RY Interviews David Jacks Part 1

This is part one of a very extensive interview done last September by Rebel Youth Magazine.

We are posting it here on the blog to supplement the print edition's publication of RY's interview with a spokesperson for ASSE, a student union federation in the nation of Quebec.

Note that the grammar is not up to par. This is due to trying to keep the transcription as close as possible to the audio recording.

We entered the Lo Pub. It was dimly lit and not too many patrons were in it at that hour. Seemed cozy enough. Some rock and top 40 music played in the background. We ordered a round of draft beer and sat in the corner. “Help yourself to some cheese bread” David Jacks says. All I had brought with me was a red Lloyds tape recorder, masking tape holding the batteries in. I'll point out now that for a man who is smiling and cheerful every time I see him, a columnist at the Winnipeg Sun has labeled him “Mr. Grumpy Pants” last autumn. WTF is up with that !?

REBEL YOUTH MAGAZINE: Tell us who you are and why we find you of interest to interview.

DAVID JACKS: I'm David Jacks, I was president of the University of Winnipeg's Student's Association (2007-2008), and Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students for Manitoba last year, and now I'm doing campaign work for the Federation here in Manitoba.

RY: What made you an activist of the left? What in your life helped form your system of opinion?

JACKS: I think it goes back to my father. Well, both my parents were immigrants. My dad came in the 1970s. And he immediately started getting involved with CUPE, Canadian Union of Public Employees. He was a chef at the convention centre (sous-chef, sorry). He was involved in some strike actions back in, like, 1990, something or other like that. And so always around our house we'd have protest signs or organizers coming in to our house and discussing labour action a lot and the labour movement.

From there, I guess in High School, my brother was part of a group called CHOICES, which was around in the 1990s, a very activist group. They did a lot of work around the privatization of MTS (against the plans of the Progressive-Conservative Filmon government to sell off the publicly owned Manitoba Telephone System - ed.). I was pretty young, a little bit too young to remember all of the details of that but I do recall my mother being highly involved and being in the newspaper quite a bit.

When I was in high school, I went to Gordon Bell high school, which is right here downtown.

RY: Oh! Gordon Bell High! (laughs) That explains a lot. ( Gordon Bell is known for producing many young activists in Winnipeg. -ed. )

JACKS: It explains a lot (laughs). Yeah. So, I went to Gordon Bell high school, and I was the president of the Student Council there, in my last year. We organized a lot of events, in particular around the refugee community in the high school there. There was a lot of people from, most of my friends were from Iran, Iraq, a number of students were from Croatia, the former Yugoslavia, right after the conflict there. So helping those students to adjust and hearing their stories, we organized with War Child Canada at that time, a big event at Gordon Bell high school, just to bring a lot of awareness around what folks went through.

From there I went into university, dropped activism altogether, I went straight into my studies. I pretty much left the activist community and social justice work for probably 3 or 4 years. Traveled Europe for a bit, did that little thing. Then got involved with the student's association there, during one of their elections, I heard one of their campaigners talking about international student differential fees. That's the issue that got me back involved.

RY: Well, that covers my second question. What made you decide to run for the UWSA?

JACKS: Well, actually that is a funny story because one of the things I figured is anybody who wants to run for an elected position because of that elected position, probably shouldn't. But people who don't want to run, but then are doing a lot of ground work in grassroots activism and then find themselves in a situation where peers and the people around them are encouraging them to run. That's the time to actually take that ownership of the organization and go for it in what you're working for.

So I was involved in the international student fees. I went “window washing for tuition fees” and all the campaigns of the UWSA that were going on but I never intended to run for any elected positions.

RY: Was there any way the tuition fees could have been held (frozen)? Or do you think this is due to a bigger problem in politics and society in general? Do you agree that the CFS could not fight this alone, like by lobbying?

JACKS: Oh Man! Like, yeah, the tuition freeze being lifted this past year, uh, was definitely political maneuvering by the, the New Democratic government. It was political maneuvering by a lot of people within the leadership of the labour movement. I do have to say that it was not the grassroots members of the New Democratic Party, not the grassroots members of the labour movement, uh but it was definitely some maneuvering by some higher ups. The tuition freeze costs last year (2008-ed.) $13 million. $ 13 000 000 is like 14% of the surplus of 2007-2008. So there's absolutely no reason why the province cannot afford to keep tuition fees low.

It certainly was pressure, from what I understand, from university administrations, like Dr. Lloyd Axeworthy who is not going to vote NDP anyways, because he's a member of the Liberal Party. And as well, certain members of the business councils and what have you, so there's definitely pressure from the right to remove the tuition freeze and implement things like tax credits which just aren't effective.

PAUSE...JACKS: but we can win it back. If people get together from all different backgrounds and

all denominations and all the different grassroots movements in this province, we certainly can put pressure on the government to bring it back.

