Category Archives: Government

Meum est or tuum est #UBC? Which is it? #ubcnews #bced #highered

The pomp of graduation, a time of calm reflection as students’ rite of passage is conferred under the mesmerizing pronouncements of the convocation speaker. And at UBC, a time to hear administrators chant tuum est, it is yours!

Reality check.

Increasingly, UBC administrators are confidently asserting meum est, it is mine!

The latest sign of meum est is the quickening process to reappoint UBC’s Chancellor Lindsay Gordon despite serious problems and reservations, such as those articulated in the 24 April Open Letter to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee (signed by 110 faculty members).

The phenomenon of meum est across a variety of campuses was detailed in The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.

I manage UBC, therefore, meum est, it is mine.

*See UBC time to change motto for a conceptual history of tuum est.

#UBC time to lay down the mace in graduation and governance #ubcnews #ubc #bced #highered

*Apologies to the medievalists. Repeated below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:

As we count down to May graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.

Times have changed, business as usual has been called into question, the Board of Governors is still operating under the pall of a No Confidence vote cast by faculty members last year, and this year on 24 April an Open Letter signed by 110 faculty members was submitted to the UBC Chancellor Reappointment Committee.

The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.

Last year was an emotional year for UBC. As we launched the celebration of our Centennial at UBC 100, our President resigned under a cloak of secrecy. As we began to party, we launched an investigation to discover the lengths to which a Chair of the Board of Governors and administrators might go to suppress academic freedom. As no accountability was forthcoming, a No Confidence vote was cast. As the BoG continued with business as usual, staff and students expressed serious concerns to triangulate those of faculty members.

It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.

It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.

UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?

From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.

Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?

Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.

Is it not time to retire the mace?

Really #UBC? Taking $7,230 in grocery bag donations? #ubcnews #bced #bcpoli

It has become increasingly difficult to entertain appeals that the University of British Columbia is underfunded by the Ministry. Surely, other postsecondary institutions in BC are chronically underfunded, as the CBC reported on a FPSE report in the fall:

British Columbia’s post-secondary system is in crisis and is failing students by forcing them into careers they may not be suited for, says a group of university and college teachers.

But not UBC and nor are its Faculties, Schools, and bloated Offices underfunded.

One problem is how the Central Managers and Middle Managers (Deans, ADs, Directors) allocate or distribute the money. UBC has a $2b budget and its Properties Trust generated another $2b over the past decade.

Yet managers see it opportunistic to go to grocery stores and take bag donations, effectively from desperate non-profits. *See UBC shameless in taking shopping bag donations.

In February-April, UBC was attached to the cash registers at Whole Foods Market at the Cambie, Kitsilano, Robson, and West Vancouver locations. UBC took $7,230.38 in grocery bag donations from the tills.

UBC took half of the $14,460.76 total while the Environmental Youth Alliance, Harvest Project, Stanley Park Ecology Society, and Westside Food Collaborative took fractions of the balance. For instance, the West Side Food Collaborative received just $1,539.76 and the Stanley Park Ecology Society a mere $889.54.

What exactly is going on at UBC with its finances? Where is the accountability?

Peter Wylie: Case study of #UBC, Okanagan campus #ubconews #ubcnews #ubceduc #bced #bcpoli

Peter Wylie
Associate Professor, Economics
University of British Columbia

A New University in an Underrepresented Region: A Case Study of University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Canada

Paper Presented at The 8th International Seminar for Local Public Economics,
University Of Guanajuato, Mexico, Nov 10-11, 2016

This paper analyzes the establishment in 2005 and subsequent evolution of a new university campus in the interior region of British Columbia, Canada, until then under-serviced with regard to university provision and with one of the lowest rates of participation of its population in post-secondary education in the province of British Columbia (BC). The paper considers the founding vision of the campus, situated in the city of Kelowna, represented by the original Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Government of BC in relation to its subsequent evolution to today.

To anticipate the results, we find that almost none of the original vision for the campus has been realized, and it has evolved in a way fundamentally opposed to the Government’s expressed intention. This is largely due to the fact that universities are autonomous institutions in Canada largely free of political influence and hence need only follow their own goals rather than those of the Government and/or electorate. It might also be that the Government’s stated vision was political posturing and it fully intended to leave the evolution of the campus entirely to the University and not hold it to account to the MoU. That the campus was left to UBC, one of the world’s top 40 universities in international ranking, and top 20 public universities, to develop as a second, smaller campus in Kelowna than its much larger main campus in Vancouver, a 4-hour drive away, has had important implications for its subsequent development away from the original expressed goals. The paper discusses issues of academic planning, accountability and oversight in the provision of this local public good by the Government funders/taxpayers.

Read Paper: Peter Wylie, Case study of UBCO

Vancouver’s K-12-university crisis #ubc #ubcnews #bced #ubced

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Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, Vancouver Observer, October 7, 2016– Vancouver, the city of disparities, is faced with polar opposites in its educational system.

