No, I am not one of those who begrudge rich people their pleasures and pursuits. Content in my own life, I harbour no ill-will toward those who are better off than me.
I do become bothered, however, when those pursuits both distract us from, and add to, the existential crises our world faces. In that, the billionaires have much to answer for.
Take the recent 'groundbreaking' flights of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos into near-space and the breathless reporting that followed it.
Start at the 9:40 mark of the following to catch Stephanie Ruhle's breathless, (star struck?) interview with the Bezos boys:
Similar gushing interlocutions can be found online following Branson's Virgin Galactic foray, but I hope the above serves to illustrate that this kind of gushing, lionizing coverage serves merely as a bread-and-circuses diversion away from the many problems we face in our terrestrial sphere.
Now, were you to watch earlier in this broadcast, you would hear how Bezos also talks about seeing our planet from above and how fragile it really is. He opines we must do everything we can to protect our world, as if his space trip offered a transcendent experience.
And Branson, after his trip, said he wants to spend the rest of his life helping to solve our many problems here.
Apparently, those problems do not include our biggest threat, climate change.
Despite these intrepid innovators' claim that the greenhouse gas emissions from their excursions are no different from those from a jet flight, the truth is otherwise. First of all, both of their business models call for more and more of these inner-space trips, and as they scale up, the price will come down, making them more accessible to more people. Hence, more trips, more greenhouse gas emissions.
Secondly, the nature of these emissions is different from jet trips. Katherine Gammon explains:
Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London... studies the impact of fuels and industries on the atmosphere.
The carbon emissions from rockets are small compared with the aircraft industry, she says. But they are increasing at nearly 5.6% a year, and Marais has been running a simulation for a decade, to figure out at what point will they compete with traditional sources we are familiar with.
“For one long-haul plane flight it’s one to three tons of carbon dioxide [per passenger],” says Marais. For one rocket launch it’s 200-300 tonnes of carbon dioxide carrying 4 or so passengers – close on two orders of magnitude more, according to Marais. “So it doesn’t need to grow that much more to compete with other sources.”
But the problem is more than simply the amount of carbon spewed, because
emissions from rockets are emitted right into the upper atmosphere, which means they stay there for a long time: two to three years. Even water injected into the upper atmosphere – where it can form clouds – can have warming impacts, says Marais. “Even something as seemingly innocuous as water can have an impact.”
Closer to the ground, all fuels emit huge amounts of heat, which can add ozone to the troposphere, where it acts like a greenhouse gas and retains heat. In addition to carbon dioxide, fuels like kerosene and methane also produce soot. And in the upper atmosphere, the ozone layer can be destroyed by the combination of elements from burning fuels.
When I was a boy, I imagined a future of endless possibilities. Each liftoff of the Mercury and Apollo missions served only to whet that imagination. But I grew up and saw an increasingly fractured world with no simple remedies.
Perhaps it is now time for these 'boys of space' to do a bit of growing up as well.
As a long-time visitor to Cuba, I have an ongoing interest in what happens in the island nation, as well as a deep respect for the resilience of its people. Despite having been exploited for centuries by outside powers, they have always found a way to work with the limited resources they have.
Cases in point: for years they have had a vaccine to treat lung cancer. They have also developed what seem to be effective vaccines against COVID-19. They provide free health care for all of their citizens, along with free education, up to and including university.
All of these feats, and many more, have been accomplished despite the crippling U.S.-imposed embargo that has been ongoing since 1962.
Despite that, U.S. news coverage has been focusing upon the large-scale demonstrations currently taking place in Cuba, protests prompted by food and medicine shortages. Most coverage is framed as an uprising against the government. The real culprit? The United States' intractable animus toward the Communist island.
The following demonstrates the bias in reporting:
I'm afraid Mr. Biden's expressions of solidarity with the Cuban people ring both hollow and hypocritical. The United States has the power to relieve their suffering but clings to the long-cherished fever dream of an overthrow of the government, one that would be replaced by a government just like theirs. (After all, who wouldn't want to be like the greatest nation the world has ever known?)
