By M. Lau & S. da Silva

On March 10, 2011 Toronto Mayor Rob Ford launched his attack on social housing in Toronto, adding to the list of other attacks that Ford’s City Hall is making on working people.  After scandalizing the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) when details were released about misspending by TCHC bureaucrats, City Hall moved to dismantle the TCHC Board of Directors.  The TCHC board was replaced with one man: ex-councilor Case Ootes, who will act as the interim managing director and the lone board member of the Corporation.

With no oversight, Ootes will be able to unilaterally make drastic changes to TCHC over the next three months. Ford has stated, “This is the first step taken to restore confidence back in Toronto Community Housing and tenants are going to be happy.”

Sure, revelations about the TCHC bureaucrats spending thousands of dollars on candies and retreats should outrage people.  But let’s not confuse Ford’s rhetoric about fighting the “gravy train” for his attacks on working people and the poor. The former is a not-so-subtle justification for the latter.

The real scandal in TCHC is the deplorable living conditions that tenants are being forced to endure.There is anywhere from $300 to $600 million in outstanding repairs due in Toronto’s social housing stock, with some 2,000+ units sitting vacant because of being in such a state of disrepair.  The crisis of chronic underfunding is the result of downloading the responsibility for housing to municipalities with the passage of the Social Reform Housing Act in December 2000.This crisis is the result of all three levels of government, and the people have to fight to prevent privatization from becoming the solution to this manufactured crisis of neoliberalism. Read more…

By Steve da Silva

The TCHC residents of Regent Park and Lawrence Heights will easily recognize the name ‘Public Interest’. Public Interest Strategy and Communications was the consulting firm that was hired by TCHC to conduct the bogus “consultation” processes with residents about plans for ‘Revitalization’ (a.k.a. Gentrification).In essence, these consultations were all about selling the idea of “redevelopment” to the people, managing people’s dissident when it arose, and channeling people’s opposition into harmless forms of community engagement.

On Sunday, March 13, 2011, a citywide organizing meeting was held in Lawrence Heights to create tenant opposition to the new threats of privatization. The folks of Public Interest (alongside one of the two purged TCHC ‘Tenant Rep’ Board members Catherine Wilkinson) immediately thrust themselves into the center of the organizing initiative.

Can a TCHC-contracted consulting group be in a position to provide genuine leadership to the tenant opposition to privatization?  Or are they merely concerned about losing their hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts if TCHC is privatized?  At least one Lawrence Heights resident saw the conflict of interest when she demanded Public Interest be excluded from the March 13 meeting: “How could these people be here if they’ve been the ones promoting the “revitalization” of our communities?”

One look at the biography of Wilkinson on the TCHC website would have most tenants thinking twice about whose been “representing” them at TCHC.  A Board Member of the Innisfil Chamber of Commerce and formerly an Auxiliary Police Constable are only a few of the highlights of Wilkinson’s stacked resume.

Sean Meagher (President) and Effie Vlachoyannacos (employee) of Public Interest have also established a series of other non-tenant led “community outreach and engagement programs”, including Save Our Structures.  It’s also no secret that Meagher, Vlachoyannacos, and the work of Public Interest as a whole isvery close to the NDP.

Tenants haven’t forgotten that it was the NDP Mayor David Miller who oversaw the deterioration of social housing in Toronto and the unpopular “revitalization” schemes.  Certainly, higher levels of government need to be blamed. But the NDP at the level of municipal politics in Toronto has done nothing but to hold back the initiative of tenants at a period when what we really need is a massive organizing and mobilizing initiative, not lobbying and electoral politics.

Since the March 13 meeting, the Public Interest-Wilkinson duo have been dominating and directing what has developed into a grouping called “Tenants for Social Housing: We are not for sale!”  They have struggled hard to ensure that the work of this grouping would limit itself to lobbying politicians, petitioning, and reinstating tenant representation (read: Catherine Wilkinson) on the TCHC Board of Directors.

