Cast off Discouragement

I just watched Gordon Laxer give a talk on his newest book, After the Sands. I haven't read the book yet, but here are my notes from his speech. This is more or less paraphrased with reasonable accuracy (and links!).

I had never heard of Laxer before, but he was the first chair of the Waffle movement in Toronto in 1969 (I'm guessing he's related to James), and he founded the Parkland Institute for education and research for the common good in 1996. In between, he's a Poli Sci prof and writer. He told us that the Paris Climate Accord had some laudable goals, but it left each country to its own to reach those targets. Canada doesn't have much of a plan, so this book is an answer to that, a bold (that word was said a few too many times) path towards a low-carbon future. We have to change our thinking with a new optimism that we can take action that will develop a socially just, sustainable, low-carbon society within two decades. As Francis Moore Lappe said, "It is too late to prevent suffering. Terrible suffering is already with us. But it is not too late for life."

Indigenous Partnerships

I seemed to have picked the right time to venture into teaching an Aboriginal Studies course. It feels like we're at a turning point with our relationships and connections in Canada, and teaching has forced me to learn our history at an accelerated rate. It's embarrassing, of course, that I knew so little before - and still - but I think that will change for the next generation. Things are shifting.

Laxer explained that no environmental victory won in the last thirty years was without indigenous help and leadership. First Nation land claims have become pivotal in environmental battles. Honouring indigenous rights is Canada's best chance to alter the fate of the planet. We need to adopt the worldview of honouring the land we live on instead of using it up for all it's worth.





Environmentally, Trudeau and Notley are Harper Redux (so far)

In Paris, Trudeau assured the world that "Canada is back, my friends," but then he started following Harper's old targets to reduce GHGs to 524 MT by 2030 at a rate of 1.7 MT/year.  For a comparison, both the US and EU plan to reduce emissions by 2.8 MT/year.

Rachel Notley announced her plan for Alberta while standing side by side with CEOs, and they all had big smiles on their faces. It's because Notley's reduction plan targets emissions from power generation and transportation, which together make up 28% of Canada's GHGs. She allowed the tar sands to continue to raise emissions, but the production of oil and gas make up a whopping 45% of GHGs. If the sands are allowed to continue, they'll cancel out all other efforts to reduce. Harper was in the pockets of big oil, and Notley isn't, but she's still intimidated by them, so she's willing to shill for oil. Unfortunately, the message is more effective coming from Notley. Too many environmentalists have relaxed, assured by her lefty stance. By 2030, if the sands continue, they will produce 56% of Canada's GHG emissions.

As an MP, Trudeau voted to pass Jack Layton's carefully drafted bill to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, which was unfortunately stopped by the Harper-stacked Senate. But it was influential enough to be adopted by the G8 in 2009. Notley's plan will gut that dream.

Laxer argues that we have to shut down the tar sands completely within fifteen years.


Energy is a Human Right

We can't let price determine who gets access to energy or the rich will exploit their position. A carbon tax barely affects the wealthy, but can be disastrous for the poor. The richest 10% cause 50% of the emissions, so we need to affect the right people. (However, the richest 10% includes anyone who makes over $25,000 per year, which might not be what you just pictured.) We need to make sure all of Canada is "energy secure." We can do this by using our own energy instead of exporting oil and gas to the US, and then importing 40% of the oil we use. The US has made it clear that if they have a shortage, they'll cut off Canada in a minute. We can't be dependent on others for our own energy. Currently we have no strategic petrol reserves; we've signed away our own resources. We have to reverse these decisions.


The Problems with Pipelines

Pipelines have become controversial due to all the leaks and spills. Conventional oil floats and is relatively easy to skim off the top of water, but bitumen from the tar sands is more dense, and it sinks. It's very difficult to get it out of the water system once it's in there.

Pipelines have run roughshod all over Native lands. "It's not a Native thing; it's a 'protect the Earth' thing." We all should want clean drinking water, so we should all be fighting to stop the pipelines. Because it's too costly to ship by rail, if we can stop pipelines, we can shut down the tar sands.

In the 1950s, pipelines ran east and west to supply all of Canada. But then in the 80s, under NAFTA, they started running north to south, and we started exporting 70% of our oil to the US. In the Energy Proportionality Clause, it says Canada must export the same percentage it had exported in the three years previous to the clause being involked, even if we're running short. Mexico refused to accept that clause, and they got an exemption. But Canada has to give the US first rights.

But then in 2011, Obama stopped the Keystone pipeline due in part to massive protests from US citizens, which makes it less likely that the proportionality clause will be invoked.

We need to ramp up renewable energy sources, phase out energy exports and exports of natural gas. We only have a twelve year supply of natural gas and BC is planning to export it. Alberta is using natural gas to turn bitumen into usable oil. "That's like turning gold into lead for export." We need to phase out electricity exports too. Hydro supplies 60% of our electricity.

We have our own usable energy, particularly from BC, Manitoba, Quebec, and Newfoundland. BC can supply Alberta; Manitoba can supply Saskatchewan; Quebec can supply Ontario (and get Ontario off nuclear); and Newfoundland can supply all of the Maritimes, but it has to get out of the exporting game. I'm hoping his book outlines how to do this; he didn't get into the logistics in his talk.


Political Will

We have the technology today to live without the tar sands, but we just need the political will and a new mindset. The colonialists came and dug up resources here to export them for cash, and we have to get away from that pattern of behaviour.

We're 9th highest GHG emitters in the world, producing twice as much as Norway and three times as much as Sweden per capita, and they're just as northerly as we are. Some argue that there's no point doing anything if China's still emitting so much, but in 2015, 100% of new energy production in China was renewables. China spent three times as much on renewables per capita as Canada last year. By 2020, they'll have enough to power homes and industry for 280 million people (200 GW each of wind and solar), and they're closing 1,000 coal mines this year. We're running out of "but look at China" excuses.

The tar sands employs 2.2 million people, many of whom travel from the other end of the country to get there. Last year 40,000 were laid off, and some were able to make the transition into solar and wind construction near their own cities. It's devastating that people lost their jobs, but we should see the lay offs as an opportunity, as the first step in a low-carbon future. There are more jobs created by green construction than by the tar sands. "A unit of carbon saved makes more jobs than a unit of carbon emitted." And then workers can live in their home communities.

We can do this, and it will make us a better society. We're built with the ingenuity to overcome obstacles, but we get sidetracked or discouraged. We must struggle for our lives, for our children and grandchildren, and for all other living things. We have a new world to create; the time to start is now.

On Pipelines: Line 9 and More

After Laxer spoke of his book on the tar sands last Wednesday, Myeengun Henry spoke. He's an Elder and the Aboriginal Services Manager at Conestoga College. His focus was on pipelines. He spoke of issues that I had heard about and kind of understood, but I admit I haven't paid close enough attention to be able to keep all the pipelines straight even though it's clear they can break and leak and wreak havoc on the soil and water. Henry brought a clarity and urgency to the issue. It's time I wrap my head around it all.

