NORTHERN AGGRESSION - Project Boneyard Volume II

Insurgence Records has teamed up with the Turn It Down Campaign and a host of bands, show promoters, crews, and individuals to bring you: Northern Aggression - Project Boneyard Volume II. The scene is stepping up again to challenge the spread of fascist propaganda (and bad music) like Project Schoolyard, a lacklustre sampler CD crapped out by a US-based bonehead label in an attempt to recruit youth to the white power movement.

Our subculture has always played to the tune of 'having a laugh and having a say'. Our message to the fascists: Get out of what was never yours to begin with. The kids on the street won't be fooled, and we will never abandon turf to self-serving freeloaders like you and the muck you spread.

Fans of real street music: Enjoy the music and smash fascism wherever it rears its ugly head!

For more info and to get your copy go to http://www.insurgence.net/releaseinfo_irSv2.htm

WFDY salutes KSM achieving legal status once again!

The Supreme Court of Czech Republic has, today, decided to cancel the ban that over the last years has the Communist Union of Czech Republic (KSM) to face the situation of being an illegal organization, deprived from the basic rights that any democratic organization should have.

WFDY considers this a major development and a historical moment. We reaffirm now that, as in the past, this is not an administrative or even legal matter, but a deeply political matter. In the same way KSM was not being made illegal by the pretense “legal” matters in its program, the decision of today is not at all a strict court decision.

This decision is the result of KSM and Czech youth’s struggle, as well as of the intense and worldwide solidarity expressed by the youth of all corners of the world. WFDY and its member and friend organizations have, from the first moment, developped countless demonstrations, petitions and many other means of solidarity, which were surely an important support to the Czech youth.

WFDY considers this moment of victory as another proof that, despite the obstacles, difficulties and attacks, the struggle is the way for victory against imperialism and urges its member and friend organizations to spread the news that will let all anti-imperialist people organizations happy and even more motivated for the struggle for social and democratic rights, freedom, justice and peace, against imperialism and all its expressions!


The CC/HQ of WFDY

Budapest, September 3

Artists protest TIFF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dozens of prominent film makers, actors and other artists protest against TIFF's City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv.

Dozens of prominent film makers, actors and other artists have signed onto a historic letter to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to protest against the Inaugural City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv at this year’s festival.

As stated in the letter, they are protesting “that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.”

Signatories from around the world include high profile celebrities such as Danny Glover, Jane Fonda, Naomi Klein, Pulitzer Prize Winning author Alice Walker and acclaimed director Ken Loach.

They are joined by independent film makers from Canada, Palestine and Israel.

Please add you name: http://torontodeclaration.blogspot.com/

While TIFF is quick to highlight their inclusion of Arab and Palestinian artists at this year’s festival, several of these film makers, including Elia Sulieman and Yousry Nasrallah, have signed on to this letter to demonstrate their disappointment that TIFF has chosen to celebrate Tel Aviv.

This disappointment is shared by individuals who have screened their films at TIFF – including Mark Achbar and Howard Zinn - and by local film makers who have been deeply involved with TIFF and have worked for years to make this festival a world-class event.

It is no coincidence that TIFF has chosen to shine a spotlight in Tel Aviv this year. In 2008, Toronto was selected as a ‘test market’ for a year-long public relations campaign launched by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve Israel’s image.

Israel's Consul General in Toronto announced then that the culmination of this ‘Brand Israel’ campaign would be a significant Israeli presence at the TIFF.

The City-to-City spotlight is one of many Tel Aviv centennial celebrations taking place around the world, with events in New York, London and Turin all being met with protest.

The signatories have made it clear that they are not demanding censorship or the banning of Israeli films or film makers.

They are objecting “to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

”The full text of the letter is available at:
http://torontodeclaration.blogspot.com/

Terror and Violence against Migrants

By MaryCarl Guiao

A special bonus feature of a longer article appearing in the next Rebel Youth. Photo is of Cericola Farms.

