Paradkar: Scholar Strike 2022: Why professors and students will hit the streets in a show of resistance

2022/03/23 Leave a comment

The “woke” crowd in action:

The intersection of Bond and Gould streets in Toronto, which housed the statue of Egerton Ryerson for 132 years only to see it toppled last year, will be the starting point of a walking tour on Wednesday. 

Call it our very own tour de résistance, marking the last of the three-day Scholar Strike that begins March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and Racism. It’s a labour action where scholars, activists and students from across the country will first participate in two days of virtual “teach-ins” that are free and open to the public, and then walk through the downtown core at various historical sites of resistance to oppression.

They will be protesting state violence against Black, Indigenous and racialized people and demanding, among other things, the defunding and abolition of police and prisons, and defunding of institutions such as Children’s Aid Societies, instead transferring funds to communities that offer care and affordable housing, and that work to eradicate poverty.

A running theme through the three-day strike is breaking down silos and drawing connections — between scholars and street-level organizers, between historical and current resistance movements, between anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, between those who experience oppression and those who don’t. 

“We want to be able to say that this resistance movement is not against you. It’s about finding ways to be together,” said Mikinaak Migwans, assistant professor of Indigenous contemporary art in Canada and curator at the Art Museum, University of Toronto. The walking tour is Migwans’s brainchild. Migwans is Anishinaabekwe of the Wikwemikong unceded territory.

In the wake of the Black uprisings of 2020, the names Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Eishia Hudson, Chantel Moore, D’Andre Campbell, Ejaz Choudry were among those that began circulating around Canada to humanize and remember victims of police brutality. Two years later, not only are they all but forgotten by many — we all move on from crisis to next shiny crisis — but new names, new bodies have piled on the deck.

Anthony Aust, Moses Erhirhie, Trent Firth, Lionel Ernest Grey, Braden Herman, Julian Jones are some. As are Jared Lowndes, Sheffield Matthews, Dillon McDonald, Coco Ritchie and Latjor Tuel. 

They are among those Black, Indigenous or racialized people killed by police, or who died in police custody since the 2020 reckoning, that organizers from University of Toronto see as the genesis of this second Scholar Strike.

Tuel was experiencing mental distress when he was killed by Edmonton police in February even while various police handled Ottawa’s often violent convoy protesters with kid gloves. The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is investigating Tuel’s killing. Edmonton police say they followed all protocols. They always say that. 

Given the worsening global context of a continuing pandemic, growing authoritarianism, war and climate change, the Scholar Strike launches with a discussion on the rise of ultra-right fascism, racism and white ethno-nationalism, said Beverly Bain, a professor of women and gender studies in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga, who is one of the main organizers.

About 40 speakers will address topics such as harm reduction, migrants and borders and invasion of Indigenous territories. These sessions offer a way to connect the ivory tower to the streets.

“We can no longer afford to have this bifurcation of the university as a site of knowledge only and the community and activism as something different,” Bain said. “Many of us in the universities are scholar activists and organizers.”

Since the first Scholar Strike that Bain co-organized in 2020 that called for defunding of police, police budgets have grown. The Toronto police operating budget sits at a whopping $1.1 billion in 2022 after the city approved a $25-million increase. 

Police shootings and killings across the country have continued unabated. More than half the 64 police shootings in 2021 involved Indigenous people. 

Justice-seeking protests can be shrugged off as a series of disjointed events that allow people to let off steam or express anger over a particular incident or project, when in fact they are continuous and connected to each other by history and geography.

The United Nations designated March 21 as a day against racial discrimination because it commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, when South African police killed 69 people and wounded 180 during a peaceful protest against apartheid. 

The walking tour on March 23 also offers connects current movements to historical resistance. 

“There has always been resistance in our communities from the time of arrival onwards,” said organizer Kristen Bos, assistant professor of Historical Studies and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, who is Métis. “That’s why the police exist, right? Like, that’s why they were literally created just in this country to stamp out Indigenous resistance.”

The tour sites include Trinity Bellwoods and Alexandra Park, where police violently destroyed encampments of unhoused people last year. Also, Christie Pits, which in 1933 saw violence break out between a baseball team that was mainly Jewish against members of what was called the Swastika Club, who told the Toronto Daily Star then they wanted “to get the Jews out of the park.”

Speakers on each site will address the injustices and connect them to larger movements. 

For instance, speakers will protest at Queen’s Park, the site of the Northwest Rebellion Monument to the officers who died suppressing an uprising led by Métis leader Louis Riel in 1885. Riel was tried and executed after being captured.

In 1920, when the RCMP was created out of the North-West Mounted Police, the old division headquarters were in the Post Office Building at 6 Charles St. E. in Toronto. Here, speakers will mark the century since the RCMP blocked Six Nations resistance against the dissolving of traditional governance and connect it to current 1492 Landback Lane, where Ontario is encroaching on and supporting a proposed real estate development on traditional land of Six Nations of the Grand River, near what we now call Caledonia.

At Yonge and College Streets, the site of the 1992 Yonge St. uprising after the police killing of Raymond Lawrence, speakers including activist-journalist Desmond Cole will talk about the history of the Black Action Defense Committee.

A big part of this tour, Bos said, is “about remembering our collective history and about reclaiming public space. So that we should be free to feel safe in parks as Black and Indigenous peoples and on campuses and on streets.”

It ends at the University of Toronto, where Bain will challenge the university’s reliance on institutions such as police in its approach to mental health issues and disproportionate policing of students of colour, and demand a police-free campus. 

“Our overall goals for this are to build collective memory and to build collective capacity to be safely and supportively together on this land,” Migwans said.

Source: Scholar Strike 2022: Why professors and students will hit the streets in a show of resistance

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , , ,

James: The divisive activism of Desmond Cole: How a campaign against a Black judge shattered Toronto’s Black community

2021/11/09 Leave a comment

Good long and disturbing read on how activism to excess can harm the cause, and alienate the very same people one is advocating for:

If you love Black people — if you are part of a Black church in Brampton or run a neighbourhood group in Scarborough or head your diversity committee at work — it has become difficult to “like” Desmond Cole, the self-styled streetfighter and intractable advocate for Black lives.

