New Ontario Tory leader fuels campaign of ignorance

Liz Rowley

Originally published in Peoples' Voice newspaper

On May 4th and 5th, 35,000 elementary students – almost 90% - were kept out of school in Brampton and Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood to protest the new sex education curriculum being introduced in health and phys ed classes in September by the provincial government. 

As far as protest organizers are concerned, no sex education is the best education for their kids – and yours too.

The protests are the result of a massive disinformation campaign carried out by Campaign Life, the Christian fundamentalist Rev. Charles McVety, fundamentalists in the South Asian community who are the main targets of this campaign, and organizers for the new leader of the Ontario Conservatives and several of his Queen’s Park caucus.

Ontario’s Austerity Hurts Students With Disabilities

By Sarah Jama

We all know what it feels like to sit in class with an uncontrollable urge to pee. Most of us would raise a hand, get granted a hall pass, and go relieve ourselves in the nearest bathroom or tree. For others, the process is more complicated. Picture wearing a catheter, or needing help to transfer from a wheelchair to a toilet. Not so simple in a school setting.

Educational assistants (EAs) are individuals who help students with disabilities gain access to the accommodations required in order for them to benefit from receiving an education. Simply put, EAs are meant to assist students with disabilities in closing the gap between able-bodied individuals and themselves, or to ‘even the playing field’. They scribe notes for students who can’t move their fingers, or assist in monitoring students with severe anxiety in testing situations. Yes, they even help students in the bathroom.

YCL Vancouver: Complete Solidarity With BC Teachers!

Statement from the Young Communist League-Vancouver, June 5, 2014

 There has been a troubling current in the student movement's response to the current labour dispute between the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) and the BC Liberal government, most obvious in the June 4th "BC Student Walkout for Students." Many students view themselves as caught in middle of a battle between equally powerful and dangerous camps, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth! In every set of collective bargaining talks between the BCTF and the government since the Liberals took power in 2001, the government has been the aggressor and has made it their explicit mission to curtail and even destroy teachers' bargaining rights.

            Earlier this year their actions were ruled unconstitutional by the BC Supreme Court (and not only in the case of teachers: the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against BC legislation restricting the collective bargaining rights of health care workers in 2007!), and the government is at it again this time around. The fundamental goal of the government and its right wing agenda is to privatize the education system and to privatize health care. In Coquitlam alone, 632 teachers are getting layoff notices. One of the intentions of this act is to initiate bigger classroom sizes with fewer resources.

            Additionally, nearly 200 schools have been shut down as a result of government cuts in education. Therefore, students have fewer schools in their neighbourhood, fewer teachers and fewer resources to help with their education. Students that require more needs and more resources for learning are especially hurt by the cuts because there are fewer resources for them to use and fewer educators in departments for students who require more assistance. BC has been targeted more than any other province in Canada.

Youth volunteers gear up for S.A.M.E. Awareness Tour

By Directions newsletter,
United Food and Commercial Workers

The countdown has started to the launch of the S.A.M.E. Awareness Tour 2014 — building on the success of the 2013 tour and outreach which energized more than 10,000 Ontario youth to defend human rights and fight for migrant worker justice.

Since it was founded four years ago, S.A.M.E. (Students Against Migrant Exploitation) has grown into Canada's leading student social justice movement to empower and engage youth on migrant worker and labour rights issues. The 2013 tour brought S.A.M.E. youth activists to more to 45 schools, colleges and universities across Southern Ontario.

The 2014 Tour launches on February 27 at York University and runs until the end of March. Throughout the five-week your tour which leads up to Farm Workers Awareness Week, S.A.M.E. youth volunteers will host seminars, music workshops, and art and multimedia activities at schools and campuses across Ontario to empower and inform youth on issues about migration and migrant workers.

