On December 1, 2011 APUS will be evicted by U of T from its home at 100 Devonshire.
In the tradition of Public Enemy, APUS will continue to fight the powers that be to ensure that we are relocated to a suitable space that satisfies our diverse program needs for part-time students, women, and their children. More importantly, APUS must be relocated to a space that is accessible to all students on campus, including low-income, working poor, racialized, and students with a wide range of disabilities.
As a founding member of Woodsworth College, and an equity and student rights advocate for some of the most marginalized students on campus, APUS hopes to reconnect with all of our allies over the past five years to organize a united front of student, disability, women’s, anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti–gentrification organizations to ensure that U of T provides APUS with a suitable space to continue serving part-time students from diverse communities on the margins of Toronto — a city where the gap is growing between the “haves” and “have nots”.
At a time when the U of T administration is undermining the ability of progressive left student organizations to create open democratic spaces on campus for students to participate in political education, consciousness raising, international solidarity efforts with oppressed peoples across the globe suffering from the global economic crisis of capitalism in the 21st century, APUS is launching “Fight the Power 2011” to continue our space campaign with dignity and justice.
In 2011, APUS will fight to win and continue the ongoing struggle to ensure that U of T student organizations have the type of space that is necessary for us to organize the change we want to see in the world.
On December 1, APUS is scheduled to be evicted from its residency at 100 Devonshire so it can be demolished as a part of U of T’s ongoing redevelopment plans to benefit private interests at the expense of many students who are struggling to get by. This year, APUS is not settling for an inaccessible space in a funeral home.
Inspired by the legacy of Public Enemy, APUS will fight the powers that be who continue to weaken progressive student organizations on campus by jeopardizing their space. APUS takes inspiration from Chuck D on “Fight the Power” when he expresses his will to fight on the side of the oppressed and encourages others to do the same:
I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps…
What we got to say
Power to the People no delay
To make everybody see
In order to fight the powers that be (Chuck D, 1989)
This year we hope all of our campus and community allies will “Fight the Power” with “no delay” in solidarity with APUS to ensure our space campaign ends in victory.
By Errol Young
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is so focused on closing community schools and selling off the land that they are skewing the data that they present to the community at Accommodation Review Committees (ARC).
That is what happened in the Jane and Finch last year.
TDSB staff told them the local enrolments were going to plummet and never recover. Read more…
But Four Closures Blocked By Community Organizing
By Errol Young – BASICS Issue #20 (July / August 2010)
The most direct attack on public resources in Toronto is currently being made by the Toronto District School Board, with its plans to close and sell up to 100 local schools in the coming years.
The Board wanted to close 12 schools this year alone, but due to community resistance only eight will be closed: Briar Hill Jr. P.S., Kent Sr. P.S., Silverthorn Jr. P.S., Pringdale Gardens Jr. P.S., McCowan Rd. P.S., Heron Park Jr. P.S., Peter Secors Jr P.S. and Brooks Rd. Jr P.S.
Lucho Granados-Ceja, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández & Cristina Guerrero – BASICS Issue #19 – May/June 2010
A Toronto District School Board (TDSB) report, released in April 2008, revealed that that roughly 40 percent of Latino students do not complete secondary school. In response, “Proyecto Latino” was launched by a team of researchers at the Centre for Urban Schooling at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, in collaboration with the Office of Student and Community Equity of the Toronto District School Board. Led by Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, the team sought to explore the experiences of Latino students, how they define student engagement and what they identify as ways to improve their own educational experience and support their achievement and success.
by Errol Young – BASICS Online February 2010
Over 100 community public schools could close in Toronto and the land sold to developers in three to five years.
This development should be of great concern to us all. First there is the economic scale of this thing. Selling 100 sites for about five millions dollars each means that over half a billion dollars will be exchanging hands. Second – and more importantly – these sales will result in a significant loss of publicly owned resources.