RY: Where does CFS Manitoba compare with the rest of the CFS in other parts of the country?

JACKS: Oh Man! I think CFS Manitoba, we're super strong. But much of what we do is, is with other Canadian Federation of Students components, in the other provinces. And also on the different student unions themselves, because that's what it's about, right? It's the strength in numbers of all the student unions. So here in Manitoba we couldn't do what we do without the support from students in B.C. or what have you. So it's all about working together. Some of the national campaigns like the Canada students grant campaign that we had going on, uh, was a huge victory for us. And it was also the work of students from across the country, getting together and making their voice that much louder.

RY: Tell us about the recent Tory (Conservative Party) tactics

in subverting the CFS on campuses.

JACKS: So yeah, you've probably heard about both in Ontario and here in Manitoba and I think a case in point is the University of Manitoba where Member of Parliament Steven Fletcher, Conservative member of parliament Steven Fletcher, met with students on that campus to discuss democratic reform, but but ended up discussing how students should essentially take over, Conservative students should take over their student unions, because student unions in Manitoba tend to be more progressive.

Actually, that was leaked to the media, we made a number of comments on it that it's unfortunate that an elected official, a MP would be influencing and trying to get involved in local student union elections. By all means, he can talk to young conservative members on that campus and discuss conservative policies and how how to get involved, that within everybody's right. But to use subversive tactics to undermine elected student union officials I don't think is quite his ball park. He should stick to federal politics.

...

It's obvious now that the conservatives do have an interest in student unions on campus. I think, because we've had a conservative government for the past, almost decade (1990s) and they've seen the type of work that students, when united can actually have impact on conservative policies and on government policies, so they understand the value of students being involved in student unions and lobbying government. I think it is unfortunate that Members of Parliament are resorting to trying to convince students to run for student union elections rather that students taking that action for themselves, which by all means they have full right to do.

If that's (the conservative party meddling -ed.) going to become a trend then that's something we have to look out for, from all parties, whether it's the Marxist-Leninists, Conservatives, NDP, or Liberals, or the Green Party, what have you.

RY: What do you think about, as far as U of W (University of Winnipeg) goes, the capital projects, like uh, new campus expansions, do you think of them as good or bad or a little of both?

JACKS: Well, definitely the campus expansion at U of W is, little bit good, little bit bad. I don't think the universities should be crying wolf for lack of funding and raising tuition fees while at the same time the university is growing faster than the Napoleonic empire. Uh (chuckle) so, I was on the board of regents back in 2007-2008 when we were voting on the procurement of the Army Surplus property (United Army Surplus and Sales, a prime retail space across from the downtown HBC department store here in Winnipeg -ed.).

The building was still there at the time. And it was supposed to remain there. The university was planning on taking over the building. We did a walk through tour. And you know, “this is where the bookstore is going to be, this is where the student bar's gonna be” and within a month it turned into a big muddy hole in the ground because of some structural issues. Now at the time we were provided the motion to purchase the Army surplus building. As a board of regents member we were provided that three days before the vote. We had very little time to actually discuss the costs involved with taking a prime real estate in downtown, and now obviously, the cost associated with building a new building on top of that real estate. There was very little discussion. The vote was rushed through. Student union representatives as well as one or two faculty members voted against the procurement of the army surplus building, including myself. We thought it was not fiscally responsible of the university to do so.

Things like the science complex is something the students have been calling for, for a long time. Upgraded labs, upgraded science facilities. We don't want things to explode. So it's great to have that type of building. But also as with any purchase of property or asset, much like cars and houses, you don't buy a BMW and a mansion at the same time. You assess what your priorities are for that expansion, and make a responsible decision for that time frame, without putting it on the back of students and their families.

RY: What's your opinion of military recruiters on campus?

JACKS: Military recruiters on campus? I think it's incredibly unfortunate that in a country like Canada, the only way to get a free education is if you're willing to kill people. It's a really unfortunate situation. I think that military recruiters on campus certainly, I mean people, have a right to come on to campus and sell MTS (cell phones), sell tacos or whatever they want to sell, but I don't think selling violence is the answer. And I think that military recruiters on campus have one purpose and that is to convince students that, the solution to their financial woes of high tuition fees and student debt is to join the military to be sent to an illegitimate war overseas. To be killed. But I think what is worse is to kill other people.

Universities are centres for critical thought. And if we're going to advance as a country, we shouldn't be teaching our young people to be shooting automatic weapons at other young people in other countries.

RY: Have you seen the Dominion article about Dalhousie's research funding being provided largely toward military projects?

...

