It Never Really Ended

If we are brutally honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that slavery never really ended. To be sure, in the United States, Black people were released from official bondage with Emancipation, and countries today have no official slavery provisions. Nonetheless, it should be clear to all with critical faculties that the exploitation of our fellow humans has never ended. 

One of enslavement's contemporary forms is what we might call wage slavery, where workers who are responsible for some pretty hefty corporate profits are given, in their view, mere orts from the table for their labour. And one group is saying they want not crumbs. but an actual meal at the table.

As the strike by Metro grocery workers continued for a second day, experts said the job action is part of a larger trend of lower-wage earners pushing back against employers for better pay in industries that have in recent years seen massive gains in profits.

“This is the revenge of the wage earner,” David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told the Star on Sunday. “The first couple years of big increases in prices flowed into corporate profits, and workers were behind the 8-ball over that entire period.

Given record profits and soaring food costs, the workers' argument is hard to refute.

“This is the revenge of the wage earner,” David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told the Star on Sunday. “The first couple years of big increases in prices flowed into corporate profits, and workers were behind the 8-ball over that entire period.

In the second quarter of this year, Metro earned $218.8 million, a 10 per cent rise from the same period a year prior. Metro also saw its sales grow to $4.55 billion in the quarter, a 6.6 per cent rise year over year.

Such profits make it hard for companies to plead poverty, and with the common perception from the public that they are getting gouged each time they enter a grocery store, sympathy for the worker should be high. Indeed, the striking Metro workers are acting on behalf of the entire food industry.

Metro is the first major grocery retailer to negotiate with Unifor during this bargaining cycle, setting a benchmark for other upcoming negotiations.

Those negotiations, conducted by Unifor, will be coming at a furious pace, with Sobey's, No Frills and others imminent. 

Union leadership identified six core priorities for the upcoming cycle of negotiations, including significant pay improvements that reflect recent record-profits, greater access to health benefits, the elimination of pay disparities between workers, more full-time jobs and job protections for workers affected by tech change, among others.

Unless we live entirely selfish and blinkered lives, it is hard to imagine anyone, other than the corporate entities, taking exception to such expectations.

History's Judgement

If you don't know the tragic story of Emmett Till, you can click here to read something I posted about him a few years back. It is the kind of history that Ron DeSantis doesn't want Florida students to know about, as I noted in a recent post.

Fortunately, Joe Biden's administration is making it harder to forget the ugliness of American racism.

President Biden on Tuesday will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager who was abducted and killed by white supremacists in 1955, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who helped galvanize the civil rights movement by bravely displaying her child’s brutalized body for the world to see.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will span three protected sites in Illinois, where Emmett was born 82 years ago, and in Mississippi, where he was killed at the age of 14 after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

The monument stands as a sharp rebuke to those who would have Americans forget or ignore their innate racism. 

Since Mr. Biden took office, more than 40 states have introduced or passed laws or taken other measures to restrict how issues of race and racism are taught, according to Education Week.  

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, referenced Florida’s new standards on Monday, saying the Till monument was arriving “at an important moment.”

“Let’s not forget what we’ve seen these past several months, as we’ve witnessed extreme officials in Florida and across the country lie about American history — the most recent example shamefully, shamefully promoting a lie that enslaved people actually benefited from slavery,” she said. “It’s inaccurate, insulting. It’s hurtful and prevents an honest account of our nation’s history.”

This isn't the first time the White House has invoked the memory of Till's horrific murder. 

During a White House screening of the movie “Till” in February, Mr. Biden told the crowd that he chose the movie because “history matters.”

“To remember history is to shine a light on the good, the bad, the truth and who we are as a nation,” he said at the screening. “And our history shows that while darkness and denialism hide very much, they erase nothing. They can’t erase the past, and they shouldn’t.”

He also said that signing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime, in March 2022, was “one of the great honors of my career.” 