There is much more to be said on this topic, but I will leave you with the thoughts of a Star letter-writer from today's print edition who puts the blame squarely where it belongs:
Use of Miami Herald piece misrepresents reality in Cuba
Toronto Star
Re Thousands demand end of dictatorship in Cuba, July 12 With its source being the Miami Herald, the Star reports that “thousands demand end of dictatorship in Cuba,” although some sources put the number of protesters as “hundreds.”
Cuba’s population is estimated at 11,320,000 and I am certain that 99 per cent of Cubans see the U.S. stranglehold on them as more concerning than any other aspect of their difficult lives.
This past June 23, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
This same resolution has passed the General Assembly every year from 1992 to 2021, that is for 29 years. This year, the vote was 184 in favour, two against (the U.S. and Israel).
A comprehensive economic embargo against Cuba was put in place way back in 1962 by the U.S. after its embarrassing defeat at the Bay of Pigs. It has remained in place. That followed the 1960 cancellation by the U.S. of the annual purchase of six million tons of sugar from Cuba.
It is not “chronic inefficiencies and paralyzing bureaucracy” that have eroded the country’s production capacity. Any country in the world, such as Canada, subject to an economic blockade by the United States for 59 years would be “in the throes of its worst economic contraction in over three decades” and suffering a plunge in foreign investment.
Why can the Toronto Star and Canada in general not recognize a huge bully gone berserk as he endlessly beats up the little kid who bested him in a game a long time ago in front of the other kids? This is no game. Millions of Cuban children and seniors are the victims as the U.S. collapses their world out of spite, while insisting it is acting on their behalf.
This letter-writer in today's print edition of The Toronto Star states what is ultimately a sad truth about us.
Canadians unwilling to make sacrifices for climate change
Toronto Star
Re Western Canada’s heat dome may be Ontario bound.
A climate expert explains what’s next, June 29
The sad fact is that Canadians, like most of the world, will not take any responsibility for climate change if it infringes upon their daily life.
How many Canadians are willing to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks or pressure their government to ban the building of large, single-detached homes and outlet malls that contribute to global warming and eat up our precious resources?
We may moan and groan about billions of baked clams, but that’s about it. We are a consumerist society and we aren’t willing to change. The world will get hotter and we’ll shrug our shoulders. In the end, our children and grandchildren will be left holding the bag.
When I was a young lad on the receiving end of a Catholic education, we had two regularly-recurring rituals. Once a month we would be led over to the parish church to go to Confession. While sitting in the pews awaiting our turn, we would pore over a booklet called The Examination of Conscience.
Designed to help Catholics make a 'good Confession', the booklet went over various types and classifications of sins (some of which were a bit beyond youngsters, e.g., Have you ever been a member of a secret society? Have you had impure thoughts about your neigbour's wife?).
After thinking long and hard about our misdeeds, we went into the confessional, where we told our tales of iniquity and were granted absolution by the priest, contingent upon our doing the penance he meted out. (Some priests were more severe than others, requiring part of the rosary instead of the more lenient five Hail Marys. It was always the luck of the draw for us.)
I dredge up these memories because penance has been lately on my mind, as I am sure it has been on the minds of many Canadians these days following the grim discovery, with more surely to come, of unmarked graves at former residential schools, powerful symbols of the racism perpetrated in all of our names.
Some might ask why collectively we should atone for past misdeeds that we had nothing to do with. In my mind, the answer is simple: the fallout of the abuse, neglect and deaths experienced by Indigenous peoples continues to reverberate today, a legacy of ruined lives that is reflected in the poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and fractured psyches experienced by far too many today. Generational pain is not self-limiting.
Where do we go from here? While there is obviously no simple answer, part of the solution has to be increased opportunities for Indigenous people to pursue higher education. And in that pursuit, all of us can play a part.
For the past few years I have been contributing to an organization called Inspire. Here is their mission statement:
Charity Intelligence Canada recognized Indspire with their four-star rating and named us a Top 10 Canadian Impact Charity for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and Maclean’s also selected Indspire as a 2019 and 2020 Top Rated Charity.
Vision, Mission, North Star and Core Values
Vision: Enriching Canada through Indigenous education and by inspiring achievement.
Mission: In partnership with Indigenous, private and public sector stakeholders, Indspire educates, connects and invests in Indigenous people so they will achieve their highest potential.
North Star: Within a generation, every Indigenous student will graduate.
