In Toronto, one of the main ways that working class people find work when they find themselves out of a job and need to pay bills is through various temporary agencies. These agencies play the role of middlemen between corporations and workers. Corporations use them for a number of reasons, though they all add up to saving the corporations money. Workers hired through temporary agencies are often paid minimum wage, with the temporary agency making money off of each worker they supply to a company.

While it doesn’t immediately appear this way in any accounting books, what basically happens is that the temporary agency takes part of the money the worker would otherwise be paid for every hour of work. What is even worse about this is that this total amount is often still less than a ‘regular’ full-time employee of a company doing the same job makes per hour.

Javeed, a printing factory worker interviewed for this article, explained, “I’ve been working in this factory for eight months and still make minimum wage. The full-time packers make nearly double what I make, while machine operators make even more than that. I’m only working there as a temp so that I can get a job with the company, but it’s getting too frustrating. I have no idea how much money the temp. agency has been making off me, but i know they are making good money. I see the cars they drive there when I pick up my paycheques.”

These temporary agencies operate in different parts of the city, often on a particular ethnic, language or community basis, recruiting exploitable immigrants from all the various communities of Toronto so that companies can make an easy profit without having to worry about taking care of workers.

Sometimes, these temp. agencies attempt to take even more money from their workers by purposely not paying them for the hours they’ve worked and still refusing to pay even after a formal complaint has been made. A case of exactly this kind was brought to the attention of Basics several years ago in Etobicoke.

In this case, a worker named Mohammed was refused several days pay worth over $200 by his temp. agency after he finished working for them. This temp. agency particularly focused on recruiting workers from African backgrounds in the northwest part of the city and was controlled by one man out of a small office located in a strip mall.

However, Mohammed was able to get back his money after contacting the Solidarity Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World, who came out to his temp. bosses office with him and presented him with formal written and oral demands for the wages to be paid. This confrontation was enough to get this temp. agency to pay up.

As workers, many of us have no choice but to work for temporary agencies to pay the bills, though this doesn’t mean we should just accept their parasitical nature as natural or normal.

People should not profit off us by sitting in an office or even their own home and siphoning off money while we work in some of the most physically demanding and stressful jobs in the city, barely being able to afford to get to work each day. The same goes for the big corporations themselves and their executives and managers. All of these parasites make money off us each day and live luxurious lifestyles off the labour we provide for them, for which they pay us as few scraps as possible.

“I’ve been living here for three years, and last night was the first time I’ve seen anyone come to fix the laundry room,” says a 33-year old resident of 3400 Eglinton Avenue East.

The laundry room in the basement of the Markham and Eglinton area building is full of washing machines and dryers, but several residents have complained about them never working properly, gobbling up people’s cash for no return. On hot summer days and especially in cold winter months, when the snow piles up outside the building and on the sidewalks, they have to carry their laundry nearly half a kilometre to a laundromat.

But the night before Monday October 19, someone finally came to take a look at the machines in the laundry room. That might have been because on Monday morning, the 16-storey building in Scarborough Village was being audited by officers of Municipal Licensing and Standards from the City of Toronto.

Makeshift repair of padlock on door.

The building is in bad condition, both inside and outside. Residents frequently complain about an unresponsive management. Repairs and maintenance are rarely done in a timely manner. One couple became so tired of asking for repairs that they repainted and retiled the apartment themselves—“Not because we wanted to but because we had to. We did it to protect our family—we have two kids.”

Another resident had a broken lock on his door, finally replacing it with a padlock he installed himself after waiting months for the building management to make the repair.

The most common complaint of all residents is the dirty carpet in all of the hallways, which is stained throughout and often smells. “When visitors come, they smell it and think it is coming from our homes,” one resident said. The carpet had not been changed, according to some residents, for over ten years.

After the municipal inspectors ruled that the carpets are not kept in a “clean and sanitary condition” management is in discussion about replacing the carpet. They began to experiment with replacing the carpet on the second floor—where the building superintendent lives, and have now removed the carpet on all of the floors of the building.

A surveillance camera monitoring tenants movements in the building, surrounded by hastily repaired ceiling damaged by water leakage.

Leaks are very common in the building. On October 10, the ceiling of the 17th floor hallway was dripping water that we caught on video. When the superintendent was told about the leak, she simply denied it.On the 17th floor, residents say that leaks have led to mould growing in the carpet and floor.

On October 19, one resident showed BASICS her bathroom ceiling, which was caving in due to leaks from the unit above her. A few days later chunks of the ceiling and water actually fell on her, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. On November 6, a plumber finally came to “fix” the ceiling—but just seems to have papered over it poorly, with nothing done to actually fix the source of the leak. The area is damp to the touch with bubbles coming out of it. “I can still hear the water dripping,” the resident said. She continues to remain concerned about mould and mildew in the bathroom, a safety concern for her three-year old daughter.

The ceiling of this washroom collapsed on a tenant due to an unresolved issue with water damage from the unit above.

BASICS spoke to municipal officers who said that the state of disrepair in the building was not surprising. Dozens of apartment buildings throughout the city are in horrible condition because the owners simply treat them as a business from which they want to turn a profit.

Despite the municipal officer’s attempts, there was not much they could do about repairs inside units unless they directly received complaints from tenants. But there are many problems, and bringing up units to minimum standards did not mean that they were good standards. The minimum standards require the building to stick to the old code, and not the new one.

For example, the bathrooms in 3400 Eglinton Avenue East all have a passive ventilation system, good enough for the 1950s, but no longer standard—bathrooms now require fans to actively pump the damp air out. The old system not only does a poor job of pushing damp air out, it can even bring damp air in from outside and from other units. This leads to growing problems with mould and mildew.

Many residents do not allow their children onto the balcony because they feel that it is unsafe.

The best and maybe only way that residents can bring about a change, according to the municipal officer we spoke to, is to build community among themselves. That means keeping an eye out for each other and for the building, and holding unresponsive building owners to account through collective action. Limiting actions to filing individual complaints will not push the management to respond. Only through collective action can we actually put pressure on the management and building owner to make the changes that are necessary for the building. 

In 2014, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation issued its annual Performance Report, a document which measures whether TCHC reached its own targets in providing repairs and “sustainable living” conditions for tenants. Last year’s report included a section for Resident Satisfaction.

This new section meant to examine whether there was an “increase in resident satisfaction with the quality and conditions of their homes and buildings”, but concluded that there was “no tool to measure progress” and that a “resident survey [is] required.”

In the 2015 TCH Performance Report, however, the same statement is written under Resident Satisfaction: “Measure under development”.

Since TCHC seems pretty busy with coming up with a survey, BASICS has decided to report some of the experiences which residents at 3171 Eglinton Ave E. have shared about the state of repairs in their aging complex.