The contrast between K-12 schools and the university in Vancouver could not be more stark: The schools sinking in debt with rapidly declining enrolments and empty seats versus the university swimming in cash and bloating quotas to force excessive enrolments beyond capacity.

With central offices just 7km or 12 minutes apart, the two operate as if in different hemispheres or eras: the schools laying off teachers and planning to close buildings versus the university given a quota for preparing about 650 teachers for a glutted market with few to no jobs on the remote horizon in the largest city of the province.

There is a gateway from grade 12 in high school to grade 13 in the university but from a finance perspective there appears an unbreachable wall between village and castle.

Pundits and researchers are nonetheless mistaken in believing that the Vancouver schools’ current $22m shortfall is disconnected from the university’s $36m real estate windfall this past year.

The schools are begging for funds from the Liberals, who, after saying no to K-12, turn around to say yes to grades 13-24 and pour money into the University of British Columbia, no questions asked.

There may be two ministries in government, Education and Advanced Education; there is but one tax-funded bank account.

Read More: Vancouver Observer

#UBC admin again dodges accountability in report on privacy breach @ubcnews #ubcnews #ubc100 #bced #highered

Yet another “investigation” into administrative mismanagement at the University of British Columbia has failed to find any facts related to leadership. Today’s report on the investigation into the “privacy breach” or leak of records related to President Gupta’s resignation fails to find accountability at the top of the Office of the University Counsel. From within this Office was an inadvertent leak of records supplementing UBC’s official disclosure.

Made aware of the “privacy breach,” on 27 January VP External Relations Philip Steencamp and University Counsel Hubert Lai announced that they would “immediately launch an independent investigation into how the material became public.”

Well, here is how, kind of, not really, not at all, nothing

Already on 28 January, Steencamp and Lai were back-pedalling: “UBC deeply regrets the error that led to this privacy breach…. To that end, UBC has retained an external expert to review its disclosure practices and provide recommendations.”

So, was there an investigation or just a review?

The Smith Report on breaches of academic freedom UBC following the announcement of Gupta’s resignation cost the University about $78k.

Now, UBC likely paid about $25k for a legal consultant to give instructions to University Counsel on embedding files in a PDF and on how to protect and redact a record.

So taking the Review of UBC’s Processing of Freedom of Information Requests as an investigation report, UBC is now 0/3 in finding facts of accountability in its recent reports.

The first was the Fact Finding Report: Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) FROSH CHANTS. The second was the Summary of the fact-finding process and conclusions regarding alleged breaches of academic freedom and other university policies at the University of British Columbia.

The only fact is that UBC has been increasingly reluctant to find any form of accountability with its senior and middle managers.

Since August and the announcement of President Gupta’s resignation, avoidance of accountability has grown progressively worse.

Avoidance of accountability is now UBC’s greatest liability.

At the same time, faculty members’ access to information regarding the budget and governance on campus is increasingly blocked and ridden with obstacles. Denied access to basic files and information, including budgets, faculty members are now forced to submit Freedom of Information requests.

And with that said, Information and Privacy within the Office of the University Counsel is swamped and overburdened, understaffed and unable to provide timely access to records.

Wary of corruption and cronyism, on 22 October, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC released a scathing report of the practice of withdrawing decision-making to shadow systems. In Access Denied, Denham begins:

Democracy depends on accountable government. Citizens have the right to know how their government works and how decisions are made.

This holds for UBC, by the University Act a corporation bound to accountability to its members: faculty, staff, students.

#UBC shadow systems of admin and FoI #ubc100 #ubcnews #bced #caut #highered

As the economy tanks with questions of whether governments, banks, manufacturers, and universities are “too big to fail,” the concept of “shadow systems” takes definition.

it was riddled with contradictions: ubiquitous negotiations on all levels, informality, and a huge shadow system. (Kisser & Kalb, 2010, p. 173)

Sound familiar? Zola suggests in the exhilaration, like gambling, of governing through a “shadow system– a place where free from outside scrutiny and evaluation a miniature version of the game of life can be played”– “the demands of the outside world seem distant” (1974, p. 61).

That’s the point– shadow systems provide a sense of control… but within the systems “too big to fail” when you get caught, what happens? When that outside world sees what’s going on, what happens?

In an extensive analysis and critique of management and governance models at UBC, the Faculty Association Executive expresses our

concern about how much UBC business is conducted in such a manner (i.e., “secret, in camera processes” or shadow systems) and hence not captured by FOI requests….

We are deeply concerned by the evidence that a culture exists in UBC whereby the Chair of the Board is personally involved with managing university personnel and their concerns, and whereby back-channels exist between the Board and the University which bypass formal governance structures.

