A high school teacher in Los Angeles got fired for encouraging her students to be, well, socially engaged. Karen Salazar was accused of teaching a curriculum that was too “Afro-centric”. You see, teaching texts like the Autobiography of Malcolm X is dangerous. Students organizing and mobilizing on the high school campus was apparently too much for stuffed up administrators (and most definitely, their higher ups) to see and deal with, so they do what they usually do in such circumstances: Scapegoat a teacher, because, of course, students themselves are too stupid to do anything on their own, and press down on her. In this case, they’ve decided to fire Ms. Salazar.

No, wait, it wasn’t that the curriculum was too “Afro-centric” after all — the materials, apparently, were appropriate. It’s just that her teaching style crossed the line into advocacy. You see, when someone encourages you to change the conditions in society that produce inequality and injustice, that’s inappropriate. Ms. Salazar quotes Paulo Freire, she says one should practice “education as the practice of freedom.” In a democratic country, where education is supposed to be a pillar of freedom, that would be all right. But in countries which pass themselves as democracies but practice so many dispersed forms of tyranny, education needs to be the brainwashing of students to toe the line.

And by firing Karen Salazar, that’s precisely what these administrators are trying to enforce. It’s not that she teaches Malcolm X and Tupac, or that she quotes Freire. It’s that students are organizing and mobilizing, learning to work together in cooperative and collective frameworks to challenge authority and change things for the better. And that’s too much.

Learn more about the struggle of the students to have Ms. Salazar reinstated — including videos of their mass actions — here: http://savesalazar.pbwiki.com/

Note: This article was supposed to be published in the next Basics Community Newsletter, but unfortunately because of some misunderstandings was unable to make it. So I’ve published it here in full.

On Thursday March 20, over forty students and allies staged a sit-in at the University of Toronto administration’s offices to protest against increases in student fees. The peaceful protest was met with physical aggression by campus police on the orders of senior university administrators. Undeterred, students and allies formed the Committee for Just Education and organized an emergency rally on March 25 to continue protesting fees. On April 7, they held an open forum on fees and staged another rally on April 10 to protest fees.

Charging fees for university and college is one way to keep the working-class and the poor in check. Although the government discusses grants and loans, these are either hard to come by or add up to huge debt-loads after graduation. Students then become “indentured servants” — working to pay off loans while also trying to maintain a life. But free education is a possibility. Cuba, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and many other countries around the world offer free education at all stages. Others, like Venezuela, are moving toward free higher education.

Free education is something that working-classes and their allies have fought for over the past centuries in various countries. These were not gracious policies of the ruling classes, but like health care, the eight-hour working day, and the weekend, are the products of struggle. The students and organizers at UofT are attempting to continue in this tradition of struggle.

But UofT’s administration responded in the most authoritarian way. First, the administration is investigating students under the Code of Student Conduct, which could lead to sanctions including suspension and expulsion. Then, for the first time in over 35 years, they selected 14 students and organizers and got Toronto Police to press criminal charges against them for alleged involvement in the sit-in on March 20. The “Fight Fees 14” were arrested over one month after the events and were released on restrictive bail conditions that prevent their associating with one another, and ban them from UofT property except for classes. One student organizer was in custody overnight, and others were held for unusually long periods of time.

This repression of dissent comes at a time when universities are moving toward increasing privatization and commercialization to intensify serving the needs of corporations and industries, instead of serving the public good. Increasing student fees contributes to the university itself operating like a private corporation instead of a public institution. When students and others protest against this agenda of corporatization, they are met with tremendous repression. At the University of British Columbia, 19 students were arrested on April 4 for opposing the commercialization of campus space, and other universities are introducing or revising Student Codes of Conduct.

We must act now to make the university accountable and accessible to our communities. Please visit www.fightfees.ca and e-mail fightfees@gmail.com to learn more about joining the struggle against student fees and helping the Fight Fees 14.

No!

About $126,000.

According to CTV News:

[the demonstrators] even mixed up their facts, Steiner added, noting the fee hike is actually 10 per cent.

Ah. Well, according to the University of Toronto’s own documents accessible here (p. 16):

The ancillary will increase the fall/winter residence rates by 20% in 2008-09.