I, Steve da Silva, a member of BASICS Community News Service, alongside Shafiq Aziz, a TCHC resident, have been attending these meetings and strongly advocating for the creation a completely independent tenant initiative.  Indeed, BASICS (and myself) were advocating for this sort of independent organizing since early 2007 when we created our newspaper in Lawrence Heights to counter the gentrification schemes on the horizon – around the same time that Public Interest was signing their first contracts with TCHC for the Lawrence Heights project.

If Public Interest and Wilkinson are against privatization, good on them; the people need allies.  But TCHC residents had no shortage of problems under the former Board of Directors and under the NDP-oriented City Hall of David Miller; and things are certainly about to get a hell of a lot worse with Mayor Rob Ford.  Residents cannot let their initiatives be supported to the NDP electoral machine or any other narrow set of interests.

At this time, tenants need a truly independent, citywide tenant organization to fight against privatization, fight for the long-overdue repairs, and build truly democratic tenant-led movement in our communities.

By Shafiqullah Aziz, TCHC Tenant, Cataraqui (Scarborough)

As the current situation with TCHC unfolds – Bill 140 threatening to throw open the door to the privatization of social housing, the firing of all members of the former TCHC board, the approval by Ootes to sell 22 units, with a one-man TCHC board occupied by Case Ootes, among many other actions – it is clear that the working class tenants of TCHC housing are being bombarded from all sides by provincial and municipal governments.

So the question arises, what should we do about this? What should the working poor TCHC tenants do about the possible privatization of the management and ownership of their homes? The answer lies in the tested, tried, and true method of grass-roots community organizing, led by tenants, for tenants, and to the benefit of the greatest amount of tenants as possible. Not only is this one of the only methods that can be effectively used by tenants throughout the city, it is by far the strongest.

What does grass-roots community organizing actually mean? It basically follows the idea that we as tenants, as individuals separate from any existing NGOs or governmental bodies, can effectively launch a massive campaign to bring the threat of privatization of our homes to a grinding halt. There are many ways that this may come about, and the key principle here is to empower ourselves to take control of matters that will directly affect our lives. Currently there are approximately 165,000 tenants living in TCHC housing, and with numbers of this size, there is a lot of progress that tenants can make by working together in one large, united collective.

Essentially, tenants would reach out to their neighbours, family and friends who all live in TCHC housing to stop the possible privatization of our homes. This approach must be used in as many communities as possible throughout the city. Spreading the word by going door to door, carrying conversations with community members, posting agitational materials throughout your neighbourhood, urging tenants to join in the struggle to keep our homes from being privatized are all tactics that may be used to gain support and solidify the power of the tenants.

These efforts and strategies must be guided by an organization whose general membership and leadership is comprised of TCHC tenants. Here are some guidelines to think about for the creation of such an organization:

1. The organization must have an authentic TCHC tenant leadership that represents the interests of the whole and not of a few individuals.

2. Meetings, discussions, town halls, etc., must be held in a manner that will respect the voices and concerns of the people; any disrespectful facilitators and rogue leadership that may lead the people astray must be questioned, and if necessary recalled to avoid the division of our collective efforts.

3. Those tenants who volunteer to take on a leadership position must be embraced and not excluded from the activities of this tenant-organizing group (especially women of colour, youth, queer and transgendered people, and other marginalized peoples representing various segments of our diverse population)

4. The leadership of such an organization must be subordinate to the greater general body of tenants within the organization; the leadership is only in place to carry out the wishes and demands of the tenants, which must be approved by and can be overturned by majority votes during meetings.

5. Individuals or groups which have a vested interest or may financially/politically gain from defending the former TCHC board and maintaining the former corrupt system, must not be allowed to co-opt the movement for their own personal benefit.

6. A genuine, independent tenants’ organization must follow the mandates set out by the democratic process advanced by TCHC tenants. The strategy devised by the organization must always emphasize and represent the interests of all TCHC tenants; the organization must appeal to the largest amount of TCHC tenants it can gather throughout the city; and the tasks assigned by the organization must be carried out in a time-efficient and effective manner at the initiative of the mass membership.