Wringing our hands and expressing sorrow and outrage about the past are normal reactions to recent revelations, But the cliched 'thoughts and prayers' must be accompanied by concrete actions if any of us is ever to achieve any measure of penance for the past and hope for the future.
That's what Alberta's nurses are calling the move by Jason Kenney's UCP to roll back their wages by 3%.
In Kenneyland, contracts apparently are notional, not legal, documents. In 2020, a four-year contract with a 0% wage increase was signed, but Alberta Health Services, under the obvious direction of a craven, feckless premier, says they just cannot afford the wages they are currently paying.
Perhaps the government hopes nurses will take some comfort in the fact that people like Alberta's Finance Minister really do like them:
In a statement on Tuesday, Finance Minister Travis Toews commended the “invaluable role” nurses have played in the COVID-19 pandemic but noted Alberta needs to get its finances back on track.
“The need to bring wages in line with other large provinces does not diminish our deep respect for the exceptional work and dedication of public sector workers.
And that 'deep respect' was echoed by the man himself.
The premier was asked about the negotiations with the nurses’ union on Thursday. While Jason Kenney said he didn’t want to comment too much out of respect for the negotiation process, he did thank all health-care workers for their services, especially during the pandemic.
As the following report makes clear, neither the nurses nor the public are impressed by political platitudes.
If the political winds are blowing in the direction I suspect they are, after the next provincial election the United Conservative Party will have ample opportunity to reflect on and review how they do politics. Sitting on the other side of the legislature will, no doubt, be a humbling experience for them.
These days, for various reasons, it is growing increasingly difficult for us, as Canadians, to feel smug about ourselves. There are the bleak indictments in the form of unmarked graves, attacks on Muslims, and people living in fear of such attacks.
What is to be done? In my previous post, entitled How Does Canada Atone? I posted some letters to the editor, one of which struck The Mound as especially useful. He wrote,
Of the options presented by these writers I prefer bringing this to our young people through our schools. We have a lot of miserable people in this country who will resent whatever is done, much as BLM triggered pushback in the US. So, let's not leave it to parents or social media or TV. Let's take this directly to our young people because it is, no matter how dismissive some can be, an important part of our history.
I replied,
I completely agree, Mound. Unlike the U.S., where some crazed right-wingers equate teaching about slavery to teaching kids "to hate America," I think educational initiatives will not only be welcomed, but also provide a necessary antidote to national ignorance, whether willful or otherwise.
By chance, Edward Keenan, The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, wrote a very insightful piece that bears directly on this issue. The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, lays racism at the feet of the Democrats, and refuses to acknowledge that his country is racist.
“Today, the Democratic party has doubled down on this shameful history by replacing the racism of the past with the racism of critical race theory. They continue to think of race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” McCarthy said, expressing his support for removing statues of Confederate leaders from the Capitol.
“America is not a racist country,” he said. “It was wrong when it was the segregated lunch counters of Jim Crow, and it was wrong when it was the segregated classrooms of critical race theory.”
Keenan found much to fault with McCarthy's 'logic'.
[T]he academic concept of critical race theory he invoked does not teach that race is a means of judging a person’s character, and does not segregate classrooms — it is a lens for understanding racism as a set of systemic legal structures that persist in U.S. society.
However, as usual, American the right-wing media, mainly Fox, are perverting it so as to stir up even more animus than already exists in that beleaguered country.
The backlash over critical race theory may be real, fed by over 1,300 Fox News mentions in 3.5 months and leading to outraged protests at school board meetings across the country. But the concept of critical race theory being depicted in these attacks bears little relationship to the academic theory. Quickly put: critical race theory is primarily a graduate-school-level concept that has been around for about four decades and was obscure until conservative activists ramped up anger about it. Actual critical race theory basically says that racism is ingrained in U.S. society and institutions. It is not taught in elementary or high schools, or even often in undergraduate university classes.
And it sounds like the fact of systemic racism will not be taught in U.S. schools anytime soon. There has been
a wave of bills in Republican states governing what can and cannot be taught in history classes to schoolchildren and even to university students.
Teaching the history of racism in the United States as something that infected the structures of government, not just in slavery but in many other ways that persisted through much of the 20th century, and that persist today, is, they say, unfair to white children who might be taught to be ashamed. What’s more, they say it is, in the words of the Trump administration when he was in the White House, “anti-American”; unpatriotic.