The attack on teachers is an attack on all working people

People's Voice Ontario Bureau

     If the basis of all real wealth - the real economy, past, present and future - is the application of human labour‑power to material from the natural environment, why has the most draconian use of state power been summoned up as a weapon against the Ontario Teachers Unions? Most people would argue that teachers do not produce wealth. In fact, in the anti‑teacher propaganda blasted by the capitalist media and whispered in a thousand dark corridors, this slander against an honoured profession is perpetrated: why should people who are essentially a drain on the public purse be compensated so generously?

     What is it about this area of collective bargaining that would cause the ruling elite to instruct their political lackeys to suspend parliament, to violate constitutional law and go to direct one party rule?

     The capitalist state has undemocratically dispensed with parliament in Ontario, to launch an unhindered attack on the teachers' unions and their ability to exercise collective bargaining. The instrument of direct class intervention is the Ontario Liberal Party, with the Tories trying to be even more hawkish, and the NDP sitting on their hands.

     Now the silk gloves have been shed for the naked fist, dispelling any illusion that these three parties protect parliamentary democracy. If the NDP had called for massive public resistance, they could have done a service to all working people, especially if the trade union leaders who belong to the NDP had organized labour unity across the board with the Teachers.

     Any Marxist will see immediately the relationship of teachers to the real economy. Their vital role to the ability of capitalism to create and expropriate surplus value is the reproduction of labour-power, the primary human ingredient in the creation of wealth. The scientific and technological revolution demands an ever higher level of education and training for working people. This is about productivity and the rate of exploitation. This is about the uncountable wealth of the one percent.

     No educated person (the product of teachers) would vulgarize the value of the teaching profession as only an instrument to maintain and expand the parasite role of the one percent. But we live in a class society. The historic service of teachers against the mental pauperization of capitalism, their resistance to the increasing demand to produce literate industrial and social drones, instead of people armed with a sense of themselves and a demand for a better future, is a direct threat to the one percent.

     It is also no accident that generations of women have dominated and transformed the profession. Witness the power of their efforts embodied in the courage and unity of the Quebec student's strike. Witness the threat to the capitalist state when student activists are a major part in the defeat of a governing political party. You cannot separate teachers from students, from the awareness of the Occupy movement, from the mental hunger and sense of wrongness and violation that is surging through our youth and through the indigenous people.

     The viciousness of the attempted destruction of collective bargaining in Ontario can only be understood clearly with a world view of the antagonism between the capitalist class in the advanced stages of imperialist decline, and the possessors of labour‑power, the global working class. Teachers worldwide develop a consciousness that makes their students much more than units of labour power, an awareness of self that will become an awareness of class, an awareness that labour power is also the essential ingredient in building the shared wealth of a non‑exploiting socialist alternative.

     The crisis of capitalism will continue to destroy whatever stands in the way of its drive to buy more life for an obsolete and historically unnecessary system, at war with its own productive forces. In the crosshairs everywhere are those who teach our children and youth, those who preserve and pass on knowledge. The capitalists cannot dispense with teachers, but they seek to break their relative independence and their dedication to humanity. They want to turn teachers into trainers who prepare our young for more efficient and profitable exploitation. This struggle is about much more than sick days, wages or classroom size. These issues might be the field of battle, but the stakes are much higher.

     The Ontario Teachers are on the front line of defending labour rights. They will decide on the extent of their resistance, on their tactics, where to attack and where to retreat. The Communist Party calls for one hundred percent support, now and in the future.

Communist Party Condemns Proroguing of Parliament: Recall the Legislature!

Withdraw Bill 155, repeal Bill 115 and restore Free Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector!

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) condemns Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s indefinite proroguing of the Provincial Parliament and suspension of parliamentary democracy, and demands the government recall Parliament and end its abuse of power.

Unable to pass his government’s anti-democratic “Protecting Public Services Act” (Bill 155) – which would legislate a wage freeze and suspend free collective bargaining across the public sector – the Premier wants to dispense with Parliament and try to impose his program of austerity without legislation. The government also hopes to evade any accountability or responsibility in the on-going exposure of wrong-doing by government Ministers and agencies.