Tenants need an organization of our own. The time for the mass mobilization of TCHC tenants is now! We must use our strength as a unified force of tenants to exercise our democratic rights, and refuse the privatization of our homes. If we are not able to organize at this point in time, or homes and communities face privatization, leading to the selling off of our homes, massive increases in rent, unaccountable management, and the general deterioration in the quality of our homes as private owners aim to increase profits, not serve the people.

We must fight to attain control of our homes and our lives. No longer will we be idle as Rob Ford, Case Ootes and City Hall sells off our social housing.

There are many organizing efforts by tenants at this time. Contact us at [email protected] to start organizing around these issues.

FOR PUBLIC HOUSING! FOR TENANT POWER!

TCHC HOMES ARE NOT FOR SALE!

By M. Lau & Diamond Wisdom

Timing was everything when it came down to Ford’s rush decision to dismantle TCHC’s Board of Directors and replace it with a one-man-operation, Case Ootes. The provincial government is currently working to passBill 140: Strong Communities Through Affordable Housing Act 2011. Bill 140 will enact the Housing Services Act 2010, and repeal the Social Housing Reform Act 2000. If Bill 140 passes, it will have disastrous consequences for those reliant on social housing in Ontario.

With over 300,000 names on housing waiting lists across Ontario—a list that can take up to 21 years to wait through—there is no mention of new funding to address the backlog of repairs or any plans to create more truly affordable housing stock.  One tenant told BASICS that she felt that the provincial plan for social housing was to let it crumble to the point where the city could use the excuse of “unmanageable deterioration” to justify privatizing management or selling off more of its housing stock.  For instance, while just a few months ago, the backlog of TCHC repairs was reported to be standing at $300 million, mainstream press recently began reporting that the number currently stands at $600 million.  It is unclear where these numbers come from as there has been no such transparent reporting / documentation of these numbers.  In any case, City Hall is trying to steer the crisis of social housing into support for privatization, as if that were the only solution.

Under Bill 140, the supervisory manager – now Case Ootes – will be given new powers to essentially do what he wants. Under Section 95(16), “The housing provider is deemed to ratify and confirm what the supervisory manager does during the supervisory manager’s appointment, but this subsection applies only to things done in accordance with this Act.” During this time, Case Ootes will be able to “carry on the business of the housing provider,” “to improve the governance of the housing provider,” and “to stabilize or improve the financial situation of the housing provider”—legal-speak for taking the wrecking ball to TCHC.

As it stands, Bill 140 effectively removes (the currently existing) provincial oversight in the selling off of local housing corporation assets. Under Section 161(2), “A person may transfer, mortgage or develop the real property only with the written consent of the service manager in whose service area the real property is located.” Under Section 162(2), “The housing provider may transfer or mortgage the housing project or the land where it is located only with the written consent of the service manager in whose service area the housing project is located.” Since the service manager of the TCHC is the City of Toronto, Bill 140 would effectively allow the City of Toronto to privatize / sell off the current stock of housing.

While the passing of Bill 140 paves the way for privatization, it fails to address the real crisis of social housing. For TCHC tenants, the Bill fails to address the systemic problems caused by the structure of the Corporation in alleviating poverty and truly helping to improve the lives of poor people across the city in an era of instability.It also fails to address existing issues such as punitive Rent-Geared-Income rules (which removes protection and increases the instability and stress of tenants transitioning into the workforce through unfair rent increases); lack of protection and fairness for tenants (for instance, in rent subsidy disputes or unfair evictions) due to a lack of an independent review process; a lack of inclusionary housing policies; the list goes on.

For non-profit housing providers, such as the 550 housing cooperatives across Ontario, Bill 140 would effectively remove the protections of these co-ops that existed under the Social Housing Reform Act 2000. The new legislation would allow service managers to take control of and potentially sell off co-ops under “a triggering event,” including if the housing provider accumulates a deficit that is “substantial.”

With a provincial election approaching for October 2011, it is not at all surprising that Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty has aligned himself with Toronto’s right wing mayor Rob Ford for a combined Provincial-Municipal offensive against affordable housing in particular and against working-people and the poor in general.

