Civic Engagement Test 2

• True.

• This legacy of racism in Windsor and Canada more broadly is felt today in our attitudes, actions, institutions, and social structures.

True or False: Canada is a nation founded on the principles of European colonialism.

The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

What is ‘colonialism’?

• The concept of settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population. (law.cornell.edu)

• In settler colonial societies (Canada, Australia, United States, New Zealand, South Africa etc.), nations declared independence, but left structures of white supremacy in place.

What is ‘settler colonialism’?

In classical colonial societies, independence was declared which put the colonized in power BUT, direct colonial rule was replaced by the rule of capital (global trade, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, trade agreements, etc)

What is ‘classical colonialism’?

• True.

• It’s whole design was based on the assumption that white Europeans were superior and therefore had the right to take land, resources, and people from other established societies for the gain of their “homeland.”

• It cannot exist and has never existed without the pretext of racial domination. The Global North--through slavery, extraction of resources, and ownership of land—built up an incredible advantage over the Global South. This advantage continues to inform global politics to this day.

• Capital is created by exploitation, first and foremost, by European colonialism over non-white nations.

• You cannot tell the story of capitalism’s development without telling the story of white supremacy and racial exploitation (the great lie of neoliberalism).

True or False: European colonialism is an explicitly white supremacist project.

The late 1600s.

When was white supremacy invented as a category?

“[W]hite supremacy is like carbon monoxide: odourless and tasteless, one only truly understands its effects once they are being suffocated by it. Racism is merely white supremacy in weaponized form, inflicted by one person or group unto another, and often inflicted without malice or ill intent.”

According to Andray Domise, how is white supremacy like carbon monoxide?

• In 2013, a teenage by the name of Trayvon Martin was murdered by a neighbourhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman in Florida. Zimmerman was acquitted.

• Three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political movement called #BlackLivesMatter.

• The movement grew through 2013 & 2014 with the continued murders of black people at the hands of police.

What event kickstarted the Black Lives Matter movement?

• Black Lives Matter is a non-hierarchical, grassroots organization of activists and organizers who act directly against powerful institutions to achieve their goals.

• It started as an explicitly American movement, but BLM has chapters all over the world, including here in Canada.

  • The largest of which is Black Lives Matter Toronto – BLMTO

• “The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. Our members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

• Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”

What is the Black Lives Matter movement, and what does it aim to accomplish?

• Black Lives Matter Toronto sprung up in response to the shooting death of Andrew Loku by Toronto Police.

• BLMTO correctly points out that systemic violence against Black people exists in Canada as well. They staged direct actions against Toronto Police and politicians to protest ‘carding’ and systemic anti-Black racism.

• BLMTO is most famous for staging a sit-in at Pride Toronto to protest the marginalization of Queer Blacks within the LGBTQ+ community and the presence of armed and uniformed police at the march.

What event kickstarted the Black Lives Matter movement in Toronto?

• Boarding school set up and paid for by the Canadian government, and run by various churches.

• Nominally, these schools were set up to educate Indigenous children.

• The first official Residential Schools were established in the 1880s

• The agenda of Residential Schools went far beyond simply “educating” Indigenous children.

• They were set up to kidnap and isolate them from their homes and families and indoctrinate them into “Canadian” society.

• They were stripped of their languages, religions, and culture and forcibly inculcated in Euro-Canadian society.

• A stark example of settler colonialism continuing after national independence—Residential Schools were set up shortly after the birth of Canada as an independent nation and as the newly-minted country pushed westward toward the Pacific.

• The stated goal of Residential Schools according to the churches was to “kill the Indian in the child.”

What are Residential Schools?

• False.

• Residential Schools were born out of the idea that Canadian culture and society, as evidenced by its European roots, was the pinnacle of human achievement and therefore the “savages” of the New World must be educated and assimilated into civilization.

• Many people working with the churches and in Residential Schools truly believed they were going a great thing—God’s work—in ridding Indigenous people of their savage roots.

• This belief is how systems of domination take hold.

• But, the belief that European civilization is superior is White Supremacy.

• This belief still exists today in overt and covert ways.

True or False: Those who worked at churches and in residential schools knew that what they were doing was wrong and actively aimed to inflict harm upon indigenous children.

• 1996

• The Gordon Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.

• The Canadian Government didn’t apologize for the brutal system until 2008.

When was the last Residential School closed in Canada?

• Prime Minister John A. McDonald (a virulent racist, even for his time) commissioned journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin to study Industrial School in the United States as a means to “civilize the savages in Canada.”

• Davin’s report recommended they follow the United States’ example of “aggressive civilization” which led to public funding for the Residential School system.

• “If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions.” - Nicholas Flood Davin for the 1879 Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds

How did residential schools start?