Shadow systems wherein business is conducted that cannot be “captured by FoI requests” have become business as usual, at UBC and the provincial government. In April, we found that  “the British Columbia government is routinely blocking access to documents that should be made public by claiming that the records don’t exist.”

Wary of corruption and cronyism, on 22 October, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC released a scathing report of the practice of withdrawing decision-making to shadow systems. In Access Denied, Denham begins:

Democracy depends on accountable government. Citizens have the right to know how their government works and how decisions are made.

This holds for UBC, by the University Act a corporation bound to accountability to its members: faculty, staff, students.

UBC Management, from top to middle (Deans, ADS & Directors) has lost a sense of how to govern faculty, staff, and students. It has also lost a sense of judgment of what is important and what is not.

UBC’s shadow systems have now come back to haunt a university “too big to fail.”

Special issue: Educate. Agitate. Organize: New and Not-So-New Teacher Movements #activism #k12 #education #edreform

We are thrilled to launch this Special Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour:

EDUCATE. AGITATE. ORGANIZE: NEW AND NOT-SO-NEW TEACHER MOVEMENTS

Special Issue of Workplace
Edited by
Mark Stern, Amy E. Brown & Khuram Hussain

Table of Contents

  • Forward: The Systemic Cycle of Brokenness
    • Tamara Anderson
  • Introduction to the Special Issue: Educate. Agitate. Organize: New and Not-So-New Teacher Movements
    • Mark Stern, Amy E. Brown, Khuram Hussain
  • Articles
  • Principles to Practice: Philadelphia Educators Putting Social Movement Unionism into Action
    • Rhiannon M Maton
  • Teaching amidst Precarity: Philadelphia’s Teachers, Neighborhood Schools and the Public Education Crisis
    • Julia Ann McWilliams
  • Inquiry, Policy, and Teacher Communities: Counter Mandates and Teacher Resistance in an Urban School District
    • Katherine Crawford-Garrett, Kathleen Riley
  • More than a Score: Neoliberalism, Testing & Teacher Evaluations
    • Megan E Behrent
  • Resistance to Indiana’s Neoliberal Education Policies: How Glenda Ritz Won
    • Jose Ivan Martinez, Jeffery L. Cantrell, Jayne Beilke
  • “We Need to Grab Power Where We Can”: Teacher Activists’ Responses to Policies of Privatization and the Assault on Teachers in Chicago
    • Sophia Rodriguez
  • The Paradoxes, Perils, and Possibilities of Teacher Resistance in a Right-to-Work State
    • Christina Convertino
  • Place-Based Education in Detroit: A Critical History of The James & Grace Lee Boggs School
    • Christina Van Houten
  • Voices from the Ground
  • Feeling Like a Movement: Visual Cultures of Educational Resistance
    • Erica R. Meiners, Therese Quinn
  • Construir Y No Destruir (Build and Do Not Destroy): Tucson Resisting
    • Anita Fernández
  • Existential Philosophy as Attitude and Pedagogy for Self and Student Liberation
    • Sheryl Joy Lieb
  • Epilogue
  • No Sermons in Stone (Bernstein) + Left Behind (Austinxc04)
    • Richard Bernstein, Austinxc04

Thanks for the continued interest in and support of our journals, Critical Education and Workplace, and our ICES and Workplace blogs. And please keep the manuscripts and ideas rolling in!

Sandra Mathison, Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Directors, Institute for Critical Education Studies

E. Wayne Ross on The Courage of Hopelessness: Democratic Education in the Age of Empire #ubcnews #criticaled #ubceduc

THE COURAGE OF HOPELESSNESS: DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE

E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia
Friday, January 15th, 2016  12:30-2:00 p.m.
Scarfe Room 310

Abstract:
In this talk I argue there is a disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of democracy in North America that subverts traditional approaches to democratic education. The tropes that have historically dominated the discourse on democracy and democratic education now amount to selling students (and ourselves) a lie about history and contemporary life. Our challenge is to re-imagine our roles as educators and find ways to create opportunities for students to create meaningful personal understandings of the world. Education is not about showing life to people, but bringing them to life. The aim is not getting students to listen to convincing lectures by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive for an equal degree of participation and a more democratic, equitable, and justice future. This requires a new mindset, something I call dangerous citizenship.

Short Bio:
E. Wayne Ross is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at UBC. He has written and edited numerous books including: Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies and Social Education (Sense, 2010); The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems and Possibilities (4th Ed., SUNY Press, 2014) and Working for Social Justice Inside and Outside the Classroom (Peter Lang, 2016). He also edits the journals Critical Education, Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, and Cultural Logic.

Letter to @UBC President: time to lay down the mace #ubc100 #ubcnews #ubc #bced #highered #caut

Open Letter to UBC President Piper:
Time to Lay Down the Mace

It has been an emotional year for the University of British Columbia. As budgets moved from Central, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada launched Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. The residential university and college take on new meaning. As we launched the celebration of our Centennial at UBC 100, our President resigned under a cloak of secrecy. As we began to party, we launched an investigation to discover the lengths to which a Chair of the Board of Governors and administrators might go to suppress academic freedom. Now, as we march to Convocation, students and alumni launch evidence that UBC is failing to properly respond to sexual assaults on campus.