Working people are coming under attack from all levels. There’s never been a more important time for residents and working people to organize themselves against the “austerity” offensive.  The rich are getting richer because of the attacks being waged on working people and the programs they rely on. Tenants require a truly independent tenants’ organization to defend against privatization and advance the struggle, made up of and truly led by TCHC residents.

Contact [email protected] to get involved in organizing.

By S. da Silva

As Canadians approach a Federal election, here’s a central issue that won’t be featured in the debates amongst the contenders for  control over the Canadian state: Yet another imperialist aggression against a sovereign country.

On March 21, 2011, as the four parliamentary parties braced themselves for an electoral campaign, all the parties found unity around the bombing of Libya.

In fact, the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois found  the Conservatives in contempt of Parliament in part for not revealing details about their spending on fighter jets, amongst other programs.

So while they offer up their nominal criticisms about spending tens of billions of dollars on new fighter jets, all the parties enthusiastically supported Canada’s deployment of 7 CF-100s to participate in the assault. In the last ten years, Canada has breached the sovereignty of and attacked the former Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Haiti (2004), and now Libya. Read more…

By Ashley M. and Nadeen el Kassem

On March 12, Women United Against Imperialism (WUAI) joined with many more women to take to the Toronto streets in the annual International Women’s Day march.

WUAI led a contingent of approximately 200 people that included marchers from Gabriela, IWWorkers, BASICS, Barrio Nuevo, UFCW Local 1000a, amongst others.

These organizations came together to highlight the strength and ongoing struggles of working-class women of colour in this city and internationally.

Marchers held their banners high, and chanted loudly to tell Toronto that they will not stop fighting as long as there is oppression and exploitation of working-class women.

The night before, WUAI held an International Women’s Day Cultural Night entitled “Celebrating Women’s Cultures of Resistance” at the 519 Church Street Community Centre.

The evening featured performances from: Faith Nolan, Joce Tremblay, the AngelHeartRiverwalker Project, Alex Flores, Sushmita Rai, Afi Browne, Panyalito, Shaunga Tagore, Doyali Islam, Stacey BE, iwWorkers/Gabriela, superINDAYS, and many more.

These artists are community builders that provide the foundation of our movement. Through our art, our voices, our lyrics, our roots, we will strengthen our fight against imperialism.

“Reading poetry from my upcoming book was a dramatic and insightful experience, as this event was my first major public reading,” said Doyali Farah Islam.

“As women, we garner strength and courage by taking up opportunities such as this one, for our power lies partially in embracing and sharing our unique and individual gifts as creative beings.”

As a follow-up to the march, WUAI will continue highlighting women’s struggles and achievements through public forums and by coming together with many other anti-imperialist women’s organizations at the International Women’s Alliance, taking place this summer in the Philippines.

Long live the working-class women’s movement!

For more information about Women United Against Imperialism, please send an email to [email protected]

By Jessica Ponting

Every year, people from nearly 100 countries around the world stand together on April 28 to mourn and demand justice for those who were killed or injured as a result of their labour. This April 28, there are many to mourn and there is much to fight for.

Still fresh in many people’s memories are the deaths of Alexander Bondorev, Aleksey Blumberg, Fayzullo Fazilov and Vladimir Korostin, the migrant workers who were killed when the scaffolding they were working on collapsed on Christmas Eve 2009. Their deaths sparked demands from community members to ensure full immigration status, workplace protections, health benefits and just workers’ compensation for all workers, particularly those without full status.

Paul Roach and Ralston White will also be remembered. On September 10, 2010 the two workers died working at a farm near Owen Sound. One worker was repairing a broken pump in a cider tank and was overwhelmed by the fumes. The second worker tried to save his comrade, but he too was overwhelmed by the fumes. Both men died before they could be rescued.

Roach and White had been coming to rural Ontario from Jamaica annually as part of the federal government’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). The program has been widely criticized for preventing labour mobility through employer-specific work permits and because the employer is able to threaten workers with deportation. Despite numerous requests following the deaths of White and Roach, there has been no indication that the government will do a coroner’s inquest and no changes have been made to the migration program that contributed to their deaths. Read more…

By Louise Jones

As the election nears, Canada’s three major parties all claim they’ll take action that will help workers and their families. But the track record of these parties tells a drastically different story.

