opposite of that right now. The BDS campaign proved to be an effective mechanism to help bring down official, brutal white rule in South Africa; it could have such an effect on Zionist rule in Israel, potentially creating space for effective grassroots Palestinian organizing, when seemingly nothing else points the way forward at the moment.

Yet, there are challenges in this BDS campaign because of the international and geopolitical context of the Palestinian struggle. I see five of them that I am wrestling with as I talk to people about the campaign. Some of these (or the form of them) may be specific to the Canadian context; they may also be issues in other parts of the West.

1. Unlike with international anti-apartheid solidarity with South Africa, we have no generalized "popular morality" in our society at this point that sees the routine killing, wounding and brutalizing of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces as unacceptable. We did have that in South Africa: regardless of how down-right hypocritical it was at times to condemn racism abroad while it continued to exist at home, condemn it white people did. Far fewer then would have dared suggest that it was okay somehow for white people to segregate, brutalize and otherwise disenfranchise Blacks. Multiculturalism taught white folks they shouldn't feel that way, even if many still did, and it created a climate of denunciation of white South-African rule. True, I remember conversations during my involvement with that campaign that brought out anti-Black racism (all the wild, out of control savage bullshit) but it was generally much easier to talk to the white person on the street about the inherent wrongness of the racist rule, whether or not the person agreed with divestment. And, of course, it was a no brainer for most people of colour.

Multiculturalism isn't helping us much in this case because we now have something much worse to deal with that trumps it: terrorism. Any person of Arab or West-Asian descent (or apparently so) who speaks too loudly, who dares to assert themselves, can run the risk of being associated with not the good, polite, grateful, peace-loving immigrant who contributes to our multiculti society, but rather one of those angry, gun-toting folks out to blow 'us' all up.

Further, it was relatively easy to argue that the white-run South African state was illegitimate because it openly violated the liberal democratic principle of equal political citizenship (one person, one vote etc.) The Israeli state has differentiated and unequal citizenship rights, by virtue of its (racist) definition as a Jewish state but non-Jewish citizens are not denied the right to vote for seats in a common legislature (but I think all parties have to accept the constitution that defines Israel as a Jewish state, and the Israeli far right would love to deprive non-Jews of the right to vote). Obviously Palestinians in the West Banl and Gaza are not citizens of Israel at all. But perhaps the nature of the Israeli political system makes it harder to delegitimize the Israeli state than it did the South African state.*

2. Part of the reason for #1, is found in the second challenge: the popoular legitimacy of Zionism and the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The political Zionism that guides Israel's mission is "an exclusionary, colonial form of Jewish nationalism". Further, as the same campaign pamphlet succinctly states,"...while Zionism was largely a result of anti-Semitism, it was never anti-racist" in its form. And, needless to say, Zionism as a political force is seen as legitimate, by many otherwise progressive people, in Canada and other parts of the world. This is to such a degree that Israel can openly threaten to launch a nuclear attack on a soverign state, as it has recently done with Iran.

So, to challenge the racist Zionist policies, to oppose the forced exile, slaughter, enclosure and dispossession of Palestinians, is often generally interpreted as being synonymous with opposing Jews and Jewishness. There is almost no social or political space in Canadian society yet in which these two can be disentangled and separated, in order to be seen for what they are: two very different perspectives. The BDS campaign will need to help create this space in order to make this distinction.

3. Challenge three is about another type of conflation: the conflation of local neighbourhood/community centre-based conflict resolution methodology with methods for addressing international 'conflicts'. Large segments of progressive society have taken up non-violence as a philosophy and a committed practice, rather than a general principle or even tactic. There is little distinction made between zero-tolerance for school-yard bullying, for mediation in co-op housing member disagreements, and for what to do when a colonizing force is bombing people out of existence. I would say the main piece missing here that is largely responsible for this problem is an analysis of imperialism. That is, of how the world is organized on this basis, how that plays out in this particular geopolitical situation (beyond 'they want the oil') and how these interminable peace talks run by global elites serve imperialist interests.

When challenge #2 and 3 come together, we get a potent and impassioned plea of "we've got to be fair to all sides" that can stop people in their tracks and gives us no real way forward.