*Fatima, a resident of 3171 Eglinton for four years, described her first few months moving into the apartment: “When I arrived, I needed to repaint the walls to accommodate my son’s respiratory issues—because it wasn’t the ‘normal’ paint, I was charged for 50% of the cost.”

Respiratory concerns are shared by many residents due to the mold that is growing throughout TCHC building. Management is slow to make any changes in the perpetually damaged state of the building: ”When things go wrong, we must make an appointment with the superintendent. When you make an appointment, people only show up after three weeks, sometimes a month,” said Bilal, another resident.

Fatima and Bilal’s experiences are shared widely by others. Jacob, a long-term resident, explained that he reported mold in his kitchen cabinets repeatedly: “When they finally came to address it, they just painted over it. I keep my cups in there, it’s a health concern”.

Some aspects of the TCHC building seem to never get fixed, as BASICS reporters realized during our weekly stairwell hikes to the twelfth floor. “When I came, it was because I was told the building was very accessible. Then the elevators started to break down. Now they break two or three times a month,” said Fatima. “They are still broken now.”

Just this month, BASICS reporters saw one woman get her foot stuck in the doors of the elevator at 3171 Eglinton, due to its faltering ability to sense the presence of passing bodies. Disturbingly, after the initial shock, she seemed fairly dismissive of the occurrence: “It’s not the first time,” she said with a shrug.

The dismissal of individual experiences are unsurprising when seeing how building-wide infrastructural crises are dealt with. Bilal described the bursting of hot water from broken pipes in February: “The water flooded the plaster in the entrance, it wasn’t fixed until March.”

The fall of four storeys worth of brick in April of this year was covered by multiple Toronto news sources. Residents who spoke to us described it as “terrifying.” Hannah, a mother who has lived at 3171 for decades, reported being “afraid to sleep in my own room at night.”

Residents of that end of the complex were given a complimentary hotel-stay three weeks after the event, perhaps as a belated apology by TCHC for the potentially-life threatening situation. Today, the outskirts of the building are surrounded by two fences, apparently in the hope that no remaining bricks will fall on passing pedestrians. One fence is a metal grille, and the other plywood. Yet the ravaged south end of the building remains covered by no more than a long sheet of tarpaulin.

Experienced tenants have told BASICS repeatedly that after private property management companies—such as DMS, which currently runs 3171 Eglinton—took over from TCHC employees, repairs have become even rarer and less effective.

The TCHC website claims that “contract management is a cost-effective way to provide the same high level of service to tenants.” If the above tenant experiences are what TCHC identifies as a high level of service, then it is clearly unqualified to provide any assessment of “sustainable living” or “resident satisfaction”. Only the tenants themselves are qualified to measure the performance of TCHC, and this can only be achieved through by communicating and organising with one another.

*Some of the names of 3171 Eglinton residents have been changed in this article at their request.

“Two people have been killed since I moved in here. Of course I feel unsafe. I feel more safe in the street than in my home.”

This is how Maryam*, a woman in her early twenties and a three-year resident of 3171 Eglinton Avenue—one of the TCHC high-rises at the intersection with Markham Road—describes her life in the building.

“I don’t feel comfortable inviting friends over. Once a friend spent the night, and at two a.m. someone started banging on the door demanding to come in. How are two women alone in an apartment at that hour going to feel?”

Of the dozens of residents at 3171 with whom BASICS has spoken, nearly all have similar concerns about safety. For female residents in particular, the greatest feeling of threat can sometimes come from other residents—in particular, men. Such feelings are common for women who, like Maryam, live alone or as single mothers.

Due to the seeming lack of other choices, some residents turn to the police. For example, after racist curses were scratched onto her door a few months ago, Maryam immediately informed the Toronto Police Service. When constables came by, however, she found them unwilling to pay even cursory attention to the situation: “When I told them about these words someone had written and asked them what they were going to do, one of them just shrugged and said, ‘It’s TCHC’.”

The cop’s indifference to Maryam’s concerns reflects the attitude of the police department towards the concerns of low-income residents. After the murder of 22 year-old Dillon Phillips in the stairwell on September 2014, a second resident recalls the police and TCHC management as encouraging residents to “Take back your building”. In such circumstances, residents and onlookers are forced to ask whether the police are in place to protect or divide communities.

Trapped between a rock (insecurity) and a hard place (disdain and disinterest from the police), Maryam’s only goal is to get as far from community housing as possible. “I don’t hang out in the area, I don’t want to be here. When I’m gone, I’ll never think about this place again,” she said to BASICS.

For a woman in her position, this view is entirely reasonable, and it is one which many women in the building seem to share. Yet when residents are lucky enough to get a transfer or start making enough money to move out, their apartments will immediately be filled by a few more people from TCHC’s 160,000-household waiting list. New residents, as well as the many who are unable to leave, are simply forced into the same stressful, unchanging, and sometimes dangerous circumstances. Unable and uninterested in providing a secure home, TCHC and the Toronto Police Service bring TCHC residents to see their apartments as places where fear and suspicion are constant.

When asked if her concerns about security cause alienation from other residents, Maryam said, “Definitely.” In a building where turnover is high, security is low, and many wish to leave, it is difficult for residents to build a sense of trust in the community.

Yet the police prove, as they did in Maryam’s case, that they have little interest in protecting working-class and racialized women—and this is without any discussion of police treatment of working-class and racialized men.

Under these circumstances, who better for female residents to turn toward than one another? Protective links already exist in small, informal ways—between friends, for instance. But if these links could turn into something larger and more organised, a safer and more inclusive community for women—and perhaps also men—at 3171 Eglinton could take shape.

*At her request, we have given Maryam a pseudonym for this article.

(Photo Credit: Chris Doucette, Toronto Sun)

The University of Toronto and CUPE 3902, which represents student and contract teaching staff on campus, are currently negotiating new collective bargaining agreements. Negotiations seem to have stalled, however, and Units 1 (mainly TAs) and 3 (mainly sessional lecturers) are readying for a possible strike. At a townhall last Wednesday, BASICS caught up with two union reps.

Erin Black is the Chair of CUPE 3902 and the chief negotiator for Unit 3. Ryan Culpepper is the Vice-Chair for Units 1 & 2 and the chief negotiator for Unit 1.

Interview with Ryan Culpepper and Erin Black, 11 February 2015

BASICS: Is the University stonewalling you guys? I’ve talked to a few Unit 1 members, and it kind of sounds like that.

Ryan Culpepper: I think that’s fair, yeah. I think they’re doing the bare minimum that they can do and not run into trouble with the Ministry of Labour.

BASICS: And why do you think they’re pursuing that tactic?

RC: I don’t know, I mean—

Erin Black: They have claimed, and there is some truth to this, but how much truth is the question, virtually every unionised group on campus is bargaining this year, so they have been trying to kind of prioritise things or schedule things, and there’s only so many of them, uh, so they say. I have some—there is some truth to that, absolutely.