While Indigenous people were recovering from residential schools, the land was being divided by pipelines. They had to get back to their traditional teachings about protecting the land.

The People Versus Enbridge on Facebook 

Wampum

They went to the National Energy Board to oppose Enbridge and the potential destructions they could cause. Pipelines have a 40-year life expectancy. The pipeline that Enbridge is using on line 9 is 40 years old, and now they want to change the flow and increase the capacity. It's going to break.

We must refuse to stand and watch it happen. So some of them took it into their own hand to go to Enbridge in Calgary. The Chippewa of the Thames First Nation talked about sharing resources and offered a two row Wampum to the CEOs. It looked something like the photo here. The two lines represent the two nations working parallel to each other. The three sections represent love, peace, and respect. And the fact that it's unfinished at the ends, illustrates that the relationship has no end.

Then the CEOs told them that the resources don't belong to the Indigenous people, and they presented them with a broken piece of pipeline.

It was clear that conversation wasn't going to bridge the gap, so they decided to take on the legal challenge.

Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 says there's a duty to consult any indigenous people on land that could be adversely affected by corporate activity. That consultation never took place. So they took it to a Federal Court of Appeals, but they lost the case. There were three judges; two said no, and one dissented.

They wanted to take it to the Supreme Court, but if they lost, they'd have to pay Enbridge's court costs. Henry feels strongly that money shouldn't be a deciding factor in a Supreme Court challenge. These court cases should be about the cost to children. People shouldn't have to prove their rights in a court of law; they should just have to show that their rights were violated for the injustice to be corrected.

BC First Nations were able to raise $200,000 in four months to fight the Northern Gateway a couple years ago.

The Chippewas started a gofundme site (DONATE HERE) and decided to go for it despite the costs. And they put Hydro One and Union Gas on notice too!

The date for the appeal to begin is November 30th 2016. Enbridge started flowing oil through line 9 last December 2015. Fingers crossed there are no leaks before it can be shut down.

Henry said,

Think back before we discovered Columbus. People understood our Mother the Earth is the most important aspect of life, and it needs to be honoured and cherished. If we dishonour her, it spoils the water and air and life ends. We need to come together on this. Nature will take all of us. We need a more unified country based on understanding Aboriginal knowledge in order to grow together.

Some pipelines in the news (outline of all Enbridge's pipelines here):

* Line 9 - 800 km from Sarnia to Montreal; it crosses tributaries flowing into Lake Ontario, and crosses the Ottawa River; it passes through 99 towns and 14 Indigenous communities in Ontario and Quebec; it has 12961 structural weaknesses and several design deficiencies along its length.

* Line 7 - from Sarnia to Hamilton, side-by-side with line 9 - This one is 60 years old and carrying 180,000 barrels/day. It was approved by the National Energy Board in November. This one's falling under the radar.

* Northern Gateway - 525,000 barrels/day from the tar sands to Kitimat BC, 1,177 kms, then to tankers to go across the Pacific Ocean. Approved by Harper in June 2014, but Trudeau visited in August 2014 and said it would be shut down if he became PM. In November 2015, he banned oil tanker traffic in the Pacific, effectively shelving the pipeline.

* Keystone XL - 1,900 km from Alberta to Nebraska (just phase IV of the whole Keystone project - the other three phases have been completed). Rejected by Obama in November, 2015 after mass protests in Washington.


Leaks and spills and explosion, oh my! 

Here's just a few to remind you of the potential for disaster. As pipelines are aging, leaks are becoming more frequent. Pipeline incidents in Canada have doubled in the past decade often citing corrosion as a culprit, yet replacing old pipes isn't in the picture:

"More than four reportable releases happened for every 10,000 kilometres in 2000, or 18 incidents in total, according to NEB data. By 2011, that rate had risen to 13 per 10,000 kilometres, or 94 incidents.

This could be your street!

Apr. 2016 - Keystone leak in South Dakota, but it will be up and running again in no time!
2015 - Drumheller, Alberta - TransCanada pipeline leaks into agricultural land
2015 - NuVista pipeline spills in the Hay Lake First Nation
2015 - Nexen pipeline in Alberta - 5 million litres - one of the worst spills ever
2014 - Otterburne, Manitoba pipeline explosion
2014 - 70,000 litres spilled near Slave Lake
2014 - Oneok's Viking Gas transmission was ruptured and exploded in a 100' fireball
2013 - Exxon Pegasus tar sands spill into an Arkansas neighbourhood, and they didn't have to pay into the cleanup fund
2012 - Elk Point, Alberta had a leak of almost a quarter of a million litres
2012 - Half a million litres leaked into a central Alberta river system, Red Deer River
2011 - Peace River, Alberta - 4.5 million litres of crude leaked near the Indigenous community of Little Buffalo
2010 - Bronte Creek, Oakville - the Trans Northern pipeline leak into creeks, soil, and groundwater
2010 - Line 6B in Michigan - spilled millions of litres of bitumen in the Kalamazoo River - bitumen can't be effectively cleaned from a waterway because of its density; it's so far the largest inland oil spill


The Protests:

Line 9 - Ontario First Nations, three activists shut if off in Dec. 2015 in Sarnia, activists shut off a valve in Quebec, Bronte Creek blockade, Waterloo Region against line 9, activists scale a tower to unfurl a banner in Montréal, activists chained themselves to a fence in Montreal, activists walked 700 km to protest, and here's a list of 80 other groups.

And Rachel Thevenard ran the entire length of the pipeline, 800 kms, IN WINTER, to raise awareness, and I hate to say I completely missed it. I know all about Clara Hughes biking for mental illness, but somehow missed any news about someone from my hometown running for an environmental cause.

"She sighed when asked if she was afraid of hurting herself. 'I will literally wheelchair against Line 9 if I have to. This pipeline has to be stopped.'"

Judy Gelfand, the federal environment commissioner, found in January 2016 that the National Energy Board is failing to adequately track whether pipeline companies are complying with conditions set out when projects are approved. The NEB's systems are "outdated or inaccurate."

Line 7 - Activists tamper with valves near Cambridge

Stand (formerly Forest Ethics) from Clayoquot Sound convinced Tim Hortons to refuse to advertise for Enbridge. Ezra Levant started a boycott Tim's site in response.


And the Greatest Irony Award goes to...

Enbridge for sponsoring a Ride to Conquer Cancer while mutated fish are developing near the tar sands!




ETA: And Notley's standing firmly in support of national pipelines. Even the NDP are willing to take a risk like this at the expense of our country and people:

"I'm asking you to leave here more persuaded than perhaps some of us have been, that it is possible for Canada to have a forest industry, to have an agriculture industry, a mining industry, and yes, an energy industry, while being world leaders on the environment."