You can love Cole, in the Christian sense of loving your brother or your enemy. Like, though, is a term of endearment. To a growing number of African Canadians, Cole is anything but likable.

Mainstream media treat Cole as a go-to talking head on racism; progressive white folks by the thousands follow him on Twitter; and allies of Black causes embrace the award-winning author and social media influencer. But at a number of dinner tables where curried goat or roti trumps steak and potatoes, in many barber shops, healing circles and prayer groups, Cole is daily chewed up and spat out.

The sentiments about Cole’s comrades are nearly as strong. Seemingly, Cole and his cohort go out of their way to disparage and diminish Black leaders, branding them as ineffectual moderates too compromised by the racist system to dismantle it.

And, with an online army in tow, they wage a constant campaign against the so-called Black elite — a target that expands to include so many ordinary community workers and volunteers that the attacks amount to undeclared class warfare.

The collateral damage runs wide and deep.

“It has had an impact, in quelling the (volunteer) participation of some people who are just not prepared for (the attacks),” says Craig Wellington, executive director of a new community organization, Black Opportunity Fund. 

Call it the “Cole chill.”

Cole’s more vocal detractors — there are many, surprisingly so, considering his high-profile, commendable confrontation of Toronto police carding practices — say they arrived at their negative conclusions about Cole slowly and painfully over years. Many others landed there in a burst of outrage last year.

That’s when a judicial panel hearing — called to determine whether a Black judge, Donald McLeod, compromised judicial standards by improperly advocating for Black people — revealed that the most serious complaint against McLeod, an allegation of perjury, arose from Cole’s own February 2019 blog.

Cole says his aim was to hold the powerful to account. But a reasonable person, reading that February 2019 blog post and subsequent writings and comments, could conclude that Cole engaged a determined campaign targeting the judge.

McLeod, a successful criminal lawyer with a record of creating social good through community initiatives, was appointed a judge in 2013. Four years later, moved by the gun slaying of someone he knew, McLeod convened a meeting in Regent Park of professionals working in several fields to ask how they might address the issues. He had grown up in social housing in Regent Park and saw some of the worst effects of unaddressed problems from his place on the bench.

Within a year, the Federation of Black Canadians (FBC) was born, McLeod was talking about forming a national organization, and he was meeting with the Prime Minister. He sought and received guidance from the Ontario Judicial Council (OJC) on the limits of advocacy for a judge. The FBC grew to encompass dozens of community volunteers and gained such quick prominence that the federal Liberals announced funds to finance initiatives the FBC flagged.

Then came the 2018 complaint, brought by former associate chief justice Faith Finnestad and heard by the OJC, that McLeod had acted inappropriately for a judge. He was cleared of the charge. A second complaint followed in 2019, alleging (among other things) that McLeod had perjured himself in the hearings for the first one. The OJC tossed out that complaint, too, on June 2 of this year.

McLeod, then the only Black judge at the Ontario Court of Justice in Peel Region, one of Canada’s most diverse regions, was back on the bench on June 21 following a 22-month paid suspension while the judicial complaint process played out. But by then swathes of the Black community were awash in trauma over the general conclusion that McLeod’s blood was on Desmond Cole’s hands.

In his writings Cole has called the FBC “a shady organization” that is too close to the Liberal Party. “The total lack of representation from Canada’s Black Lives Matter chapters, who are doing some of the most important and celebrated advocacy in the country,” he wrote in his blog, “seems too much of an oversight to be an accident.” As for the FBC’s head, McLeod is a “cherished and untouchable” elite considered “sacrosanct” in the Black community and allowed “to do whatever he wants,” Cole told the Star in an interview. “I’m holding people in power to account; that’s what journalism is.”

Cole’s opponents say he and his confrères acted as the investigative arm of the OJC, de facto undercover agents intent on trapping the judge — only to fail ingloriously. The OJC hearing unmasked what aggrieved citizens described as dirty tricks, and what one witness called a “failed witch hunt” — actions that went demonstrably beyond the bounds of acceptable journalism, traditional or otherwise.

“I was disgusted that it was our own people who were involved in what I consider to be a public lynching of Donald McLeod,” said Peel district school board trustee Kathy McDonald, who said she and others watched in despair as the virtual hearing streamed for 17 days last December and February.

“In the end it boiled down to a bunch of vindictive, envious people that just hate the skin they are in,” she said. 

Dave D’Oyen, a local activist and diversity consultant who says he is trying to help his Scarborough community heal from the tragic affair, convened a healing circle for people to vent. He summed up their feelings in a post for Medium:

“Something is wrong when our actions are to malign ardent individuals who wish to be in genuine service of our people … The unintended consequence is a flight of capable individuals from community service because the risks of reputational damage and career suicide are too palpable. In this case, a possible removal of Brampton’s only Black judge from the bench. Many now find themselves asking, ‘If this could happen to a judge, could this happen to me?’”

I have known Desmond Cole for about a decade. In glowing and proud tones, I have introduced him to more than one audience as he received an award or delivered a keynote speech. I watched from a front-seat vantage point as he challenged the Toronto Police Services Board to end the evil practice of carding. Tears streaked down onto my glasses as the board greeted his cries with indifference.

I helped grease the path to his freelance columnist job at the Star because I felt the platform was so huge and so right for a voice this large and forceful. And, of course, I was disappointed he chose to give up that platform.

No matter how he spins it, and he has written about his experiences at the Star as well as in his book, he gave it up — in much the same way he approaches many issues — by adhering to an uncompromising rigidity that’s incompatible with improvement by degrees. His tactic has its place, for sure.

