THE MAPLE SPRING COMETH AGAIN
THE STUDENTS ARE ORGANIZING A STRIKE
Little Gaza
Today, I entered "Little Gaza" @ UofT for the first time, having attended the grounds daily to observe and chat with friends I ran into -- today I had official business: attending a talk by Human Rights lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Fatima Hassan of health4palestine.com and I learned much as the speaker and attendees delved deep into the parallels between Canadian, South African, and Israeli apartheid, and the links between pharmaceutical companies such as TEVA and the IDF. (And vaccine hoarding by Pfizer.)
I learned that:
the youth stood up in South Africa as they do today
Brian Mulroney stood firm on sanctions against apartheid South Africa and is honored in South Africa for this reason
Mulroney did not accept half-measures, and held out for structural change
music was essential to the South African uprising
As I left with the idea fresh in my mind of boycotting TEVA a pair of students handed me a flyer:
It reads:
“As the student encampment enters its second week, the University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU) issued a statement in support.
This is an important development in the struggle. The UTSU has the power to escalate the fight by mobilizing the entire student body to shut down campus.
With the invasion of Rafah, and Ford’s green light to clear the encampments, the need to escalate the movement is even more urgent. We need to shut down the university as a step toward shutting down the country and shutting down the Israeli war machine.
THAT IS WHY WE ARE CALLING ON THE UTSU TO PREPARE A STUDENT STRIKE THAT WILL SHUT DOWN THE CAMPUS UNTIL OUR DEMANDS ARE MET!
We demand that the university disclose all investments and divest from the genocide of Palestinians.
We demand the dismantling of the unelected board of governors who invested in the genocide in the first place.
We demand student, faculty, and staff have control and management of the university.
Disclose and dives! Intifada until victory!
RCP”
Support The Strike
This. Is. It. Folks! I don't know if you remember the "Maple Spring" when student strikes in Montreal forced an election and led to the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, but the same is happening here, again, but this time with more buy-in from the anglophone community: at the time the English-language media covered the French protests with a persistent fallacy: "If their tuition is so low, why do they strike?", identifying success as failure: in Quebec, tuition is low because of persistent student strikes, and all the reasonable coverage came from The Montreal Gazette.
I support the student strike and so should you, I will see you there, at any actions that they call for, and we must all listen intently to their demands, and the surrounding dialogue, for peace depends on everyone alive.
—
adamgolding.substack.com
PS I am not a communist ;-)