RC: Though they themselves negotiated the terms of the agreement, so like the fact they all expire in the same year is something that they themselves have set up.

EB: And they’ve known that we’ve been coming for three years, and could have, in my humble opinion, prepared for, better than they did, in terms of, ‘I’m sorry, we just don’t have any dates for you, ’cause we have to go talk to, uh, whoever.

RC: But right now they’re not meeting with us and there’s no other unions bargaining, it’s just us and they’re still not meeting with us.

BASICS: So most of the agreements have already been made, for the other unions.

RC: Yeah, the other two biggest are done, Steelworkers and another big CUPE local.

BASICS: So, in terms of [Unit 3] membership, there’s sessional Instructors, like Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3?

EB: Yeah we call it sessional lecturer 1, sessional lecturer 2, sessional lecturer 3, or SL 1, 2, 3.

BASICS: So how many people are in Unit 3 of CUPE 3902?

EB: Unit 3 represents approximately a thousand individuals, that’s sessional lecturers, writing instructors, we have some hourly paid employees who are musical professionals, but the bulk of the membership is sessional lecturers.

BASICS: And what percentage of the sessional lecturers would you say are SL1’s?

EB: Oh, the majority.

BASICS: And I think you said there were, 44–

EB: There were exactly 44 who have hit that brass ring of guaranteed work [this refers to SL3’s having guaranteed positions].

BASICS: And do you know how many SL2’s there are?

EB: You know what, if you give me a minute I actually ran these numbers for our bargaining team, if you give me a second.
[Reading from phone]: So there are 440 SL1’s, 120 SL2’s, and, sorry, 45 SL3’s, we have a new one this term.

BASICS: Moving up in the world. And so, the rate at which an SL 1 is paid per course is $7500?

EB: The SL1 is $7,125[per course], the SL2 is going to be…I can’t pull the exact figure out but it’s going to be around $7500, um, and SL3’s would be about $7900.

BASICS: And they are guaranteed four half-courses?

EB: Four, yep.

BASICS: No guarantee for SL2’s, but just preferred hiring.

EB: Just hiring preference.

BASICS: Is there a maximum, I don’t know if you mentioned this earlier, for the maximum number of courses—

EB: That you can teach? No. If you get to SL3 they owe you four; you can apply for work on top of that, and if you get it you can have it; but after 8 years of service, at least 8 years of service to the University, after having taught at essentially that course load, that 2/2 load, that’s how we refer to it, for at least 3 years, and after having been deemed ‘superior’ not once but twice, the university owes you what amounts to a gross salary of around $35 000. After all of the stuff you’ve got to get. And I might add, that commitment was not permanent, we successfully have achieved that in this round of bargaining. It was time-bound to each collective agreement, and in this round of negotiations they have now agreed to make it non-negotiable.

BASICS: Do you have a lot of people who are sessional lecturers for very long periods of time who aren’t moving up?

EB: We do, we have a classification called ‘SL1 Long-Term’, uh, so those people don’t have hiring preference but they get like a hundred bucks extra pay in honour of their at least six years of service to UofT.

BASICS: Do you have any idea how many people are in that category?

EB: That’s actually a small category, ’cause most people do advance, um, I think it’s probably about twenty or so who are at the long-term rank, most advance, but for—the reason some of these people, I’ve asked them, like, ‘you qualify for advancement, why don’t you do it?’ and the most common response I get back is, uh, ‘the process [of teaching review to be able to move up in level] is too intensive for the outcome; I have to go through all of these hoops, for what amounts to just a smidgen more pay, and a hiring preference, which is a good thing, but which may or may not matter because the course may not exist in the future anyhow.

RC: Also increasingly they’re screwing with the advancement process. Like, they’re denying more people advancement, and they’re doing weird things, like just as someone’s about to reach the threshold for an advancement review, they’ll pull their courses—

EB: ‘Oops, we don’t need your course this year!’

RC: —yeah, they’ll pull their courses so that they can’t reach the threshold to be reviewed for advancement.

EB: They’ll tell you that it was just, you know, curricular changes necessitating that.

RC: There’s lovely coincidences out there.

BASICS: Right, ‘changes in the historiography necessitate the end of your course.’
What’s the–do you have a rough idea of how many sessional instructorships there are offered in a year versus the new tenure track positions which would sort of, be offered? What would you say the ratio is?

EB: That’s a bit harder to answer. UofT is a little different than other institutions, so the growth rate of tenure-track positions—there was a study done by the Higher Education Council for Ontario…which investigated a bunch of universities in Ontario. At UofT, which is different than other institutions…there has been greater sessional growth than tenure growth, but UofT has also created a bunch of ‘teaching-stream’ positions, so full-time, permanent benefits, all that sort of stuff, represented by the faculty association, so those guys are higher than us, but less than the tenure-stream. And at other Ontario institutions…who aren’t doing this, it’s basically like, tenure [gesture to show tiny increase], sessional [gesture to show large increase]. But UofT has this weird sort of blip because of these teaching-stream positions that have been created, that are full-time positions; we’re thrilled to see them, [but] our long-serving members often don’t get hired into them; so you’ve created a teaching-stream position, and instead of affording it to the individual who’s been doing that work for five, six, seven, whatnot years, chances are it’s not going to go that person.

BASICS: So, these are full time positions, but they’re not professorships.

EB: Their rank system is ‘lecturer–senior lecturer’, but they are full time positions, they are continuing positions, they come with benefits and pensions and they are represented by the Faculty Association. But because they’re ‘teaching-stream’, they’re not ‘assistant, associate, full professor’, which has a much greater research requirement; so that’s the difference.
And then there’s us: the course-by-course-by-course.

BASICS: What’s the average TAship in terms of hours? How many hours is the average contract?

RC: Probably an average contract would be about 140 hours for a semester or 280 for a year.

EB: I can tell you in my department, for any incoming new student…they work very hard to make sure they do not get over the 205 hours [beyond which T.A.s are paid at the rate of $42.05/hour; under this threshold, their remuneration is considered to be made up by the $15 000 stipend which all PhD students receive]. This year I have two T.A.’s who were brand new students who were each capped at the 205.

BASICS: And that’s why they kind of start having contracts where you don’t have any remuneration for–

RC: Yeah they trim the hours so that they don’t have to pay you the hourly rate. When you get offered a job, you get offered a job that is for a certain number of hours. And then you have to sit down with the supervisor and go through the breakdown of the hours. So that’s where the process happens of saying, ‘you’re going to get so many hours for marking, so many hours for office hours–

EB: So many hours for actual class time.

BASICS: So this may be anecdotal, but in your experience, does it tend to be in situations where they’re trying very hard to make sure that a TA doesn’t get a contract for more than 205 hours, where they tend to have these, sort of, more brutal regimes where you don’t have any time to talk to students, where you don’t have any time to hold office hours, that kind of thing?