On the question of whether he could report and opine in the Star on the very issues he is actively and publicly protesting — to the point of disrupting and halting public meetings because his demands are not met — Cole considered the guidance from Star editors as an encroachment on his desire to practise journalism how he felt compelled to do it. So he chose to advocate for Black lives, without constraints. He gave up the column. His world is black or white, no grey.

I accepted his decision.

What is surprising, then, is how someone who seeks such latitude for his own radical advocacy would deny the same to a judge — even where the judge’s governing body allows it, acknowledges the risk of crossing ethical lines, and struggles to set some limits so as not to ban advocacy outright for judges. Cole dismisses the possibility of such a double consciousness for Justice McLeod.

“A sitting judge saying he is going to lead a political advocacy group is a quite novel and bizarre occurrence that warrants greater scrutiny … That’s why the fixation,” says Cole, explaining his repeated interest in McLeod and the FBC.

Community members watching the OJC hearings were dismayed to learn of a surreptitious recording of a conversation between McLeod and Idil Abdillahi, assistant professor of disability studies at Ryerson University. McLeod called Abdillahi in early 2018 for an off-the-record conversation to clear up misconceptions between the FBC and its critics. It lasted more than three hours. What McLeod didn’t know was that Abdillahi recorded the private conversation and also linked in Cole and others (listening in a car) the judicial panel would hear.

The anguish among many Black residents and community leaders spiked when Dahabo Ahmed-Omer, the current FBC chair, testified during the hearings about the stress of dealing with what she felt were daily online attacks from Cole and friends. 

It climaxed when McLeod testified of the “violence” done to him by Cole’s assertions, which he branded as false; the betrayal he felt when Abdillahi’s secret recording of their telephone conversation ended up as evidence at the panel hearing; and how, at his lowest point in the ordeal, his mortgage provider began questioning his viability as a client because he could be fired from his job.

Cole “maligned my name. He had been doing it for years and continued to do it. It was now offensive. This was violence to me. He took someone’s name and decided to brandish it as if I were lying,” McLeod told the OJC hearing.

McLeod’s words unleashed a torrent of anger. “Treachery,” “Judas” and other highly charged words and images were frequently unfurled within the Black community. The conclusion among many was that Cole and his allies were responsible for McLeod’s public flogging.

One tweet, from Danielle Dowdy, an early FBC volunteer read: “Having taken in 9 days of the hearing into the conduct of Justice Donald McLeod, what’s abundantly clear and impossible to measure is the depth of pain and hurt many of us are feeling. The emotional collateral damage among the local and national Black community is incalculable.”

How did we get to this stage? And why is it set to continue — fracturing the vital advocacy of tens of thousands of anti-racism fighters across the country? Consider the judicial lynching of Justice McLeod as exhibit A.

I became aware of Donald McLeod in Seventh-day Adventist church circles in the late 1980s when he sang in a men’s gospel quartet. We worship with different congregations but share the same strictures of this relatively small religious denomination.

Soon McLeod, the lawyer, was seen on television representing clients in high-profile cases like the Toronto 18 terrorists and arguing racial profiling before the Supreme Court. In my capacity as city columnist, I attended his launch of 100 Strong, an organization aimed at empowering Black youth through education.

In 2016 he called to say he was convening a group of Black professionals who have an interest in improving the outcomes for Black people in Toronto and Canada. Something needed to be done to stem gun violence. And Black folk can’t just sit and watch the carnage. By then he was a judge. The fact that he cared enough to step out of his judicial ivory tower was not lost on anyone.

I attended the Regent Park meeting, now known as the Toronto 37. It was part of my journalistic information-gathering around community engagements. The only thing that sticks out was that the attendees were all business, laser-focused on seeking a way to make a difference. They agreed to create a document leading to this end. I don’t recall reading it. But not long after, I understood they were taking their findings and recommendations to politicians and agencies and anyone who could spark the changes needed.

The Federation of Black Canadians came out of this beginning. How they advocated, and why, and to whom was never my concern. I was just happy for their advocacy. It takes all kinds. I marched with Charlie Roach, embraced Dudley Laws and felt proud of Lincoln Alexander, Wilson Head and Sen. Anne Cools — all entirely different Black community icons and representatives, with sometimes incongruous sensibilities. It’s this belief that allows me to embrace radicals and conservatives, elites and common folks — while remaining mindful of their varying impact.

Cole and his comrades were not among the 37 at that 2016 Regent Park meeting. As the fledgling organization quickly gained traction in Ottawa, and the Trudeau government promised funding for Black community projects, jealousies surfaced.

Cole and others created a Twitter storm and stirred acrid debate over the FBC. They questioned the legitimacy of “elites” lobbying for Black people, their political loyalties and Black credentials. Besides, Cole argued, a judge can’t lobby, period, much less advocate to root out the systemic racism endemic in the government institutions from which he and the elites earn a living.

Those are reasonable debating points and fair comment — but they provided fodder to the former associate chief justice of Ontario to complain against McLeod’s advocacy. The OJC, the governing body for Ontario judges, hauled McLeod before a complaint hearing panel in 2018. But the panel ruled that McLeod’s intentions were noble. He crossed the line here and there, but there is no judicial misconduct. So, carry on and follow the new guidelines.

Cole told me his criticisms of McLeod are not motivated by jealousy. He doesn’t apply for government funding but he was concerned that “when there are lots of groups that have been out there for five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years doing real work in the Black community and are unable to receive federal funding … But a new group that is led by a very powerful person introduces itself on the scene and is immediately able to secure hundreds of thousands of federal funding. That is a story, my friend.”

So was this the driving force behind his preoccupation with Justice McLeod and the FBC, I asked Cole in late August.

“You say driving force; I would say important factor,” Cole said, adding later, “I’m following the money and power. That’s what journalists do.”

After the 2018 complaint against McLeod was dismissed, Cole and his cohort doubled down. McLeod told the hearing that Cole called him a “house negro” on his Newstalk 1010 radio show — as despicable a slur as there is for someone to attach to a Black advocate. In other words, McLeod was sucking up to Massa in the big house while selling out his people toiling in the “field.”