In the meantime, terrorists and terror struck Sharm el-Sheikh, Beirut and Paris while the dogs of war howl for bombers and drones to command from the skies above. Increasingly larger regions of the world live in a state of emergency.

It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.

To take a stand symbolic of peace and reconciliation, please lay down the mace for ceremonies and Convocation. Please put away the coat of arms and lay down the mace. If not for good, then how about for peace?

It is time to retire this symbol of aggression, authority and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies this week with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.

UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?

From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.

Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?

Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into your Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May. That’s “too messed,” as the students say.

Is it not time to retire both?

Threat Convergence: The New Academic Work by Petrina, Mathison & Ross #academicfreedom

THREAT CONVERGENCE:
THE NEW ACADEMIC WORK, BULLYING, MOBBING AND FREEDOM

Stephen Petrina, Sandra Mathison & E. Wayne Ross

The convergence of the casualization, fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work with the post-9/11 gentrificaton of criticism and dissent is arguably one of the greatest threats to academic freedom since the Nazi elimination of the Jewish professoriate and critique in 1933, Bantu Education Act’s reinforcement of apartheid in South Africa in 1952, and McCarthyism in Canada and the US in the 1950s and 1960s. In the history of education, this would be quite the claim yet the evidence seems to speak for itself. Academic work has been fragmented into piecemeal modes and intensified as academics absorbed, through amalgamation, traditional clerical staff and counseling work. The balance of the academic workforce has been reduced and casualized or segmented to an “at whim,” insecure, unsalaried part-time labor pool, the 8-hour workday and 40-hour academic workweek collapsed to 60-80 hours, and the primary locus of academic work shifted off-campus as the workplace crept into the home and its communal establishments. Academic stress— manifested as burnout through amalgamation and creep of work, and as distress through bullying, mobbing and victimization— underwrites increases in leaves of absence. Non-tenure track faculty are hit particularly hard, indicating “contingency or the precariousness of their position” as relentless stressors.

Nowadays, it’s whimsical to reminisce about work-life balance and promises that the academic workforce will be renewed as boomers retire with baited expectations, or that the workweek and workplace for salaried full-timers could be contained within the seduction of flextime and telecommuting. In many ways, the flexible workplace is the plan for boomers by boomers with both nest eggs and limits on retirement age breaking. As currency values, retirement portfolios, and savings spiral downward while dependent children and grandchildren and inflation spiral upward, incentives to retire erode. Precariously unemployed, underemployed and part-time academics aside, boomers still in the academic system are trended to face the biggest losses. As economic incentives to retire decrease, incentives for intellectual immortality and legacy management flourish with the boomers’ political leanings moving toward the center. One can hardly blame them.

Enthusiasts of anything “flexible” (learning, space, time, work, etc.) and everything “tele” (commuting, conference, learning, phone, work, etc.), academics readily workshift with additional liability but no additional remuneration— instead is an unquestioned acceptance of the “overtime exemption”— while the employer saves about $6,500 per year per worker in the tradeoff as worksite or workspace shifts from campus to home. The academic workweek is now conservatively 60 hours with many PT and FT reporting persistent 70-80 hour weeks. Perhaps academic women can finally have it all after putting in the 120 hour workweek. One reason institutions now cope with many fewer FT hires is that academics are all too willing to do the work of two. As Gina Anderson found a decade ago, “with apparently unconscious irony, many academics reported that they particularly valued the flexibility of their working week, in terms of both time and space… in the same breath as reporting working weeks in the order of 60 hours.” For most academic workers, the cost of flexibility is effectively a salary cut as overheads of electricity, heat, water, communication and consumables are shifted to the home. Carbon footprint reductions are a net benefit and for a minority, the savings of commuting and parking offset the costs of this homework or housework. What is the nature or implications of this increasing domestication of academic work and displacement of the academic workplace? For academic couples with or without children, the dynamics of housecohabitry, househusbandry or housewifery necessarily change as the academic workplace shifts and labor creeps into the home. With temptations to procrastinate on deluges of academic deadlines, academic homes have never been cleaner and more organized. Nevermind the technocreep of remote monitoring. Over the long run, although some administrators cling to the digital punch card and time stamp with HivedeskWorksnaps or MySammy, “smashing the clock” in the name of flextime and telework is about the best thing that ever happened to academic capitalism.

This is not exactly a SWOT analysis, where Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are given due treatment. Rather, the focus is on this threat convergence as it resolves through historic displacements of the academic workplace and work. To what degree are the new policies for academic speech inscribed in academic work, regardless of where it’s done? As the academic workplace is increasingly displaced and distributed, are academic policies displaced and distributed as well? Observed at work, monitored at home and tracked in between—these are not so much choices as the cold reality of 21st century academic work.