I'm not remotely persuaded.

Fractured Land

I went to see this at the Perimeter Institute last night, and was so excited to meet the star of it, Caleb Behn, Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne-Za hunter, fisher, activist, and lawyer. Unfortunately, he cancelled. It was disappointing, but the film made it clear that he's a seriously busy guy! It was worth going to see the film anyway.

It's a perfect film for my Native Studies class. It brings in the notion of a split identity, of the relationship with the environment, the need to regain legal control over the areas being destroyed, and the challenge of putting it all together.

Behn's parents are polar opposites: his dad endured the residential school system and spoke at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and his mom is the highest ranking female executive at an oil and gas company. He's trying to cope with a system that destroyed his people, and she's trying to change the system from within. They divorced when Behn was ten, which he refers to as the first great break in his life.

The film lets us dwell on some beautiful scenery juxtaposed with concerns about checking game for contamination before eating it and the quickly dwindling number of animals to hunt. Behn lives in Northeastern B.C., land covered by Treaty 8, and the third largest hydrocarbon deposit in BC. It took 88 years to turn the pristine land into an industrial wasteland. The area is rife with cancers and birth defects.

The bulk of the film is about the treaty obligation required of any corporation or government entity to consult with Indigenous peoples on any action that could impede their rights. But they reveal that most of the consultations were for show, a quick by-the-way long after all the paperwork was completed with little in the way of real information provided to allow impacted groups to make an informed decision. Behn's grandfather commented that the government "makes the words dance on paper."

At this point one gets the sense that it's all so much about money and greed. The energy corporations rubber stamp the consultation and, in one historic day, they were able to make $476,000,000. Fracking is facilitating a new land rush. Behn relates, "They came for the trees, then the gold, the fur, the children, the oil, and now the gas." The government propaganda ads suggest that washing a car near the roadway is worse for the groundwater than pumping chemicals and fresh water down 2.5 km for the shale gas, leaving behind tailing ponds that end up back in the water system. The oil and gas company activities are regulated by their own industry. And LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) is being targeted for international markets in Asia. It's not about the jobs; it's about the fortunes they'll make. The attitude is one of getting not just what we need to survive, but as much as we possibly can - in the words of Rich Coleman, "to win this race before the rest of the world." Except the faster we extract, the faster we destroy our own land.

The film brought in many voices to add to Behn's experiences. Hydrologist Gilles Wendling explained that nobody has clearly examined exactly where the waste water goes. Dr. Robert Howarth, Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell warned that LNG emissions will soon rival the tar sands. An industry spokesperson from CAPP suggested that gas below the earth is a gift from the creator, and she explained that the industry will shut down a fracking site in a minute if there's any problems - except they never have despite all the many concerns raised. If they destroy the headwaters of the Tahltan River, they will destroy everything downstream.

Little Tahltan River

Behn had only positive things to say about the good heart of the people working on the ground in the industry. It reminded me of Julia Butterfly Hill, two years up a tree to save it from logging, explaining how fond she grew of the loggers, reminding us that we need to change the system, not demonize the players:




But many of the workers on fracking sites are itinerant who move on after 4-6 weeks to another of the 28,000 wells in B.C. The landscape is disappearing under the weight of one proposal after another, a death by 1,000 cuts.

Behn was able to speak at a moratorium on fracking and realized, "If we get this dialogue wrong, things will be very very dangerous in our territory." His speech was well-received, but then they moved on to the next item on the agenda. "There's so much more to politics than speeches and young people raising their voices." It's hard to get our heads around the slippery inner workings of the system.

The film also raised some interesting psychological issues about suffering, authenticity, and the burden of fame. Behn was born with a cleft palate, and he believes it made him more empathetic towards others. I've often commented to classes about the number of famous activists who were raised with some type of early hardship. Behn suggests it's good to have suffered: "Sometimes pain can be good." Personal pain can open our hearts to others in a way that might not be reached if we've never been a little cracked. Behn grapples with his own authenticity as he recognizes the benefits he's had from having a mom in this lucrative industry. And some of the Indigenous protesters insist that "you can't tear down the master's house with the master's tools" because he has a law degree from their universities. There's a split between the old traditions and modern day culture that's hard to bridge. And Behn is startlingly honest discussing his new fame as an activist, how girls made themselves available and he didn't always act honourably: "Relationships are the clearest expression of my failures as a man." The film did a brilliant job of getting us to really understand the complex experience of fractured people, of all of us.

I didn't leave the film feeling any better about the world, but I felt less alone in the fight, and really really lazy for the pittance I offer compared to the men and women on the front lines.

On bell hooks

I came across a bell hooks essay about writing with passion, as a "space of transgression," which I like very much. And then PEL (The Partially Examined Life - a panel of four guys who talk about different philosophy texts each week, with special guest Myisha Cherry) had a couple podcasts about her views on racism and sexism, which fit well with some thoughts I've been dwelling on in my Indigenous Studies class. But the shaky bridge to get my students actually reading her, might just be her piece on Beyoncé in which she says, right out loud,

"I think it's fantasy that we can recoup the violating image and use it. I used to get so tired of people quoting Audre Lorde, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, but that was exactly what she meant, that you are not going to destroy this imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it. Even if it serves you to make lots and lots of money. [Her body stands for] desire fulfilled, that is, wealth, fame, celebrity, all the things that so many people in our culture are lusting for. . . . all of those things that are at the heart of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. . . . I say to my students: Decolonize. But there's also that price for decolonization. You're not gonna have the wealth. . . . part of what has to happen for us to be free is that we have to create our own standards of how to live."

They might not agree, but they might listen just enough to be able to defend their idol. (Listen to the whole discussion here - that bit starts about 30 minutes in.)

There's a cost to liberation, so it's a struggle to get people to actively let go of that path completely. We keep one foot in it, trying to get the best of both worlds, but it doesn't work.  People just "flip the hate channel to the voyeur channel, but nothing is really changing."

We are more messed up than we realize. Our problems are deeper. We don't see our own racism and sexism. Images and representation in media are vital to changing how we see ourselves. The PEL podcasts talked about the study on children who, whether black or white, thought a black doll was ugly and wouldn't play with it. That conversation reminded me of the movie Smoke Signals when characters struggled to figure out what it looks like to be Indigenous, to be who they are, and how not to disparage their own people.




Other things I heard in the PEL podcast (partially quoted or paraphrased but filtered through my own thoughts on the topics as they relate to my class):

On Taking Care of Oppressors:

It's a strategy of some groups to point out that we're all victimized by the structure of oppression. White males are also harmed. To a point, it can be a way to get the dominant class involved in the struggle or at least convince them to stop opposing it. John Ralston Saul does this somewhat in his books about Indigenous Canadians. He's got a we're all in this together stance that does affect me on a different level. It's no longer an Indigenous issue; it's a Canadian issue. And I'm not just the bad guy as someone who comes from a long line of colonists.  I'm a fellow Canadian also affected by the discrimination taking place on our collective land.