A Public Statement by NO COPS (Neighbourhood Organizing Coalition Against Police in Schools)
Toronto Police Services’ own report on the School Resource Officer program shows that the program has had no positive impact toward any of its claimed goals.
Toronto – November 25, 2009: The Neighbourhood Organized Coalition Opposed to Police in Schools (NOCOPS) questions whether the Toronto Police Services (TPS) misinterpreted or misrepresented the data from the 2008/2009 School Resource Officer (SRO)Program Evaluation Report. NOCOPS is a coalition of concerned parents, students, teachers and community members who have been monitoring the SRO program since its implementation in September, 2007
“If this report had been written by a student, it would definitely not pass as it draws conclusions contrary to its own data” said NOCOPS member and teacher James Campbell.
The Evaluation Report was released to the public on November 18, 2009 with claims that the data suggests the SRO program has been “beneficial to crime prevention, crime reporting and relationship building in schools and surrounding neighbourhoods.” Read more…
Hundreds participate in walk-out after student arrested at No
BASICS #16 (Nov / Dec 2009)
by Noaman Ali
Two hundred students gathered on either side of Roehampton St. south of Northern Secondary School at 11:30am on Thursday, October 22 to protest the arrest of a 16-year-old male on October 2 and also to protest the very presence of the police officer in their school. The “School Resource Officer” (SRO) Initiative, started by the Toronto Police Service and the executive of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in 2008-09 and expanded in 2009-10, has led to the presence of uniformed and armed police officers in fifty high schools across Toronto. The demonstrators demanded the immediate removal of the SRO from Northern and a “fully-open, publicized public community consultation regarding the SRO Initiative at Northern.” Read more…
BASICS #16 (Nov / Dec 2009)
by Noaman Ali
Huda is a 22-year-old young mother with a disability who intends to study Sexual Diversity Studies, Creative Writing, Visual Arts and French at the University of Toronto. “It’s a lot, but I’m focused because of the support that TYP provides me.” In an educational system and society that repeatedly fails working people, the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) is one initiative that reaches out, usually to people who haven’t finished high school, and gives them support in an intensive one-year programme to transition to a more conventional university education.
Brandon, 23, grew up in Toronto Community Housing in Scarborough and was first arrested when he was 14. Caught up in “guns, drugs, and crime,” he made an attempt to turn his life around at 17. Now in TYP, he wants to be a teacher.
On Monday, October 19, administrators at U of T attempted to pass a proposal at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Science Council that would have weakened the program, according to students, alumni and faculty who have formed the TYP Preservation Alliance. Over fifty of them –almost all people of colour from working-class communities – showed up at the meeting to protest the move. The proposal sought to merge TYP, administratively, with Woodsworth College, but the Alliance argued that the merger was a cost-cutting measure that would result in staff cuts. In addition, Ahmed Ahmed, a recent TYP graduate, noted, “Three faculty members will have retired by the end of December, and they are not being replaced.”
Joe Desloges, Principal of Woodsworth College, effectively confirmed the fears of the TYP Preservation Alliance about funding cuts. The University “can’t guarantee staff positions. TYP faces identical challenges regardless of where it’s located,” he said. Ultimately, the Faculty of Arts and Science Council voted to delay the vote on the proposal after seeing the mobilization of the TYP Preservation Alliance and its solid arguments. “Programmes like TYP must be inflation- and recession-proof,” said professor and council-member Harry Fox. U of T Provost Cheryl Misak said in an e-mail sent the next day that because of the Alliance’s organized opposition, the move was “off the table.” In this sense, the TYP Preservation Alliance won a victory, but a partial one.
The Alliance will still have to fight further funding cutbacks. Meanwhile, other programmes at the university, particularly in area studies and equity studies, are also facing cuts. On October 29, over forty students and faculty gathered at New College at a town hall meeting held by the Equity Studies Students’ Union in order to organize against the cutting of a faculty member in Disability Studies. There is only one other faculty member at U of T who focuses on disability, even though people with disabilities make up over 15% of the Canadian population and are far more likely to live in poverty.
These cuts come after U of T’s administration recently introduced a “flat fees” system for the Faculty of Arts and Science. This means that students who might have taken three courses because they could not afford the full fee now have no option but to take five courses, and they cannot work part-time to fund their studies. This move came after U of T’s administration had fourteen students and activists arrested in 2008 for protesting increased tuition fees—the trumped-up charges were all eventually stayed or withdrawn.
There has been a broad pattern to restructure universities to more intensely cater to the needs of private corporations and wars instead of to the needs of public welfare and working people. Students are going to have to continue to organize in order to roll back cuts to programs that are already marginalized, to eliminate all fees for postsecondary education and to make university relevant and accessible to working people in Canada.
McMaster TAs go on strike as UofT Sessionals Set to Walk Out
BASICS #16 (Nov / Dec 2009)
by Farshad Azadian and Noaman Ali
Hundreds of teaching and research assistants at McMaster University in Hamilton set up picket lines at three different entrances on Monday, November 2, after the university administration tabled an offer that actually was a step backward from an offer they had tabled earlier. The administration thereafter walked away from the table and thus forced the union out on strike.
Meanwhile at the University of Toronto, sessional lecturers are getting ready to go on strike next Monday, November 9 as the university administration also drags its feet in negotiations. The tactics used by these administrations echo the ones that forced over 3400 academic workers out on strike at York University in a three month strike that began almost one year ago in November 2008 and ended in January 2009. That strike was ended after Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government legislated the strikers back to work. Although many people were angry at the union for being out on strike so long, it becomes clear from the current labour unrest that the problem is a systemic one and not limited to certain unions.
Since so many communities in Ontario rely on the public university system, the provincial government and employers try to set people in communities against the workers. The same pattern was seen in during the inside and outside Toronto city workers strike of summer 2009. That strike was also caused by the City of Toronto administration looking to gut workers’ wages and benefits. These attacks on workers come just as McGuinty’s government has expressed its intention to attack public sector workers in particular, along with the entire working class through service cuts, as a means of “solving” the government deficit that is supposedly a result of the economic crisis.
But the crisis wasn’t caused by workers, it is a built-in feature of the capitalist economic system, that for the last many decades has made a small minority immensely wealthy. Despite this, workers are expected to pay for it, as with the $270 billion bailout to big banks and industries funded by taxpayer money. The huge deficit at the federal and provincial levels – a deficit caused by the bailout – has instead been downloaded on our communities and our workplaces, through expected concessions at the bargaining table and through cuts to services such as housing, childcare and recreation centers that will probably result in increasing user fees.
University workers need to be prepared to play hardball against the anti-worker policies of the university administrations, who force workers out on strike by making offers with little substance that they know will be refused. Working class people should take an example from the important stand that university workers are making and be prepared to support them on the picket lines.
An Interview with Dr. Krista Hunt, member of CUPE 3902 Unit 3 and a BASICS supporter
BASICS #16 (Nov / Dec 2009)
by Luis Granados Ceja
Sessional Lecturers at UofT have been in bargaining for several months, and could be on strke as of November 9th. Many UofT Students, including supporters of BASICS Free Community Newsletter have been actively building a solidarity network on campus called Students In
Support of CUPE 3902.
BASICS: What are the demands of CUPE 3902-Unit 3?
Krista Hunt: The bargaining team is looking for a wage increase of 3%, which is the same amount of a wage increase that the Teacher Assistants got in our union. It covers basic cost of living increase. In addition to that, the other major thing is job security because currently we have no job security: we have to reapply for courses every 4 months or 8 months. People don’t know if they can afford to pay their rent or their mortgage; they can’t really plan ahead at all. The third is having some time allocated and funding allocated for sessional lecturers to do research because a key component of teaching is staying current in your field and publishing your research. Read more…