• Residential Schools reached their zenith across the country in the late 1950s through to the mid 1980s, culminating alongside a project called the Sixties Scoop.

• The Sixties Scoops is the nickname for the government/church-led project to remove Indigenous children from their homes en masse and place them in brutal foster care systems. Along with Residential Schools, this project of handing Indigenous children over to white Christian families has been referred to as a Cultural Genocide.

What was the Sixties Scoop?

• Reservations are supposedly sovereign areas where First Nations can govern themselves, and while that does happen, reservations exist often on the worst land and extremely rural areas.

• Reservations are a form of segregation which continue to marginalize Indigenous people in extreme isolation and often extreme poverty, the likes of which we can barely imagine in the rest of Canada.

• First Nations people in Canada today are still relegated largely to reservations.

• Several reservations across Canada don’t even have potable drinking water—including one just outside of Toronto.

What are Reservations?

• Justin Trudeau has made a political career out of using Indigenous people to further his image as a “progressive.”

• In the 2015 election, he ran promising reconciliation for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people only to ignore that responsibility once he took office.

• After years of calling for a public inquiry into Indigenous rights violations in Canada by First Nations activists, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives shut the door for good in 2006 by refusing to fund and execute one.

• So, with money raised from First Nations communities across the country, an independent inquiry was established called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

• The Commission lasted from 2008 to 2015 and recommended 94 calls to action which would start the process of reconciliation between Canada and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people.

  Trudeau cynically used the TRC in his 2015 election campaign, promising to implement all 94 actions.

• Trudeau has implemented exactly 0 of them in his time in office.

How has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau treated Indigenous peoples before and after being elected into office?

• He promised during his campaign to implement all 94 Calls to Action from the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, but so far has failed to uphold even one.

• He has promised true reconciliation by upholding continuously broken treaty agreements, but has not—and in fact has broken more with his insistence on building the Trans-Mountain Pipeline—his government purchased it in order to ensure it’s completion.

• He promised to make sure that all Canadian reservations had access to clean drinking water but has not implemented a single measure to do so. The problem has gotten worse under his administration. The money his administration has promised falls short of every estimate provided to the Liberals for fixing the problem.

• He is steadfastly in favour of oil pipeline projects which break treaty agreements and violate the land rights of First Nations people.

• In January 2017, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered the Trudeau government to take immediate action on under-funding of First Nations child welfare programs, but five non-compliance orders later, they continue to break the law.

In what ways has Justin Trudeau failed Indigenous peoples?

• White privilege is the day-to-day result of living in a white supremacist society—the often subtle ways in which life becomes easier or harder based on skin colour. Like white supremacy, this is not always obvious or noticeable.

• Whiteness is normalized in society. White people are taught not to recognize white privilege—it becomes an unearned package of assets that whites can cash in at any time.

• White people are socialized to simply not see the effects race has on their life the same way men are socialized to not see the effects male privilege has on their lives.

What is ‘white privilege’?

• The lay usage of the term usually involves luck or fortune. To be privileged is to be lucky and to benefit from luck and the opportunity it affords.

• Seen as a positive outcome of happenstance.

• The lay usage of the term privilege can lead to referring to those without privilege as “less fortunate” meaning that their lot in life is out of anyone’s direct control. This obfuscates responsibility and frames acts of charity as acts of kindness from the fortunate to the less fortunate. Charity is framed as optional kindness from those who can offer it.

What is the lay usage of privilege?

• “[T]he rights, advantages, and protections enjoyed by some at the expense of and beyond the rights, advantages, and protections available to others.”

• The critical/academic usage of the term privilege suggests that it is not the product of luck or happenstance, but the outcome of advantages some groups have over others.

• Dominant groups occupy positions of power. Because of this, membership in dominant groups automatically guarantees privilege.

• Social and institutional advantages are created which benefit the already dominant in society

  • For example, the rich, whites, cis-men, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, Christians, etc.

  • Minoritized groups are “othered” against the assumed dominant position.

What is the critical usage of privilege?

• This definition of privilege allows us to see how power impacts minoritized groups or “othered” groups, but THAT DOESN’T MEAN that if you occupy one of these positions that you are a bad person taking advantage of all the things your privilege has afforded.

• Privilege, used in this critical sense, is meant to point out institutionalized forms of oppression and power. Institutionalized oppression hurts everyone, even people at the top of the arrangement (think about Teajai’s presentation).

True or False: Being in a privileged position means you are inherently a bad person.

“The advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.”

What is ‘feminism’?

• 19^th and early 20^th century

• The fight for universal suffrage—a.k.a. the right to vote.

• Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom

• Helped women gain absolute rights (voting, owning property, political candidacy)

• Was a movement of mostly wealthy white women.

What are some characteristics of first wave feminism?

• Mid-century

• The fight for cultural equality

• Ending workplace discrimination

• Pay-equity

• Equal opportunity under capitalism

• Often referred to as “Liberal Feminism”

• Again, largely a movement of mostly wealthy and middle-class white women.

What are some characteristics of second wave feminism?

• Some suggest it minimizes the complexity of feminist movements.

• Feminist discourse consists of varying perspectives under the basic notion of gender equality: liberal feminism, post-feminism, radical feminism, Black feminism, Queer feminism, etc.

• Not all of these movements are created equal. They have differing goals and differing tactics.

• Some are not “feminist” movements at all: Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), sex-worker-exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs), conservative feminists (an oxymoron).

Why do many feminist scholars reject the idea of the wave model of feminism?

• Characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity. “a monolithic society” “a monolithic worldwide movement” undiversified; not diversified. (vocabulary.com)

• “In many mainstream cultural circles, feminism is presented as a monolithic movement of bra-burning, man-hating women who do not want equal rights, but a matriarchal society where women have more right than men. This is, of course, nonsense.”

What does viewing feminism as a “monolithic movement” imply?

Argues for women to have equal rights under capitalism: in other words more women in traditional positions of power—CEOs, political leaders, etc.

What is ‘liberal feminism’?

• Recognizes that we shouldn’t be striving for more women CEOs, but the abolishment of the entire system of oppression that creates CEOs in the first place. This intertwines it with other anti-oppressive movements and with Critical Theory.

• Recognizes that patriarchal institutions are created through the privilege of dominant groups (men), and therefore must question and seek to deconstruct those institutions.

• Recognizes that feminism must be not only a movement focused on equal right for women, but it must be antiracist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist since institutions in contemporary society marginalize women through multiple forms of oppression (often called intersectional). Racism affects women more than men, capitalism affects women more than men, etc. The systems which dominate the poor and the racialized are the very same systems which oppress women.

What is ‘critical feminism’?

• Justin Trudeau proudly wears the ‘feminist’ moniker despite the fact that his government has done little to change the structural issues facing women.

• Saying nothing of his government selling arms to Saudi Arabia, a brutally fascist government with a particularly bad record regarding women, who have since used them on their own citizens and millions of people in Yemen.

• Trudeau has focused instead on a gender-equal cabinet and marching in the Pride parade—not that those things are bad. They just aren’t enough. They are merely his wearing of the identity.

• Strong and robust feminism acknowledges all interlocking forms of oppression and takes in to account issues of race, class, gender expression, and sexuality.

In what ways has Trudeau succeeded or failed in being a feminist?

• Understands that someone’s particular cultural standpoint is important in understanding the world.

• Standpoint Theory recognizes that oppressed people are in the best position to understand and deconstruct oppressive institutions.

• We are less likely to recognize the current of we are being propelled by it.

• Women and genderqueer folks live every facet of their lives existing and surviving in a patriarchal society so it is them who must lead in the critique and deconstruction of that world.

• The same principle holds for all forms of institutional inequality—race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.

• Dominant groups make and benefit from the rules—existing in the “othered” portion of the binary allows for a “bottom-up” understanding of domination.

What is ‘Standpoint Theory’?

• Also referred to as Trade Unions or Labour Unions

• An organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers.

• In other words, a union is the coming together of workers to better their working conditions and lives.

• They operate in opposition to Capital.

• An old adage from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) states: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”

What is a ‘union’?

• Once the workers vote to be in a union, the employer is required by law to negotiate in good faith and cannot fire workers for forming a union (although they do all the time in sneaky ways)

  • In Canada, any worker has the right to form a union with their fellow workers

  • Unions are organized by workers who already work in the workplace sometimes in collaboration with already existing parent unions.

• CBAs govern the structure of the relationship between workers and employers.

  • They determine pay scales, seniority, grievance processes, working conditions, safety procedures, training, and anything other interaction between the workers and the employers.

  • CBAs are typically negotiated on the union side by a democratically-elected committee and all agreements must pass a vote of the full membership in order to be ratified.

What is a ‘Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)’?

• If a union and an employer can’t come to an agreement on a CBA, either initially or after a negotiated CBA expires, they can vote to strike.

• An employer can also “lockout” a union if no agreement is met.

  • The closing of a place of business or a suspension of work by an employer. Lockouts may be used by the employer to pressure the union into agreeing to terms and conditions of employment and sign a collective bargaining agreement. (Canadian Industrial Relations Board)

• Strikes and lockouts are types of work stoppages where workers do not work and the employers operate at either part-capacity or not at all. Workers will then publicly demonstrate at or near their place of employment to publicize their struggle against the employers

What is a ‘strike’ or a ‘lockout’?