But bell hooks is wary of this. It's not right to change out of self interest. According to hooks, this deflects the problem in a way that we end up pitying the oppressor for their unfortunate plight.  But their situation is nowhere near as horrible as anyone who's lived through slavery or residential schools. It can be a problem if concern over the dominant class makes us forget how horribly the oppressed are treated. It's a problem if it makes us ignore the profoundly victimized when we have to concern ourselves with the mildly victimized as well. The oppressor is also a victim, but people are victimized in different ways, and some also benefit. Those who have something to gain from the process have little incentive to overthrow it regardless the guilt and shame they might suffer. Louis gets it...





On the Decolonization Process:

hooks explains that recovering after the colonialist experience isn't just a matter of going back to what was. It's too late for that. It's not a surgical removal of an event. That's not possible. After any trauma, we can't go back to the way things were. We have to accept and then get beyond that part that is in us now, part of us.  That's true of the oppressed and the oppressor.

This is a difficult point for me to get my head around - not that it is, but how to sit with it. After my class watched Smoke Signals, we talked about the betwixt and between stage of many indigenous who have lost the skills of a traditional life, but reject further assimilation to modern life as well. It's curious to me what gets rejected and what's kept. They can no longer sustain themselves from the land, getting their own food and building their own homes, but can't afford the outrageous prices for food or lumber either. As an outsider, I see the solution to their plight in tools of the dominant class: formal education, indoor plumbing, stocked grocery stores. But if we reject assimilation models, then what makes these acceptable? Or are ties to tradition purely symbols and rituals at this point?

Or is it in their philosophy, which, from scant readings to this point, I can best understand through my prior knowledge of Taoism. It's a difficult philosophy to maintain surrounded by a consumerist culture, which helps clarify the important of staying put in more isolated communities. But then the costs of food and lumber, not to mention the many social services we take for granted in the city, will never be on par for such tiny communities. When many bands have fewer than 500 people and remote locations, to what extent can we offer functioning hospitals and universities? It's a conundrum.

hooks says decolonization may take place at the individual level at first, but to be fully decolonized, the entire system must be overthrown. It requires a revolutionary action, not just an internal psychological stance. We can't just self-emancipate without emancipation of all others. For this to happen collectively, we need narratives of individuals who have 'self-actualized'. [In the PEL panel, they waver between terms like 'self-actualize' and 'authenticity' but admit that none of those terms are actually used by bell.] We need narratives for people to see how it's done: role models, opportunities.

When you're oppressed, you start to see yourself as the other. Many philosophers were mentioned throughout this discussion, but de Beauvoir never came up even though she wrote about this concept extensively. The whole role of domination (patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism...) is refusal. Their mode of action was one group oppressing another for their own advantage while convincing the others it's for their own good. According to hooks, to be radical and revolutionary, we have to counter competition with love.

In order for any of us to be radical, we need a support group, people who will love us no matter how radical we get. We need role models of survival, and we need to accept a great diversity of true expressions. We should avoid the trope of the struggling black woman rising up by accepting that some didn't have it that hard, AND that the expression of a different path doesn't negate the experiences of those who struggled because it suggests we can only bond if we all tell the same story of victimization. Any group naturally tries to develop norms as a means of solidifying the group, of anchoring their identity, but those norms can then get imposed on others in the group until real experiences are shut down. We must be careful of this because it's no longer a support group at this point. She's critical of the way political ends force a dismissal of different kinds of experiences within a group - it dulls the edges of activism. We can only facilitate healing if we're strong enough to acknowledge and listen to different voices, to let others be what they are, and to listen with respect.

We still need some common narrative about the oppression, a counter-narrative to the dominant myths perpetrated, but we also need room to become individual people. Choice is a luxury of the empowered. To be able to become fully 'actualized,' we each need the opportunity to explore, to have the world opened up to us. If we're not working collectively to overthrown colonization paradigms, then we're not creating the space necessary for people to evolve.

There's a problem with the colonized and oppressed mistaking their own dominator acts as a radical departure from domination. Some people working to break free from the model end up copying it because we're all so immersed in it, but not everything we do is a free and authentic act. We need spiritual leaders (assuming we can figure out who they are) who are ahead of us on the path to help distinguish whether or not our acts are informed by colonization. For instance, genital mutilation is an act of oppression even if women choose to have it done. It clarifies the extent to which we're internalized oppressor norms anytime we willingly act like a slave or servant. We can only decipher what's authentic through sustained engagement with ourselves. It's complicated.


On Intersectionality:

Her books came out before the term existed, but she talks about the problem with talking about racism and sexism as different. Focusing on one can exclude attention to the other. We won't be fully covered if we have two movements; we need to be liberated from both to make concrete political changes.

We need to be aware of and informed by the intersection of multiple identities that affect how we're treated. We need to recognize different types of oppression in the work we do. For instance, Black Lives Matter was started by two lesbian women, but the focus ended up on police brutality of black men. Women were erased in those narratives even though they are also oppressed by the police. Cherry spoke about the a man speaking at a rally. He was the brother of a woman who had been killed by police, and he was encouraged to just talk about Trayvon Martin, not his own sister. It was as if discussing black women would distract from the movement.

In class we discussed the many protests taken on by indigenous peoples over land rights and environmental destruction. My students noticed parallels with the Black Lives Matter movement, except they hadn't previously heard of the many indigenous protests currently happening in their own country. We need to open spaces for indigenous discrimination to be part of the intersectionality we've just begun to honour.

The thing we're all pushing for should allow for multiple narratives, but we live in a soundbite world. Chomsky has been on about this for decades. We can't give the whole story when we're only allowed to speak in simple, easily accepted terms within a consistent narrative. We have work to do to stop ourselves from perpetuating a dominator ideology, and to continue to look at our assumptions about people based on sex, race, sexuality, ability...  It's not just an act of cognition but a political challenge, a call to action.

I'm still not sure what the path looks like yet, but just that we have to start heading in that direction.

On Canada: Because it's 2016

For the 13th time since 1980, the House of Commons is debating changing the national anthem. The first 12 tries were defeated, but this time it might actually pass. The bill just proposes to change "all thy sons" to "all of us."

I think, while we're there, we should go whole hog on this and get rid of "native home" since most of us immigrated here, and get rid of any reference to God to acknowledge we're multi-faith and secular.

AND, if we really want to be inclusive, and since kids in school learn a version of the song that's half French, it would be cool to have a few lines in Ojibwe or Cree. Imagine if the last two lines were in whatever indigenous language is most spoken in each region. So if you travel across Canada to sporting events or visiting schools, you'd hear the various anthem lines particular to each area. It means MORE JOBS for translators, singers, recording studios... to get all those recordings packaged and sent to schools for their morning announcements. Imagine all three founding nations represented in our anthem.