RC: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how it is all over the university, I only know in departments where I’ve worked, I’ve seen big trimmings on contact time and prep time. That’s where they’re trimming back hours.

BASICS: And so, because course instructors are salaried, I assume there’s no–I don’t know, do you have an average of how many hours a sessional lecturer will spend working on a course?

EB: We did a survey of our members and asked that question; most said, if you were to add it up, the whole course, from start to finish, creation to delivery and marking and all that, most said that it’s probably at least 250 hours from start to finish. Interesting fun fact: for employment insurance purposes, a course is only credited at 230 hours.
And it really does vary. For instance I mentioned earlier, I teach a fourth-year seminar; because there’s no lecturing in that course, it’s straight up student discussion, and there’s fifteen students, it’s less labour-intensive than a course that I prepare lectures for. And the first time you’re preparing lectures for a course, it probably takes an average of maybe 8–10 hours to write one single lecture; so what gets spoken to the students in 2 hours takes probably 8–10 hours to actually draft. That first year I taught I actually kept track of my hours, and then I divided it by the stipend, and I was making below minimum wage. Because we’re not paid on an hourly basis; we’re paid like, ‘here’s a stipend.’ TA’s get this, Ryan referred to it, this Description of Duties and Allocation that breaks it down, x hours for this, x hours for that. I get a letter that says, ‘Dear Dr. Black, we’re hiring you to teach this, there are 24 hours of lecture in this course and one hour of office hours per week, and you will be paid x,’ which is the stipend, and x includes everything, from creating the syllabus, picking the readings, delivering the lectures, meeting with students, grading the students, or if I have TAs working for me, supervising the TAs—it’s kit and caboodle for them, it’s all part of delivering the course, so it’s one stipend.

BASICS: Can you tell us where the bargaining process is at?

EB: Sure. Both units are in similar spots actually; we’ve both filed for conciliation, which Ryan mentioned, that happened in December, we did it on the same day, that’s the process where you involve the Ministry of Labour. Both teams have now, after a meeting in conciliation, requested what’s called a ‘No Board’ Report, it’s a labour term basically. The upshot of that is when that report is issued, that starts a clock ticking, a 17-day clock, at the end of which puts either the union in a legal strike position or the employer in a legal lockout position. Both Units 1 and 3 have asked for the report that is now ticking down to a legal action on either side. But both have more dates to meet, [to Ryan] you have–

RC: Four.

EB: Four dates scheduled between now and the strike deadline, uh, the ticking clock ending, and we so far have the one additional date that they offered at 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

BASICS: And I guess in your experience, or in the experience of the union, is that–are four dates or one date a realistic amount of time to get an agreement?

That one’s harder to answer, I think what’s more telling is that Unit 1—what have you had now, a total of what, 14—maybe—dates? In the last round of Unit 1 bargaining [during the 2011–2012 school year], well before they even got to conciliation, they had like 25 dates.

RC: We had 18 even before our strike vote last time.

EB: Yeah, and this time there were like 6 or something. So it’s—at the end of things, processes can move or they can stall, that’s sort of amorphous, but—

RC: I mean, they know what it would take to get an agreement, right?

EB: Yes.

RC: They know what it would take to get an agreement, they’ve known since Day 1, so it could take one day, but that’s not the way that they bargain, so I mean, is timing a concern? Yeah, definitely.

BASICS: So, you mentioned the role of the province, the Ministry of Labour mediator, in the process, how helpful has that been? I don’t know what the specifics of that mediator role are.

EB: It’s up to the parties. So, sometimes the conciliator, he’s called a conciliator at this [earlier] stage, although now he’s a mediator, because both of us have filed the No Board Reports, he or she can do different things. Sometimes the parties sit in separate rooms and he or she shuttles back and forth, sometimes the parties meet face to face and the conciliator’s in the room, to sort of hear both sides, so it’s really up to the parties how they do it.

RC: And the Ministry of Labour employs conciliators in the first place for one purpose, which is to prevent strikes. That is their job. Their job is to prevent labour unrest in the province, so they come into the process, to sort of bash both sides on the heads and get them to come to an agreement. And so they go the employer and say, ‘Listen these guys are serious they’re gonna strike, you should be scared, give them what they want,’ and then they come to the union and they’re like, ‘Dudes they’re ready, they’re ready for you they’re gonna squash it you can’t go out you have to take the deal,’ like that’s their job, so you know. I don’t begrudge them for doing that job, but you have to recognise, I guess on both sides, what that is.

BASICS: I guess was just trying to get at—what kind of help from the province can you get, I mean, it doesn’t really sound like much if at all.

RC: I think the conciliator—the conciliators I’ve worked with in the past and our conciliator now, they’re usually quite aggressive, they really try to get you to make movement, draw proposals, that kind of thing. And that’s annoying and you have to develop your own way of dealing with them, but the good part is they also do that to the employer. I have found the ones I’ve worked with to be quite neutral in how they—all they want to do is prevent a strike, so they’ll be aggressive with both parties if it means, you know, getting you to sign a contract, so that is sometimes helpful.

BASICS: I wanted to ask about the solidarity between the two sections of the union: how did that come about, and is that rare, I guess? Do they often work together in collective bargaining? And also, it seems as though the University, if they’re closer to making a deal with Unit 3, then they might—is there a possibility that they would then use that against the TAs? Because it’s a lot harder to do a strike for just the TAs, right?

RC: Yeah.

EB: Well they’re a lot bigger though, I mean, much bigger, 6 000 to 1 000. So I think size takes away that sort of differentiality.

RC: I think it’d be more like, um, sessionals are—I mean, I’m learning from going out to events like this and talking to journalists, and sessionals are a more sympathetic crew; people like sessionals. So that’s great, um, so I think if sessionals [Unit 3] settled before we [Unit 1] did, I think the damage that it would do to us would be more like, ‘well, we always thought you were a bunch of unreasonable, radical students anyway, that nobody could deal with, and look, like the sane people, the people who will listen to reason settled; you’re on just some crazy crusade,’ and you sort of then lose the war of public opinion.

EB: I don’t disagree with Ryan, I think that would be the perception out there; what’s behind the scenes, though, is that for—[the University] are not making movement for Unit 1; they are making movement for Unit 3, and I’m not saying it’s enough—

RC: Oh yeah, fair enough, I think they’re absolutely trying to set themselves up to do exactly that, so that they can take, you know, frankly the more politicised Unit and give them a lot less, by giving some crumbs to the one that looks more sympathetic.

BASICS: But my impression is that Unit 1 is not asking for a lot—you said something like, a raise [to the guaranteed minimum funding package] of a few thousand dollars is not even going to put you above the poverty line—that doesn’t seem like an insane amount to—

RC: I don’t think it’s insane at all, but I think they would like to paint us as entitled, greedy—

EB: And what they’ll focus in on, and this is focused in on by student news coverage at UofT, is the $42.05/hour rate. Which is like, ‘Oh my God, you make that much? What are you complaining about?