Despite what some would have people believe, history matters, and it renders judgements. To revise and pervert that history, as so many in the U.S. seem intent on doing, is yet another stark illustration of the ongoing systemic racism that continues to cripple and diminish that nation in the eyes of the world. 

If you would like to know more about the monument and Emmett Till's fate, go to the 17:50 minute mark of the following:

 

Driving The Point Home

 If you don't get this, please see my previous post.

UPDATED: Who Needs Reparations?

According to the 'new' history to be taught in Florida, it may be African Americans who owe white America reparations, given the 'benefits' that slavery conferred upon them.

Sound ludicrous? Not in Ron DeSantis's world.

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers' union as a “step backward.”

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.

I can't help but wonder if working endless days under a hot sun with no pay might have been one of those skills. Or perhaps the liberal application of the lash was an extended character-building exercise meted out generously by selfless plantation masters? Revisionist history offers a myriad of possibilities.

And lest we forget, the race massacres were apparently a two-way street:

Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.

 That language says, “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”

 The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers’ union representing about 150,000 teachers, called the new standards “a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”

The union said it is troubling that at the high school level, the standards conflate the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, when at least 30 African Americans were killed for attempting to vote, with “acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans.” And in middle school, the standards require students be taught slavery was beneficial to African Americans because it helped them develop skills, the union said.

Ron DeSantis, the architect of these changes that prove everything Orwell warned us about, is frequently quoted as saying "Florida is where woke goes to die." Anyone with even a modicum of critical intelligence, I'm certain, would prefer to be 'woke' rather than imprisoned in a dystopian dreamscape fueled by the distortions of Florida's Ministry of Truth. 

UPDATE: Can Ron DeSantis explain how being enslaved was beneficial to Celia?

In 1850, a fourteen-year-old girl in Missouri named Celia was purchased by enslaver, Robert Newsom. Over the course of five years, he repeatedly raped her. On June 23, 1855 while pregnant with her second child, Celia defended herself against more abuse, resulting in the death of her enslaver and rapist. During Celia’s trial, Newsom’s grandson William Powell testified. Powell testified that Celia had complained that Newsom repeatedly demanded sex and that she had approached other Newsom family members in a vain attempt to stop the rapes.  Powell also admitted that Celia told him that her attack on Newsom came from desperation and that she only intended to injure, not kill. Celia was found guilty. An appeal was filed. The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately ruled against her appeal. On December 21, 1855 at 2:30 P.M., the state of Missouri murdered Celia on the gallows. Are we going to teach children this history? Or are we going to continue to whitewash history because it makes some people uncomfortable?

H/t Calés McGinnis 

 

Meanwhile, In The Land Of Corrupt Backroom Deals

 

H/t Patrick Corrigan

I'm sure that Premier Ford hopes no one is monitoring his ongoing corruption and his destruction of much-needed Greenbelt land. Star readers puncture that illusion.

Ford on defensive over probe

Doug Ford criticizes auditor general over Greenbelt investigation, July 13

Dear Doug Ford, please don’t mistake the electorate’s lack of attention for stupidity. As you very well know, many people are apathetic and do not pay attention to politics. However, we Ontarians are not stupid when confronted with the facts concerning your developer friends benefitting from your decision to open up the Greenbelt. People are well aware that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and, in this case, smells like a duck, it most certainly is a duck. All your “friends and folks” rhetoric changes nothing and only reinforces the mistrust that we have for you and your buddies.

Dave Ottenbrite, Cambridge

 As Ontario’s auditor general continues her “value-for-money” audit into the Progressive Conservative government’s decision to open up 7,400 acres of the Greenbelt, let’s remember: Premier Doug Ford’s developer buddies benefited from the Greenbelt land swap. Now, Michael Rice and Silvio De Gasperis are going to court separately in the hope of not having to testify under oath and providing the additional records the auditor general wants. If everything is so squeaky clean, why are Ford’s buddies going to court? This is only the tip of the iceberg. The full story must be allowed to come out.