The Liberals were counting on the Tories to support Bill 155, but the Tories are demanding the government go much further. The Tories are already campaigning to disembowel existing labour laws under the slogan of ‘flexible’ labour law ‘reform’. They want to eliminate the Rand Formula, make Ontario a right to work jurisdiction, and break the back of the labour movement as has been done in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other US states.

The Premier has said he will use the next months to force a negotiated wage freeze onto public sector unions. A negotiated wage freeze has the support of NDP leader Andrea Horwath according to statements made at a recent news conference filmed by CP24. While the NDP opposed a legislated freeze, they support a negotiated freeze. The NDP caucus apparently believes that working people should pay for an economic crisis caused by corporate greed and ably assisted by right-wing governments in Ontario and elsewhere. The 99% would disagree with the caucus, just as they disagreed with Bob Rae’s social contract in 1993.

The Liberals’ anti-labour, anti-democratic austerity agenda has provoked massive public opposition, including ongoing protests and demonstrations. The prorogation is bound to generate even more opposition as public outrage at the government’s abuse of power spills over.

The Communist Party calls on the Premier to immediately recall the Legislature, and move quickly to withdraw Bill 155, repeal Bill 115, and allow the province’s public employers and public sector unions to move forward to freely negotiate unfettered collective agreements.

The Premier must also take the strong medicine needed to clean up the corruption caused by years of privatization and deregulation by stealth, including ORNGE and other P3 arrangements, and by vote-buying in ridings with gas plants.

The Communist Party also demands that the Premier and the Liberal government, as well as the Tories and the NDP remove themselves from collective bargaining and let the public employers and public sector unions exercise their bargaining rights to negotiate free and unfettered agreements.

We stand with labour and all those who oppose this government’s austerity policies, and the efforts to download the costs of the economic crisis onto the backs of working people through this on-going attack on public sector wages, pensions, jobs and public services. A massive struggle against austerity in the streets and at the bargaining table is the only way to beat back the attack on wages, incomes, jobs and living standards, and save public services and assets.

Another Ontario is possible. And urgent. The Communist Party offers a 10 point prescription that is a pro-people alternative to austerity and is detailed on our web site www.communistpartyontario.ca.

Students -- support the teachers!

REPEAL BILL 115 -- THE ‘PUT STUDENTS “LAST” ACT’

Statement by the Young Communist League (Ontario)

It is time for Ontario high school and elementary students to rise up in support of teachers. The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. Already, students are organizing walk-outs across Ontario against the McGuinty Liberal provincial government’s Bill 115.

Together, we can stop Bill 115!

If we don’t join together and push back, the consequences for teachers and students alike will be dire. If we unite, students can help protect democracy, defend workers’ fundamental rights – and force the government to repeal Bill 115.

Students first

A students-first agenda, in a nutshell, calls for quality education: public and accessible.

Education is not a business opportunity to make profit. It is the right of the youth, and a keystone in securing our future.  Another vital necessity for quality education is the right of teachers to form, participate in, and be represented by their labour unions.

Student organizing in the 1930s and the YCL

The On To Ottawa Trek

In the 1920s, 30s and 40s the Communist movement was under intense surveillance by the political police or Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- we know this because they have made their official secret documents public for this time period. The surveys continued, of course, after the 1940s and actually intensified but the reports from the years before show that the RCMP was already paying very close attention.

Below we present an RCMP report from November 1936, which includes a report about the work of the Young Communist League on campuses and a student conference organized by the YCL at McGill University. No doubt, not everything in this report is true. The informants used by the RCMP often exaggerated the statements of the Communists (saying, for example, that the Communists called for violent and bloody revolution in a public speech) to simply justify their existence as informers and spies. This organizational culture was supported at all levels of the RCMP who always monitored the CPC more closely than the ultra-right groups -- even when Canada was at war with fascist Germany and about to enter into an alliance with the USSR. As historian Chris Frazer writes in the latest issue of The Spark journal:

As chief of the RCMP's intelligence section, Rivett-Carnac argued in early 1939 that fascism was a lesser threat than communism since fascism was a "modified form of capitalism." Rivett-Carnac's opinion corresponded with the anti-communist and anti-labour views of RCMP Commissioner S.T. Wood, who argued later in 1941 that, "it is not the Nazi nor the Fascist but the radical who constitutes our most troublesome problem."[19] Although the charges were never substantiated, as early as October 1939 the RCMP Security Bulletin claimed that "there is more reason to fear ... acts of espionage and sabotage on the part of the Communist Party than from Nazi or Fascist organizations." Source.