Since 2018, the hearing documents show, Cole alone issued more than 130 criticisms of the FBC and more than 70 against McLeod on several print, online and social media platforms. He and his colleagues frequently attacked the FBC for faux activism. One recurring issue was the deportation of Somali refugee Abdoul Abdi. If the FBC wouldn’t join them in pushing to stop the deportation, then the organization was proving itself to be a fraud. Cole blamed McLeod for FBC’s inaction; with him as chairperson, the group couldn’t do more. 

The criticisms stung. Inside the FBC, a struggle raged on how to proceed. With their leader being a judge who must tiptoe around public advocacy, how could they prove their bona fides? The actions of Cole and some of his allies as disclosed during the McLeod hearing took the betrayal to a new level.

Cole colleague Rinaldo Walcott, a well-known scholar and Black Lives Matter member, tweeted criticism questioning the relevance of the FBC. Notwithstanding his public criticism of FBC, Walcott privately asked McLeod to set up a meeting with the immigration minister. McLeod did so. Walcott never acknowledged the meeting publicly, asked McLeod to not disclose it either and later tweeted that the FBC was useless because it wouldn’t help Abdi. 

Abdillahi’s role in the campaign against McLeod elicits much scorn. In her covert recording of the phone call with McLeod, which became part of the evidence heard by the panel, she repeatedly reassured McLeod the conversation was off the record. She didn’t mention that others were listening in. Some of Cole’s later accounts were spiced with information from that call. 

Cole explained it this way. Yes, his ally recorded and shared a private conversation with the judge. But there was no entrapment, Cole said. The judge telephoned Abdillahi and exposed himself to the recording, which was legally made. 

Notwithstanding that explanation, the essence of the narrative was: Look, people, last year Justice McLeod told his disciplinary panel he had not advocated for Abdi, but I have people and info and a taped recording that show he did. So he lied. Hello, OJC. Perjury!! The judge’s going down. 

So, Cole and friends went from: You are a fraud and can’t advocate effectively for Black people, so get out and let us do the job to … Breaking news, my investigation uncovers evidence of the judge being the very advocate we say he can’t be. Oops! That’s an offence. Let’s see what his bosses do now.

The narrative was so convincing McLeod’s judicial bosses sprang into action and filed an official complaint, the second against the judge, paying him to sit at home for 22 months while they conducted a public hearing that they knew could signal career death for him.

Most egregiously, the OJC did so despite its own policies, which favour remedial measures to resolve complaints. In the 2019-20 year, the Council processed 37 complaints against judges. None went to a hearing. McLeod had two complaints against him, and both went to a hearing.

The OJC was acting on thin evidence. For example, the investigators did not have the secretly made recording before the hearing was called. Fatally, the OJC investigation relied too heavily on Cole’s interpretation (in blog posts and elsewhere), which could not be supported by the recording when it got to the hearing. And the kicker came when Walcott — described by McLeod’s lawyer as the OJC’s “star witness” — failed to confirm that McLeod advocated for Abdi at the meeting with the minister. Case against McLeod dismissed. For a second time.

The Star has reported that the second hearing alone cost taxpayers $3.4 million to pay the battery of high-priced lawyers for McLeod and the “presenting counsel” or lawyers hired to present the case for the complainant. These costs do not cover the OJC staff, the panel of judges, and attendant costs to hold the hearing. So don’t be surprised if the tab for the two hearings approaches $5 million. 

Cole presents as one who relishes a brawl. He’s built for this and can capitalize on the fame, or notoriety, to increase his online presence and grow his brand — all the time benefiting from the very thing he condemns. He’s promising more of the same.

Before McLeod, he pulled the rug from under Saron Gebresellassi, the young Eritrean lawyer and long-time activist and mayoral hopeful in 2018. Days before the election Cole withdrew his endorsement. Why? Incumbent Mayor John Tory had given Gebresellassi a list of the debate organizers — favourable inside information that, in Cole’s mind, must have meant Gebresellassi had “sold out.”

At one Toronto Police Services Board Meeting, attendees had to restrain Ken Jeffers, community elder and police board member, from going after Cole, who disrespected Jeffers’ years of sterling community service, charging Jeffers had betrayed community interest over police presence in schools.

“He was accusing me of betraying my community, imagine that. You will not see me speak at any platform with him,” Jeffers said in late July. 

Recently, Cole slammed the efforts of Black North Initiative — the corporate “show your love and respect for Black people” initiative started by Black businessman Wes Hall, following the murder of George Floyd. Hall’s sin? Partnering with a company that has contracts to ensure bail bonds and bail conditions are met in the U.S. Black men overwhelmingly are the target. The criticism falls into fair comment, but many in the Black community see it as another Cole attack.

There are normal, intergenerational philosophical differences in any movement, and it can be painful for older advocates for Black communities to hear some of the young radicals speak. They think the protest and advocacy that preceded Black Lives Matter was somehow less impactful and authentic. They talk about the old guard hopping onto their bandwagon to take credit for the blood the young ones now shed on the streets.

Writing in Maclean’s magazine in 2018, during the buzz over the FBC’s worthiness as a national rep, Melayna Williams and Lincoln Anthony Blades argued:

“While younger, more militant activists see a colour-aware future of intersectional acceptance, and a complete eradication of systemic discrimination, other movements involve private luncheons and glad-handing, which haven’t historically been effective measures of overcoming white supremacy, but rather demonstrate an obscene allowance of it … efforts from groups like the FBC appear to be rooted in an investment in the oppressive structures themselves.”

Such hubris — elegantly and arrogantly stated in this useful insight. The wiser among the young activists are less haughty and more mindful of the foundational work of the thousands from “other movements.” 

Just know this: some of the quiet advocates who work for institutions founded and sustained by systemic racism, do more in a year for the advancement of Black people than some radicals are on track to accomplish in a lifetime.