 

 Al Yolles, Toronto

 Ford says he hopes to collaborate with mayor, July 13

So, Premier Doug Ford expects Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow to collaborate with him. With whom did Ford collaborate when he reduced the size of Toronto’s council? With whom did Ford collaborate when he changed the Greenbelt boundaries? With whom did Ford collaborate regarding Highway 413? With whom did Ford collaborate when he decided to move the science centre? With whom did Ford collaborate when he awarded the spa contract on Ontario Place grounds? With whom did Ford collaborate with when . . . Ford wants others to collaborate with him but when it is time for him to collaborate with others, there appears to be a barrier.

Ed Saliwonchyk, Owen Sound

Doug Ford's legacy of selling out Ontarians will never be forgotten. 

 

Straight-Pride Guy's Disappointment

 As Kermit the Frog said, it's not easy being green.

H/t Dean Blundell

Things Ron DeSantis Doesn't Want People To Know

JAMES BALDWIN addresses the University Of Cambridge during his epochal debate with William F. Buckley in 1965.

Oratory and content of the very highest order. To listen is to learn.

H/t Michael Warburton

Keeping both Black and white people ignorant of their history is the main strategy of the Florida governor. God help the Americans if he becomes their president.

UPDATED: Just A Victim Of Circumstances?

Fate can be cruel. It is not unheard of to be going about, minding one's own business, when a person of unknown provenance accosts you and demands a photo with you. Results of such encounters can vary.

There was, one may recall, an incident in 2002 when the Mayor of Toronto shook hands with a member of The Hell's Angels.

Mel faced some criticism for that encounter, but claimed he had no idea that the outlaw biker gang dealt in drugs, guns, and violence.

Just a victim of circumstances.

No serendipity was involved in the disgusting picture of former PM Stephen Harper shaking hands with quasi-dictator Viktor Orban of Hungary. For this, he made no apologies, and at least owned up to the fact that the handshake was intentional as he advocates closer ties with him.

But the case of Pierre Poilievre, or, as I like to call him, PP, is a whole other category. Photographic misfortune stalks him. One remembers the time he posed with Jeremy Mackenzie, founder of the Diagolon group, during the former's leadership campaign.

PP's explanation:

“Over the course of my campaign I have shaken hands with literally tens of thousands of people at public rallies. It is impossible to do a background check on every single person who attends my events,” Poilievre’s campaign team said in response to Global News’ request for comment on Aug. 20.

“As I always have, I denounce racism and anyone who spreads it. I didn’t and don’t know or recognize this particular individual.”

And now that the prime ministerial aspirant has doffed his glasses and donned makeup, his photographic presence is in even greater demand:

But again, poor PP is just a victim of unfortunate circumstances:

A spokesman for Pierre Poilievre said Mondaythe federal Conservative leader does not agree with the message of “straight pride,” after he was photographed with a man wearing a T-shirt bearing those words.

Sebastian Skamski said Poilievre had been posing with “hundreds of people” at the Calgary Stampede on Saturday when he was photographed with an individual “without reading what was written on his shirt.”

The bright green T-shirt featured the symbols for men and women that are often posted to the doors of public restrooms.

It said, “Thank a straight person today for your existence,” in black capital letters, with “straight pride” written at the bottom.

Skamski said that “Poilievre does not agree with the message displayed on the T-shirt,” adding that Conservatives are working to build a country where everyone is free to be themselves, “regardless of their sexual orientation.”

PP's lapses are alarming to some; however, I suspect they are very loud dog whistles to others. 

Circumstances, fate, or character revelation? You decide.

UPDATE: Dean Blundell has his interpretation that aligns with mine. 

 

Atticus Said It Best

 

Interestingly, that is exactly what Marlon Brando was talking about in 1972, when he refused the Oscar for Best Actor (The Godfather). He was opposing the portrayal of Native Americans on the screen. To make his point, he sent his refusal via Sacheen Littlefeather. As I recall, she was met with hoots of derision from the Academy attendees.