The November 1936 report is from a series of security reports that the RCMP issued on a monthly basis. Much of what the YCL is interested in doing, as presented by this report, is anti-fascist work -- or campaigning for peace. At points the language of the document reads as if the informer simply copied the original text in shortened form. The sentence structure and wording is dated and has a kind of 1930s feel, but the thinking of young people at that time shines through.

The report states that student participants came from Queens (Kingston, Ontario) Dalhousie (Halifax, Nova Scotia), McGill (Montreal, Quebec) and Varisty -- which perhaps refers to the University of Toronto, whose student newspaper and sports teams are called that and where the YCL had an established public club at that time (although the word varsity simply means a university sports team or a university).  Two delegations also came from high schools in Montreal.

The conference called on YCLers to continue political and ideological work against "Capitalist ideology and propoganda in schools" but to combine this with immediate struggles and political work like peace, unemployment, youth rights, and united front work with other youth organizations. A strong parallel can be drawn with the work of the League today.

The report calls for "proper combination of broad campaigns on specific issues [...] with careful fostering of permanent student organizations." This approach may have some thing to teach youth and student activists today, with the spirit of Occupy, the "Casserole" solidarity protests, and other spontaneous actions on our campuses and communities. More often than not, these movements unfortunately fail to develop into real organizations and the youth movement swings along, after a few weeks or months, to the next popular issue.

Particular attention was given to the Canadian Youth Congress (CYC). The CYC included progressive religious youth through the Student Christian Movement which was the main social-justice organization on campuses at that time, but also farm youth, the Canadian Cooperative Federation Youth or CCF (forerunner of the NDP), as well as social and sports groups like the YMCA and YWCA (Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations). The CYC advocated for a Charter of Rights of the Youth or "Youth Act". It had just held, the year before, a series of protest actions against government policy during the depression -- like peoples courts against Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.

Despite that fact that most university students were not from the working class, interestingly the YCL report does not dismiss political action on campuses. Instead the League states that students are a diverse social group, generally inexperienced, and that schools varied considerably -- depending even on the personality of the school principle (or university President). As a result "no stereotyped formula can be given" but there was a sharp problem of leadership because of inexperience on campuses.

Further discussion

A lot of material is presented here which could be fruitful for further discussion about strategy and tactics.  At this time the YCL itself had only just fought and defeated, with the Communist Party of Canada, an effective ban on the organization. It was still on a precarious edge of legality.  Why would the YCL not want the Student Peace Movement to be an underground organization and forbid that direction?

Why would the YCL want official support of efforts like the CYC and peace clubs but not progressive clubs which are to remain independent?

What do you think about the experience and tactics of the YCL on high school campuses at Baron Byng and Strathcona?

Why do you think they thought it was necessary to write that"the club must neither be a collection of intellectual giants nor ostensibly be interested in nothing but ping pong while in reality acting as a snare for unsuspecting innocents"? What does this mean?

How are "linkages with the labour movement" maintained with YCL clubs in a way that is not "mechanistic"? What do you think about the example at McGill?

What do you think about the proposal for a YCL club meeting agenda on campuses and the idea of "all-talk-no-action"?

Although the story-teller is a police agent, the actual minutes from this meeting no doubt have been long lost. It is, therefore, an invaluable source of information. What we get is not the conference discussion in full, or even the complete final resolution. It is sifted by a police filter from the informant to the official report given here. The reader simply has to trust that most of the document is, more or less, accurate.