4. Another challenge a friend of mine saw at a recent leaflet was what I'd call "street-level anti-Semitism". I would say that in Canada at this point in history anti-Semitism is not systemic. That is, it does not generally exist in institutional forms, marginalizing Jews from participation in Canadian society. But, while it is not a structural phenomenon, everyday anti-Semitic attitudes are still there. So we have to be prepared when doing the boycott campaigning for people to say "Oh, I didn't know Jews ran this bookstore!" We have to be prepared for it and challenge it, unequivocally, because it is the right thing to do and to give no room for anti-Semitism to be used by Israeli Zionists to buttress their genocidal activity.

5. The fifth one, a typical product of the neo-liberal era, is no less daunting. The 1993 Oslo-accord designed sub-contracting out of the occupation by Israel to Palestinian Authority has done wonders for Israel and for it's ongoing imperialist supporters. The passing of responsibility for population control to a small, Palestinian elite has allowed the Israeli ruling class to hide itself in the cloak of a defender of its Jewish citizens against out-of-control, violent Arabs, at the same time as that state formulates and implements aggressive genocidal practices. Without this neoliberal, sub-contracting analysis, and without a class analysis of Palestinian society, it gets said that Palestinians are all just "fighting amongst themselves", that they cannot "control their own people". The Hamas-Fatah rivalry is deadly and a serious social and political problem. And it's largely been created by what imperialists hail as such a such a positive step: a 13 year-old failed peace accord.

These are difficult challenges but they don't mean the BDS campaign can't be done. It does mean that people who support the campaign have some thinking to do as we get out and promote the campaign projects.

For information on the BDS campaign, check out http://www.caiaweb.org/

*thanks to Sebastian Lamb for the contribution of the thoughts in this paragraph.

Weighing in on Rebick vs May

2006-12-25T10:11:00.000-05:00

There’s a public debate underway at the moment between Elizabeth May and Judy Rebick, the latest installment (Dec 22, rabble.ca) of which ends with May giving Rebick a virtual hug. Oh, please.

In her Dec 22 response to Rebick, May offers us the rather holier than thou statement that choosing an abortion is “always a deeply difficult decision” for women. Sorry Liz, but it just ain’t so. And it doesn’t mean those of us who haven’t had deep difficulty making that choice are using abortion as birth control or that we’re cavalier about life. It just means we’re really clear what is best for ourselves and we don’t all have sexist moral teachings echoing though our consciousness creating guilt and uncertainty, making us think we’re bad people for killing a child that doesn’t even exist.

For someone who professes to be a champion of social equality, May has a simpering lack of appreciation of how society is organized on the basis of power. As an environmentalist and Green Party leader she operates in a social vacuum, politically treating MPs in powerful cabinet positions as individuals, whose actions and intentions are to be assessed as such, in a ‘fair’ way, rather than as part of a complex, power-based understanding of how the web of elite social management & control forms, morphs and reforms itself as part of the times.

Whatever illusions or intentions individual politicians may have, government as it now stands in our time and place in history is run for the benefit of ‘our economy’ which, frankly, doesn’t belong to most of us. So, they dole out some social good (less and less) to mitigate (or appear to mitigate) the damage caused by the excesses of big business (corporations that produce goods & services, foreign direct investment and banks) so that the self-same elites can continue ratcheting up their profit margins.

I agree with May that respectful, constructive dialogue is important; we so need to wade through the rhetoric and ideology that often gets slung about so that we get to the heart of complex issues and figure out a sustainable and just way forward. Within the left we absolutely need to be doing that; we’re in disarray and polemics aren’t helping us. But, please, let’s not pretend that ‘dialogue’ with those that control ‘the economy’, those that control the definitions and access to recognition of social and human rights, those that are in power, that is – let’s not pretend that making nice with the ruling class is going to bring about the sexual and other equality May refers to.

A new proposal for Ontarions and "our" MPPs

2006-12-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

I wonder if anyone in the McGuinty government feels at all embarrased about passing legislation allowing workers to continue earning wages, without employers having to pay benefits, after 65 years old, while at the same time planning for an MPP 25% raise and big increase in their own pension plan contributions and severance payments.

Even more embarrassingly, they said they need to do this to attract the best quality people to the job of running the Ontario government. What is it, a business, or an elected position in which you're supposed to represent the interests of the citizenry? Sorry, silly question.