In that denial comes a crucial difference in the Canadian response to revelations of racism here, as we ask
whether patriotism and celebrations of national pride can coexist with a recognition of deeply shameful episodes in a country’s history. The discovery of mass unmarked graves filled with the bodies of Indigenous children on the sites of residential schools has made vivid to many Canadians the evil that those schools represented throughout most of Canada’s history as a country — from their founding in the 1800s right up until the 1990s when the last of the institutions was closed.
Following along from Washington, I’ve seen both in news media and on social media, how reflecting on this has led to waves of people calling to cancel Canada Day celebrations this year. You don’t shoot off fireworks to celebrate your country while people are mourning the deaths of their children who were killed by your country’s government, is the gist of the sentiment I’ve seen.
The recent revelations have prompted a response of humility in the majority of Canadians. The next, absolutely necessary step is to make sure that our school curricula reflect not just the pride of Canadian accomplishments, but also the shame of widespread injustice and evil.
I believe we do have the national character to reach that step.
I have a practical suggestion to partly address the title's question, but I'll leave it for a future post. Today, some letter-writers from the print edition of the Toronto Star offer their views:
All the groups that have been victimized by threats, abuse, violence and death as a result of ignorant hate are sick and tired of hearing the false apologies. They are false because we know the politicians are pressured by the constituents to say something. They need the votes. Other groups may speak up because they feel compelled by general social actions.
But what matters is the real action taken. And there is usually no action. Some protests, some memorials, possible reparations.
The recent horrific findings of Indigenous burials is unspeakable. How these families were treated is abhorrent. The action we need is education. We need to get the education into the schools, teach all our youth from the very start. We need to develop our history lessons to include so much of this real history. English class should include reading lists that focus on books about so many of these tragedies. Every student should have to select two or three books in a term from different cultural tragedies, to read, reflect on and review.
Young people need to understand how others have been targeted and how easy it could be for anyone to be a target.
Corinne Broder, Collingwood, Ont.
We have a national monument, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to honour those who fell in battle but whose bodies were not identified or recovered.
There should be a national monument to the unknown children from the residential schools who died while attending these schools — children who were abused while living and whose bodies were so callously discarded in death.
It won’t change the past, but it will be an eternal reminder of the sacrifice imposed on their families and the children.
Greg Narbey, Toronto
Like many, I am saddened to read about Indigenous children who died in Canada’s residential school system. Fixing this failure in our history will take action, time and resolve from all Canadians.
I propose our federal legislators designate a Reconciliation Day on our calendar, like Remembrance Day observed on Nov. 11, to remember and honour those Indigenous children who perished in residential schools.
On Reconciliation Day, our nation pauses from its day-to-day functions.
Canadians come together as one inclusive people in public gatherings, to learn and show respect for Indigenous people and their time-honoured culture.
Constantine Argiropoulos, Toronto
The tragedy of the residential school system and the racism endemic in our history and culture has created enormous harm, grief, and loss to Indigenous families.
This perfidy stains our national identity and our souls.
I’d like to see a National Day, or a National Week, of mourning, to pay tribute to these children and their families. Why are flags not at half-mast?
I want to see these enormous losses, this enormous injustice, recognized, finally, in the hope that it would have some meaning for Indigenous families.
I would like to see this national acknowledgment followed quickly by meaningful government action on the promises of many years.
Like many blogs, mine is largely informed by the thoughts of others. To be sure, I try to make it my practice to shape and filter things through my own perspective and commentary, but on this Canada Day I reproduce in its entirety a piece by Gabor Mate in which he talks about confronting our deeply troubled past.
For Canadians to be truly strong and free, we must come to terms with our grim past
I was 13 in 1957 when, along with nearly 38,000 fellow Hungarians, refugees from a brutal Stalinist dictatorship, my family and I were welcomed with open arms by Canada. The North really seemed true and strong and free. What I didn’t know and what no one was speaking of was that in the same year, even as we were adjusting to life in British Columbia, not far from where I lived a 4-year-old First Nation child had a pin stuck in her tongue on her first day at residential school.