At the same time the report tells an important tale not just about the YCL but also the youth movement of the time. The final resolutions of the conference, for better or worse, show the thought-out contribution of the YCL to the students struggle: it identifies key priorities like peace and youth rights; it strives to find the maximum level of unity and militancy in the context; it navigates difficult questions like legality, illegality, and the public presence of the YCL; and it interconnects the youth struggle with other struggles.

The report especially tells its members to strive to work in a way that is not mechanistic or formulaic, to listen to its high school members, and to work in a collective fashion with initiative. Clearly, the League does not dismiss the campuses or reject participation in the political life of students -- even though access to education was much more difficult in 1936 than today for working class youth. And to be sure, campus activities were a relatively lower priority of the League which focused more on young workers. But in tacking the problems of the student movement of the day, the YCL shows its broad sweep of understanding struggle -- a revolutionary perspective of mobilizing the all the oppressed masses of youth in unity with the working class. Clearly the police though this vanguard approach towards the youth struggle in Canada was a real danger.



YCL at McGill

Wave of high school protest sweeps Ontario in support of teachers

PV Ontario Bureau 

Ontario high school students are answering the passing of the McGuinty Liberal’s “Put Student’s First Act” or Bill 115 with a wave of walk-outs and protests across the province.

Students in multiple high schools have walked out in large and small communities. New reports have been filed from Toronto, Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Brampton, Bluewater, Georgian Bay, Owen Sound, Goderich, Wingham, Flesherton, Clarington, Kingston, the Kwartha Lakes, the Quinte region, and Ottawa – easily totaling over ten thousand students.

The actions overwhelmingly appear to have been in support of the teachers with students waving signs like “Your child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts,” “Putting students first means putting teachers first,” and “Democracy Last Act, Bill 115.” In some cases the students headed down to the local office of their Member of Provincial Parliament and staged rallies.

Many of the actions have been organized by social media. “The students are walking in support of teachers who are upset about their right to bargain and the withdrawal of extracurricular activities. The support and effort teachers give to students through education and especially their dedication to extracurriculars is beyond that call of duty, and that’s why students are walking out in support of teachers,” one pro-walkout Facebook group description said.

Speaking at a meeting of the Toronto Young Communist League, Ontario YCL organizer Drew Garvie held up an article from a newspaper report on the student protests and pointed out that the photo – which showed Stop Bill 115 signs – was the opposite from the anti-teacher message of the accompanying article.

High school students are already getting in touch with student unions and other progressive organizations including the YCL, he said.  “This is an attack on the entire education system and it is important for college and university students, and young workers in general, to be in support of these actions,” Garvie said.

The Ontario YCL is issuing a statement, which will be available on the YCL’s website and Rebel Youth blog, calling for “high school and elementary students to rise up in support of our teachers” and force the repeal of Bill 115. “Teachers working conditions are students learning conditions,” the statement says.

“Education is not a business opportunity to make profit, it is the right of the youth, and a keystone in securing our future.  Another vital necessity for quality education is the right of teachers to form, participate, and be represented by their labour unions,” the statement says.

“The government is telling everyone a Big Lie. They say there is no money, and no alternative to Bill 115’s anti-union measures. But Ontario is a province with tremendous natural wealth, a surplus of the super-rich, and many giant corporations and banks -- controlling all of the wealth.  In their shadow stand our hospitals, transit system, and schools that remain underfunded and neglected by the government. Who made the crisis in education? It wasn’t the teachers or the students – it was government policies which pay no serious regard to people’s needs, only corporate greed,” the statement says.

The YCL is fully supporting the student walk-outs and calling for them to spread. “When injustice becomes the law, resistance becomes a duty [...] Organizing a walk out can be done quickly and successfully using social media, word of mouth, defiance, courage and unity. Convince your friends. Convince your class. March through the halls and hit the streets!  You can suspend one student, but you cannot suspend hundreds.”

So far there have been no reports of students being disciplined because they participated in protests.