JACKS: Well, (on that same vain of corporate interests -ed. ) at the University of Manitoba, with Monsanto's national headquarters being on campus. With a university that prides itself on it's agricultural programs, now Monsanto, (pause) I'm sure your totally well aware, conducts incredibly environmentally harmful, whether it's experiments, creating environmentally harmful products for agriculture, for farmers to use in their fields. The terminator seed, was one of the one that was in the media for quite some time. A seed that essentially kills itself after it grows (not capable of sprouting into a new plant -ed.). Without understanding the effects of cross pollination. Monsanto is also a company that produced agent orange, which the U.S. sprayed over Vietnam. (part of operation ranch hand, the toxic effects of dioxin are still felt today – ed.)

END OF PART 1

link to cartoon here

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Statement of WFDY On the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada

The opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games has been met with a wide-range of protest in the streets of Vancouver, Canada. The World Federation of Democratic Youth expresses its solidarity with the popular opposition to this corporate circus.

The Olympic Games are supposed to be about peace and friendship. The Canadian government has no mandate to host the Games. It is implicated in operations to destabilize African countries like of the coast of Somalia. It has deployed thousands of police and troops into Haiti. It is providing vocal diplomatic support to the Apartheid regime of Israeli. It is engaged in an imperialist war in Afghanistan. In a reactionary affront to democracy, Canada’s Conservative government dissolved the current parliamentary session because of the Olympics - although in reality parliament was shut down to avoid a growing torture scandal involving Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

The 2010 Olympics are racist and dishonorable towards Aboriginal nations. For example, the symbol of the games is an Inuit sculpture, a people whose territory is thousands of kilometers away. But “branding” can not hide the long genocidal history of the Canadian state and ruling class towards the Aboriginal nations. Despite public pressure, the Canadian state refuses to sign the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Games will be held on unsurrendered Aboriginal land where no treaties have been signed and resistance continues. Today, one-in-two Aboriginal children, including First Nations and Metis people, live in poverty. On many Indian Reserves there is no clean drinking water. The opening of the Games coincides with a Canada-wide day of action for the over 3000 Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered since 1980. As aboriginal peoples and their allies have said, big business and the government have no respect for aboriginal sovereignty and self-determination, no money to ‘pay the rent.’ But there are billions of dollars to spend on Olympics.

In fact, just the ‘security’ bill for the Olympics - involving US and Canadian military, as well as thousands of para-military police - is $1 billion. This is an attempt to prevent people’s democratic right to protest, free speech and association. Striking workers have been legislated back to work for the Olympics. Thousands of poor people made homeless and criminalized. Environments and ecosystems have been destroyed. The recent border interrogation of progressive US radio host Amy Goodman has brought into the public spotlight the aggressive police harassment and repression of anti-Olympic activists.

The Olympic Games have transferred billions of dollars from the working people to corporate coffers. The immense public debt generated by the Olympics represents money that should have been spent on people’s needs, like job creation, more accessible education, housing, health care, libraries, child care, and affordable transit. The WFDY salutes those who opposed this injustice, particularly sister Harriet Nahannee who died from pneumonia afflicted while unjustly jailed for protesting. WFDY calls for sports to cherish fair-play and cooperation and promote peace, internationalism and solidarity - not militarism, elitism and consumerism.

No Olympics on Stolen Native Land!
Sports for people, not profit!

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New issue of Rebel Youth!

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Celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela

Celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela: Intensify the class struggles on all fronts!

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

Over the last two weeks, South Africa, especially the progressive forces, celebrated two very important events. On 2nd 2010 February we celebrated 20 years of the unbanning of the ANC, SACP and other components of the national liberation movement, and on the 11th February the release of Nelson Mandela from the apartheid prisons. The celebration of the unbanning of our organizations and Nelson Mandela was not a tribute to the 'generosity' of the apartheid regime, but honouring the massive sacrifices of millions of South Africans in their selfless struggles against the apartheid regime. The release of Mandela marked a high point in the determined struggles of our people dislodge the apartheid regime as an important step towards the creation of a democratic South Africa.

The celebration of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison also marked one of the most important victories for the international anti-apartheid movement and, to a large extent, also marked the victory of anti-imperialist forces against tyranny and oppression worldwide. The South African Communist Party (SACP) also wishes to use this occasion to salute all our people and the international(ist) progressive forces in their role towards the defeat of one of the most evil forces on earth, which was bent on promoting and consolidating a neo-fascist project of racial oppression and class exploitation of a white minority over a black majority in the latter's country of birth and origin.