I discussed it with my students and got a variety of responses.  The dominant arguments of my most vocal grade tens went something like this:

"This is all a stupid thing to try to do. People are too sensitive. What's the big deal about "thy sons" anyway? It'll be too complicated if we change it and have to learn a new one. It's just a stupid song. Who cares?"

My grade elevens were all about the changes.

Firstly, if you don't care about the song, then stay out of the way while people debate this.

I think the lyrics of a song that represents our country are very important. Our anthem tells people a bit about who we are and what we think is important. And the anthem links all Canadians, so it should avoid any word choices that clearly exclude anyone.

It might be a chore to learn some new words, but you can always just listen while others sing. The people who will be most affected are children in grade school who actually sing it every day. I think they can cope with a few minor word changes and a couple lines in some cool new languages.

I asked my tens, "If instead of saying "all thy sons command," the original* said, "all white people command," would you feel like that should be changed?"

Of course. Everyone has a problem with that one.

We're much better at detecting racism than discrimination in other areas. I agree that people are too sensitive when some suggest we need trigger warnings and safe spaces set up to accommodate anyone potentially offended by a discussion. But this isn't about the anthem upsetting people. It's about working towards making the anthem as inclusive as possible to build a national community. And it's such an easy and visible thing to do.

When they passed this version into law in 1980, they promised to be open to changes in future. I think the future is now. Anything new is difficult and annoying, but soon enough we get used to it. and in just one generation, everyone will know a version that encompasses the men and women from the three distinct nations who got this ball rolling.

I said as much in a letter to the editor, which says the same as above, but in 200 words and with reference to a recent news piece:

I applaud Wynne’s apology, particularly her insistence that, “Ontario is working to provide the resources and space for Indigenous languages, traditions, teachings and governance to thrive.” The timing is perfect for discussion of a different issue. 

On Monday, the Commons debated a bill to change the lyrics of Canada's national anthem to replace “all thy sons” with “all of us.” Since it’s beyond 2015, and we’re finally beginning to work towards a more inclusive nation, maybe it’s time to make our anthem more fully represent Canada. 

Replacing “thy sons” is a start. We could also consider Canadians who aren’t native and even those who don’t address God in moments of patriotism. 

To demonstrate further inclusion, school children already learn a version that is partly in French. I propose, in light of Wynne’s offer of “space for Indigenous languages to thrive,” that it would be a profound, symbolic action if we included a couple words of the languages of the actual native land when we sing en masse (in addition to “Canada,” of course). Then our three founding nations can be represented in our nation’s anthem. 

Yes, change is difficult. But learning a few new words in a song is a small price to pay for the true north.

* The original 1880 version didn't even say "thy sons command"; it said, "thou dost in us command." See that first link for the history of the song.

Mohawk Institute: "The Mushhole"

My class toured this historical "museum of conscience" with a survivor of the school as a guide. It operated as a residential school from 1828 to 1970. We weren't in the original building because it had been burned down and rebuilt twice. Some schools were burnt down and not rebuilt, choosing instead to ship the inhabitants elsewhere. This site persisted. The roof leaks now, so there was water damage, but Wynne promised some funds to help restore the building. They plan to furnish the empty rooms the way they were when it was operational.

There's part of me that so loves old buildings that I can divorce myself from their history enough to notice the trim work, carved pillars, and tin ceilings marred by fluorescent lights. I would gladly offer my labour to restore it, but it smelled like they might have a mould problem from the water damage that would require a professional to clean.

There was too much to see and discuss in one short visit. I suggested to my class that maybe the institute could make it an overnight trip once they have beds and desks. Then tour groups could experience sleeping in an open room with nothing but mush for breakfast (overcooked oatmeal). But I had no takers keen to spend a night in there. They had a better idea though: an audio headset for self-guided tours using the voices of a variety of survivors discussing their lives as visitors walked through different rooms:

• the front hall where children were dropped off, some with parental expectations of better days, three meals and an education, but others as virtual orphans, not to see their moms again for a decade;
• the intake room where hair was cut and a number tattooed on their little hands, their only ID for their time there; stories of older children telling the younger ones not to forget their real names;
• the dining hall and kitchen with long tables on either side, one for girls and one for boys, all with numbered chairs with siblings separated to keep them from talking their language; 
• the makeshift stage area where a bizarre man in a stuffed red costume showed up one day each year with a small present for everyone, a ruse to indoctrinate them into the Christian church;
• the cupboard under the stairs where children were locked for days with only bread, water, and some salt, in close proximity to the sleeping quarters, all the better for the children to hear the wails of the punished (without any prospect of a Hagrid coming to save the day); 
• the clothes washing room where boys would peek through the windows at the girls;
• the clothes folding room table with numbers carved beneath to show who liked whom (46 + 27) and many romances attempting to blossom without the benefit of enough contact to say hello; 
• the boiler room full of unspeakable tales; 
• the window where children would wait for their parents, day-by-day, every June, with a few still waiting as September rolled around again;
• the grounds where the youngest collected eggs that they rarely got to eat; 
• all liberally peppered with some laughs to ease the tension - stories of digging through the local landfill for boxes of candy with the cellophane broken rendering them unsellable, or the rare treat of being chosen to go mow a lawn or rake some leaves for someone in the city. 

A talk by a younger guide whose grandparents had attended brought a few surprises. Hitler had used the early reservation system and residential schools, solutions to the "Indian problem," as a template for the "Jewish problem" almost a century later. I had no idea. 

But even more thought provoking was being referred to as "you people," as in, "How long have you people been a country now? 160 some years?" That one sentence shifted my thinking considerably. After reading John Ralston Saul's Fair Country and Comeback, I had gotten a lovely impression that Canada is one big family just waiting for us to return what we stole so we can finally see that we're all in this together. But that line made me realize that, for this guide at least, being united under Canada is not an option. She's from North America, not Canada. 

I started understanding it all something like this: It's like if two siblings are sharing a place, and the brother's a jerk to the sister, and the sister gets her own place. It doesn't really matter how much the thoughtless brother apologizes, because it's not just about that. The sister has her own path that's separate - will always be separate - from her brother's path. It was a pipe-dream to think they'd live together forever. They're family, but have always been independent of one another. 

A student was offended by the comment, but I was just saddened by finally getting that we're on parallel paths that won't merge - maybe aren't really meant to merge.

And the day brought a clearer understanding of the intergenerational effects of the schools.  So many studies have found evidence of things like childhood trauma being linked to later drug and alcohol abuse, and moving during early adolescence (when teenagers on reserves are shipped off to high-school) correlating to a higher incidence of suicide. We know that a rough childhood is hard to get over. When both parents grew up restricted from forming bonds with other children, they can struggle to relate to each other much less their children. When it's suggested that people should just forgive and forget the past, just get over it already, it makes no sense to me.