The Conservative Party

One of the first things the Harper minority government did when it came to power in 2006 was to withdraw billions of dollars from Aboriginal communities, even though the Kelowna agreement guaranteed these funds. His government also eliminated the Status of Women Canada, a federal agency focused on promoting women’s equality, illegally defunded KAIROS, a faith-based charity organization critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza and spent more than one billion dollars to violently quash dissent in Toronto during the G20 protests. And that’s just to name a few of the current government’s memorable moments.

These symbolic manoeuvres fall in line with the larger conservative policy trend to divert taxpayers money away from social programs. This money is instead spent on security at home, to better protect the political and economic elite, and abroad, where a handful of corporations make a literal killing from imperialist occupations. The current conservative government allocates $30 billion for fighter jets and $13 billion for what mainstream media have termed “US-style mega prisons.”

While it was a Liberal government that first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2001, the Conservatives extended the mission two times, most recently saying Canadian soldiers will remain in the country in a “training capacity” until 2014. Testimony from Afghani people and Wikileaks documents revealed that NATO forces fund warlords and even the Taliban themselves as they attempt to establish a west-friendly regime in a land rich with minerals. Read more…

By Manena D.

When today’s families struggle to make ends meet, the option of having a stay-at-home parent is a luxury that is almost extinct. There are 3.1 million children under twelve years old with mothers in the paid workforce in Canada.

“A lot of women in the non-profit sector have been laid off recently. And the cuts that Ford is making to public sector workers will predominantly affect women” says Carolina Crewe, mother of two and teacher at York University.

Many who worked for the non-profit sector are finding it hard to find jobs due to the large funding cuts we just experienced in the public sector.

Families will be forced to take their kids out of daycare, losing their daycare space, while they search for a new job and struggle to survive on EI, if they qualify.

“Unemployment numbers point to a decrease in unemployment, yet the families I meet day-to-day, are still unemployed” says Crewe. Read more…

The May 1 Movement (M1M) is a coalition of working class organizations and progressive allies, with representation from various sectors, including organized labour, youth, media, women, human rights, migrant and various ethnic communities.

M1M formed in 2009, “the initial idea was bringing out May 1st as international workers day” says Marco Luciano of Migrante Ontario.

“We would like to share our experience of May Day, but also be able to learn from the worker struggles of other communities.”

Participants of the Coalition include: Barrio Nuevo, Bayan Canada, BASICS Free Community Newsletter, Canada-El Salvador Action Network (CELSAN), CASA Salvador Allende, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) – Toronto, Latin American Trade Unionist Coalition (LATUC), Migrante-Ontario, Progressive Nepali Forum of the Americas, Tamil Resource Centre, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1000A, Victor Jara Cultural Group, Women United Against Imperialism

For our BASICS May Day issue, we interviewed several of the representatives of the various mass organizations that are part of the M1M coalition to share their struggles and why they are a part of M1M. The interviews are below.

Barrio Nuevo // Pablo Vivanco

Barrio Nuevo is an organization in the Latin community here in Toronto, comprised of people of Latin American descent. We see a commonality between our people in terms of cultural heritage, but also with our conditions here as immigrants, as working class people.

Census data has verified that the majority of Latin Americans in Canada have lower wages and have higher rates of unemployment despite having higher levels of education. This indicates systemic oppression of our community.

We strongly feel that the answer to the systemic oppression of the Latin community lies, not necessarily asking government to do everything, but in trying to bring our community together to talk and try to find those solutions ourselves.  We’ve worked with a number of people in the community organizations to bring people together to start discussing what are the issues affecting people on housing, on employment, on education.

We’ve worked to highlight some of those issues as well as try to engage our community in terms of elections. Not in terms of trying to get people to vote one way or another, but to get our community to start actually working together to discuss what the issues are. We are seeing more often that elections become less about engaging in the real bread and butter issues or things that are actually relevant to people’s lives and end up being ridiculous exercises in talking about who is a better leader among four guys who don’t spend any time in the places where people live. We wanted to begin those discussions.