Submission on Bill 115 Putting Students First Act

From the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)

September 6, 2012

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) calls on the Liberal government to withdraw Bill 115, the misnamed “Putting Students First Act”, as unconstitutional, an attack on free collective bargaining, an attack on the local autonomy and democracy of elected School Boards, and an attack on quality public education in Ontario.   If Bill 115 is passed, it will open up an attack on the collective bargaining rights of all public sector workers in Ontario, threatening the labour, democratic and civil rights of all citizens.

In the event Bill 115 proceeds to a vote, we call on MPPs across all parties who support quality public education to defeat it.

The provincial government is not the bargaining agent and has no bargaining rights, and no legal rights to impose a collective agreement on either Ontario School Boards or the education unions that negotiate with them.  It is noteworthy that collective agreements were in force right across the province in August when the government drew up this Bill and began its disinformation and fear-mongering campaign that schools would not open September 3 due to imminent strikes and lock-outs.

In fact, if the provincial government had not interfered School Boards and education unions in the province would have been in negotiations in September working towards collective agreements.

The only crisis in education today is the one wholly manufactured in Queen’s Park by the Liberal government which has continued the policy of the chronic under-funding of education that was started by its predecessors the Harris Tories. The Liberals have followed the example of the Harris government and its Education Minister John Snobelen, and ‘created a useful crisis’ in an attempt to remove large sums of money from their education transfers over the next two years.

The real crisis is not in education, it’s in the spring budget where the Liberals undertook deep cuts to education, health, and social spending as recommended by Ontario’s bankers and corporations in the Drummond Report.  Some cuts made by the provincial government are even deeper than those proposed by Drummond.

Removing funding from education is not a vote-getter as the government well knows.  So the problem for the government was how to remove these funds without also losing public support.

Attacking unions and education workers as greedy, and counter-posing their wages, benefits and pensions to the full-day kindergarten programs being rolled out across the province, is the government’s cynical solution.

But it has back-fired as the results of the Kitchener Waterloo by-election are showing.  The public is rejecting union-bashing and attacks on free collective bargaining, quality public education, and local autonomy and democracy.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has warned that Bill 115 is unconstitutional and that the round-table discussions with OECTA and the French Boards took place under duress.

The ‘agreements’ were forced, and therefore not legal.

The unions in the education sector have stated they will challenge Bill 115 all the way to the Supreme Court, should it pass September 10th.

They could be joined by the province’s School Boards whose collective bargaining rights have also been eliminated, and whose authority over collective bargaining, budgeting, and in other vital areas is also attacked in Bill 115.

The government should withdraw Bill 115, and instead deliver the over-due and long-promised needs-based funding formula for public education, which would enable collective bargaining to proceed quickly and new collective agreements to be ratified.

Finally, we call on the government to heed the UN Human Rights Committee and end the discriminatory funding of religious schools in Ontario.   In fairness, as Quebec and Newfoundland  have already done, Ontario should phase out Catholic School funding and establish a single, secular, and quality public school system open to all – regardless of religion, gender, sexual orientation, or nationality.

Ending the duplication of two parallel school systems would save billions of taxpayer dollars over the long haul, generating needed funds for investment in capital repairs as well as programs and operating costs.  This will deliver a better quality education for all.

The government cannot ‘put students first’ if it puts teachers, educational workers, school boards, and democracy last.  We call on all MPPs to defeat Bill 115, if the government refuses to withdraw the Bill.

Respectfully submitted,

Elizabeth Rowley
Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)

Student struggles in Canada

Excerpt from the 25th Central Convention documents of the Young Communist League of Canada on the struggle of high school and post-secondary students.

The primary contradiction in the struggle for increased access to education is: corporations want a trained workforce but they will not pay for it through corporate taxes, forcing the people to pay for education through wages, savings and especially debt. The working people want accessible, emancipatory education.

This class perspective is often obscured. The struggle for access is presented as a simply universal fight against the government. Right-social democratic ideas in the student movement deliberately avoid class perspectives and misrepresent the state as neutral. Yet the state’s decisions are, generally, in line with the banks and businesses. And the single largest group of youth impeded and excluded from post-secondary are youth from the working-class majority.