So, if Robert Steiner is capable of getting an incontrovertible fact wrong — either because he was misinformed or willfully misleading everyone — then what else other facts did he get “mixed up”?

He said, “Demonstrators seemed to be protesting everything from the war in Afghanistan to the coffee at Second Cup […]”

Well, actually, no. The demonstrators were protesting the NC residence fees, and student fees in general. The only time Second Cup was brought up was when one of them asked me why I was drinking Tim Hortons coffee — and that I threw away the cup without rolling up the rim.

(Yes, one of them commemorated the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq — March 20 — but, last time I checked, being against wars that kill millions of people is a good thing.)

Also:

If there was any “brutality,” Steiner suggested it was on the part of demonstrators who tried to trip staff as they left the building, shouted at security and in one case even bit an officer.

Well, it is evident that protesters were pushed to the floor and held by police officers as members of the administration were escorted out. According to the protesters, the administration members literally walked on top of them. According to Robert Steiner, they were trying to trip staff.

Seeing as Robert Steiner is so full of lies and misinformation, I’m not planning on taking his word for anything. After all, if you get $126,000 a year for “Strategic Communication” you probably know exactly how to spin the truth into lies — even if that contradicts your own documentation.

March 20, 2008 thirty-five University of Toronto students occupied Simcoe Hall, the home of the President’s Office, to protest a 20% fee increase. The nonviolent sit-in was accompanied with a peaceful rally outside the building—until the police began brutalizing those inside. This was captured by multiple video cameras.

The students had three simple demands.
1) To be granted a meeting with President David Naylor;
2) To have the proposed fee increase removed from the University Affairs Board meeting, scheduled to take place on March 25; and
3) To be given 15 minutes at the University Affairs Board meeting for a presentation and discussion on broader issues of access to education and the impacts of high tuition upon students, families and communities.

Students attempted to deliver their letter to the University of Toronto President, David Naylor, and to speak to other members of the administration in Simcoe Hall about the rising costs of education in Ontario. The administration refused to meet with the students. The response of the University of Toronto was to violently remove students from their peaceful sit-in. Police aggressively grabbed students and dragged them away from the entrance of the office. The students feared for their safety and after four hours in the building, the police violence forced the students to leave.

Video of these events has been posted on YouTube and it can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ketNtnZQIwQ

Images can be viewed here:
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/9.jpg
http://www.edwardfwong.com/uoftact/10.jpg

Students are continuing to demand a meeting with President Naylor, and the right to accessible and affordable education.

Now vlogging. Propagate proper propaganda. (Try saying that three times fast.)

One of the more common arguments against socialism, or in general, against imagining or enacting alternatives to capitalism, revolves around the notion of human nature. The argument goes that humans are intrinsically selfish, and will put their interests before that of others. This is, in effect, held to be “the law of nature” — animals step over each other to accomplish their self-preservation. So, the argument implies, it is human nature to be self-interested in the way that we all are now and to want more things.

There are two levels at which I’d like to respond to this argument, but I should add that these two levels are not the only ones from which it can be approached. The first is at the level of what constitutes “human nature” itself. The second is to examine the role of society (or “nurture”). However, the one approach bleeds into the other.

I agree that there is a human nature.

Read the rest of this entry »

The letter I sent to the Globe & Mail’s editor-in-chief, comment editor, and Tony Jenkins:

Dear Messrs Greenspon, Martin and Jenkins,

The cartoon printed on Monday, February 18, attempts to take a stab at the substance of what an Afrocentric curriculum may look like. As many readers have noted, the cartoon is racist. I can imagine that, in your defense, you will say something along the lines of, ‘If we thought it was hateful, it wouldn’t be allowed.’ Mr Jenkins might assert that his cartoon is based on real life, and that it is only meant to shed light on a different viewpoint. After all, this is not the first time Mr Jenkins has expressed his racism through his art. On July 6, 1994 the Globe & Mail published a cartoon captioned, ‘Wisdom of the elders…’ This cartoon depicted Natives as drunken, smoking gamblers, passing on such “wisdom” to Native youth. A humourous turn of phrase, no doubt, in the minds of Mr Jenkins and the then associate editor of the Globe & Mail, Sarah Murdoch — but vile and racist, nonetheless.