We’ve also worked on campaigns around issues of police brutality. For example, this year, a youth of Dominican descent died following an altercation with the police. Recently the coroners report confirmed that the youth died of asphyxia due to that interaction with the police. The police were acquitted and resolved of any wrong doing in that.

One of the other things we worked on this year is the issue around of why so many Latin American youth drop out of school and why there is such poor representation of Latin Americans in universities. These things signal that there are systemic issues that our community actually needs to overcome in order for people to advance themselves, in order for the community to advance themselves. And things that signal that our community is on the bad end of some significant social injustice.

May 1 is a date that resonates with our community because it continues to be a focal point of struggles back home. In Latin America where people recognize that it is the day when social movements live, people go into the streets regardless of what government is in there, regardless of whether they are permitted or not, regardless of whether they are going to face repression or not.

We’re involved [in M1M] not only because of the significance it has for people back in Latin America, but because we feel at a time when we are starting to see an unprecedented attack on every sector of working people (immigrant, non-status, unionized, and even those with historically the most protection and privilege) May 1 can act as something that unifies.

We see that the situation in the world is getting more difficult for pretty much everybody, everywhere. But at the same time, its not bleak: there’s hope. May Day is a day when all those groups can come together and realize that we all have commonalities and that we have a common adversary. Now it’s our time to act; it’s our time to come together to go out into the streets, just like people in Egypt, Palestine, Venezuela, Nepal and other places have been doing.

CASA Salvador Allende // Manena D.

CASA Salvador Allende is a grassroots non-profit organization that works primarily with the Chilean community, although the organization is open to working with others in the Latin-American community.

Casa Salvador Allende Toronto was created honouring Salvador Allende’s legacy of envisioning a world focused on social change, a world where there is justice for all.

Space for participation is given to members of the Chilean-Canadian community and Latin America to identify commonalities that allow us to work in building the Canada we want.

Right now, we are participating in a community education project. This five year project aims to provide an arts-based education program for children between the ages of 3 and 14 originating from Latin America. The project is in response to the shortage of resources and programs available to the Latin American community.

We work towards and promote solidarity activities for respect of human rights, social justice and democracy in Chile and the world.

The current Chilean government is not a people friendly government; it is corporation friendly. Similar to the struggles we face in Canada today, in Chile there is a shift towards privatization, and there is an anti-union climate.

There is a lot of social injustice in Chile. There are a lot of people that have been displaced due to the earthquake. The current government has failed to help the most vulnerable members in the community. Yet, after the earthquake, corporations have benefited from incentives to rebuild their enterprises and have made a profit at the expense of the marginalized population.

We have started a watchdog movement where we are keeping tabs on what is happening Chile. The Chilean-Canadian community in Toronto has had fundraisers to support Chileans victims of the earthquake, such as Caleta Tubul, a small forgotten fishing community in the south of Chile. We campaigned to buy fishing equipment so that the community could return to work and regain their dignity and their ability to rebuild.

It is very important for CASA Salvador Allende to be a part of the M1M and to put some pressure on the Canadian government to recognize May Day as an important day to celebrate the labour movement.

It came to me as a complete surprise to find out that in Canada May Day is not even talked about. For Chileans, May Day is a very important day when we celebrate workers’ accomplishments and we reflect on the struggles yet to be resolved.

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada Local 1000A // Leanne Wilkins

The United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 1000A consists of 30,000 members and about half of them belong to the Loblaw’s group—so Canadian superstores such as No Frills.

Our members face a constant demand by the employers for concessions in their collective agreements. Wages is number one. Benefits are up there. Schedule language—employers basically want to abolish any seniority clauses in the work place. They want to have more control over health and safety, which is a huge concern for us.

On average, a Loblaws contract is above minimum wage for the 5+ year employee. So they have a lot to lose after years of trying to get to that point in collective bargaining. To have it basically stripped away is a slap in the face, since the company is basically profiting off their backs.

Loblaws’ point of view is: we don’t care about you as a worker, we care about our bottom line—we pay you too much compared to our non-union competitors like Wal-Mart and Sobeys and so you need to go back down to minimum wages.