High school youths willing to go to jail

would you do the same in a similar situation?

In Israel, military service is compulsory after grade 12. A refusers movement among high school students has been growing for some time. Shministim-Tweleve Graders is the name of the movement and members are willing to and have served time in prison.

A video explains:

Profiles of some of the objectors are shown on this webpage. Among the items on the webpage is a letter and web form for showing support and a video, this one has french subtitles:

YCL Responds to National Post Slander

Editor, National Post

The continued slanderous disinformation campaign labeling anti-Semitic all those who condemn Zionism and Israeli’s occupation of Palestine is wearing thin.

Last week, the National Post newspaper targeted the brave students and educators at Toronto’s alternative Student School who have launched High School Students Against Israeli Apartheid. The Post even steeped to red-baiting, saying that school coordinator Mr John Morton “refused interview requests from the National Post, but he outlined the school's continued support for such programs in a letter to the Web site Rebel Youth Magazine, a blog published by the Young Communist League of Canada.” (National Post, April 6th)

If The Post had done its homework, writer Dave Bowden would have found Mr. Morton’s supposed letter was simply an email widely circulated among the broad progressive majority in solidarity with the sovereign people of Palestine and outraged by Israel’s racist and brutal occupation, backed by US and Canadian foreign policy.

But then lack of fact-checking has never stopped The National Post from zealously churning-out Harper Tory capitalist drivel – attacking workers, women, youth and students, Aboriginal peoples, Quebequois, people of colour, Muslims and Arabs, people with disabilities, artists, you name it. The Post continually worships the market, while failing to make a profit from its own sales.

The Post’s inflammatory articles against the Student School have prompted an investigation into its coordinator.  Youth today are widely condemned for not voting, and then publicly chastised when we do engage in politics. Teachers who try to encourage discussion in class rooms are singled out for special scrutiny. This does not foster an educational environment, it deliberately creates an atmosphere of fear aimed at stifling free speech.

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. The shrill claims to the contrary do not cut ice in Canada, nor around the world. The Young Communist League of Canada warmly applauds and expresses our full solidarity with the Student School, which has also recently banned police from its corridors, and High School Students Against Israeli Apartheid. Justice is on your side, as it is on the side of the Palestinian people.

Johan Boyden,
General Secretary,
Young Communist League of Canada
290A Danforth Ave.
Toronto, ON M4K 1N6
416-964-3894
www.ycl-ljc.ca

Letter from "The Student School"

Please note that contrary to what the National Post has written, this message was simply an email circulated broadly on the left. Slopppy journalism and cheap red-baiting NP! Your attempts to smear an honest solidarity campaign, by saying that criticism of the racist Zionist state of Israel is anti-semetic, doesn't cut ice. We will be issuing a full statment soon.

Hello Friends

I thought it important that you know about what’s going on with our school.

About a year and a half ago, our students, at our regular “all school” Council meetings, passed several motions ( most unanimously) regarding Israeli apartheid.

They included inviting members of S(students)AIA to speak, the showing of “ Occupation 101”,

A motion to support CAIA and a motion to boycott Chapters/Indigo. We had a very active committee and some of our students helped to form H(high schools)AIA.

A mother of a former student complained about our activities. We stood firm and after about a month of “investigation” we were allowed to keep our posters, stickers etc on the walls. We, as a council, reconfirmed our support of CAIA.

During this time B’nai Brith’s “Jewish Tribune” wrote 3 or 4 articles about our school (you can imagine)

We are now taking flak again. One of our students (no longer in the school) wrote an article for “Canadian Dimension” that was published last September (see link below).

Apparently someone from B”nai Brith got a copy of this article, contacted TDSB, and its hit the fan again. Last week the Tribune wrote another article (see link below) attacking U of T students and our school. We’re holding our own, and have relayed to the Board (through the Principal) that we will continue our social justice activities on this and other issues.

I thought you might be interested!

Keep up the good work!! John Morton

Jewish Tribune Article http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/content/view/1361/53/

Canadian Dimension Article http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/09/04/2020/#top