Cole and his colleagues add another disrupting layer to these generational dynamics, crossing the median from critique to personal attack. Rarely have persons who claim to love Black people waged such a targeted, destructive, dis-unifying assault on their own flesh and blood.

Well, McLeod’s bosses rejected both complaints about the judge’s behaviour. They ruled that his interface with governments amounted to lobbying and that some of his community activities are incompatible with his judicial role, but there was no misconduct. They found he didn’t lie.

But even if the judge were guilty of all that Cole claims, the attacks are excessive and smack of unstated animus — a realization that prompted one witness to tell the OJC panel she feared she was caught up in a vendetta against the judge.

It’s counterproductive, destructive and dispiriting to anti-racism fighters when one of their fighters is pilloried by others on the same side because he successfully engaged government. The result is that many ordinary Black community volunteers who do the majority of the heavy lifting are turned off advocacy because of the toll the unrelenting criticism takes on their profession, their family and personal lives.

They are not in it for fame and fortune. They consider the price paid to be unfair and crippling.

So many have expressed this as trauma that someone like me —committed to free expression and welcoming of all kinds of advocacy in the fight for the dismantling of racism — is forced to request less stridency from Cole and friends.

I’ve loved Cole for a long time and respect much of his work. Lately, it’s been with a sigh, and so much regret. I prefer to like him, but we don’t get everything we desire.

Despite all of this, I still want Cole as an advocate. His voice is resonant, strong and distinct. It is one of many voices the community needs. Black people don’t have the luxury of discarding tactics and approaches that don’t quite meet the “best” advocacy standards. That is a reality both radicals and moderates might want to embrace.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/11/07/the-divisive-activism-of-desmond-cole-how-a-campaign-against-a-black-judge-shattered-torontos-black-community.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Black advocates must put cause ahead of career

2018/03/02 Leave a comment

Desmond Cole’s counterpoint to Karen Carter’s earlier column (My activism is better than yours | Toronto Star) and critique of the Federation of Black Canadians.

Ironically, his commentary appears a few days after Budget 2018 provided significant funding to help address issues facing the community, where the Federation (or at least its chairperson) is being given public credit:

Nearly three months ago in a Toronto library, I stood with El Jones, a devoted activist and professor from Halifax, and asked the federal minister responsible for immigration to stop the deportation of a black youth who grew up in Canada. The exchange I had with Minister Ahmed Hussen that morning was like many with government officials — he asked for more information and agreed to follow up.

I feel responsible for what happens to Abdoul Abdi, 24, a refugee who came to Nova Scotia from Somalia at age 6, was taken into the child welfare system, and never got his citizenship because the government, his legal guardian, never applied for it. I’m lucky to be in a position to raise my voice for Abdi, and I have made many sacrifices so I can speak as openly as I need to for Black people across Canada.

I regularly meet Black folks who encourage me to speak out, who say they cannot for fear of compromising themselves, especially in their workplaces. While I truly understand how they feel, I also believe that Abdi is still in Canada because Black Canadians and many others have publicly told the government to stop his deportation. People who are not free to make such demands, or who refuse to, can never propel the libratory changes Black people in Canada need.

A new group calling itself the Federation of Black Canadians (FBC) is led by well-connected Black people who cannot, or who choose not to demand Abdi’s freedom. I don’t believe the judges, police officers and corrections officials who helped create FBC can speak to Abdi’s particular situation, nor do I think they can openly critique their own institutions — the courts, the prison system, the law enforcement regime — without jeopardizing their careers. This obvious fact, bears repeating given the sudden rise of the previously unknown FBC.

The FBC is led by chairperson Donald McLeod, a sitting judge in the Ontario Court of Justice. Whatever duty McLeod feels to our community, he also has a professional duty to the court. The Ontario Principles of Judicial office state judges “must avoid any conflict of interest, or the appearance of any conflict of interest,” in the performance of their duties; that a judge “must not participate in any partisan political activity;” that an Ontario judge “should not lend the prestige of their office to fundraising activities.”

McLeod has spent the last 18 months building the group now called the Federation. During that time he has held meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Kathleen Wynne, and a host of Liberal cabinet and caucus members, including Hussen.

More shockingly, freelance journalist Ron Fanfair reports that, after high-level meetings with the federal government in 2017, McLeod “received a call from Ottawa indicating they would prefer the initiative to be national.”

McLeod’s behaviour, including his reported willingness to take direction from Ottawa about the FBC, gives the strong appearance of conflict of interest and partisanship.

The Federation has no formal bylaws, constitution, or public membership, yet it is asking for donations, with McLeod saying he wants Black people to scrounge up our “toonies and loonies and fives and tens” to fund the initiative.

Again, this behaviour appears to conflict with the rules of his office. Even if it doesn’t conflict, such conduct is not good enough for Black people fighting in our name.

On Sunday, Ebyan Farah left the Foundation steering committee — the group claimed her term of service had simply ended. Farah is the spouse of Hussen, and it only took days after I publicized this news for her to leave abruptly, without further explanation.

Imagine Farah, as part of the Federation, wanting to advocate for Abdi but knowing her husband may be ultimately responsible for the refugee’s fate. This compromised advocacy is what the Federation of Black Canadians is offering us, and we must do better.

Karen Carter took space in this publication Tuesday to criticize me for “personally attacking” McLeod (I never have).

Interestingly, a Feb. 23 tweet by MP Melanie Joly tweet shows Carter sitting next to McLeod at a meeting with Joly at BAND, Carter’s Black-owned art gallery. Carter says there are many ways for Black people to advocate, and that all are valid — I disagree.

We can only get free by putting the plight of people like Abdi ahead of our own access to power, safety, and comfort.

via Black advocates must put cause ahead of career | Toronto Star

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Suspicion of immigrants is a Canadian value: Cole

2016/09/17 Leave a comment

Element of truth in what Cole writes but lacks balance and nuance in failing to acknowledge attitudes and policies have and continue to evolve.