Clearly, what's good for MPPs, Ontario workers they represent are not good enough for. Let's face it, most working people would prefer to retire earlier rather than later. Those that will "choose" to continue after 65 are the ones who don't have houses that are paid for, don't have well-stuffed RRSPs, and cannot afford to live on meagre CPP and OAS pensions that are often inadequate to fully cover even basic needs. That is, most of us.

And then there's the minimum wage which McGuinty's government raised from $6.85/hr to $7.15/hr on February 1, 2004 and has annually since been raised so that it rockets up to $8.00/hr by this coming February.

Wow, $8 an hour for 35 hours a week (if you can get a full-time gig), that's an amazing $280 a week, a whole $14,560 a year. And it's just a little bit less (well, $7500 or so, but who's counting) than the $22,000 increase that the right-wing MPPs are putting in place for themselves.

Maybe we could do a deal with the Ontario Liberals -- how about they get the $0.25 per hour wage increase planned for minimum wage earners in February and low income people get bumped up to a minimum $22,000 floor? I really think that would benefit a lot of the "good quality people" that make up the majority of the working population. And if we loose some Liberals to Ottawa because they're struggling to get by on $88,771 a year well.... oh, that's a good thing, isn't it?

*The proposed legislation raise the salaries to $110,775 from $88,771 and also increases the allowable contribution to a provincial members' registered pension plan to 10 per cent from five per cent of their salary and boosts severance payments for departing MPPs.

December 6

2006-12-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

In all the 17 years since the Montreal massacre -- when Marc Lepine gunned down 14 women for being women who dared attend L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal -- I have yet to be able to attend one remembrance celebration.

It's not that I'm not a feminist. Hah! Do not even get me started.

It's also not that I'm afraid of the cold. It's the impotent rage that's the problem. It's rage that becomes impotent when I see on T.V. all those gentle candles casting a glow on the mock tombstones, and hear all that suffering, respectful silence.

I cannot conceive of organizing around annual, one-day events (be it Dec 6 or "take back the night") as a comprehensive, political strategy to combat the ruthless, systemic violence against sex trade workers, women going to & from other work, or women trying to survive in peace in their very homes. And when those one day events insist on this deeply, gendered quietness, this symbolic passivity in the face of such ongoing horror -- well count me out.

Impotent rage brings makes me sob, makes me want to hide under the covers. Empowered rage, when I connect with other people who want to seriously organize, 365 days of the year, not just for better services, but to fundamentally undermine the deep roots of ruthless and violent social exclusion... well that would make me really live, that would put the energy of my rage to good use.

"Relaxing" requirements for Migrant Workers?

2006-12-03T17:58:00.000-05:00

On November 16, p.m. Steven Harper's migra minister, Monte Solberg annouced a "relaxation" in visa access to migrant workers, for a specific list of jobs, for just B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. Interestingly, one article stated that the work of Alberta oil boom has left a labour shortage in "other areas". Seen those ads on t.v. advertising for "flexible hours' careers" at Timmie's? There's an area of your labour shortage.

History is being repeated here in a different form. The only real "boom" in this country in recent history has been in Alberta, drawing not just western Canada workers but also Newfoundland migrants, suffering from the fish "bust" in their region, in droves. Lucky for them -- I guess -- that Newfoundland dragged itself into Confederation in 1949. So, while they have to leave their communities, families and friends to make money to send home, they can actually legally stay in Alberta if they want. Yeah, "lucky" them.

But when you're migrating from down South (I mean, below Texas) you're not likely to be so, well, lucky. Because in our modern capitalist nation-state system, there are officially different kinds of humanity: thems that have papers that allow them to be in the North (above the Rio Grande & Europe.. oh, and Australia & New Zealand too.. and a few more that are getting a little bit richer and as white as they can manage); and, thems that don't. Of course, possession of money and/or property can mitigate this inhumanity designation. And whiteness goes a long way too (requiring less money & property... but you still need to have something).