RC: I did an interview with the Star today, and like, that’s all, I could not get her off the wage, that’s all she wanted to talk about.

BASICS: What would both of you want to say to people about the positions of your Units of the union?

EB: Well first of all, we are separate units, we have separate agreements, but we’re the same union, to come to your question about solidarity…we are CUPE 3902. So, we’re looking out for each other, to the extent that we can, we brought joint language, um, around common issues, which really freaked them out, ’cause this is the first time we bargained at the same time, normally it’s been one ahead of the other—

BASICS: So this is the first time that’s happened?

EB: Yeah, so that really freaked them out, and Ryan for Unit 1 came to the Unit 3 table, and they’re all like, [miming shock]—

RC: They spent an hour arguing whether I should be there or not.

EB: —it’s like, ‘what’s, what’s going on here?’

RC: They’re very very scared of the idea of collaboration. They said to me at that time, they said like, ‘You are the negotiator for Unit 1, how dare you try to bring that leverage to bear at this table!’ you know, like they are very scared of the idea of [collaboration]. I think the thing that is shared, and I hope it makes everyone equally sympathetic, but I’ll say this definitely about Unit 1 members, like I see, I’m out at info sessions and town halls all the time, and member department meetings, like, people are broke, they’re broke and they’re overworked and they’re exhausted and they’re exasperated, and the reason we are where we are is they feel like they’re out of options. So I think that’s shared with Unit 3.

EB: Oh it’s absolutely shared with Unit 3, equally as broke, equally as stressed. Have you heard of ‘Rhodes scholars’, right, like the impressive scholarship for Oxford, there’s a take on it, ‘Roads scholar’…because sessionals are always on the road so much, working at like a gazillion different campuses… One of our bargaining team members like goes to Peterborough for Trent, to teach. We have people who work on our campus who come in from as far away as London and Kingston and stuff like that. So yes, absolutely, the common ground is that whether you’re a graduate student education worker or somebody who has actually crossed the floor and gotten your PhD, we are similarly in the same economic boat.

BASICS: Living paycheck to paycheck.

EB: While being asked to do an incredibly important job, which is undergraduate education.

BASICS: What can students and the public do to mobilise or show solidarity?

EB: If the university can be told in no unequivocal terms, ‘We’re on their side,’ that’s going to be worrisome in Simcoe Hall.

* * *

You can follow updates from CUPE 3902 on Twitter at @cupe3902 or on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CUPE3902

August 25/2014
In this feature interview we talk to inmate Ryan Jordan about systemic racism, racial discrimination, racial divides between administration and inmates and a racial division between who gets privileges and who gets punishments within Canada’s “Correctional Institutions”. Incarcerated since 2003, Jordan speaks from his experiences as a grievance clerk for other prisoners, as well as from his own experiences launching a number of legal challenges against the prison system and its administrators, the most recent of which in April 2014 was concluded in his favour at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Ryan Jordan is currently serving a life sentence and is currently institutionalized at Collins Bay minimum security

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/basics-news/interview-with-inmate-ryan-jordan-a-grievance-clerk-for-his-fellow-prisoners

Interview with inmate Ryan Jordan – a grievance clerk for his fellow prisoners. Photo: Huffington Post

 At 77 years old, most people are concerned with spending time with their family and having enough money for their retirement.

 In July, 2013, the Canadian government gave Djaber Kalibi and his family something worse.  Upon returning from a trip to France, the Canadian government confiscated his passport and gave him a deportation order.

 “I’ve been here 9 years. How is this possible?” asks Kalibi.

 Kalibi and his wife and two daughters moved to Canada from France in 2005. He applied for permanent residence, but all he received was a work permit.

Kalibi, who has a PhD in political science from a German university, was able to find work at a private college in Montreal, where his family settled.

 But now, Kalibi and his family’s lives are up in the air. All their belongings are packed in boxes, as they are in the process of moving from their family home in Montreal.

 When I asked him where they are moving, he is silent. “I don’t know… it depends on what happens,” says Kalibi.

 It is a cruel fate for a man who has fought for justice and freedom all his life.

 As a student studying in Germany in the 1970s, he joined the worldwide Confederation of Iranian Students and began to speak out about the abuses of the Shah in Iran. He returned to Iran during the 1979 revolution and participated in the massive protests that ousted the Shah.

 However the broad-based grassroots movement to overthrow the Shah was subverted by Islamic groups led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Kalibi continued to work as a professor in Iran until 1982, when he fled to France as a refugee. By this time, the new Islamic regime had already executed thousands of Iranians during the first few years in power.

 In France, Kalibi continued to be concerned with the welfare of those back home.  He was troubled that the violent Khomeini-led contingent had been able to co-opt much of the people’s movement and install a theocratic regime. Here, In France, he met with other refugees to discuss what had gone wrong in the movement to overthrow the Shah, and organized educational and political actions to resist the newly established Islamic Republic that was oppressing critical and dissenting voices within its population.

 At a time when France was attempting to normalize its relations with Iran, Kalibi’s outspokenness against the Islamic Republic of Iran began to attract the attention of the French government. In 1986, the political police in France arrested Kalibi and four others. They were interrogated for four days straight and he was initially charged with terrorism, but the charges were subsequently reduced to a misdemeanour.

 Despite the surveillance of both France and Iran, Kalibi continued to organize solidarity for those seeking change in Iran.  In 1990, the Interior Minister of France tried to have several Iranians deported to silence their activism against the Iranian government. The judge at the Supreme Court declared that the deportation order was unconstitutional and that Kalibi posed no threat to France.

 Prison sentences and threats of deportation have not deterred Kalibi from speaking out. For over 30 years, Kalibi has denounced the Iranian government for their numerous human rights violations (including torture, unlawful imprisonment, mass execution of prisoners, and legally entrenched gender inequality) along with their treatment of ethnic and religious minorities.

 Despite the repressive regime, Kalibi does not support an invasion of the country by Western powers seeking regime change and instead believes that the Iranian people can bring about social and political change in their country.

In 2013, during the lead up to Iran’s presidential election, John Baird, Canada’s Foreign Minister, spoke out about the abuses of the Iranian regime.

Baird said that: “the Iranian people will not forever tolerate the hypocrisy and corruption of the regime; the wanton waste of its resources; and the transformation of a proud nation into a pariah.”

Baird also spoke about supporting Iranian activists both inside and outside of Iran.

“We stand with the courageous activists inside Iran…with the dedicated Canadian diaspora outside Iran …and with freedom-loving people everywhere who want a brighter future for your country,” said Baird.

In May 2013, Canada’s Foreign Minister spoke about supporting Iranians in their desire for a country free from Khamenei’s regime, and yet in July 2013, the Canadian government begins the process of deporting one such activist.