And are some of the ‘values’ talked about only a “reflection of our colonial, white, British, monarchical heritage,” or are they not broader and more universal?:

Conservative MP and party leadership contender Kellie Leitch doesn’t really want a conversation on Canadian values. The callous Leitch, who has been insisting lately that we consider a values test for prospective immigrants, simply wants to boost her brand by playing to racist and xenophobic fears of some Conservative party supporters. Modern conservative groups keep questioning immigrants’ values because they know their liberal political opponents, who are prone to the same prejudiced scapegoating, will struggle to condemn them.

Many have criticized Leitch’s proposal by saying it is impractical, since no one person or group can define or determine Canadian values. That’s a nice idea, but in practice we know the values our politicians attempt to sell us are a reflection of our colonial, white, British, monarchical heritage. There are such things as Canadian values, and they explain how our politicians have been peddling a fear of foreigners for the last 150 years.

Suspicion of all immigrants who are not white, or are not members of the former British Empire, is a Canadian value. Canada’s founding prime minister, John A. Macdonald, argued that Chinese immigrants to Canada were unfit to vote because they exhibited “no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations.” Macdonald didn’t need to cloak the authority of the state in the language of wanting a “conversation” about immigrants, as Leitch does today. In his time, there was no conversation to be had.

Assurances that we no longer live in the 19th century are beside the point. Every politician from Macdonald to Leitch has been able to bank on significant support by distinguishing between British or Canadian values and those of everyone else. Yes, even many newer immigrants echo these suspicions of outsiders’ customs or beliefs. They may hail from countries that our government is wary of. The pressure on these newcomers to conform — to validate the wisdom of the system that chose them, to scrutinize those who come after them — must be overwhelming.

Of course, all of this is only possible because of another fundamental Canadian value: erasure. Our modern mythology suggests that indigenous people were never here, or that if they were, their values and customs gave way to a superior British way of life. Our history books and our educational resources for prospective new Canadians have little to say about the values and traditions of indigenous people. British colonialism made outsiders of people who had been here for thousands of years, and cast their values aside.

That’s how a white man in a red coat who carries a weapon and patrols stolen land has come to symbolize the enforcement of Canadian values. We are taught to honour the force Mounties used to Anglicize this land, to view the guy in red as a symbol of honour and patriotism, no matter what despicable crimes he carries out. The values of dominance and separation enforced by the modern RCMP, and the Canadian Border Services Agency, are not universal or self-evident — they are steeped in centuries of racism, colonialism, and white supremacy.

Leitch may not win her leadership contest, but the fact her naked appeal to prejudice can still spur “debate” in this country says it all. Polls suggest a majority of Canadians agree with Leitch’s call to screen immigrants for good values. Few of us really care about the content of the questionnaire. What we care about is our very Canadian right to demand that immigrants be questioned, scrutinized, and weighed against the comfort and well-being of those already established here.

Conservatives are more likely to support the traditional dominant values openly. It was Leitch who announced a 2015 Conservative campaign proposal to create a “barbaric cultural practices hotline.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has cast himself as being far more progressive on immigration and cultural issues, had little to say about the Macarthyist snitch line — Trudeau and his party had quietly voted in favour of a Conservative law called the “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” only four months before the election.

Maybe one day, we will be able to have genuine conversations about human values that transcend not only borders, but so many other ideological barriers we still use to divide one another. For the moment, the state and its actors keep pretending there is something especially benevolent about being Canadian, and the culture wars continue.

Source: Suspicion of immigrants is a Canadian value: Cole | Toronto Star

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Non-citizen voting in local elections is long overdue: Cole

2016/05/13 Leave a comment

Desmond Cole on municipal voting for non-citizens. While I understand this position, have never been convinced by the arguments in favour of municipal voting, as most of these also could be applied to provincial and federal voting (e.g., healthcare and education provincially, EI and employment programs federally).

Given that Canadian citizenship is relatively accessible (apart from the fees!) in contrast to many European countries, simpler and more effective from a political integration perspective to encourage and facilitate citizenship, with the full range of voting rights:

Immigrants are the backbone of Ontario’s economy and the source of much of its growth. Our government deems newcomers fit to live, work, invest and raise families here, but somehow unfit to make electoral decisions about the laws and regulations that govern their lives. Sheesh.

While municipalities all over the world allow at least some non-citizen residents to vote in local elections, Ontario’s politicians have long seemed afraid to follow suit.

Interestingly, our provincial political parties allow non-citizens to buy party memberships and to vote in partisan leadership contests. Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown allegedly signed up more than 40,000 new party members during his recent leadership bid, many of them from so-called “cultural communities” (i.e. black and brown first- and second-generation immigrants). His campaign didn’t ask if all these folks were Canadian citizens — it wasn’t deemed a relevant factor to their ability to partake in that democratic process.

Canadians seem increasingly supportive of allowing some non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. City councils in Toronto and North Bay have formally asked the province to enfranchise non-citizens who have obtained permanent residency; officials in Halifax, and in five municipalities in New Brunswick, have made the same request of their respective provincial governments.

This was what I hoped for all those years ago with I Vote Toronto and in retrospect I am only sorry I didn’t push the threshold even further than permanent residency.

Before 1988 in Ontario, you didn’t have to be a citizen to vote. You had to reside or hold property in the municipality where you planned to vote; Nova Scotia allowed non-citizen British subjects to vote in local elections until 2007.

The need to vote and the benefits of being able to do so — for permanent residents, foreign workers, students and undocumented people — are just as critical for new immigrants as they are for citizens. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals should acknowledge this and extend the municipal franchise to all non-citizen residents.

Source: Non-citizen voting in local elections is long overdue: Cole | Toronto Star

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Robyn Urback: On that contentious Black Lives Matter tweet…

2016/04/11 5 Comments

One of the better commentaries:

…. I sort of understand why members of the Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) group all but shrugged this week in response to a controversial tweet put out by one of its co-founders. The tweet was originally posted back in February, but only came to light this week after Jerry Agar, a local Toronto radio host, reported on it on his show. In the tweet, BLMTO co-founder Yusra Khogali wrote, “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.”