Read More: Threat Convergence

New Workplace Issue: Academic Bullying & Mobbing #highered #ubc #caut

New Workplace Issue #24

Academic Bullying & Mobbing

Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies. Please consider participating as author or reviewer. Thank you.

New Workplace Issue: Reforming Academic Labor, Resisting Imposition, K12 and #HigherEd #criticaled

New Workplace Issue #25

Reforming Academic Labor, Resisting Imposition, K12 and Higher Education

Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies. Please consider participating as author or reviewer. Thank you.

Lilia D. Monzó & Peter McLaren on Red Love: Toward Racial, Economic and Social Justice #handsup #highered #criticaled #race

Lilia D. Monzó & Peter McLaren, Truthout, December 18, 2014– Racism is exacerbated by a capitalist production process that teaches us that some people have a God-given right to pursue their economic and social interests without regard for other people’s right to thrive, free of fear for their own survival. The antidote is red love.

The Slaughter-Bench of Race

It seems that it is an everlasting open hunting season in the United States and the kills are Black men. The senseless killing of unarmed Black young man Michael Brown by a White police officer and the grand jury’s decision to allow the officer to walk without facing a trial through a faltering prosecutorial process (that aims to defend when the target of indictment is a police officer) has brought Ferguson, Missouri, and other communities across the country to their feet in loud and incendiary protest.

Approximately 50 protesters on a 120-mile march from Ferguson to Jefferson City decrying the shooting death of Brown were met with counter-protesters all along the route. Especially stomach-churning was the reception given to the protesters in the sleepy hollow of Rosebud, where the caterwauling and public scouring was most intense as 200 residents screeched at the protesters to “go home and get jobs” along a route littered with 40-ounce beer bottles, watermelons, Confederate flags and fried chicken, and where at least one concerned citizen was wearing a makeshift white hood, redolent of the vile knights of the “Invisible Empire.”

While the corporate media has suggested that the violent response by some protesters – property damage and looting in some instances – diminishes the authentic call for “change” – i.e., a demilitarization of the police, improved police-community relations, urban job creation, increased sensitivity training regarding race among police force recruits – it is hard to ignore the storied observation by Frantz Fanon that violence is oftentimes the only possible response by communities that have lived through centuries of violence – slavery, joblessness, poverty, police profiling, the school-to-prison pipeline and a military-industrial complex that thrives upon the deaths and killing of Black and Brown young men.

In the wake of this blow to the Black community, we have seen a string of similar White police killings of unarmed Black men and an unwillingness to indict them. These include the killing of Eric Garner who was caught on video repeating the words, “I can’t breathe,” 11 times as a New York Police Department officer had him in a chokehold that has been banned by the NYPD for years; the killing of Rumain Brisbon in Phoenix, Arizona; the killing of a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, who was holding a toy gun in a park and shot within two seconds of police arriving on the scene; and the killing of Akai Gurley, a young man who was fatally shot by a rookie NYPD officer in a dark public housing stairwell in Brooklyn. With the growing confidence among White police officers that Black men are fair game for killing without consequences, how many more of our Black children’s lives will we lose?

In the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Akai Gurley, the police did not make any effort to assist their dying victims. In the case of Gurley, the officers who shot him – in true “cover your ass fashion” – decided to text their union representative while ignoring calls from the police and medics. Six and a half minutes went by before they finally radioed for assistance. It wasn’t until a detective and FBI agent arrived at the scene of the Tamir Rice slaying that the victim received any first aid. In Eric Garner’s case, numerous police officers stared at his unconscious handcuffed body for seven crucial minutes instead of performing urgent CPR or frantically seeking professional medical assistance. In the case of Michael Brown, we know that his body lay lifeless on a Ferguson street for four hours before it was carted off to the local morgue. While some have attempted to justify police killings of Black men as a function of the job demand for quick decisions and their own survival instincts, this unconscionable and merciless failure to attempt to save these men’s lives, points to something much deeper.

Astonishingly, we are now hearing backlash against protesters that Black men must be suicidal since they are acting in ways that are surely to get them killed. It seems no matter what the circumstance, the narratives shift in order to maintain the sanctity of the White cop. The institutionalized and pretentious discourse of conservative talk show hosts now includes remarks to the effect of: “If Garner can say ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times, then he can breathe” (obviously these self-proclaimed “critics” don’t realize that being pinned down by police may prevent lungs from re-expanding, forcing out the functional reserve capacity of air while the expiratory reserve volume – which is not oxygenated and basically exists as carbon dioxide gas – still permits vocalization). This vicious insensitivity from the frenetic ranks of these racist prodigies have ripped away any cosmetic prostheses hiding the seething subterranean animus of the White population who have inherited a historical proclivity to blame Blacks for their own suffering and who continue to do so with an increasingly smug impunity.