Her crime had been to speak her Native language in the classroom. For an hour this little girl could not put her tongue back in her mouth for fear of cutting her lips. Soon after, years of sexual abuse began. By age 9 the child was an alcoholic and later became dependent on opiates to soothe her pain. We met at a healing ceremony not long ago. Now a grandmother and years sober, she grieves to see her grandchildren suffer the throes of addiction. For her there was no true North, strong and free. Nor is there yet.
There is also no free North for the 30 per cent of Canada’s jail population that is of First Nations origin, six times their proportion in the general population. The nature of trauma being multi-generational, parents transmit their wounds and dysfunctions onto their children. Barring some healing, violence, illness and addictions follow. Very little in Canadian culture has encouraged the necessary collective healing, and there is much to inhibit it.
The depth of our capacity for denial is well-nigh unfathomable. The recently “discovered” makeshift graves near residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are too-perfect metaphors for the truths so many of us have buried deep out of sight, mind, and heart. I use quote marks because such atrocities have long been well-known lore in Indigenous communities and etched in the historical record.
In a recent survey two thirds of Canadians owned that they knew little or nothing about the residential schools. This bespeaks not individual ill will, deliberate unawareness, or necessarily, bigotry, but systemic and structural denial on a vast scale. Any colonial system must continue to obscure he history of the Indigenous people whose people it murdered, whose culture it nearly extirpated and whose lands and resources it continues to crave. Hence the litany of broken promises to our First Nations by politicians of all hues. We have apologized to our Japanese citizens for depriving them of their property during World War II, a case of legalized larceny; but though we have apologized, too, for the residential school system, we have not yet begun to acknowledge the despoliation of Native resources because we have not yet stopped practicing it.
Emotionally, it is difficult for human beings, individually and even more so in groups, to have their cherished identities questioned. Facing the brutal realities of our history challenges mainstream Canadian self-concepts of kindness, fairness, and humanity. It can feel threatening to open oneself to disillusionment. Waking up to how things are may be extremely painful.
Painful, and mandatory. No society can understand itself nor collectively heal itself without looking at its shadow side. The shedding of illusions, though scary, is a move toward personal and collective healing. There are encouraging signs that the recent dreadful revelations will wake us up to what we, as a country, have wrought. It’s not a matter of guilt but of responsibility to ourselves, to one another, and to the generations to follow. If we are to have meaningful Canada Days in the future we have to come to terms with our past, and with its ongoing resonances in the present in the form of institutional racism in all aspects of society, from the educational system to policing, from health care through the legal apparatus to the realms of economy and politics.
The freshly identified graves of little innocents can jog us into the genuine strength and freedom that honesty bestows and healing demands. We face the challenge and the opportunity of building a North strong enough to face what’s true, and freer for it. We will be amazed, too, when we open ourselves to being informed by the transformative power of the wisdom traditions, healing practices, Earth consciousness and cultural resilience that helped First Nations peoples survive and surmount the unspeakable.
Unless you have been living under a rock (or more likely, the cool of your basement), you will know about the weather catastrophe occurring in the West, and, to a slightly lesser degree, in the East. People are dying at an unprecedented rate from the heat, and it is only going to get worse. As well, infrastructure that was built to cooler Canadian standards is buckling.
None of this bodes well for our future. To get a real sense of how dire things are, I would suggest you watch the following video from the beginning. If pressed for time, start at the five-minute mark and watch the two reports that ensue.
At this late stage of things, the only real hope we have is in fortifying our infrastructure from the horrors to come, as the second of the two reports makes clear.
Now that the internet has made everybody experts on everything, just a small, sobering reminder: expertise and critical thinking are not things you readily acquire.
I was reading Owen's blog yesterday, in which he cites Robin Sears' view that, as Britain did during WW11, Canada needs to build back better post-pandemic.
I am a skeptic as to the prospects of that happening. Here is the comment I made:
What I notice most about our current federal government, Owen, is their almost endless capacity for saying the right things, but the enacting of these aspirations seems mired in inertia. Any chance of 'building back better' would surely require a change in the taxation regime, but I don't hold my breath about that one. I read recently, for example, that despite large infusions of cash, the CRA has not prosecuted even one large tax evader, although they have called in a couple of them for 'a good talking to.'