So, given these two apparent kinds of humanity, six months before this "rule relax", Harper could oversee deportations en masse of Ontarions who'd lived and worked here for many years because they were somehow not real Ontarions, because they got here without the state's beneficient "relaxing" of the rules. I mean, heaven (or someone) forbid that people figure out how to relax the rules themselves, finding a way to come here, build our buildings plus their homes and lives here, contribute to the community and economy here, without Harper's & Solberg's permission. And because they didn't get the official go-ahead, these folks are considered queue jumpers; but the queues they are supposed to -- and would -- access don't even exist.

I'm sure you'll agree, dividing people into different forms of humanity is obscene. It's also historical and, so, insidious. This division is based on an interconnecetd mix of what nationality you officially have, what 'race' you are assigned you, your gender and the social class you belong to. And those infamous "queues" out there aren't for most working people who are "disadvantaged" by their locations in these categories. The queues are for the professors, doctors, engineers, the people that generally have some money &/or property in their country of origin, so that they can legally apply to come to our land of opportunity and start their new careers as.... cabbies, pizza delivery people and temp agency workers?!

I was talking to a group a people at the University of Manitoba this past March who were deeply concerned about racism in Canada. One of the guys asked me what to do about a complex dilemma people get into about migrants in Manitoba: we need more jobs for Manitobans because there are so many un and under-employed people in the province but the migrants have rights to work to. So, when you talk with people about 'them' taking 'our' jobs, it's hard to challenge that.

I said, well you could first ask why those un/under-employed folks aren't doing those open jobs in the first place. Oh, I know! Because it's bottom-rung paid work with excessively long days and no benefits. So, that's that part.

And the other problem can be taken care of if we could just turn those migrants into Manitobans. Then all off 'them' will become 'us' and we won't have to make those distinctions anymore. I mean, you can think of them like those nice white middle-class retirees that fly to Florida from urban Canada every year. That's it, the migrant workers from the South are all Snow Birds, but in reverse, so let's give them access to the same rights and papers. You know, what's good for the goose and all that.

Then, maybe when all working people are a little more us than they/we are them, when we ditch this nationality stuff up here, fewer and fewer of us will stand for poorly paid, and/or unsafe and/or back-breaking jobs... wouldn't that be quite a pickle for thems with all the papers, property and money? Of course, we still have to solve the Canadian problems of racism and sexism in work, but taking aim at the inhumanity of these nationality designations would sure be a good start.

This moment in neoliberalism brought to you by Bill 107

2006-11-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

Ontario’s Bill 107 to amend the Ontario Human Rights Code is another moment in neoliberalism brought to you by the McGuinty Liberals. Neoliberalism is about an individualized, business-oriented, hyper-commodified approach to life. It’s not just about changes to the economy (deregulation, decreased corporate taxes, increasing privatization of property) - as if that were separate from how people live day-to-day, anyway: it’s about governments pulling out of the social well-being business. It’s about deepening the power imbalances in society while continuing the pretense that as individuals we all are formally equal in this free-market world. Started in the 70s, how fast and how far governments go with it varies in the West with how good a social safety need was achieved through pre-war struggle & negotiation post WWII.

In Ontario, our governments have been dismantling this support system in earnest since the 90s. It got the most serious kick in the teeth following the ideological ground work laid by the Conservatives in the mid 90s election campaign: anti-immigrant and poor bashing became daily fair, as did the phrase “special interest groups”. The massive cuts came immediately after the Harris Tories won in 1995: unthinkable 22% cuts to already pitiful social assistance cheques, an end to construction of non-profit housing, major rollback of workers rights by the gutting of the Employment Standards Act, and the dismantling of rent control along with the introduction of the “eviction by fax” system under the so-called “Tenant Protection Act”.

The Liberal McGuinty government that took over a few years ago hasn’t rolled these cuts back. In fact, they’re doing their best to continue the neoliberal tradition. And this is where the deformation of the Ontario Human Rights Code fits in, through their Bill 107.

None of the community groups who are said to be split on their support of Bill 107 should be fooled by the state’s intentions here: it’s not about reforming an outdated, 44 year-old system, that isn’t meeting the needs of Ontarions because the complaints review process is underfunded and sluggish. It is both and it does need to be overhauled. But it’s not what’s behind it for the Ontario goverment.