Given the rancid history of racial violence in the United States, should we be aghast at the audacity of White police officers who continue to shoot first and show little restraint prior or remorse after, and at the imperviousness of prosecutors and grand juries that see only through the dominant lens, justifying the growing epidemic of Black killings by White cops as a “natural” reaction to fearing for their lives? Protesters are demanded to show restraint in a country that has shown no restraint in killing Black communities and other communities of color – physically, psychologically and economically. While we do not advocate for violence, we understand how centuries of pain and humiliation can result in a pent-up rage that eventually explodes.

More recently, African-Americans face the grim new reality of moving from the super-exploited sector of the working class to being even more marginalized as capitalists switched from drawing on Black labor in favor of Latino/a immigrant labor as a super-exploited workforce. As a result of increased structural marginalization, African-Americans are subject to what William Robinson describesas “heightened disenfranchisement, criminalization, a bogus ‘war on drugs,’ mass incarceration and police and state terror, seen by the system as necessary to control a superfluous and potentially rebellious population.”

Racism is not a natural phenomenon, but one that has been produced within each and every institution of our society. Racism is exacerbated through a capitalist production process that teaches us that some people have a God-given right to pursue their own economic and social interests with little regard for the right of every human being and other living organism to thrive in the world free of fear for their own survival and with dignity and freedom. Racism stems from a world that has lost its ability to recognize its social nature and absolute need to love one another. While we must work to make people safe today, we must also consider the long-term goal of anti-racist struggle, which in our view is one and the same as class struggle, such that a new world order, one free from class and founded on love, interdependence, social responsibility, equality and freedom can thrive.

Read More: Truthout

#IdleNoMore social movements #ubc #occupyed

CBC News, October 24, 2014– Idle No More was one of the largest Indigenous mass movements in recent history, sparking hundreds of teach-ins, rallies and protests across the country. On Friday night in Saskatoon, a group of educators and grad students learned about how it all came together.

People involved in the movement addressed members of the Canadian History of Education Association. Lynn Lemisko with the Association says there’s a history of teach-ins, like Idle No More, being used as a resistance movement.

“It’s a powerful example in the way in which resistance can be done in a peaceful way through dancing and just gathering together and demonstrating,” Lemisko said.

Lemisko says mass social movements can be successful even if they don’t result in clear, measurable outcomes, such as legislative changes. She says they heighten awareness and help develop critical thinking. And she says educators are interested in how the Idle No More Movement changed the social and political landscape in Canada.

“Is this something that we can borrow and use in our own lives in our own ways that we want to support social justice resist and reconcile?” Lemisko asked. Lemisko says a similar effort could be hard to duplicate. She says some mass movements just happen because there are forces that come together at a particular moment in time for whatever reason.

Read More: CBC News

Talks moving forward despite police attacks on #HongKongStudents #scholarism

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James Legge, The Independent, October 19, 2014–Pro-democracy demonstrators returned to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday night, undeterred by two days of violent clashes with police.

Some came equipped with helmets and home-made foam arm protectors to defend them against police batons. “I will continue to stay here until C Y [Leung, the city’s chief executive] resigns,” said Lap Cheung, 40, who left his IT job in the United States to return to Hong Kong for the protests. He added he had no hope of a breakthrough tomorrow at planned talks between student leaders and the authorities. The negotiations will be televised live.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, officers used pepper spray on demonstrators in the shopping district of Mong Kok, parts of which have been closed to road traffic by the demonstrators since the end of September.

The protests were sparked by anger over Beijing’s proposal for electing the city’s next chief executive in 2017. The plan, set out in August, dictates that all candidates require majority approval from a committee of mostly pro-Beijing members of the city’s elite. But Mr Leung suggested yesterday one area where the protesters might find concessions is in the make-up of that screening committee. He said: “There will be plenty of room for us to talk about how we can structure a nomination system so that we have genuine choice of candidates come 2017.”

He maintained that certain things remain off the table, reiterating that civic nomination, under which Hongkongers would put up their own candidates, would run contrary to the Basic Law – the mini-constitution under which Hong Kong is governed from Beijing but maintains greater freedoms than the mainland.

During the two-hour talks, Carrie Lam, the city’s chief secretary, will lead the government team, and five members of the Hong Kong Federation of students – including Lester Shum and Alex Chow – will represent the protesters. Both Mr Shum and Mr Chow have become well-known spokesmen for the mostly leaderless occupations, which are focused on the city’s political and financial power centre.

This is the third time both sides have agreed to meet for talks, but looks like being the first meeting actually to take place. The first was called off by protesters after violence from a counter-protest, and the second was cancelled by the government after it accused students of trying to use the meeting to rally more demonstrators.