Finish Schools: What Do They Have that We Don't Have?

Everyone's a buzz about schools in Finland being awesome, so I read a book and some articles and their curriculum documents to figure out what's so special.

In a nutshell, copying their school system will do little unless we can find a way to copy their entire culture, but let's look at their structure nonetheless because it's pretty interesting.


THE STRUCTURE

They start grade 1 a year later, at 7 instead of 6, and their schooling to the end of what we call high-school is the same number of years, so students graduate at 19 instead of 18. That works if you have affordable daycare at the front end, and, of course, they do: "Early childhood care, voluntary free preschool that is attended by some 98% of the age cohort, comprehensive health services, and preventive measure to identify possible learning and development difficulties before children start schooling are accessible to all" (48).

I just focused on their high-school system, or "Upper Secondary."

It starts after grade 9, after their 9-year "basic school," and has three streams to choose from: academic, vocational, or go to work. That's right - as far as I understand it, they can choose to walk away from school at 16. BUT only 2% (29) choose that route, compared to the 16% in Canada. I think drop-out rates have a lot to do with employment opportunities also, which can be seen at that link which shows the highest rate in Alberta where there are currently more unskilled labour jobs due to the tar sands. When our city was full of factories, I knew lots of people who dropped out early to work. I can't find a graph of the unemployment rate compared to the drop-out rate, but one might be telling.

Their day has five 45-minute classes and a free, healthy, school-provided lunch. Teachers have time to meet together regularly after school and at lunch because they don't offer sports or clubs. Those are provided through community centres unaffiliated with the schools. An exchange student who came to our school once said we're really lucky to have sports right at school. He also said teachers would never allow so much talking and looking at cell phones in classrooms back home.

ETA - They also have 15-minute breaks between classes. Can you imagine, at the end of a class, having 15 minutes to answer a student's questions without another class barrelling in and eight people mobbing you with requests to go to the bathroom or get a drink?! It'd be like the kinds of classes they show on movies about high-school.

The academic upper secondary stream typically takes three years to complete, but many stay for a fourth year. The curriculum documents, if I'm reading them correctly, have courses that run 38 hours each (instead of our 110 hours), but some elective courses can be shorter or longer. I gather they have something like five 8-week terms each year (about 40 weeks in total), for a total of 25 courses per year (compared to our 8 courses per year). Essentially, the courses that we offer are broken up into three shorter modules that make up separate courses. That makes sense to me because if a student doesn't understand one component of a subject area, it's just a matter of re-doing the unit rather than the entire subject. Furthermore, this "change enabled schools to rearrange teaching schedules, and, in turn, affected local curriculum planning because schools had more flexibility to allocate lessons into these periods differently" (25).

In total, there are a minimum of 75 courses needed to graduate (we have 22 in grades 10-12), at least 47 of them compulsory. "Normally students exceed this minimum limit and study more, typically between 80 and 90 courses" (25). They call their electives, specialisation courses. They replaced "age-cohort-based grouping of students with a nonclass organizational system...not based on fixed classes or grades (previously called 10th, 11th, or 12th grades). Students thus have greater choice available to them in planning their studies in terms of both the content and the sequencing of their courses" (25).

This table below is in the Appendix of the documents.

What I find interesting is the number of ethics, philosophy, history, and social studies courses that are compulsory. They also demand almost twice as many hours of math, but fewer hours of science and geography, and about half as much literature (English).  The fact that they require a second language makes sense for a mother tongue spoken by so few outside the country, but they require students to learn two foreign languages in addition to two domestic languages. "Finnish students also acquire skills of designing, conducting, and presenting original research on practical or theoretical aspects of education" (83).

Students also have an education and vocational guidance course primarily to help them develop their own individual study plan. I imagine it's a little more complicated to do course selection than it is with our system!


THE PHILOSOPHY

Then I read Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg. Page numbers above and below are from there.

He praises a few places, including Alberta, but speaks specifically about the problems with what Ontario, the U.S., the U.K., and many other places have done recently. He calls it the "Third Way" in which we claim to have an emphasis on the moral purpose of education, but we have the same empty purpose irrespective of cultures within each school: "Raise the bar and narrow the gap to improve test scores." He questions some of the gurus we follow and quotes Manfred Kets de Vries who bemoans the fact that "many so-called turnaround specialists are little more than psychiatrically disturbed narcissists, sociopaths, and control freaks" (xvii). Harsh. The real problem is that many very different countries are blindly following the same goal. They have dramatically different cultures, but,

"the consultants' PowerPoint slides remain pretty much the same. In the Third Way, people aren't defining or developing their own shared visions or moral purposes. They don't own their visions. They rent them from other people" (xvii). 

We also follow the idea of "capacity-building," which is a term I haven't yet heard. But, whatever it is, we don't do it well.  It's meant to help communities help themselves. Capacity-building is,

"a humanistic and empowering concept directed toward assisting people to fulfill their own personally compelling purpose. In Third Way policies, though, capacity-building has often turned into something else - training people in prescribed strategies to deliver accountability goals and targets imposed by others" (xviii).

Apparently we're training for policy delivery instead developing innovation and collective responsibility. Unfortunately I don't actually know what that means or looks like. I'm not quite fluent in edu-speak. I get the sense, however, that we're blindly copying a model that has, at its core, the idea of working together with teachers to develop a model that works for the people using it, but the whole point is the process of working together to create something together. It falls apart if you take one group's results and apply them everywhere. And copying someone else's style is never a good idea.

The "Fourth Way," by contrast, is about trust, professionalism, and shared responsibility" (5). This is purely anecdotal, but I don't know many teachers who feel they are actually trusted as professionals at this point. In fact, I've never seen a time where so many teachers are worried about what parents and admin will say about pretty banal decisions they're making in their classrooms. It doesn't help when parents have a cursory understanding of AER but feel expert enough to challenge teachers. But that could just be an isolated experience.


FINLAND'S SYSTEM IS ACTUALLY WORKING

"Finland is special also because it has been able to create an educational system where students learn well and where equitable education has translated into small variation in student performance between schools in different parts of the country at the same time...using reasonable financial resources and less effort than other nations" (5).

"In Finland, teaching is a prestigious profession, and many students aspire to be teachers....Teachers have a great deal of professional autonomy and access to purposeful professional development throughout their careers....Those who are lucky enough to become teachers normally are teachers for life." See Ontario stats here and here citing up to a 50% attrition rate for new teachers with work load and relationship with admin cited as the top two reasons for leaving the profession.