The following interview with Brando explains more fully what he was hoping to emphasize in his refusal.

Amazing how little the non-cinematic world has learned over the 50 years since this interview.

about his larger lesson here 

Are You Listening, Mr. DeSantis?

Of course you aren't.

H/t Michael Warburton

Political Theatre Writ Large

                                      

For those unfamiliar with the death of Chuckles the Clown on the Mary Tyler Show, please click here. The episode ranks as one of the funniest in television history, its dark absurdity eliciting laughter that some would deem inappropriate.

I chose the above as my graphic because I am so often these days thinking of the absurdity of political theatre - you know, the type that happens when government tries to convince the electorate that it is serious about flexing its muscle in the face of corporate power. Such enactments are designed to divert our attention away from the fact that corporations control our governments. 

The theatre currently on offer is called Standing Up To The Tech Giants. The scenario goes like this: the Canadian government, in order to protect our sovereignty and our democracy, is demanding that Meta and Google pay news organizations for the content showcased by their respective algorithms. Thanks to the resistance put up by both entities, the government is pulling ads from Meta and Instagram, which are now refusing to carry Canadian news on their sites; Google will face similar consequences when it stops showcasing Canadian news. Personally, it means nothing to me that those two will no longer be sites where I can find links to news; I read several newspapers, one print and two digital, because I abhor living in ignorance or a restricted worldview. 

Is the Canadian response a blow struck in defence of democracy and sovereignty? Maybe, but our leaders lack any real appetite to tackle the corporations that exert even more influence/control over our lives. One example, of which I have previously written, is the Rogers-Shaw merger. Despite the protracted spectacle of that theatre, the merger was, as I always knew it would be, ultimately granted. The fact that the feds want to protect and cosset such a cellphone quasi-monopoly is reflected in the fact that they refuse to allow foreign competition into the field. 

And what about the toothless Parliamentary inquiry into grocery prices in Canada? You know, the one where executives thumbed their noses at our representatives.

The sorriest part of the Competition Bureau’s just-released market report on grocery competition in Canada is not its obvious conclusion — we need more competition in the sector — but the lack of disclosure reported by the grocery giants.

We recall the parliamentary hearings this past spring when MPs pushed grocery executives for granular financial data on food profits, essential to validating, or disputing, the “greedflation” charge levelled against retailers as grocery prices rose and rose and rose.

And we recall the high degree of corporate pushback from executives appearing before those hearings who declined to air their profit margins, specifically on food, in the public realm.

Now we know that despite promised confidentiality from the Competition Bureau, co-operation from the industry was mixed. To quote the report: “In many instances, the bureau was not able to obtain complete and precise financial data, despite its repeated requests.”

The government's answer is not to create legislation that would compel disclosure, nor will it entertain the NDP's suggestion about taxing grocers' windfall profits. No, its response is that we need more competition. How that can be achieved is not included in the current theatrical run.

The other response is to subsidize the grocers' excessive profits by sending out rebate checks that will do nothing to tame corporate greed but perhaps score a few political points for the governing Liberals. But even that attempt seems to be falling flat:

If you watched the entire clip, you will have noticed the corporate world's best Canadian friend, Justin Trudeau, blaming the high cost of food on the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, etc. Nary a word about corporate greed, that omission exactly what his friends in high places like and encourage.

To draw upon a cliché, the current corporate/government hybrid presiding over us is happy to treat us like mushrooms. Mushrooms are kept in the dark and fed manure. 

Just like the citizens of Canada.

Canadian Vulnerability

Were it not for the willfully stupid and ignorant, the unhinged, and the extreme in our midst, I really would be less concerned about the benighted domestic decisions the Americans make. But because of the four aforementioned blights on our Canadian landscape, I do worry that those decisions have an outsized influence on Canadian politics.