Baird’s words seemed to have spoken directly to Kalibi’s situation.

“Under the burden of escalating repression, the regime is forcing activists to leave. As they do, others take their place, subjected to the full force of this regime’s anger… They can take comfort, knowing that Iran’s democratic voices have begun the hard, patient work of bringing about a free and open society in Iran,” said Baird.

Baird even spoke about engaging activists by standing with “human rights defenders who take such tremendous personal risks in trying to protect others.”

But instead, Kalibi, a long time activist, is told that Canada does not support him. Kalibi received his deportation order shortly after the election of the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in June 2013.

On June 12, Kalibi expects to hear whether his deportation order to France will be overturned.  

The Canadian government is using the same materials from the French case nearly 30 years ago to argue that he is a threat to the “national interests” of Canada.

Twenty-eight years ago, the highest court in France “la cour de cassation” (the Supreme Court of France) dismissed the case against Kalibi. But this time, there is no court to judge whether he or not he is a threat. Instead, his case rests in the hands of a commission and specifically those of the Minister of Public Safety, Steven Blaney.

Kalibi believes that the only way to overturn the order will be to generate public pressure to have him stay. To this end, he has worked with Solidarity Across Borders in Montreal to raise awareness and they have managed to get thousands of signatures.

Today, it appears easier for wealthy Iranian officials, supporters and beneficiaries of the brutal hand of the Islamic Republic, to enter Canada than it does for those Iranian dissenters, thinkers, and artists who are critical of the regime.

When I asked Kalibi whether he has any regrets, he says: “It is a choice. It is a legitimate struggle and I don’t step back. I am fighting for a world without the misery we see around us. And I am in solidarity with those who struggle for a better world.” 

Djaber Kalibi
Photo : Pedro Ruiz – Le Devoir

Sureté du Québec Lt. Guy Lapointe shows tobacco seized by the Quebec police force at a news conference, April 30, 2014 in Montreal. Photo credit: Ryan Remiorz , THE CANADIAN PRESS.

by M. Cooke

“You don’t have to go to Kahnawake to combat crime. The government is trying to make us [indigenous people] look worse in the eyes of their public,” says John Kane, host of radio program “Let’s Talk Native” on WWKB 1520 out of New York.

The Mohawk radio personality believes that the police raids around Montreal, earlier yesterday, are more about public relations than targeting criminal organizations. He says that by criminalizing the trade and manufacturing of tobacco, the Canadian government is violating Mohawks’ rights to develop their own economies.

The April 30th police raids were the largest raids involving contraband tobacco in North American history. Over 400 officers were deployed in what was the culmination of an 18-month operation.  According to details acquired by the Two Row Times, 35 warrants were issued and 28 people were arrested, which included eight people from the Mohawk territories of Kahnawake and Akwesasne.

The timing on the raids couldn’t be better for the federal government as they are just a few days away from the third reading of the Bill C-10, the Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act.  This Act will criminalize all those involved in “contraband tobacco”, tobacco that does not comply with federal and provincial statutes, which means tobacco produced independently by native producers in their own territories.

Much of the media has emphasized the involvement of the mob in the transportation of the tobacco from the U.S. to Akwesasne. Kane says that those reports are helping justify the further regulation of the Native tobacco enterprises.

Also known as Bill C-10, if the Act passes its third reading, it will introduce mandatory minimums for those found with more than 50 cartons of contraband tobacco. The Act will also force First Nations police to work with provincial and municipal police to enforce the act.

Kane says that proposed laws like Bill C-10 are in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

“The declaration states that we have the right to free, prior and informed consent. In addition, we have the right to develop our own economies. Both of which, the Canadian government is violating,” says Kane.

“The manufacturing and selling of cigarettes is an enterprise. It is the same thing they [multinational cigarette companies] are doing,” says Kane.

“When you criminalize our enterprises, it brings in nefarious characters. It forces your hand,” says Kane.

Kane ties the Canadian governments raids and legislation targeting Native tobacco enterprises to an ongoing history of colonialism.

“The Canadian and US governments have been trying to either assimilate or eliminate us. They don’t allow us to develop our own economies. They want us to remain in a ward-custodian relation,” says Kane.

By targeting Native enterprises, Kane says that the government is preventing the development of an independent economy and is instead forcing indigenous people onto welfare.

“They are trying to keep us on welfare and band council money. But most of us will never accept that scenario. We are going to continue to trade between our territories,” says Kane.

One of Toronto’s inner suburbs has become a focal point in the ongoing struggle in Venezuela between the Bolivarian transition to socialism and the fascist resistance that has been developing over the last month.

With its face to the bustling city moving past it on Dufferin, just a little south of Lawrence, the quaint little church of San Lorenzo appears as a modest sight to unwitting passersby.  But the small church, and its Latin American Community Centre to the rear, are more than simple sites of worship.

Since its establishment in 1997, the San Lorenzo parish has become a beacon for  many in the Latin American community who have fled fascist dictatorships and military juntas over the decades from places like Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala.  But its message and ministry amount to more than a salve for the restless migrant soul, more than a home away from home.  In the words of the Church’s patron saint, San Lorenzo: “The poor are the treasures of the church.”

That this church actually treasures the poor (as opposed to seeing the poor as a source of its treasures) can be seen in the day-to-day activities that drive the vibrant community organization that has built up around San Lorenzo.  Its community centre is home to Radio Voces Latinas 1660 AM, Canada’s only 24-hour Latin American radio station and a key alternative to commercial news, views, and music that dominate the spectrum.

Ambulances on the Caravan of Hope decorated for their trip to El Salvador.

San Lorenzo is also the organizer of the annual “Inti Raymi – Festival of the Sun,” which draws thousands into Christie Pits under the summer sun to to mark the celebration of the summer solstice in the tradition of the Andean region’s Indigenous peoples.  The festival routinely raises thousands of dollars for the church’s solidarity missions and charity drives.

Among those programs include fundraising drives for disaster relief in Haiti, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela; as well as the community centre’s “Caravan of Hope,” which drives decommissioned ambulances and wheel-trans buses to El Salvador annually.

However,  over the years, San Lorenzo and its priest Hernan Astudillo, have courted more controversy than one may think such acts of humanitarianism would invite.  When charity becomes solidarity — when one proceeds from charitable handouts to morally and materially supporting  struggles to emancipate people from their class oppression — some hearts simply stop bleeding for the poor.

As the old proverb has it, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” But what if this man is violently dispossessed of his fishing rod? His family chased away from his lake-side community and into the urban slums?  What if the rivers are being poisoned by large corporations?

It is the understanding that such social inequalities are the basis for poverty and suffering that drives San Lorenzo’s and Hernan Astudillo’s theology, which is part of the liberation theology tradition in Latin America that has prioritized the poor and their emancipation and which is seen as reflecting historical Jesus’s lived practice.