In this latest cartoon, the ‘joke’, of course, is that knowledge itself is decisively nonracial and, indeed, can’t possibly be racialized — so the only way these schools would be “Afrocentric” is through the thick-lipped, ebonicized blackness of the teachers (and students).

In the cartoon, the key element of Afrocentrism is the ebonics (“S’up, dog?”), and this means that what characterizes African cultures (and the cultures of descendants) is the bastardization of proper, common standards of discourse (that is to say, knowledge), and therefore, behaviour. And this bastardization—this wanton inability to get it right—is all that separates the Afrocentric curriculum from the supposedly non-cultural, non-racial curriculum that gets taught in “normal” schools. So, not only are these Afrocentrists setting themselves apart, but they are going to ruin the ability of black students to interact with “mainstream” Canadians.

These assumptions and assertions, carried by the cartoon, are not only ignorant of the content of and debate surrounding Afrocentric schools, but wrong and deeply racist. Tony Jenkins and the Globe & Mail should apologize to all readers for printing this cartoon. It was not funny, it was racist. It was not enlightening, except to reveal how deeply racism is entrenched into Mr Jenkins’s art and the Globe & Mail’s editorial decisions. In addition, Mr Jenkins and those involved in deciding to publish the cartoon should attend anti-oppression and anti-racism seminars.

Awaiting your apology,
Noaman Ali

Yes, folks, letters can and will change the world. (Not.)

I googled Tony Jenkins, the cartoonist who drew the racist Globe & Mail cartoon I commented on earlier. It turns out this isn’t the first time Jenkins has been a racist. In 1994, Jenkins drew, and the Globe & Mail published, the following:

Does the racism in this cartoon need to be elaborated upon? Does anyone have to break this down?

Tony Jenkins, the cartoonist, defended his work, saying it wasn’t racist but based on fact or real life. He said the inspiration from the work came from a story about the Kahnawake community’s rejection of a casino project. There are about 60 bands waiting in the wings to get into gaming.

Natives are into smoking, drinking and now gambling, Jenkins said. At one time, Elders would pass on information about hunting and trapping. Now the knowledge that will be passed down will be about gambling, the cartoonist said.

Jenkins attempts to take the political issues of the day and make people laugh and think. It’s one man’s opinion, and is expected to be taken with a grain of salt, he said. The intent wasn’t to mock, but to shed light on a different viewpoint.

Globe and Mail Associate Editor Sarah Murdoch concurred. Racism is not allowed in the paper, but ‘fair comment’ is and Jenkins is given a lot of latitude, she said.
“If we thought it was hateful it wouldn’t be allowed,” Murdoch said.

So there you have it: If the Globe & Mail’s editor doesn’t think it’s hateful, it isn’t. If the Globe & Mail’s editor doesn’t think it’s racist, it isn’t. If the Globe & Mail publishes some vituperative, base, racist content, well, it isn’t.

We see here how deep Jenkins’s racism is, and how entrenched racism is in Globe’s editorial decisions.

Fathima has a brilliant post about the virulently racist editorial cartoon featured in the Globe & Mail on Monday, comparing it to The Star’s two editorial cartoons as well.

What’s particularly interesting about this Globe & Mail cartoon (by Tony Jenkins) is that, unlike the ones in The Star, it takes a stab at the substance of what an Afrocentric curriculum (so to speak) may look like. The joke, of course, is that knowledge itself is decisively nonracial and, indeed, can’t possibly be racialized — so the only way these schools would be “Afrocentric” is through the thick-lipped, ebonicized blackness of the teachers (and students).

In asserting that the key element of the Afrocentrism is the ebonics, “S’up, dog?” [sic], it asserts that this, this is what characterizes African culture and its derivative culture: the bastardization of proper, common standards of discourse (that is to say, knowledge), and therefore, behaviour. And this bastardization, this wanton inability to get it right, is all that separates the Afrocentric curriculum from the acultural, aracial curriculum that gets taught in “normal” schools. So, not only are these Afrocentrists setting themselves apart, but they are going to ruin the ability of black students to interact with “mainstream” Canadians.

(In all of this I imagine certain administrators from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science looking at the cartoon and saying, “I can see how it’s offensive, but it’s not quite racism.”)