Internationally, "Finnish 4th-grade students were the best readers in the Reading Literacy Study...and 15-year-olds achieved top rankings in all four PISA cycles" (51). These stats have been criticized because their curriculum is most closely aligned with PISA standards, but  more impressive to me is this: "The national PISA report concludes that only 7% of Finnish students said they feel anxiety when working on mathematics tasks at home, compared to 52% and 53% in Japan and France, respectively" (64).


WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT

Here are some pointers that Sahlberg deems vital to the development of an excellent school system:

• Significant attention must be paid to developing the capacity of leaders and teachers to improve individually and together. One of the ways teachers improve is by learning from other teachers. "Isolation is the enemy of all improvement" (xx). 
• Teachers must be involved in developing a collective vision of education reform connected to inclusiveness and creativity, and in developing curriculum together rather than following ministry guidelines. "It is the school, not the system, that is the locus of control and capacity" (36). "Teachers at all levels of schooling expect that they are given the full range of professional autonomy to practice what they have been educated to do: to plan, teach, diagnose, execute, and evaluate" (76). "School curricula can look very different depending on the school" (88). Teachers having a key role in course development is more important than board-wide standardized lessons. 
• "An important - and still voluntary - part of Finnish teachers' work is devoted to school improvement and work with the community" (90).
• Teachers teach less (600 vs our 900 hours/year), and students spend less time studying both in and out of schools. Most basic school students take home minimal or no homework. Teachers spend two hours each week planning and developing work with colleagues, and teachers don't have to be present at school if they do not have classes (90).
• Teachers make more for teaching higher grades (about 10% more), and pay is not tied to merit (77). 
• "There are no formal teacher evaluation measures....it is not possible to compare school performance or teacher effectiveness" (90). "The question of teacher effectiveness...is not relevant...teachers have time to work together during a school day and understand how their colleagues teach....principals, aided by their own experience as teachers, are able to help their teachers to recognize strengths and areas of work that need improvement. The basic assumption in Finnish schools is that teachers, by default, are well-educated professionals" (91). This is a culture of mutual trust and respect (125). 
• Teachers must be high-quality and well-trained with master's degrees in their area of specialization. Particularly important is high-quality, specialized special ed and guidance teachers. 
• They offer on-going, useful professional development (50 hours annually) that helps teachers understand the learning process of students. "Teachers cannot create and sustain context for productive learning unless those conditions exist for them" (144). 
• "The Finnish school principal is always also a teacher. Almost all Finnish principals teach some classes each week....principals should also have a vision of what a good school is and know how leadership can help to achieve that vision" (119).
• They don't tie classes to age groups, so students feel comfortable taking more time to complete their studies. 
• They have an inclusive special education strategy where nearly half the student get support before the end of grade 9 to identify learning strategies that students can use rather than labelling them and having teachers continue to accommodate their differences into the higher grades. They provide testing and interventions in daycare centres before they even start school.
• Career guidance and counselling is an important factor in explaining low grade repetition and drop-out rates and serves as a bridge between education and work. Students spend two weeks in selected workplaces during their basic schooling (before the end of grade 9). During grades 7, 8, and 9, students get two hours a week of educational counselling. "This reduces the risk that students will make ill-informed decisions....It also helps students to put more effort into those areas of their studies most important to their anticipated route in upper-secondary school" (27).
• Educational reform must be linked to economic competitiveness of the area. We can't have schools work in isolation of employment opportunities. 
• They maintain a basic philosophy that all students can learn, and that students must be responsible for understanding how they learn best and develop skills to help themselves. 
• All education after grade 9 is non-compulsory. And they can leave and come back later. "More than 50% of the Finnish adult population participates in adult education programs...without shifting the burden of costs to students" (44).
• They have increased the attractiveness of vocational education with at least one-sixth of the training on-the-job learning.  More than 40% of upper-secondary school students start their studies in vocational schools (26). They are able to shift to the academic stream later if they decided they made a wrong turn, and there's less stigma around it because their students aren't divided by age/grade after grade 9; there are students ranging from 16-20 in most classes.
• They have very few standardized tests, test-prep, or private tutoring because "...good teaching was sacrificed in pursuit of raising test scores" (67). He also adds that testing itself isn't a bad thing, so long as they're not high-stakes. "The higher the test-result stakes, the lower the degree of freedom for experimentation in classroom learning" (101).
• Schools decide criteria for evaluation. Report cards at different schools "are not necessarily fully comparable because they are not based on standardized and objective measures" (66). Having a unified curriculum limits the freedom to follow student curiosity down a different path.
• They offer free university, colleges, and trade school. 
• They have university entrance exams (matriculation exams) that are mostly essay-based and open-ended with reading material that must be referred to in the answers (31). "Since there are no standardized high-stakes tests in Finland prior to the matriculation examination at the end of upper-secondary education, the teacher can focus on teaching and learning without the disturbance of frequent tests to be passed" (67).  
• Students go to schools based on where they live: "Making schools and teachers compete for students and resources and then holding them accountable for the results...has led to the introduction of education standards, indicators, and benchmarks...and prescribed curricula" (100). 
• "All the factors that are behind the Finnish success seem to be the opposite of what is taking place in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world, where competition, test-based accountability, standardization, and privatization seem to dominate." "Finland has remained unconvinced that competition and choice with more standardized testing than students evidently require would be good or schools" (39). 

Beyond educational reform, the culture of the country is different with respect to education. Students are much more independent from their parents at a younger age (especially compared to the helicopter parenting we see here). They "encourage creativity, entrepreneurship, and personal responsibility" (120). "Parents expected their children to study further, and young Finns themselves also hoped to reach higher in their self-development" (23). Some think it's the fact that schools shifted from being based on cooperation instead of competition that has change everything. Many students stay in school until they're 20; they don't feel they same pressure to finish quickly and move on as we do here.

The country has a focus on equity, but it's also got a strong economy to help raise everyone up to a comfortable place. "Finland has a competitive national economy, low levels of corruption, good quality of life, a strong sustainable-development lifestyle, and gender equality" (96).  "Poverty is a difficult factor that affects teaching and learning in schools." 3.4% of children in Finland live in poverty, which is the second smallest number, compared to Canada at 13.6% (69).  "The equitable Finnish education system is a result of systematic attention to social justice and early intervention to help those with special needs, and close interplay between education and other sectors - particularly health and social sectors - in Finnish society" (69).

Although teachers there make about half as much as teachers here - "slightly more than the national average salary" (77), it's a much desired and revered profession. It's "consistently rated as one of the most admired professions, ahead of medical doctors, architects, and lawyers....Teaching is congruent with core social values of Finns, which include social justice, caring for others, and happiness" (72).  "Finnish experience shows that it is more important to ensure that teachers' work in schools is based on professional dignity and social respect so that they can fulfill their intention of selecting teaching as lifetime careers" (70). "The working conditions and moral professional environment are what counts" (77).