This past March 9th, San Lorenzo held a mass to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez — a tradition in keeping with past ceremonies held by the church for Latin America’s champions of the poor, with masses marking the deaths of various fighters for freedom, from the assassinated Che Guevera to the murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Romero was the Catholic bishop in El Salvador who was assassinated in 1980 in wave of terror that targeted thousands of leftists, including many clerical elements. Romero is also a key figure in Latin America’s liberation theology tradition.

“I did the mass in honour of Hugo Chavez, who I consider with all humility, a very holy man,” priest Hernan Astudillo told BASICS. The result was predictable and sadly not unfamiliar to Astudillo and the church.

“I received a fax saying they would ‘eliminate’ me personally… basically, a death threat, they will kill me. We have received death threats over the phone. We have received two messages: One sent by email from an anti-communist organization insulting our people who work on the radio station, saying that they are going to take out our [radio] antenna.”

On March 6, the church received a letter from an organization calling itself “Contracomunistas” in which the Radio Voces Latinas was cited as a target.  On March 12, the fax threatening Father Hernan’s life came in.

But the threats are nothing new for Father Hernan: “This reminds me how when 14 years ago I performed a mass for Monsignor Oscar Romero in this same church, I had also received death threat letters because I was holding a mass for a ‘communist bishop’.”

If only this was all just some verbal aggressiveness from the Latin American community’s right wing, the threats could perhaps be dismissed as posturing from disgruntled elements anxious about their oligarchic families and classes losing their grips on power back home. But a history of these threats actually materializing on the Church gives great cause for concern.

In 2006, the antenna of Radio Voces Latinas was discovered to have been shot after having experienced some unknown technical problems for a period of time.

BASICS asked Father Hernan if the threats have ever translated into bodily harm: “I’ve received death threats more than ten times and on two occasions, a group has stolen money from us during our summer festival at Christie Pits park. In September 2008, they even came to my office, hit me, and dislocated my right shoulder. They were trying to instigate me to react violently, but I refused to.”

A mural of Oscar Romero in San Lorenzo. Photo Credit: Steve da Silva / BASICS.

Father Hernan drew out the irony and hypocrisy of the attacks on his church’s concern with the poor and their social struggles: “I’ve been meditating over how during this time of Lent [the season of penance and prayer leading into Easter], I might receive even more letters like this [death threats] as I prepare mass for Jesus Christ, because he was really far stronger than Monsignor Oscar Romero and many other martyrs and prophets in the world. His actions, his life, his decisions were always with the poor people.”

BASICS asked Father Hernan if he’s seen any of this opposition or resistance to the church’s pro-poor messaging and its socialist sympathies from within his own parish: “This is from outside.  This parish knows what kind of theology we have. We don’t practice the theology of the conquerors. We follow the theology of the historical Jesus Christ, a man who gave his life for equal rights, a man who was fighting the Roman Empire.

“Jesus Christ was not a person who was faking his spirituality in his life. He was a wonderful human being with a pure and transparent identity, to rehumanize the world he was living in at the time in Nazareth and Galilee.”

Image to the left of Juan Montoya (Credit: Chris Arsenault/Al Jazeera). Image to the right is a poster for Montoya from some years ago that reads “For the complete freedom of Juan Montoya – “Juancho” – He’s not a terrorist, he’s a revolutionary” at a time Montoya was being persecuted by the Venezuelan government. Indeed, the Bolivarian government has had moments of strained relations with the independent armed organizations in the barrios that long precede Chavez coming to power.

BASICS correspondent and San Lorenzo parishioner Pablo Vivanco was also in attendance at the March 9 mass for Chávez, which brought out a single anti-Chávez protestor.

“One individual brought out a placard in the mass that stated something to the effect of honoring the ‘student martyrs’ in Venezuela,” Vivanco commented.

“Of course, the names he had on there (some of them incorrectly spelled) were of Chavistas and others killed by the violent opposition in Venezuela. One of the names this individual was hailing as a ‘martyr’ was Juan Montoya [killed in mid February], who was actually a prominent member the Tupamaros.”

The Tupamaros is a decades-old leftist guerrilla organization with a strong base in some of Caracas’ poor neighbourhoods that has been supportive but independent of the Venezuelan government.

“So it’s entirely disingenuous to claim Montoya’s death for the opposition cause, and equally dishonest to not acknowledge that the vast majority of people who have been killed in the last month are the result of the opposition and their actions,” a fact of the reality in Venezuela that is being assiduously documented by independent researchers.

An image from the March 9 mass.

“But the right wing sectors in the community unfortunately do not have this sort of tolerance,” Vivanco elaborated. “This isn’t the first time that threats have been issued against Father Hernan for his principled stances. What’s more concerning is that the violent right wing opposition in Venezuela is killing people and has also attacked media and journalists, so who knows if those allied with the opposition in Venezuela will try something like that here.”

In 2010, Father Hernan Astudillo visited Venezuela to learn about the vast expansion of popular media projects in the country and to deliver the community-generated funds to victims of landslides.

From his own experiences in the country, Father Hernan shared with BASICS his view that: “The opposition in Venezuela is fighting not because they want to help the poor people, but because they want Venezuela’s oil wealth to themselves.  They are not fighting because they want to help the poor people, like President Hugo Chavez did. That finally poor people have hope is beautiful.“

The evidence of the threats against San Lorenzo and Hernan Astudillo are now in the hands of Toronto Police Services. BASICS contacted 13 Division’s Criminal Investigations Bureau on the morning of March 19, but the assigned detectives were not available at the time of publication for comment.

With the legitimacy that the Canadian government has given to the violent opposition and the blame for violence that is has misattributed to the Venezuelan government, we shall see if the threats against San Lorenzo will be treated with the same severity that such threats would be met with if they threatened a corporate leader or a Canadian politician. Updates on this investigation will be made here.

The Jesus represented here in a mural at the front of San Lorenzo reflects liberation theology’s view of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, a stark contrast with the Jesus brought by the “the conquerors” Jesus. Photo Credit: Steve da Silva / BASICS

EARLY YEARS

O: I was born in El Salvador. My parents migrated here.  I didn’t speak the language at all as a youngster, and I remember I was about 7 years old.  You definitely feel outcasted. I remember feeling that the only people that really knew me and the only place where I felt safe was at home amongst my family. I would go to the classrooms.  Kids would laugh at me.

R: The first school I went to, there was no ESL program at that school. There was one Latina.  Actually she was from Spain, she wasn’t Latina, and she refused to speak to me.  I remember very clearly that she said she would be considered low class if she was to speak Spanish to me.

RACISM

O: There was one particular incident where there were these two girls that were speaking and they were talking about my skin colour. Something along the lines that “We shouldn’t judge him because of his skin colour, like it’s not his fault.”  And I was like “Really? Like why is that even a problem?” I didn’t even know that that was an issue.