It was a dumb thing to post, especially for a leader of movement that — one would think — would want to covet potential allies rather than ostracize them. And it shouldn’t be surprising that some people found it offensive. But rather than acknowledge the inappropriateness of the tweet, apologize for it and move on, BLMTO members dug in their heels and went on the defence: the group’s other co-founder, Sandy Hudson, refused to comment on it during an interview with a local television station, and instead criticized the reporter for focusing on the tweet, rather than the issues about which BLMTO was trying to get attention. In the Toronto Star, journalist and activist Desmond Cole explained Khogali’s tweet as a “common response to violence and injustice,” “an honest appeal to restraint and wisdom in the face of violence, racism and misogyny.” And Khogali herself refused to comment on the issue altogether.

Meanwhile, critics of the BLMTO movement latched onto the tweet as a sort of “smoking gun,” which supposedly proved the violent intentions of the group. But to make that assertion is a pretty remarkable stretch: people say and post all sorts of hyperbolic things when they’re angry — and despite some progress in recent years, black Canadians still have plenty to be angry about — but that doesn’t mean they actually intend to act on it. And it also doesn’t mean that the group’s core message should be wholly discredited because its co-founder posted one thoughtless, offensive tweet.

None of this is to say that Khogali’s tweet was in any way acceptable, though her defenders have demonstrated some phenomenal mental gymnastics in attempting to explain why it’s somehow OK to post a prayer to God, asking for the strength not to kill people of a certain group and gender. It’s not. The impulse to hunker down in this case is understandable, especially as BLMTO is slammed with criticism, seemingly from all sides. But it’s ultimately disingenuous: no group is, or should be, above criticism — not Black Lives Matter, not Orthodox rabbis in New York, not National Post columnists who, perhaps unwisely, wade into the most contentious of social issues.

BLMTO representatives say they would prefer we talk about carding, or wage discrepancies, or violence against blacks at the hands of police — which are all worthy topics of discussion. But at the same time, there is no better way to get people interested in a tweet than insisting that the media stop talking about it. Had BLMTO led the discussion, and heard the criticism, I suspect the conversation would have been over by now.

Source: Robyn Urback: On that contentious Black Lives Matter tweet…

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Shunning hatred online won’t make it go away: Cole

2016/02/06 Leave a comment

Desmond Cole on the tendency of media outlets to eliminate online comment sections:

Few people are mourning the disappearance of online comment sections in major media outlets. CBC recently removed public feedback for all stories involving indigenous people; the Toronto Sun and the Star have done away with the feature altogether. Gone is the fear of scrolling down too far in an online story, and taking in the hateful filth of mostly anonymous provocateurs that had become so common. As a bonus, cash-strapped media outlets who kill comment forums no longer have to pay staff to police them. Everybody wins, right?

But beware: the “block” function doesn’t transpose so easily into our live, face-to-face encounters. It’s tempting to ignore the hatred and discrimination we hear at work, in transit, at the dinner table. But while it’s not always safe or advisable to confront such oppression head on, we need to find ways to challenge it. The instinct behind the closing of comments sections is perfectly understandable, but looking away from the worst in our culture is generally not a path to progress, and can leave vulnerable people at the mercy of the haters.

Ontario’s Liberal government, for instance, should be applauded for its work to establish a clear definition of sexual violence and harassment for the first time. The government’s provocative “It’s Never OK” ad campaign against sexual violence has earned lots of attention; a set of proposed legal changes also deserve public consideration. We know, for example, that employers in Ontario regularly encounter sexual harassment in the workplace, and often choose to ignore it.

….It’s dangerous to dismiss oppression anywhere, including the rampant misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism that can dominate internet forums. It may be pragmatic for media outlets to eliminate it from their pages, but it endures in the hearts of hateful people. As we move to limit the impact of oppression online, let’s not fool ourselves that we can shun it without consequence in the many places we find it.

Source: Shunning hatred online won’t make it go away: Cole | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Ontario sets strict new limits on police street checks

2015/10/30 Leave a comment

Changes to carding, the new Ontario policy:

You will be told you have the right to walk away. You will be told the interaction is voluntary. You will be told that you do not have to give any information, and why you are being stopped and asked for it to begin with.

You will be provided with a written record of your interaction, given information about the officer, and informed about the police complaints system.

In a move hailed as historic — and overdue — the Ontario government is proposing a strict set of regulations banning all random and arbitrary police stops, and setting limits on how and when police can question and document citizens.

“The regulation makes it very clear that police officers cannot stop you to collect your personal information simply based on the way you look or the neighbourhood you live in,” Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, announced at Queen’s Park on Wednesday.

“This is the first rights-based framework surrounding these police interactions in our history.”

Source: Ontario sets strict new limits on police street checks | Toronto Star

And Desmond Cole’s reminder that rules need to be accompanied by cultural change:

The Wynne government is finally acknowledging that residents’ stories of intimidation and surveillance are credible, and deserve a response. It’s a welcome, if long overdue, development. But new rules cannot, on their own, reverse a police culture of aggression and hostility towards residents, especially black Torontonians. We can’t regulate decency and respect in policing, but we must nevertheless demand it.

… Too many residents — especially those who are black, indigenous, homeless, or living with mental illness — can recount stories similar to Miller’s. They rarely have the video evidence to prove what we should all collectively know by now: the police regularly abuse their authority when dealing with vulnerable and marginalized people.

New rules and technologies can help discourage bad behaviour and hold officers to account when they transgress, but without tackling the ingrained culture of police intimidation no real solution to this problem is possible. Indeed, the arresting officers in Miller’s incident directed their TAVIS colleagues to “turn the camera on that guy,” to use their recording devices as a tool of intimidation. Equipping police with body cameras is different from insisting that police respect all residents, and ensuring that those who do not are taken off the streets.