On Sunday in Mong Kok occupiers attempted to grab territory on the arterial Nathan Road. Scuffles erupted before police surged forward with riot shields, forcing the protesters back. Dozens of people, including at least 22 police, were reportedly injured in the two consecutive nights of clashes going into yesterday morning.

The police chief superintendent Hui Chun-tak said the crowd included “activists from radical organisations as well as trouble-makers” and that four men were arrested.

He said protesters “charged the police cordon, trying to occupy the road junction. Repeated warnings were issued to stop charging the cordon. However, they were all ignored.”

Mr Leung said authorities would continue trying to clear the streets “in parallel” with the dialogue. This two-pronged strategy has fanned protesters’ anger further, with many major voices in the movement claiming that the continued attempts at clearance call into question Mr Leung’s sincerity in offering the talks.

In Mong Kok, protesters appeared defiant and also angry that the city government was portraying their campaign as increasingly radicalised and violent. Igloo Novas, a student, told Reuters that Hong Kong leaders must tell Beijing the “truth”, that the majority of Hong Kong people wanted to choose candidates in elections freely. “This is one compromise I can accept from the government,” she said.

Read More: The Independent

Police removing #HongKongStudents barriers #scholarism

CBC, October 12, 2014– Hong Kong police began on Monday to remove barricades erected by pro-democracy protesters who have occupied several sites around the Chinese-controlled city for two weeks, according to protest group Occupy Central.

At the main protest site, around government offices in the downtown district of Admiralty, scores of student protesters faced off with police who were massing in the area, a Reuters witness said. The Hong Kong government has said the demonstrations are illegal.

On Saturday, student leaders issued an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging him to consider political reforms in the city and blaming the city’s unpopular leader for the demonstrations.

The letter, issued by two student groups leading the protests, said Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was responsible for a civil disobedience campaign that has seen tens of thousands of people throng the semi-autonomous city’s key thoroughfares over the past two weeks.

Thousands of demonstrators showed up in the main protest zone on Saturday, two days after Hong Kong’s government called off scheduled negotiations with students who are demanding voters have a greater say in choosing the city’s leader in 2017 elections.

The protesters have vowed to keep up the demonstrations until the government responds to their demands.

“Students walked out of classes and are occupying different places now because Leung and others have repeatedly ignored what the people want,” the letter read. “If the central government is confident, it should not be afraid to let Hong Kong people elect their own chief executive.”

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Friday that he was confident Hong Kong’s government can preserve “social stability.” He did not directly mention the protests, but stressed that Beijing won’t change its “one country, two systems” approach to running Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, a Chinese state-run newspaper blamed the United States for being behind the protests — a claim the U.S. State Department strongly rejected.

Read More: CBC

#HongKongStudents increase pressure, government backs out of talks #scholarism

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Daniel Schearf, Voice of America, October 12, 2014– Pro-democracy protest leaders in Hong Kong have vowed to continue their occupation of city streets after the Chinese territory’s leader soundly rejected their demands. Hong Kong’s chief executive also called their movement “out of control” and said it could not last very long.

Protesters Sunday voiced defiance after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said there was ‘zero chance’ of meeting their demands.

In an interview with TVB, Hong Kong’s Beijing-approved leader said China would never rescind its decision against open nomination of candidates for the chief executive post.

Leung also dismissed protester demands that he resign for allegedly failing to uphold Hong Kong’s constitution, the Basic Law.

Criticizes decision

Lester Shum, deputy secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and a protest leader, said, “What C.Y. Leung, the chief executive, said, showed that the Hong Kong government still refuse to take the responsibility to face the political issue made by, or caused by, the Hong Kong government.”

Hong Kong is to hold a much anticipated first direct election for chief executive in 2017 as part of the Chinese territory’s unique “One Country, Two Systems” status.

But China’s National People’s Congress in August set out a plan that allows Beijing-leaning officials in Hong Kong to choose the candidates the public would be allowed to vote on.

The limitation on the former British colony’s democracy sparked students to boycott classes and lead the occupation of city streets, now in its third week.

Talks canceled

The number of protesters had declined in recent days, but got a boost Friday night when thousands answered a call to rally at the main demonstration site next to government offices.

Authorities had canceled a dialogue on constitutional reform with protest leaders Friday after calls for a new wave of civil disobedience.

Despite the boost, Shum acknowledged they are struggling to maintain the momentum of the movement as it is challenged by those disturbed by the barricaded streets.

“Yeah, I believe this movement has come to face a very difficult problem,” Shum said.

“It’s that … the government use every tactics to wish to delay our movement, to wish us to come home or give up our occupation. So, what we are going to do, or what we are facing is how we can convince the Hong Kong citizens and students to support us, to still support this occupation movement,” he said.

Groups of people opposed to the occupation, including taxi and truck drivers, have demonstrated against it. There are also sporadic arguments and fights with protesters.