When we look at what the Bill would actually do, that becomes clear: it does away with the publicly funded Commission role to receive, review, resolve and enforce individual complaints and instead sends all those who want to file a complaint directly to the Tribunal system. Under the guise of being expeditious and effective, the government is trying to further reduce public services through this privatization of our outcries of discrimination in the workplace, in housing, in income support… oh, right, in the very places where the likelihood of human rights violations has been increased by giving landlords more power, making it harder for people to get decent, affordable housing, and making those on welfare impossible for them to live with dignity.

We have in our fair, multicultural society vile, overt acts of racism taking place in public and private institutions on a daily basis. Are people targeted by such illegal activity (which harassment and discrimination is) supposed to carry out their own investigations, create their own support teams and then hold fundraisers the pay for the lawyers they will need to navigate the tribunal?

Knowing this to be a weak point of their Bill, the Liberals have incorporated some vague provisions for the Commission to have a new role in educational efforts to challenge systemic discrimination, through Anti-Racism and Disability Secretariats. Systemic is brilliant; it’s definitely what we need. So, perhaps these bodies will educate their own government through recommending changes in all Ontario laws and programs that contribute to racism and ableism? For example, if there isn’t adequate housing available for people who use mobility devices because there are 10-13 year waiting list for non-profit subsidized housing and there are no government programs to build new affordable housing, I guess that’s a systemic change. And I guess the Employment Standards Act would have to be amended to cover migrant workers, since that group of folks is completely racialized and deeply discriminated in terms of wages, benefits, housing and general quality of life. Yeah, that would attack systemic racism on that front.

But, let’s face it, that’s not what they have in mind. And perhaps that’s why they abruptly cut their promised public consultations this past week – they knew that the 200 or so people and groups still lined up to give depositions were probably on to the window dressing in the Bill and they were ready to challenge it.

So, instead of systemic change, what we’ll likely get is more glossy posters and pamphlets, with right on slogans, in more public locations on March 21 and December 3*. Watch for them and feel the system changing as you read them.

* The International Days for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and for Disabled Persons, respectively.

Urban Reserves - First written Nov 2003

2006-11-25T18:53:00.000-05:00

During a broad Aboriginal-focused policy discussion, two words – urban reserve – were spoken publicly in Winnipeg near the end of August, and a whole lot of white folks hit the roof. For most of September, right-wing radio and newspapers were having a field day. All the usual white-protectionist epithets were thrown around, things like “we’ve given them enough already” and “no more unfair tax advantages”. Aside from the emotional, racist response from non-Aboriginal people of various class backgrounds, including not only individual community members but groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Chamber of Commerce, many levels of the state and the main local newspaper are either squarely behind or quietly supportive of an urban reserve. This article is a brief exploration of where urban reserves fit on the road to truly democratic and self-determined aboriginal self-government.

There are more than 50 urban reserves in Western Canada, the vast majority in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Not surprisingly, the legal-political context for urban-based reserve development is unsettled treaty agreements. In Manitoba, 20 First Nations signed the “Treaty Land Entitlement” (TLE) agreement in May of 1997 in an attempt to fulfill the 1871 and 1910 Treaties 1 through 6 and 10. All these communities are made up of “bands” of “status Indians”, as defined under the federal Indian Act. As such, no non-status Indian or Métis person or community has legal access to this kind of land negotiation.

The agreement calls for the transfer of 445,754 hectares of land to these bands, 399,008 of which are currently federally-owned. The outstanding 46,000 or so hectares will be purchased from municipalities with $76 million the federal government agreed to set aside. The agreement also makes it clear that there will be no expropriation of lands to fulfill the TLE. To date, while bands have initiated settlements in smaller, more northern areas, no formal proposal has been made for by far the largest urban-based and populated centre of the province. With a provincial population of about 1.1 million people, a reserve in Winnipeg, whose population is about 685,000 people (of which upwards of 10 percent identify as Aboriginal), would be significant.

In terms of governance of the new territory, the bands will have limited flexibility under the Indian Act to decide how that will be handled. Models employed to date in Saskatchewan would not seem to lead to greater grassroots control of the expanded land base: either the existing band council governs, a band council special committee is responsible, or a management board is set-up to oversee what are generally commercial ventures. In these existing urban reserves, housing and social-cultural life seems to remain largely in the rural reserve and/or in urban, off-reserve areas. The urban land base is a site for business development, controlled by the band, but often in joint-venture with non-Aboriginal business people that generally have a bigger share of the capital and connections than Aboriginal people do.