Remnants of the elements of the beneficiaries of the apartheid order, including elements of the current opposition forces in the current democratic dispensation and their backers in mainstream bourgeois media, have tried very hard to try and present these two major developments as an outcome of the generosity of the leaders of the apartheid regime. Having dismally failed in this exercise, including their attempts to rubbish President Zuma's State of the Nation Address, these forces are now resorting to some of the worst tactics of trying to discredit and undermine the very democratic institutions they claim to be defending. Yesterday's walkout from parliament by the Democratic Alliance and Cope is actually an expression of how these forces have lost their strategic sense of direction and expression of their frustrations in the failure of their attempts to exploit our democratic institutions for their narrow party political gains.

The walk-out by both Cope and the Democratic Alliance in parliament is also an expression of how these forces seek to use parliament for their narrow and highly sectarian interests, and thus their failure to do so exposing their political bankruptcy and some of the worst forms of political opportunism. It is in this desperation that Cope has also exposed itself as a parasite and political extension of the narrow right-wing and often racist interests of the Democratic Alliance.

The more the frustrations of the DA and COPE are exposed, the more the naked class interests of these forces are exposed.

The opportunism of the opposition parties also manifest themselves in their attempts to praise Nelson Mandela, not out of genuine recognitition of his role in the liberation struggle, but in order to try and opportunistically use his image and legacy to condemn the ANC, its alliance partners and the national liberation struggle as a whole. It is an attempt to try and appropriate the image of Madiba to advance their narrow class interests.

It is for all the above reasons that as the SACP we have correctly and consistently argued that the global 'iconic' status of Madiba must never, ever be allowed to bury Madiba the revolutionary - whose principled commitment to the liberation of the black majority and his fight against all forms of colonialism, discrimination and chauvinism must be at all times highlighted and defended.

In our tribute to Madiba, the SACP also highlighted the fact that Madiba was not only a leader of the ANC and its alliance partners, but that he at all times genuinely remained a loyal friend of South African communists. It is on his consistent and principled defence of the ANC alliance with the communists that Madiba will stand out as a true friend of South African communists. For instance, shortly after his meeting with PW Botha in prison on 5 July 1989, in which the latter sought to offer Mandela his freedom if he distanced himself from the communists, that he had the following profound statement to make:

"No dedicated ANC member will ever heed the call to break with the SACP. We regard such a demand (from PW Botha) as a purely divisive (apartheid's) government strategy. It is in fact a call on us to commit suicide. Which man of honour will ever desert a life-long friend among his people? Which opponent will ever trust such a treacherous freedom fighter? Yet this is what the (apartheid) government is in effect asking us to do; to desert our faithful allies. We will not fall into that trap".

This is also a pointed lesson to those within our own ranks whose sole mission is to try and attempt to push the communists out of the ANC.

For us as South African communists, we need to, at all times, defend Madiba the revolutionary! In practice this requires that we also intensify working class struggles in all key sites of power as part of winning our key strategic objectives as contained in our medium term vision; to build working class hegemony in all key sites of power.

It is therefore of utmost importance that much as we celebrate the iconic Madiba, we consistently push for preserving, honouring and integrity of Madiba as a revolutionary. It is for this reason that for the SACP Madiba shall always remain a revolutionary, whose making was shaped by the revolutionary struggles as led by the ANC. This requires the intensification of class struggles on all fronts of terrains of struggle. The intensification of such class struggles must also mean that, in memory of Madiba, we intensify our class struggle on all fronts, including the confrontation of those within our own ranks, who are using access to state power to advance their narrow economic class interests.

We must also deepen the class struggle in order to celebrate true values of what Madiba stood for; selflessness and commitment to people as a with a view of rolling back the capitalist system and its corrupting values of dog eat dog. To us this is the only way we can protect the legacy of someone like Madiba and the integrity of our revolution.

Long live Madiba long live!

Asikhulume!!

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Protest is not a crime! The 2010 Games are!

Young Communist League, BC Committee, February 14th 2010.

The Young Communist League, BC Committee, condemns police violence and harassment of anti-Olympic demonstrators and demands the immediate release of imprisoned activists.

While demonstrations against the Olympics have been largely peaceful, it is clear that it is the desire of VANOC and the police to shut down peoples democratic rights to freedom of speech and assembly by whatever means possible. Particularly on February 13th aggressive tactics were used by police in riot gear. Reports indicate that there were thirteen arrests and that more protesters were rounded up by police after the demonstration had ended. No serious injuries were reported.

We also condemn the attempts of the corporate media to paint anti-Olympic protesters and activists as violent thugs and to dismiss the legitimacy of peoples grievances against the Olympics. Implicit in this is an attempt to create a rationale for the removal of the peoples rights to protest during the Olympic period. While it is true that a minority of protesters have engaged in the destruction of corporate property, it has been police who have resorted to physical violence.

Protest and opposition to the Olympics is not a crime. The theft of the peoples tax dollars, homes, rights, and sustainable environment in the interests of the rich is. Resist the 2010 corporate circus! Whose streets? OUR STREETS!

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