This April and May, Canadian Border Services Agency (CSBA) conducted violent US-style raids in Simcoe, Toronto, Leamington and Windsor, arresting hundreds of overseas workers with precarious status. Nearly 100 detained workers were rounded up at Cericola Farms’ food processing factories. The workers were held at gun point and herded into a cafeteria, where CBSA separated individuals with proof of citizenship and permanent residency from workers without full documentation, in turn immediately criminalizing the latter. These individuals were then transferred and kept immobile, shackled on a bus for a reported eight hours. Dozens more undocumented people were picked up in places unrelated to their workplace, some by enforcement officers waiting outside of shelters or impersonating lawyers.

More than 100 of these workers were later driven to the Rexdale Immigration Detention Centre, where they were put into a room with no furniture to wait unattended for several more hours. An immigration official then rushed through their rights in a reported 15 minutes using complicated language, saturated in legal terms. The official provided them with biased recommendations, and did not adequately identify documents and materials which migrant workers were pressured to sign. The documents provided are not part of the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This inadequate level of information and support resulted in many workers unintentionally waiving their rights to counsel, options for delaying their removal, and appealing to procedural actions.

Later in April, 43 detained workers, many of which had their original passports stolen from them by their employers, were forced out of Canada and deported to Thailand.

Again, demonstrating no sensitivity and no adherence to morality and true justice, immigration authorities did not consider the context of these cases. Many arrested individuals formerly possessed prior temporary work permits, but fell into a precarious status for a number of legitimate reasons. Some reported that they faced severe danger if they were to return to their countries of origin. At least one was reportedly forced to quit their documented job due to a sexually exploitative employer, in turn voiding their permit.

Response to the Provincial Interest Regulation Consultation Paper Bill 177 The Student Achievement and School Board Governance Act

Ms. Margot Trevelyan
Director , Labour Relations and Governance Branch
900 Bay Street

Mowat Block
Toronto, Ontario
M7A 1L2

Dear Ms. Trevelyan:


At the outset, we would like to express our deep concerns about Bill 177, and the consultation process the government has adopted with regards to the Bill and the Provincial Interest Regulations.

The legislative changes under consideration are not minor, and if passed will substantially and negatively impact on local autonomy and democracy, and on the quality of public education in Ontario.

For these reason, we believe the government should withdraw Bill 177 and the regulations, and we call on the government to do so without further delay.

We are convinced that the substance of the Bill and regulations are the reason why the government has eschewed public hearings in favour of email consultations in the dead of summer.

Public hearings would have ensured the full public airing and discussion that we are certain would have generated very broad and vocal public opposition to the Bill and regulations.

What would have been revealed in public hearings is that the government is attempting to (1) make School Boards responsible for the declining quality of public education (2) redirect public attention from the Liberal government’s failure to deliver the needs-based funding formula promised in 2003 and again in 2007; a funding formula that would provide the adequate and stable funding School Boards need to provide universal quality public education in Ontario schools, and without which universal quality public education cannot be delivered in Ontario schools, and (3) erode local democracy and autonomy by forcing local School Boards and locally elected Trustees to become a transmission belt for the government-of-the-day’s austerity and privatization policies or face removal from office, supervision, and trusteeship for remaining accountable to local electors who have consistently opposed such policies and the governments that deliver them.

It will be surprising to many that the current Minister of Education has approved and is shepherding this Bill and regulations. Many in Toronto recall Minister Wynne opposing exactly these kind of policies when, as a Toronto Trustee, she along with a majority of the Board, fought the Harris government when it imposed supervision on the Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton public Boards after they refused to make the cuts to programs and staff demanded by the Tories, that so profoundly damaged public education in Ontario.

Yet this Liberal Bill and regulations are intended to do exactly the same thing as the Tories did in 2002-03.

Further, it is the same thing that the Liberals (and Tories before them) are doing in health care and hospitals. As budgets shrink relative to need, local hospital boards have come under increasing public pressure to deliver needed community services. In response local hospital boards have become increasing vocal and critical of provincial government funding policies. But instead of providing needed funding, the provincial government has enforced the Tories’ balanced budget legislation, and is now abolishing local hospital boards.