Likewise, provincial rules on carding, which have simply not existed until now, can’t fully eliminate arbitrary police stops or disproportionate police suspicion of black people. It makes no difference that the TAVIS officers who accosted Miller are themselves black; if the expectation in police culture is to treat black residents with greater suspicion and less respect, all officers must fall in line, or must face internal scrutiny for failing to play the game.

It took too long for the province to object to carding. It will be many months before the new regulations are critiqued, modified and passed. Even then, it will be up to local police services boards, many of whom have shown no interest in stopping carding, to make the proposed changes real. But carding is just an ugly manifestation of the dominant social belief that blacks and other marginalized people need to be kept in line with aggression, dominance, and disrespect.

New carding rules can’t regulate decency and respect in policing: Cole

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Subtle racism is the real threat: Cole

2015/09/19 Leave a comment

Desmond Cole on subtle racism, following UofT’s ‘White Student Union’ controversy:

The SFWC [Students For Western Civilization] website also features an interview with University of New Brunswick professor Ricardo Duchesne, who claims that “there is a real bias in university against white students, against white history.” Duchesne is the founder of the Council of European Canadians, whose mission statement proclaims that “Canada should remain majority, not exclusively, European in its ethnic composition and cultural character.”

For the moment, these messages of blatant white supremacy, and resentment for racialized people and movements, are thankfully unwelcome in mainstream Canadian conversation. That could change, of course, which is why it is important to challenge and oppose Duchesne, SFWC and their sympathizers. But we must also recognize them as merely the leading edge of a racist undercurrent in Canada, a mainstream fear that insists white people are under attack, but skilfully avoids examining what whiteness is or where it originated.

Race is a social construct, a false classification of humanity with no basis in science. However, thanks to our human history of European colonialism, slavery, and appropriation, whiteness has been established in Canada as an unscrutinized norm, a blank standard against which all other races are measured.

In Canada, white people are rarely named as a definitive group of people with a common identity or culture, a collective existence or set of values. Instead, whiteness stands invisible behind the camera and the microphone, examining the actions of others and demanding an explanation without acknowledging its role in framing nearly all mainstream conversions.

This is why, for example, a Canadian national newspaper can publish the headline, “We can’t keep tiptoeing around black-on-black violence,” as if the public is consumed with some other form of intra-racial violence, or would even validate that, say, white-on-white violence, exists or is a problem. It is why I, as a well-known black Canadian, am routinely asked my opinion about the actions of alleged black criminals, when it is the opinions of our white-dominated media that truly guide that narrative.

Most political observers and even casual news watchers remember city councillor and former mayor Rob Ford’s statement that “Oriental people work like dogs.” That kind of shameless racism gnaws at our Canadian sensibilities. But few people remember that Ford, whose heritage is hardly indigenous to North America, also said that East Asian people are “slowly taking over.”

Ford didn’t have to say what “Orientals” were taking over or, more importantly, from whom they were taking over. Similarly, when Conservative politician Larry Miller recently said that Muslim women in Canada who cover their faces should “stay the hell where you came from,” he did so without irony despite the fact that his own ancestry is not indigenous to Canada.

We can all recognize overt racism, and we should all condemn it, but our bigger problem is the subtle, unexamined sort. While we may reject uncomfortable notions of white student groups and organizations that promote European “cultural character,” most of us are more accepting of the equally racist notion of a dominant “Western civilization” they employ as a substitute for talking openly about whiteness.

Our unacknowledged assumptions, and our language about human diversity are better indicators of racism and discrimination than the impolite outbursts we seem so prone to recognizing. The clumsy expressions of hatred on local university campuses this week are like weeds — we can tear out the unsightly offshoots that pop up, but ultimately we have to address the problem at its root.

 Source: Subtle racism is the real threat: Cole | Toronto Star

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Premier Wynne, give us the data on police carding | Desmond Cole

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

Agree. The data should and needs to be shared:

Last week, the province launched a public consultation on police carding, the controversial practice of stopping and documenting civilians who are not suspected of any crime (some police forces use the terms “street checks” or “proactive policing” to describe the practice). The news is welcome and overdue — for years, police forces across Ontario have been disproportionately carding people with dark skin in the name of public safety.

The consultation includes an online survey, whose opening paragraph claims that “information collected during street checks may help solve and prevent crime.” Our police have never produced any data to back up this critical argument, and the province fails to do so in its consultation. If Queen’s Park wants meaningful public input on carding, it must publish independent, province-wide data showing how often carding happens, whom it tends to affect, and how much relevant information, if any, it produces.

Carding remains controversial in part because police tend to suppress data about it. The few existing stats tell us nothing about the relationship between carding and public safety. But data from police in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto is clear about carding’s racial bias; in each of these cities, black residents are overwhelmingly the most likely people to be carded.

Only 5 per cent of Ottawa residents are black, but 20 per cent of people carded in the nation’s capital in recent years have been black. Since 2010, Hamilton police have carded blacks at a rate of three to four times their share of the local population. The total number of people carded in Toronto dropped sharply in 2013, but during the same period the share of blacks being carded actually went up. This is the reality in three of Ontario’s five most populated cities.

The police forces responsible for this skewed policing deny there is any problem, and simultaneously hide relevant info on their activities. In June, Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau claimed his force did not collect information on the racial breakdown of carding incidents. A month later under growing public scrutiny, Ottawa police produced the race-based data the chief claimed they didn’t have.

…Officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) have done the majority of Toronto police’s carding in recent years. TAVIS has refused the Star’s requests for data on the number of its contacts that result in arrests or the recovery of guns. However TAVIS data from 2008, the most recent year available, shows that officers failed to lay charges during 98 per cent of carding interactions; that same year, TAVIS officers recovered a firearm once in every 650 times they carded a resident.

Premier Wynne, give us the data on police carding | Toronto Star.

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