I went back to the article and decided it merits further examination. It offers a devastating indictment, not only of the agency, but, implicitly, the government ethos it is reflecting.
Data from the Canada Revenue Agency shows its recent efforts to combat tax evasion by the super-rich have resulted in zero prosecutions or convictions.
In response to a question tabled in Parliament by NDP MP Matthew Green, the CRA said it referred 44 cases on individuals whose net worth topped $50 million to its criminal investigations program since 2015.
Only two of those cases proceeded to federal prosecutors, with no charges laid afterward.
The lack of prosecutions follows more than 6,770 audits of ultra-wealthy Canadians over the past six years.
It also comes amid a roughly 3,000 per cent increase in spending on the agency’s high-net-worth compliance program between 2015 and 2019 due to a beefed-up workforce, according to an October report from the parliamentary budget officer.
I believe, as does Matthew Green, that there are free passes for the rich, and severe penalties for the rest of us:
“The CRA is not pursuing Canada’s largest and most egregious tax cheats. And yet for a small mom-and-pop shop, if you don’t pay your taxes long enough — two or three years — then they will absolutely go in and garnish your wages … because they know you don’t have the ability to take it to court,“ he said.
To be fair, there is some validity in the claim that the wealthy have all manner of resources to try to thwart the CRA. Says National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier,
“The super-wealthy are able to pay for super lawyers, super tax specialists. They can do everything to get out of paying their fair share.”
Increasingly, those individuals are going to court when audited in order to withhold documents, with about 3,000 “complex” cases now ongoing, the minister said.
However, the fact that other jurisdictions have been quite successful in their pursuits of the rich suggests that Lebouthillier's explanation holds only limited water.
And it appears that Canada prefers a less costly, gentler, more accommodating strategy:
Settlements are much more common than criminal prosecutions, saving investigators time and money, said Kevin Comeau, author of a 2019 C.D. Howe report on money laundering.
“The problem with that is that you don’t have on the public record that these persons did not comply with the tax law. And therefore you don’t have that public shaming and you don’t have that warning to other tax cheats out there,” he said.
But the problem will not go away, and needs to be addressed as quickly and as tenaciously as possible:
… critics say the vast troves of wealth that remain untouchable to government authorities reveal the need to tighten tax rules as well as hunt down cheats.
“In former times we didn’t see tax avoidance as a crime,“ said Brigitte Unger, professor of economics at Utrecht University whose book, ”Combating Fiscal Fraud and Empowering Regulators,“ was published in March.
“But now we see the public sector needs money, and this is effectively stealing money from public coffers, and should be treated as such.”
As I said at the start of this post, I, for one, will not be holding my breath awaiting remediation from a government that is far, far too cozy with the moneyed class.
To really understand the mindset of educational institutions today, you have to appreciate one fact: despite nonstop rhetoric to the contrary, they are inherently conservative and risk-averse. Some might even call them reactionary.
While I will get to the main basis for my post in a moment, a personal anecdote perhaps helps to illustrate this pernicious reality. Yesterday, I was talking to a neighbour across the street who retired from high-school teaching last November. A graduation ceremony was recently held in the school's parking lot for teachers, students and their parents, but she was told by a superintendent not to attend, as she is no longer a staff member. The administrator feared that "some parents might complain."
While it has been true for some years that administrators and boards have become hypersensitive to public opinion, the trend has accelerated, in my view, because teachers who advance beyond the classroom today tend to be what a friend calls "the resume-polishers," desperate to prove that they are "team players" as they climb the career ladder.
Simply put, their personal ambitions trump educational principles. They follow orders without question, and do everything in their power to avoid 'dirt' in their package.
And that is not good for society.
Shree Paradkar illustrates this fact as she writes about the craven treatment of Javier Davila by the Toronto District School Board:
Last month, after the equity educator was repeatedly attacked by a Toronto Sun columnist, and a pro-Israel advocacy group called for him to be fired, the Toronto District School Board placed him under investigation and an indefinite suspension. The action ignited an uproar from teachers, principals and other staff who framed it as an “all lives matter” approach by the board that has put a question mark on its stated commitment to anti-oppression.
Davila declined to comment to the Star. But in a Medium blog where he describes his work, he said he has received hundreds of emails over the years from teachers, principals and even directors of other school boards who asked permission to use his resources.