Protesters add tents

Nonetheless, demonstrators over the weekend added new tents to the streets around government offices in a show of defiance and determination to develop a genuine democracy.

The protest became known as the “umbrella revolution” after protesters used umbrellas to peacefully defend themselves against police tear gas and pepper spray.

People hung notes of support shaped like umbrellas to a large, wire sculpture of an umbrella and added post-it notes to those already plastered on a nearby wall.

Frankie Lam, who brought his two children to see the demonstration, said Hong Kong authorities should stop making excuses for not allowing them to directly elect their leaders.

“They can do it. Just whether they are willing to do so. So, I think, for now, the Hong Kong people will try to … cooperate with each other, to try to fight …  (against) this unfair treatment,” Lam said.

When asked whether he thinks the protesters will succeed, Lam replied, “I don’t know. But, if you never ever try, you will never ever know. Just try our best to do something for our … for the next generation.”

Lam’s elementary school-aged son posted a note that read “Do Not Give Up” in Chinese characters.

Read More: VoA

Talks underway #HongKongStudents revolution resolute

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Gu Qinger, Epoch Times, October 6, 2014– Preparatory talks are under way in Hong Kong between the student protesters and the government, but all signs suggest that normal life is not returning to Hong Kong anytime soon.

On Oct. 6, during the second round of preparatory talks between student representatives from the the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Ray Lau, Undersecretary of the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, both sides have agreed to have multiple rounds of discussion, with both sides on an equal footing, and with any agreement to be enforced by the government.

Yet students are wary of the officials speaking to them.

In April 2010 Ray Lau declared on the television program City Forum that Radio TV Hong Kong should play the dual roles of being the mouthpiece and supervisor of the Hong Kong government, which angered many people in Hong Kong. Radio Television Hong Kong is the public broadcaster of Hong Kong.

The voting record of Lau during his tenure as legislator of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong does not bode well for the students’ demands.

Lau voted against legislative bills on “Defending press freedom,” “Taking a positive stand on the demands by citizens participating in the July 1 march,” “Addressing the 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre,” and “Improving social stability by breaking up the monopolies.”

“To reduce violence and reduce casualties, police will take action at the appropriate moment,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said just hours before the two sides met to plan the upcoming talks. “I encourage students, bystanders and others to leave high-risk areas as soon as possible.”

One person offering an overture towards the students was Tung Chee-wha, former chief executive of Hong Kong, and vice chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee.

“You guys have left behind everything to participate in the occupying movement and fight for democracy. You have made great sacrifices,” wrote Tung in a statement entitled “A Call to Those Students and Young People by Tung Chee-hwa.”

“For students and young people who take part in the protest, we have heard your democratic demands. We have heard them loud and clear,’ wrote Tung. “We understand your unwavering quest for ideals.”

That Tung addressed himself as “we” instead of “I” suggests the Chinese authorities would share his view to some extent, according to Apple Daily. In September this year, Tung Chee-hwa led a delegation of business leaders in Hong Kong to meet with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

80 faculty members, including To Yiu-Ming, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University, issued a statement asking the government to take a step back and calm down. It asks the government to talk to the students and respond to their demands to avoid further social division on Oct. 5.

“Leung has not been willing to give in an inch. Every time there is a dialogue opportunity, something would happen, like thugs attacking peaceful protesters,” said Professor To.

Read More: Epoch Times

#HongKongStudents defiant, regrouping

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Eyder Peralta, NPR, October 5, 2014– Update at 10:35 a.m. ET. No Sign Of Dispersing: Watching a live feed from the Admiralty and Mong Kok areas of Hong Kong, one thing is for certain: It does not appear that protesters are going anywhere. In fact, it appears that crowds in those two areas have grown.

The South China Morning Post reports that Federation of Students secretary-general Alex Chow Yong-kang addressed the crowd this evening, saying they are preparing for talks with the government.

Chow, however, noted that their demands had not changed: The federation wants to be able to nominate whoever they want as the city’s next chief executive.

Update at 8:15 a.m. ET. Confusion:

Reporting from Hong Kong, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn says that just as some protesters announced they were leaving the area surrounding the Chief Executive’s Office, other protesters came in.

This protest, he says, has, after all, been very decentralized.

The South China Morning Post has some detail:

“As the Mong Kok protesters were divided on moving out, there was similar confusion in Admiralty as dozens of protesters re-occupied the junction of Lung Wo Road and Tim Wa Avenue (the main entrance to CY Leung’s office) just moments after the crowd voted to clear that area.

“‘We strove hard to get this site. We shouldn’t give up this site without any government decision in favour of us,’ said Ben Liu Chi-fung, 20.

“‘The chief executive’s office is an important site,’ said student Tanson Tsui. ‘I think we cannot give up the basic principle of our demonstration: to press for the government to undo the unjust electoral reform framework.’ “

Read More: NPR