So, what about this business model for urban reserve development? In the climate of global capitalism there is little room for collective and co-operative ventures. Deregulation, privatization and the associated cut-throat competition for profit maximization is the all-encompassing framework within which “community” can easily be sliced out of “community economic development”. In this environment, the powerful business lobby comes out of the woodwork prior to reserve formation to make sure property taxation is “fair”, based on the narrow idea that “my tax should not cut into my profit any more than yours does”, a view completely severed from an historic appreciation of how the non-Aboriginal ruling and middle classes have got their land and capital for their ventures in the first place. Aboriginal leaders and managers are often heard giving careful defensive explanations in the media: don’t worry, it’ll just be an industrial park and we’ll pay for our services. As a result, while the TLE framework can be an important tool for the just honouring of treaties, the space for its implementation becomes narrower and narrower as demands for racial and economic justice are more and more silenced by the grind of the neo-liberal machine.

QUESTIONING URBAN RESERVES

It is interesting that the Winnipeg mayor and a number of city councilors are firmly behind the implementation of the TLE. Obviously, they now have a legal responsibility but there are also other interests too: something has to be done to support the increasing urban Aboriginal population whose social and economical marginalization continues to deepen. Perhaps the conclusion they have drawn is that a less threatening kind of pseudo self-government is the best way for the state to handle it. This model could pass the buck to Aboriginal leaders while providing little of the much-needed supports and infrastructure. And, while the Chamber of Commerce and friends flip out about “fair taxation”, no one is overly concerned about an historical staple of capitalist expansion, the actual land. This is not surprising given that abandoned railway land is one likely source of territory.

Another question centers on the potential benefits of urban reserves. The Indian Act provides that First Nations do not pay tax on income earned on reserve as long as the profits are going to benefit the band members collectively. Neither do status employees of band businesses pay personal income tax. These tax policies could have potentially broad Aboriginal self-government implications for urban reserves. One could assume that some form of taxation would be necessary under full self-government so it would be interesting to see under what conditions community members would go for that. As well, if status First Nations want to expand the urban reserve benefits to Métis and non-status Indians, the required band-specific collective benefit to avoid tax on urban reserve income would have to be addressed.

And what about the workers? If Aboriginal entrepreneurship succeeds and money is funneled back to the rural home reserve for desperately needed housing and other basic services, would it be predominantly low-waged work that would be supporting this? At a recent city executive policy committee meeting, community member Gerry Grey Eyes indirectly spoke to this issue. She pointed out to the committee that Aboriginal women are not only left out of most negotiations and planning for such initiatives; these same women are also overwhelmingly under-employed. Even when they are well-educated, Grey Eyes said, they are over-represented in contract jobs and other precarious forms of work. Are there plans to change the male-dominated proposal-drafting and negotiations processes? Are perspectives like Grey Eyes’ going to be taken into account when cost-benefit analyses are done for any new reserves? Will a wide range of Aboriginal community people have a seat at the table? It remains to be seen.

MOVING TOWARDS SELF-GOVERNMENT

Even with all these issues, it is undeniable that the taking back of urban territory is an important and powerful move given the historical displacement from and ongoing encroachment of Indigenous lands. With 21st century life being so centred in the urban world, Aboriginal people must become more able to make real choices about where to live and be, to get beyond barely subsisting in either setting. A territory that spans both the rural and urban realities, one that allows them to mutually support each other, seems a promising step on the road to real First Nations self-government.

Just like anywhere else, the level of organized struggle and solidarity will largely determine how far the urban reserve model can be pushed to be as inclusive and progressive as possible. While they have a prouder history of resistance than many of those of us whose ancestors came as settlers to this land, Aboriginal people have no greater burden than non-Aboriginal people to come up with radical solutions to oppression and exploitation. In fact, given the racist roots and branches of their historical repression, Aboriginal people have arguably less social space in which to wage this fight than many others of us do. In a time when the balance of forces are not in our collective favour, we have to factor that into our assessment of initiatives such as urban reserves. Moreover, we non-Indigenous folks must commit to serious solidarity with the various struggles of all Aboriginal peoples for the recognition of their inherent rights.