Instead of tearing away at the contracts and lowering wages for members, we are trying to get out there to unionize the non unionized retail grocery store workers like the Sobeys, Wal-Marts and Price Choppers.

Many of our members, in their home countries, celebrated workers’ day. And really, international workers’ day should be celebrated by all workers, regardless of whether you are unionized or not. It shouldn’t be just for organized labour in September. It should be for all workers.

We find that workers are often pitted against each other—organized unionized against non union, full time versus part time, all of those things and instead of bowing to that divide and conquer attitude, we should all be coming together. And so being involved in the M1M coalition is definitely one way of doing that.

Women United Against Imperialism (WUAI) // Ashley M.

Women United Against Imperialism is a women’s collective comprised mostly of working women. Many of the members of our organization are migrant workers and working class women with issues with status, precarious work, state repression, and policies that negatively affect our community here in Canada.

We are also faced with the effects of colonialism, violence, patriarchy, forced migration, poverty, unsafe working conditions, and racism amongst others.

We bring out the issues that many of us face by organizing under an anti-imperialist feminist lens. Our focus over the course of the past few months has been on violence against women (in regards to state and personal) and our last forum was focused on confronting precarious work.

In the past, we have focused on issues such as war and occupation, the right to status and systemic repression of imperialist and non-imperialist nations—all of which interconnect with precarious work and violence against women.

We continue to focus on these issues and building alliances with different communities locally and internationally.

The initial reason why we joined M1M is because we are a working class women’s collective and wanted to highlight the importance of recognizing international workers’ day as international day of solidarity with other workers. This was one of the biggest pushes for us to join.

It’s important to work with other communities to join together in unity, connecting us with a lot of other communities that make up the thread of Toronto and all over the world. May Day is important and celebrated all over the world and it’s important to continue to keep that flame alive.

Migrante Ontario // Marco Luciano

Migrante Canada is a chapter of Migrante International which is based in the Philippines. It has chapters in 100 countries. Migrante Canada itself is an alliance of 16 organizations from BC to New Brunswick.

The members of Migrante are Filipinos. We do a lot of work with Filipino migrants and immigrants on migration and settlement issues.

A lot of our members are caregivers here in the greater Toronto area. We do a lot of work on the changes to the live in caregiver program and also in the bigger temporary foreign worker program.

Because Migrante is an advocacy organization, we don’t have the capacity to provide services such as legal matters. So we do a lot of work with progressive lawyers and unions who can provide these services. One of the projects we have is the unionization of care givers in Ontario.

Another important aspect of our work is to help Filipinos form their organizations and affiliate with Migrante. To affiliate with Migrante, there is a basis of unity: you must work to address the rights and welfare of Filipinos here and also understand the root causes of migration – that migration here is not a choice, but we are forced out of our country.

Filipinos that are here today did not choose to be here. Because of economic conditions in the Philippines, lack of jobs, lack of industries where people can work, lack of subsistence farms, people are forced to go abroad to look for work. Currently there are almost 4,000 Filipinos leaving the Philippines everyday. There are 8 million Filipinos abroad, living and working in 198 countries.

We thought that it is really important for folks in Canada to understand the importance of May Day. In the history of our struggles in the Philippines, we are brought up [understanding] that May 1 came out of the struggle of international working people.

Coming here and seeing that Labour Day was celebrated in September, I was confused. In Canada, Labour Day is a parade. It’s not even a march.

In the Philippines, people come out not because it is not a working day, but because it is a time where the people’s issues are really brought out. People take to the streets because there are demands by the people. In Canada, the whole message that Labour Day is a workers’ day is watered down.

Progressive Nepali Forum in Americas (PNEFA) // Mukti

PNEFA brings Nepalis in North America into its network and tries to raise voice against discriminations and autocracies and for pro-people activities, pro-national sovereignty activities and pro-democratic activities.

PNEFA has opined over major incidences in Nepal (such as Nepali border encroachment and brutalities, insubordination of pro-monarch army to the legitimate government) through press releases and submission of memoranda to concerned embassies.

PNEFA is involved in M1M because May Day raises voices related to human rights and democratic issues related to the largest and productive section of society—the labouring class.