An educator for 16 years, Davila's job in part consists of sharing resources on matters including anti-colonialism, anti-racism and police abolition.
In recent months, he has sent bulletins on topics such as the Land Back movement, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and responses to the murder of Asian sex workers in Atlanta.
The board was so enthusiastic about his work that it directed people to his website if they weekly communications from him.
All that enthusiasm suddenly evaporated after the latest violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Davila shared two resources for teachers, one onMay 16, the other onMay 19.
Within days, a Toronto Sun columnist wrote not one or two but three pugilistic columns castigating Davila for being anti-Israeli.
Indeed, much of the Jewish community is in an uproar. B'nai Brith is calling both for a full apology from the board and the termination of Davila, adding that "...no one who distributes anti-Semitic propaganda like this should work for a school board in Canada.”
All of which has board officials quaking in their collective boots.
“During this time, the staff member will be on home assignment. We are also in the process of removing this staff member’s current and previous group mailings/newsletters from TDSB email inboxes,” a spokesperson told media.
“Home assignment” means being put on ice, cut off from his workplace and not allowed to contact his colleagues.
The board also took down the page on its website that directed educators to Davila’s newsletter.
So how are people reacting to this?
Retired TDSB educator Tim McCaskell says where formerly this might have earned a low-key talking to,
"... the board is so risk-averse now it doesn’t take much to send it into a tailspin,” he said.
The Israeli lobby’s position was that criticizing Israel could foster anti-Semitism. Today it posits that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitism. “The conceptual framework has shifted,” he said. “Could you imagine organizing a conference on human rights in Palestine?”
Others are rallying in support of Davila:
There are no instances of anti-Semitic content within the resources,” reads a petition titled “Oppression and Censorship have no place in our schools.” It is signed by nearly 5,000 people and includes the support of unions such as CUPE and CUPW.
A group of more than 80 teachers calling themselves “concerned educators” and identified only by their initials and the name of their schools told the school board and trustees they were perturbed by the term “anti-Israel racism,” saying it would have the same effect of shutting down conversations on anti-oppression as would labelling critiques of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people as “anti-Canadian.”
Jewish educators, parents and community members began another petition in support of Davila. “The resources that Mr. Davila shared were in no way anti-Semitic, and we’re concerned that this investigation will put a chill on TDSB staff who may fear discussing this issue or possibly other issues that are perceived as controversial,” they wrote. “As Jewish parents, we refuse the notion that Palestinian human rights are somehow oppositional to our own — in fact, the opposite is true.”
Meanwhile, the board is engaged in a surveillance protocol that would do justice to a police state.
… staff said their social media accounts were being monitored and “likes” on pro-Palestinian material meant a private conversation with immediate superiors.
“We are increasingly disturbed by the policing, criticism and silencing that some of us are experiencing when we name and create space to discuss such human rights violations,” a group of about 50 TDSB principals told the board in an open letter they signed as “anonymous for fear of reprisals.”
A school principal who was one of the letter writers confirmed to the Star they were given a talking-to by a senior board official as well as a trustee of a ward that is neither from where the principal works nor lives.
All of this leaves me angry and disgusted, but not surprised, for the reason I cited at the beginning of this post. But the final word goes to an anonymous TDSB staffer:
“People are nervous,” said the TDSB staffer. “For a lot of educators looking at Javier, we’re thinking if this is a white-passing dude who is being targeted this way, imagine if it was us.
With increasing awareness of the wrongdoing that police sometimes perpetrate, video recordings of their interactions with the public are becoming of increasing importance, both in Canada and the United States.
Here at home, one only has to recall the murder of Sammy Yatim by Officer James Forcillo. Had CCTV footage not recorded the officer's execution of Yatim, an official cover-up story would have undoubtedly carried the day, something along the lines of a knife-wielding drugging trying to stab the officer.
In the United States, were it not for a brave bystander's recording, Derek Chauvin would still be conducting his brutal practices, like the one that killed George Floyd.
Abuse of authority can happen in any jurisdiction, but the San Jose California Police Department seems to have perfected the art. Start the video at the nine-minute mark to learn all about it.
Protecting and serving the public entails real responsibility. In my view, bodycams should be standard issue for all police departments.