R: I remember being picked on a lot. People would come to me and sing Daddy Yankee songs, like that was cool or that I would feel at home or something, and people bullying me.  It was very hostile. A lot of people tried to fight me and I didn’t really know why.

At one point, I went to Mexico to celebrate Christmas. And so when I came back, the teacher had a set-up with chunks of desks, like she had four here, four there, whatever. And when I came back, my desk was at the corner closest to the door. And everyone else’s was at the opposite corner, packed away from me. And so when I walk into the classroom the teacher says to me, “Look, we just really feel you shouldn’t be here, because you’re Mexican and we don’t want to catch swine flu. And so we wanna ask you not to come back to school.”  I got completely bullied.  I was harassed.  People wrote this on my Facebook and made videos about it.

SCHOOL

R: I got kicked out of the school because, well, I was in a classroom and the priest walked in and he started to ask people the commandments. And so I didn’t know them in English and so he threw a set of keys at me. And I picked them up and I walked to him and I gave them back to him in his hand. I mean, he was a priest and I was just coming from Mexico. And so he once more asks me for a commandment which I don’t know how to say. And so he throws the keys at me for the second time, and I pick up the keys and I throw them at him. And so I was like arrested [sic] by a teacher, and they took me to the office and they were just screaming at me.  Like I understood what they were saying.  They were saying I was stupid or I was gonna burn in hell, that Mexicans were violent, that it was all because I was Mexican. That Mexican people were horrible.

Then I arrived at Downsview which is where I completed my high school. There was a lot more Latinos at Downsview and things were a lot more enjoyable in the sense of students. I remember at one point we had a group of like 30 friends and we would help each other out. But as soon as I got there I was told by the principal that I would never be able to go to university, and that I would never achieve to graduate high school, because I would never be able to pass Grade 12 English.

And I was bashed out of many classrooms by teachers because I was called a communist, simply because I wanted to speak about things. I remember one time, this teacher wanted to give us a lot of homework for Thanksgiving. And I said to him, “No, this is a holiday.” And he started to argue to me and I said, “Look, this is not a dictatorship.  You’re not an ultimate power. You are in a sense elected by somebody and if we all work as a collective and decide to walk out on you, you will be fired.” And he bashed me out of the classroom.  He called me very nasty things and started to relate me to a lot of nasty characters in Latin American history. He started saying “Oh, don’t call Pablo Escobar on me,” and stupid things like that.

O: I remember this one professor, he was white, but I remember one of the first slides.  He showed a little caricature, and he said, “Oh its scientifically been proven that those students that wear hats backwards, there is a correlation with lower grades.” So I purposely would bring in a cap.  I wouldn’t always put it on backwards, but I would always bring it in, as a form of resistance. And you know, that’s bigotry right to the end because it’s based on absolutely nothing, and yet you’re claiming it to be scientific evidence, as a professor.  I don’t know if he was joking but even if he was, like who jokes around about that? Why, out of everything, pick that? And I think that’s definitely targeting racialized groups. They don’t understand the culture that it even comes out of.

R: I was incarcerated [sic] by a principal. It was in high school and the teacher said we could do whatever we felt like doing, but our teacher had written on the board that we had to do a shitload of work, like a crazy amount of work. He had been absent and he hadn’t taught any of the material he wanted us to do, and so I was like “Wait a second, this guy never comes to class, never teaches the material and expects us to perform like a super student.” And so I said to the students “Look, if we all walk out of this classroom, the teacher can’t fail us all. If all of us get up and walk out right now, he’s screwed.” And so, we all got up… Well it took some convincing, took me a little more convincing. And so we all got up and started walking out, and the principal grabs me. Grabs me by the shoulders and yells, “Everybody get back into the classroom!” Everybody gets freaked out.  Everybody started heading back in.  And he says, “You’re coming to the office with me!” By the way, that class was very crucial to me.  That was Grade 12 English and if I didn’t pass I wouldn’t graduate. And so he took me to the office and made me sit in a corner of his sketchy office. And so I said, “No, I’m an adult.  You’re not gonna treat me like this.  You’re not gonna segregate me, you’re not gonna outcast me because I was speaking about my rights.”  And he was literally like, “Shut up, I don’t wanna hear you, go in your corner.”  And so he locked the door and locked me in. And he left me in that office for two hours, just sitting there. And I remember kicking the doors and getting angry and screaming.  I started writing step by step how I was segregated, and comparing it to acts of genocide which have happened in our society.  Like I was locked in an office as a student for fighting for my rights! And I drafted this to the director of education. He looked at the paper and said, “Oh yeah, this is a good principal, don’t worry about it.”

At one point in my life, I was like, “Fuck this.  These guys are all racist.  I’m never gonna win against them.  There’s no one like me.  I’m a nobody.  I’m not gonna go to university,” and I started believing it. And it’s really hard without teacher support, it’s really hard as a student. And it’s quite frustrating because you don’t have control over them. If a teacher wants to be racist to you, he will be racist to you. And to know that you can’t do anything about it, that you report it to the Director of Education and he does nothing about it. It’s frustrating.  It’s heartbreaking.

You don’t feel like you belong in the school, all your teachers are white, and they talk about white behavior, and they’re all racist towards you, and it’s like well, what am I? A fucking alien? Am I the weird one? We talk about why there is so much violence in youth, why there is so much anger…fuck, what do you think this frustration builds to?

GENDER

O: I feel like a lot of times we have to resort to those things [violence], or fit into the stereotype that was being projected onto me. As a young Latin American male, you’re like cholo, gangster, like you have to do that. You have to be a drug dealer, beat people up, treat women like shit, be a scumbag, machista.  Even with all the bullshit that we have to go through, I imagine it’s much, much more difficult for a Latina.

R: My girlfriend was told to take parenting classes five times because she was told by a guidance counselor that all she needed to do was go to university to find a husband. And that once she found a husband that what she would do for the rest of her life was be a mom, so she might as well take a lot of parenting courses. And so it took her two extra years to graduate high school because of that, because the courses she was supposed to take were not given to her because she didn’t need to be smart. All she needed was to find a good husband, so she was given almost a semester and a half of the same subject.  Just because she was Latina.

LATINO COMMUNITY

R: There was definitely a lot of pride in the land where we came from and I never wanted to turn my back on mi gente and my community. I was blown away by the lack of community that I experienced here. Coming from a little colonia back home, it was all like one family and that was something that I lost.  Every time you try to explain to people who we are as Latin Americans, we aren’t listened to.  Like I feel that we are a minority and not even recognized…things like the constant need to remind people that we’re not Spanish but Latin American, and the constant need to remind people that we’re not all Mexican.  We’re not all the same.  It’s important for us to come together; I remember one of the chants in El Salvador that is used all over Latin America. “El Pueblo unido jamás será vencido” [The people, united, will never be defeated] and I truly believe that.