1. Closed Shop

2. Post-Entry Closed Shop

3. Open Shop

4. Agency Shop

5. Craft Union

6. Industrial Union

7. General Union

What are seven types of unions?

• A workplace where all workers must be a part of the union in order to be employed.

• In Canada, this form of unionism was ushered in by The Rand Formula.

What is a ‘closed shop union’?

• A type of closed shop where union membership is withheld until after a certain period of time

• In Canada, post-entry closed shops typically have a probationary period of 90 days.

What is a ‘post-entry closed shop union’?

• A workplace where only some workers are part of the union.

• These are only semi-legal in Canada but have been made legal in the U.S. in so-called Right-to-Work States which started to become prevalent in the early 2010s under “Tea Party Republicans.”

• In Canada, any hybridized workforce must be negotiated with the union in order to exempt certain workers from union membership.

What is an ‘open shop union’?

• A type of open shop where non-union workers must pay a fee for anything they benefit from due to the union (most commonly the collective bargaining process.)

What is an ‘agency shop union’?

• Unions organized not by workplace, but by craft (trades such as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc.)

What is a ‘craft union’?

• Unions organized not by workplace, but by industry (but not necessarily craft)

• Workers may have different jobs or specialties within the industry (Movie and tv production workers, delivery drivers, autoworkers, etc)

What is an ‘industrial union’?

• A union that organizes disparate workers across industry

• Also may organize unemployed or precariously employed workers

• The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) are a good example of this.

What is a ‘general union’?

• Unions raise the living standards of workers across the board.

  • More predictable schedules

  • Safer workplaces

  • More job security

  • Better benefits

  • More time off

  • More autonomy & democracy in the workplace

  • Union workers in Canada make an average of $5.14/hr more than non-union workers for the same work

• In Canada, union membership peaked in the early 1970s at just over 50% of all workers. By the early 1980s that number had fallen to around 40% and now that number is at about 28%

  • However, public opinion of unions have shot up in recent years as rampant inequality takes hold. It’s expected that the number of unionized workers in Canada will rise up over 30% again in the next five years.

Why are unions important?

• Non-union workers also benefit from unions through what’s known as the Union Threat Effect.

• The threat of workers joining a union scares employers into upping working conditions, benefits, and pay.

• This is especially prevalent in industries where only some employers operate a union shop

  • Purolater/UPS vs. FedEx

What is the ‘Union Threat Effect’?

• Political democracy is something that we “enjoy” here in Canada. Our right to vote and participate in the political process is limited, but not closed off.

• We by no means have perfect political democracy (see: Everything), but there is at least some.

• Capitalism, however, is an economically fascist or authoritarian system. We must work and earn a living to survive and therefore must put up with authoritarian workplaces that buy our bodies for a period of time every day for 50+ years of our lives.

• Unions are an attempt to swing this the other way and give workers some semblance of economic democracy. Unions ARE workers, they are not separate from them. They vote on nearly every aspect of their workplace and have an equal say as their fellow workers in all things (in theory).

• Full Economic Democracy however involves taking the union model one step further to workers owning the means of production themselves.

• In other words FIRE YOUR BOSS.

What is the difference between Political Democracy and Economic Democracy?

• The Haymarket Massacre (Haymarket Riot, Haymarket Affair) took place in Chicago on May 4^th, 1886.

• Workers were peacefully striking for an 8-hour work day after a worker had been killed and many more injured the day before at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company.

• Someone threw a bomb into the crowd and the ensuing gunfire from police and workers killed four workers and injured many more.

• Eight anarchists were charged and convicted, but the OVERWHELMING evidence suggested it was someone acting on behalf of the Machine Company who threw the bomb.

• This is widely considered the impetus for May Day, or the International Day of Worker Solidarity.

Describe the Haymarket Massacre.

• The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire occurred on March 25, 1911 in Manhattan, NY.

• Workers all over the industrialized world were struggling to join unions and were battling their employers for basic human rights.

• Routinely, worker uprisings were met with violence from police (state sponsored) and private security firms known as Pinkertons (privately sponsored). This violence led to the injury and death of thousands of workers in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

• The factory occupied several floors of a Manhattan building known as the Asch Building, located just off of Washington Square Park—one of the wealthiest parts of the entire country.

• Workers at the TSF were paid almost nothing (there was no minimum wage in the U.S. at the time), they were densely-packed into the building and surrounded by unsafe, unregulated conditions.

• There were about 500 workers.

• 11 to 12 hour days, six or seven days a week.

• Most of the workers were young immigrant women—some as young as 13.

Describe the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire..