‘They Don’t Belong’: The Solution is Not Cops

by Rayon
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

A few weeks ago, our high school, Weston Collegiate Institute, had a few people from the NO COPS campaign (Newly Organized Coalition Opposing Police in Schools) pay a visit to us at lunch time. They set up a table across the street and had stacks of free BASICS newspapers to give out. While BASICS organizers are well known for distributing the papers in Toronto communities, the members of NO COPS who were there that day, strapped with their BASICS issues, had another purpose.

What these guys had was a petition to the remove the “Special Resources Officer” - the uniformed armed police officers in high schools – from the 30 or so TDSB secondary schools across Toronto.

For the majority of the students at Weston, this petition is allowing us to voice our concerns about having a cop in our school. There was a lack of community consultation in bringing this cop here in the first place. The Toronto Police Services initiated and funds this program and the Toronto District School Board approved it at an executive level. The feelings among most of the students at Weston C.I. is that they do not want a cop in their school and they feel threatened by the presence of an armed police officer in the school for numerous reasons. The students cannot identify with an individual who wears a massive bullet proof vest and carries a loaded gun and taser, which is quite intimidating particularly for people coming from T.O.’s “priority neighbourhoods” – let’s be honest, ghettoes – who witness and experience police activity in a whole different light than youth from more affluent areas.

On a day-to-day basis, the police harass, bully, and brutalize people from our communities and get away without being held to account for their actions. How can we accept having police in our schools to “build relations” with us if they are getting away with daily brutality and sometimes murder in our communities? (Anyone remember Alwy Al-Nadhir or Byron Debassige?) We have already experienced police (SRO) harrassment at Weston C.I. There was a conflict with two young women and the SRO used unnecessary and excessive force on the two young women. This incident was captured on video.

The effect of having police in schools is going to push more and more marginalized students out of school altogether, furthering the divide between youth from financially-stable homes and communities and youth from working-class homes and communities. We cannot let this happen. We will not let this happen.

We want cops out of our schools!

If you are interested in becoming an organizer with the NO COPS campaign , please contact us at nocops09@gmail.com.

Protests in Toronto respond to Ontario immigration raids

by Syed Hussan, Faria Kamal, and Chris Ramsaroop
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Nearly 200 outraged community and labour activists rattled the fences of Rexdale Immigration Detention Centre on April 5, demanding the release of over 100 undocumented workers arrested during unprecedented immigration raids across southwestern Ontario.

Chanting ‘No One Is Illegal! Stop deporting people,’ ‘We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us’ and ’Justice for migrant workers,’ teachers, lawyers and organizers from OSSTF D12, Parkdale Legal Community Services, Mujeres Al Frente, the Sikh Activist Network, the Good Jobs Coalition, CUPE, UFCW, CAW, OPSEU and many others joined family members and friends on Sunday morning. Organized by No One is Illegal-Toronto, Migrante Ontario and Justicia for Migrant Workers, the spirited action was in response to three separate but coordinated attacks against undocumented communities.

This past week, Canada Border Services Agency and South Simcoe Police arrested hundreds of people, detaining over 100 workers. At the same time, in Leamington and Windsor, Ontario, dozens of undocumented people were picked up on their way to work, in their homes and in public spaces. Homes were also raided on the Danforth where absentee workers possessions were confiscated.

''For Justicia, these are our friends and our families that are on the inside," says Chris Ramsaroop from Justicia for Migrant Workers. "For Justicia this isn't just political, it’s personal. Our activists are impacted by these workplace raids."

“Racialized people have been targeted once more while working to pay for the basics while corrupt employers go free. And to this we say No!" he thundered.

No charges have been laid against the employer, Cericola Farms. These raids come the same day the migrant worker community celebrated a victory against recruitment agencies charging large “placement" fees to workers even if no legal work was found. Many workers were forced to work under precarious immigration status in order to secure an income.

As supporters encircled the premises of the detention center, the detainees came to the windows, applauding, cheering, pounding at the glass and waving fists. The action saw both the imprisoned and their community allies demanding an immediate end to immigration raids, detentions and deportations.

Numerous Studies Show Cops in Schools Make Matters Worse

by James Campbell Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The first School Resource Officer (SRO) programs began, unsurprisingly, in the United States. The goal of the first programs, started in Flint, Michigan during the 1950s, was to “improve relations between police and young people”. Despite the long history of these programs and their growing expansion to school districts all over the U.S. and Canada, a report by the International Center for Crime Prevention (ICCP) suggests that these programs have no long-term measurable benefit to student engagement or school safety.

If these programs have no measurable benefit, then why would Toronto Police Services (TPS) and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) be spending invaluable financial and institutional capital on an SRO Program at a time when our schools and our students are in crisis?

The answer, according to the ICCP report, is the move made by most police forces in the 1990s towards “community policing”. In the wake of the release of the Falconer Report, in response to the shooting of Jordan Manners at C.W. Jeffries Collegiate Institute, Toronto's own champion of “community policing” Police Chief Bill Blair made his own pitch to the TDSB to install armed police officers in schools.

In keeping with the history of SRO programs, and despite the dire warnings of the Falconer report, about the urgent need to make schools safer places for students, teachers, and staff, the goal of Blair's program is not to make schools safer but to “improve relations between police and young people”.

Despite being explicitly part of the TPS's 'community policing' mandate, there was absolutely no community consultation before the pilot program was implemented in September 2008. The decision to create the program was made in a series of back-room meetings with members of the Safe and Caring Schools department of the TDSB and members of the TPS.

Not only was the program created without consultation, it explicitly ignores two major community consultations done at the cost of millions of precious taxpayer dollars. Both the Falconer Report on School Safety and the Curling-McMurtry report on the Roots of Youth Violence spent months talking with and listening to students, parents, teachers, and school support workers. Out of these direct and extensive consultations, both reports painted a picture of a system in critical need of repair, and outlined extensive and specific recommendations to both engage marginalized youth and make our schools safer. Not once did either report recommend putting armed and uniformed officers in schools.

In fact, the Curling-McMurtry report explicitly points to the racial profiling of racialized youth by Toronto police as a major contributing factor to the increased climate of fear for many youth:

“Many youth also told us that they felt uncomfortable walking through policed areas within their neighbourhoods for fear of being harassed. One senior civic official highlighted this for us when he explained that in one community the youth favoured the use of surveillance cameras in public areas because they created zones where the police did not harass the youth.”

While the TDSB is still struggling to come up with funds to hire the highly-trained youth and social workers recommended by the Falconer and Curling-McMurty Reports, the TPS has stepped in with funding to replace social workers with the very police officers many youth fear.

Despite explicit assurances that the SRO program is not about school safety, the TDSB continues to justify the program on the grounds that it's making schools safer. This February, the TDSB released its preliminary report on the 5-month-old SRO program. In glowing articles in both The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, school administrators as well as TDSB and TPS officials told seemingly charming stories about police officers staying late to coach teams and participating in school-wide events by dancing in tutus. Based on these stories and other “anecdotal” reports, journalists and administrators happily concluded that the program was so far a great success in making schools safer.

Not only did these stories ignore the numerous reports by students, teachers, and staff of police harassment and an increasing climate of fear and repression, but they also ignored the TDSB report's own data. While TDSB data shows a reduction in suspensions and police charges in schools with SROs, there is nothing to support the claim that these reductions are the direct result of the SRO's presence. Indeed, these drops are consistent with a similar drop in suspensions and police charges in schools without SROs, which have been credited to the changes made to the Safe Schools Act explicitly intended to reduce suspensions and the intervention of police.

There is only one significant difference when it comes to data comparing schools with and schools without SROs: while the report indicates a 24% drop in violent incidents board-wide, it shows a 15% increase in violent incidents in schools with SROs. (Officials blamed this increase in violence in SRO schools on two major incidents in two different schools, and then conveniently chose to exclude these two incidents from the data set because it “skewed” the results.)

With no contemporary or historical data to suggest SRO programs have any measurable benefit for students, and with much historical and contemporary data that suggests that increased police presence alienates and marginalizes many youth, both the TDSB and the TPS continue to struggle to come up with a rationale for the program. At a time when there is almost universal consensus on what our schools and students need, our police force and school board are spending precious time, energy and resources on a program whose stated goal is not to benefit students in need, but to benefit the police force itself.

Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Month
April 2009

WHEREAS the Hispanic population is among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the City of Toronto and is committed to preserving its rich culture and traditions. Hispanic Heritage Month provides our Latin American communities with the opportunity to showcase and share their lively and captivating culture and traditions with Toronto residents and visitors to our city.

In Toronto, we encourage and welcome cultural celebrations of our many cultural groups that work hard to promote and preserve their rich heritage. Thes celebrations encourage understanding and goodwill and enrich our social and cultura developmen and the quality of life for many.

NOW THEREFORE, I Mayor David Miller, on behalf of Toronto City Council, do hereby proclaim April 2009 as "Hispanic Heritage Month" in the City of Toronto.

Mayor David Miller

For more information visit: http://hispanicheritagemonth.wordpress.com/

Review of Steven Soderbergh’s 'Che'

by Sana Malik
BASICS Issue #13 (April/May)

Steven Soderbergh's 4.5 hour biopic on Ernesto Che Guevara is an accomplished and respectful take on the revolutionary years of Che’s short life. For those who expect a celebratory tribute to the Latin American figure, Soderbergh’s piece will seem like a vague attempt to represent a hero’s tale. However, Soderbergh’s depiction and stylistic choices – always showing not telling – are as complex as its subject. Che was a principled man, but he was not without flaws or errors in judgement. This is an epic that celebrates his victories, but it just as easily leads you into the frustration of crushing defeat that Che was surely encountering. Soderbergh's strong cinematic overtures, and the contrast in pace and tone between part one and part two provoke questions on who Che was as a revolutionary and as a leader forced to make conflicting decisions. And that's exactly where this picture is the strongest- never making any judgements but leaving the viewer in the position of dissecting Che’s actions as a man of principle, without ever making his thoughts or actions palpable.

Part one contrasts scenes of guerrilla fighting in the 50’s in the Cuban heartland with Che’s first visit to the UN in 1964. His zeal and confidence are on full display in the gritty black and white reel, and a BBC reporter’s voiceover makes distinct the simultaneous suspicion and intrigue the West held of Che. It’s here that Soderbergh introduces and plays on the iconic and visionary poses that make the Argentine recognizable as a revolutionary, while the battle of Cuba wages on in subsequent scenes. Che remains obscure in Soderbergh’s vision - adding to his larger than life image as a popular icon – and Benicio del Toro captivates with perfection in the lead. Del Toro’s Che is equally compassionate and cruel, sometimes dogmatic and other times rash, his brilliant intellect on display and his crucial miscalculations devastating. It makes the man all the harder to understand.

The battle has been won and Cuba’s glorious socialist revolution is now place, and part two begins with Fidel Castro reading Che’s farewell letter to the Cuban people he helped free from the forces of imperialism. Che’s vision for a free and socialist Latin America has compelled his return to guerrilla warfare in Bolivia and to his eventual death. This story is less about his image as a revolutionary icon and more about a man as complex and conflicted as a determined fighter. The glamour is left behind in part one, and the continuation is a more reflective piece that captures Che’s raw emotion and human spirit. Or at least as much is accessible. Soderbergh reconstructs the complexity of Che’s covert battle – in the landscape and with himself – through discrete, but powerful sequences in the fateful year Che spent in the Bolivian highlands. Che sees everything that happened in Cuba in reverse: he is rejected by the peasants he hopes to liberate, his battalion shrinks as fighters die, are wounded, or run away, and the American-trained Bolivian militia encroaches his terrain. But he never turns back and that is the biggest message this film delivers.

The film is challenged by it’s slow pace and choppy storytelling attempting to mesh parts that don’t quite work together. It’s not entirely a glamorous portrayal and part two, especially, will probably suffer in commercial success. But it’s as honest, direct and significant as the subject it portrays.

Barrio Nuevo on Radio BASICS

Pablo Vivanco and Lucho Granados Ceja of Barrio Nuevo were recently featured on Radio BASICS, speaking about their experiences as international observers during the 2009 Salvadorian presidential election.

The clip is below:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Or download at:
http://drop.io/BNOonBasics

For the entire episode visit:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/32275

Be sure to check out other episodes of Radio BASICS and Barrio Nuevo's show "La Esquina", Saturdays from 8 to 10 on 1610 AM (CHHA).

Why Jason Marin doesn’t speak for me and shouldn’t speak for Latino/as

A letter from Lucho Granados Ceja of Barrio Nuevo to students at the University of Toronto

“I’m a gay Costa Rican Jew. I think that’s pretty diverse”. That’s how University of Toronto Students' Union (UTSU) presidential candidate Jason Marin responded at an elections forum when students expressed concern that his ticket lacked diversity. What Jason needs to realize is that if he purports to represent the Latino community, he must defend our interests. Unfortunately, he has consistently done the opposite.

Barrio Nuevo and its allies regularly see the detrimental effects of poor leadership amongst our community; issues such as a high drop out rates, low participation levels in post secondary education, and racial profiling continue to plague our community. As someone who works with the Latino community in Toronto, it is my opinion that Jason is the very type of “leader” that has been a detriment to our community and kept us oppressed here in Canada for so many years; “leaders” such as right-wing Toronto city councillor Cesar Palacio, who only champion their ethnicity when convenient, and push anti-people policies once in power.

Jason’s record on New College Student Council (NCSC) gives us troubling clues as to how he might behave should he be elected president of UTSU. As president of the NCSC Jason consistently sided with the University of Toronto administration as they advocated for policies that are harmful to economically oppressed and racialized groups, further entrenching the systemic racism found in our society. Naylor’s agenda includes the deregulation of fees, and while Latinos/as - who already face significant barriers to education – would be further marginalized by the skyrocketing tuition fees that would follow deregulation, Jason was absent from organizing against these policies.

Our elected leaders must see that racism in our society is still a systemic problem and that UofT is no exception. We do not live in a “post-racist” society, and good leaders cannot simply claim to belong to our communities; good leaders must champion our issues to the powerful by taking direction from our communities. Jason, sadly, only takes direction from the administration. Racialized people and their allies need to support leaders that support us, and they will not find such leadership in Jason Marin and his “Change” ticket.

Open Letter to US President Barak Obama

Dear US President Barak Obama:

We write to you as Barrio Nuevo, a young grassroots organization from the Latino community in Toronto. Much like many of the organizations you have worked for in the past, we are working to inspire social change and the development of our community by our community.

As first and second generation immigrants we understand the significance of your election to the Presidency of the United States not only for racialized people in your home country but also for all people around the world. Many in your country have chosen to express their desire for a different direction in your domestic and international policy by casting their votes and resting their hopes on you. It may not surprise you to know that many outside of the United States also have the hope that you will change the foreign policy of the US government and that the state of affairs countries impacted by US foreign policy will improve as a result.

We are concerned about the state of the Latino population in North America and our countries of origin in Latin America. Though we live here in Canada, we are very connected and informed of the state of Latin America and understand the impact of North American foreign policies on that region. This letter asks you to challenge yourself to reach beyond the traditional role that the United States has played in Latin America and to go past the propaganda that is still perpetuated about our region and people.

We ask you to act positively on 4 key matters pertaining to Latin Americans and Latin America:

1. Normalization of the immigrant Latino population working in the United States

There are literally millions of immigrant workers in the United States (primarily in areas that less than 200 years ago were part of Mexico). These people are supporting families and looking to build a future that was denied due to conflicts and problems in their own nations. They are crossing under perilous conditions which include not only recently constructed fences and walls but also the prospect of encountering armed militias that have been self appointed to ‘protect the border’.
As a humanitarian imperative, immigrant workers have to be given status so they can live without fear and without threat of having their families ripped apart or worse.

2. Ending the inhumane embargo against the sovereign Republic and people of Cuba

As seen from your presidential elections, the political tendencies and appetites in the most ardently anti-Castro segments on the United States are changing.
As called for by numerous United Nations resolutions and NGO’s you have a unique opportunity to demonstrate to the World that the United States is no longer interested in playing imperial master by dropping the embargo against Cuba.
Both the US and Cuban economies, and more importantly Cuban people have suffered long enough under this callous project.

3. Respecting the democratic decisions and movements of Latin America

Never in recent memory has Latin America seen such thriving civil societies taking active part on deciding the future of their nations. To the dismay of some, many elections have produced victories for parties that have been labelled pariahs by certain circles and have produced policies which have brought discomfort to those who still worship ‘free markets’.
Whatever the economic and social policies, they are the concern of the people that are determining them. The elections and governments elected in Latin America over the last decade must be respected and US funding and support of opposition parties and fronts must immediately end.

4. Ending military and material support for the Colombian government

While governments and elections must be respected, it does not mean that government must be aided by the United States. The Colombian government, a top recipient of US military aid since before the Bush Administration has been flagrantly implicated in vote buying, drug trafficking and assassination and disappearances of trade unionists, journalists, community leaders and others.
Consistent with our previous point, we are asking you to NOT interfere with the internal situation of Colombia. We are asking you to remove your military aid to this government which is using these resources to commit the worst human rights violations in the hemisphere.

We encourage your will “to begin diplomatic conversations about how to improve relations” and applaud your recognition of “all countries in the region [having] something of importance to contribute” along with the role of your state being “not to dictate policies… but to find cooperation and mutual interest.” We believe that in order for this to happen successfully, each country must be respected equally with the right to political and economic sovereignty.

- Barrio Nuevo Canada