Bill 177 and the accompanying regulations also seek to silence local School Boards and Trustees that, in their majority have been very vocal and critical of previous and current provincial governments’ education funding policies.

Bill 177 and its regulations are shot through with the central obligation of School Boards “to ensure effective stewardship of the Board’s resources”, “to effectively use the resources entrusted to it”, to “use the resources entrusted to it for the purposes of delivering effective and appropriate education”, and most Machiavellian of all, to “manage the resources entrusted to it in a manner that upholds public confidence”. (Appendix A: Bill 177 – Duties and Powers of School Boards)

This last obligation, the obligation of School Boards and Trustees to sell provincial education cuts to the public, will put School Boards and Trustees in contravention of the Education Act if they are even remotely critical of provincial government funding policies and education transfers. What would be the consequences if Trustees and School Boards did what Minister Wynne did in 2002-03, when she and a majority of the Toronto Public Board supported by the vast majority of local electors, refused to make the budget cuts directed by the Supervisor and the Ministry?

The answer is in Bill 177 and its regulations (Appendix B: Education Act – Section 11.1 - Provincial Interest Regulations), which state that the Ministry can force a School Board to comply with funding cuts: “(6) a regulation… may require a board to adopt and implement measures specified in the regulation to ensure that the board’s funds and other resources are applied (i) effectively, and (ii) in compliance with this Act, the regulations and the policies and guidelines made under this Act.”

Further, any School Board that baulked or defied fiscal compliance would immediately trigger a process leading to provincial supervision, in other words provincial trusteeship over the Board.

In some provinces, provincial governments have unilaterally eliminated locally elected and accountable school boards with strong community roots. Is this where the Liberal government is heading? Bill 177 and its regulations give rise to such concerns in Ontario.

The provincial government lets on that justification for the draconian measures contained in Bill 177 and its regulations is in the revelations of inappropriate spending by some Trustees at the Toronto Catholic Board.

While spending by some Trustees was indeed inappropriate, none of it was criminal, and all of the funds questioned have been returned. If criminal action had been involved, the government had the ability to act decisively and immediately using the full range of civil and criminal laws to lay charges. But the government didn’t lay charges, and instead used the opportunity presented to draft Bill 177 and accompanying regulations. If passed, it’s Bill 177 and the regulations that are likely to prove a far greater crime to public education in Ontario.

What caused Trustees at the Toronto Catholic Board to spend inappropriately was, in fact, the cuts to Trustee honoraria brought in by the Harris Tories. The Harris government cut Trustee honoraria from a provincial average of about $20,000 annually plus medical and dental benefits, to a high of $5,000 and eliminated all benefits. In the process, they increased the size of Trustee wards by a factor of 8, and eliminated the right of local Boards and communities to determine the amount of work expected of Trustees and to set the equivalent honoraria for the job.

The mass vilification of teachers, educational workers, School Boards and Trustees that characterized the Harris years were no doubt a further contribution to the demoralizing climate at the Toronto Catholic Board, which preceded the spending irregularities there.

Instead of Bill 177, the government should draft legislation to restore and enhance the powers of local School Boards, including



o introduce a needs-based funding formula now, to guarantee adequate and stable funding to Ontario’s public School Boards and a universal, quality system of public education in Ontario



o remove education from the property tax, and fund education from provincial general revenues



o repeal balanced budget legislation affecting school boards, hospitals, and municipalities



o strengthen local autonomy and democracy for Ontario School Boards



o restore the right of School Boards and communities to set appropriate honoraria and benefits for Trustees



o provide status for School Boards and municipalities in the Canadian Constitution



o repeal Harris era “Secondary reform” and introduce a broad based liberal arts curricula, including Canadian history, Aboriginal history, and labour and women’s studies



o repeal standardized testing



o fight for ESL funding, and fund Special Education to meet the needs of all Ontario students



o fund hot breakfast and lunch programs




Locally elected and accountable, strong local boards with deep roots in communities across Ontario, combined with a needs-based funding formula can build a universal, quality system of education in Ontario.

Respectfully submitted,

Executive Committee

Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)