The following letters from Star readers make some pertinent points in that regard:

Americans still live under Trump

U.S. Supreme Court conservatives dash decades of abortion and affirmative action precedents, July 1

The ill-fated implosion of the Titan, due in part to a disregard for safety, is an appropriate analogy for the United States as their Supreme Court causes an implosion within the American society with their reversal of many decisions that were supportive of women, the racialized, LGBTQ+ people and the marginalized. Trump’s legacy of lunacy will live on for many years regardless of what happens to him now because he was able to politicize the Supreme Court during his presidential tenure.

Matthew Marosszeky, Aurora

It’s obvious with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that human rights are only for the few in America. If you are male, white, heterosexual and Christian, breathe freely. You have nothing to fear. Any other combination of gender identity, religion or race will make you vulnerable south of the border. The stench wafting northward from these judgments surpasses anything that is blowing south as a result of our wildfires. Canadians need to hold our values tight to make sure the same doesn’t happen here.

Julia Bowkun, Toronto

To describe the U.S. Supreme Court decision to support denying service to same-sex couples as a win for religious rights is an abomination. Religious freedom should not be a licence to promote hatred. What next? Wearing a badge indicating sexual orientation?

Diane Sullivan, Toronto

If Only The Truth Could Set Them Free

 But judging by Donald Trump's approval ratings, it does no such thing:

This is how you beat Donald Trump: 1. Destroy his brand. 2. Expose his lifetime of lies and failures 3. Humiliate him as the absolute loser that he is day after day after day after day.

A Reflection On This Canada Day

While there are many who would tell us that Canada feels broken, it is only so to those who get their news from demagogues and their ilk. There is, however, much to be reflective and humble about, and this country does a pretty solid job of cultivating both. Not for us the jingoistic flag-waving of our southern neigbours.

Perhaps we can better appreciate our own capacities by contrasting our country with the United States, which has a virtuoso ability to endlessly tear itself apart. The recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, discrimination against the LGBTQ community, and student debt relief all attest to that fact. And given that there is a very fertile environment within which their demagogues thrive, there is no relief in sight for that benighted nation. Hatred, intolerance and discrimination, paraded as patriotism, are cancers eating away at that country. Their refusal to confront their historic and current racism only ensures that the erosion continues.

By contrast, despite its many problems, Canada stands as a beacon of hope. Yes, we have an epidemic of homelessness, opiate abuse, ongoing environmental decline and governments too influenced (controlled?) by the corporate agenda. But we also have an open and generous heart collectively and individually, one that is reflected in our daily actions and government policy. We are a country that has not lost hope for something better, although that hope is often sorely tested. Our multiculturalism and our efforts at reconciliation speak to the better angels of our nature. 

In short, our faith in ourselves and others, our compassion for others, help to define us as a country. It is something we might be inclined to doubt if we listen to the outsized influence social media have conferred upon the unhinged and extreme, but if we read enough and are sufficiently self-aware, we can put those into the category and perspective they belong.

None of this should give us a sense of complacency, however; I do look at the future with trepidation and, at times, despair. That this Canada Day sees many of us staying indoors because of the 500 wildfires raging and polluting our air is cause for grave concern, and an alarming harbinger of worse to come. 

This Canada Day also sees us becoming more insular in our outlook. One has only to look at the outrage directed toward the government at Bill C-18, the implementation of which will see Google and Meta withholding Canadian news from their sites. Personally, as a newspaper reader, I am not alarmed by that threat - relying on those two giants for news is like living one's life in a dimly-lit closet. Choosing to read only a narrow range of news, something that newspapers serve to prevent, means that we live our lives in boxes, and our awareness of the world around us decreases tremendously. I am not hopeful of any great renaissance of traditional media, but I do fear the expanding umbra of ignorance that "narrowcasting" promotes.

But to end as I began, we are still a young nation that has resisted the cynicism marring many older ones. Deep down, I think we feel that there is still much potential for the betterment of ourselves and others in the country we call home. Canada, and all it represents, is a country that lights a candle instead of cursing the enveloping darkness.

HAPPY CANADA DAY.