They also have a different relationship with students; teachers aren't cautioned about developing ties with students. Teachers are addressed by their first name, and they comfortably invite students for meals at their home. We have much firmer boundaries here, and I don't recall ever discussing love in teacher's college:

"The well-known Finnish educator Matti Koskenniemi used the term "pedagogical love" that is also a corner stone of my own theory-of-action as a teacher. Teaching is perhaps, more than any other job, a profession that you can successfully do only if you put your heart and personality into play. Each teacher has her own style and philosophy of teaching. There may be many motives for becoming a teacher. My own is that I want to do good for other people, care and love them. I do love them and thus I will be a teacher" (74). 

Now the tricky part will be getting from here to there.

On Raising the Minimum Wage

So, the argument goes something like this:  If you raise minimum wage, corporations will pay for that cost by raising prices, thereby increasing inflation, and we'll all be poorer for it as everything gets more expensive.  The problem isn't wages, but inflation. Therefore, we should not increase minimum wage.

It follows, that it's necessary that some people work full time yet live well below the poverty line because otherwise, if we raise their wages, they'll end up even poorer because everything will costs so much more - right?  So, we're actually helping people by maintaining a lower wage for them and letting them choose between heat or food.  We're awesome! 

I don't buy it.

Check out this video.  It's worth it to watch the whole thing even though it's 25 min.

The counter-argument:  If we raise minimum wage in corporations that are profiting, they will see a slight reduction in profits, and the CEOs will take home a little less. Raising prices is NOT a necessary result of raising wages.  Yes, that's right.  I think the company should eat the loss, and a recent Business Insider article agrees. The video shows that in States that raised the minimum wage, "Across the board rigorous research makes it very clear that business have been able to afford the wage increases."

AND, the increase in wages stimulates more spending from a ton of people who can now actually afford a luxury or two.  Maybe even a hamburger.  So, overall, the increase in spending counters loss from actually paying people a respectable, living wage.   It's not a matter that nice corporations ate the loss for the good of society, but that corporations didn't experience a loss.  They can maintain profits by increasing the number of people who can buy their stuff.

The one line near the end of the video makes a different point that's equally important.  Since there are too many variables to have any certainty with respect to precisely what one company will experience when they raise wages, we have to stop looking at it economically and start looking at it ethically.  It's just wrong to pay people a wage that forces them to work more than 40 hours/week in order to meet basic survival needs.

I always go back to Rawl's veil of ignorance assignment on issues like this:  If I were to create a society in which I didn't know which position I'd end up in, would I maintain that some people can be paid less than is enough to survive?  Because that could be me.  And, in real life, right now, if something happened to me, it could be my kids.  Full time workers shouldn't have to live in poverty - especially not so others can maintain their standards of ridiculous excess.   

Inequality for All

I watched Robert Reich's film last summer on a camping trip.  I woke up in the middle of a pitch-dark night and couldn't fall back asleep.  I tried a movie on my phone to lull me into a coma, but this was the wrong one to choose.

Reich's film clearly explains how we've gotten into this economic pickle, and he offers solutions to get ourselves out.  Here's the film (90 minutes), and my synopsis is below.  It's about the U.S., but much of it applies to Canada as well, so I use "we" throughout.

The (corporate controlled) media has created the illusion that the U.S. is poor, and we don't have any taxes to pay for anything, but that's a myth.  The U.S. is very wealthy, richer than it's ever been, but it's just no longer sharing the wealth in a way that can support itself.

The media also contributes to the problem by spinning any attempt to discuss income inequality into a conversation about class warfare - which, apparently, is a topic to avoid.  Jon Oliver gets at this issue very well and in only 14 minutes (with jokes!):



We have the same disparity now as we did in the 1920s - just before the great depression.  Policies that benefit a few at the expense of the many, according to Oliver, get passed because we've been brainwashed to believe erroneously that we, too, will end up in the upper echelons with the very wealthy:

"60% believe our system unfairly favours the wealthy, but, and here's the key, 60% also believe that those who work hard enough can make it.  Or, in other words, 'I can clearly see this game is rigged, which is what's going to make it so sweet when I win this thing!'"

Federal estate tax is created to tax anything over 5 million, and is on the verve of being abolished because people think it might apply to them one day.  The problem with inheritance is it keeps the wealth circulating in few hands, and the poor have less chance of every getting out of poverty.  Marx was on the problems of inheritance, but from the other end.  He warned about the error of dismantling inheritance first while leaving the economic system intact:

"The disappearance of the right of inheritance will be the natural results of a social change superseding private property in the means of production; but the abolition of the right of inheritance can never be the starting point of such a social transformation."  

And we're back to Reich.

The Class Struggle

Reich and Oliver agree that, like cinnamon, a little inequality is a good thing, but too much is dangerous.  Reich uses a graph that looks like a suspension bridge, with the peaks - the danger points - in the 1920s and now.  In 1928 as in 2007, the top 1% took home more than 23% of all income, and the middle class stagnated. That's what too much inequality looks like.

The middle class is imperative to a healthy economy.  The rich buy very little proportionate to their numbers ("a person making a thousand times as much money, doesn't buy a thousand times as much stuff"), so we count on the masses to keep shopping. A good economy will support the middle class and the poor who will create jobs by spending money.  But they are struggling too much to survive for them to shop any day except, of course, Black Friday.

Policy Changes in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s

There's no such thing as a truly free market.  There are always governmental rules necessary to run things.  The real question is who do the rules benefit and who do they hurt. Middle class wages rose from the late 40s until the late 70s, and then flattened out.

The best book to understand this period of history, for my money, is The Shock Doctrine.  Naomi Klein outlines in detail exactly how the US, UK, and Canada (under Reagan, Thatcher, and Mulroney) changed the economic system with worldwide repercussions.  From the film:  The tax rate on top earners dropped from 70% to 28% under Reagan.  In the late 50s it peaked at 91% under Eisenhower for top earners, which was set at incomes over $400,000 (about $3.5 million in today's money).  That was dismantled in the name of equality: Why should some people be taxed higher than others.  But that confuses equality and equity.

The financial markets were granted more power as governments moved to deregulate the market, so they engaged in more excessive behaviour.  Labour unions declined (often by force) which mirrored a decline in the middle class share of income.  And globalization and technology added to the destruction of the middle class.

Where a company's headquartered means less and less.  We can outsource jobs which undercuts wages of workers in the US.  And automation has reduced the need for as many employees.

On the positive side, we have more cool stuff that's cheaper, and CEOs and financiers are much richer.  But CEOs raised their own salaries as they fired workers.  When companies depend on shareholders, there's a growing pressure to increase profits, which plays out by pushing down wages and benefits to the bare minimum.  But then they have fewer consumers available to buy their products, so they have to widen their market worldwide, make products that self-destruct, and encourage people to buy crap they really don't need.

What Worked in the Past

Policies that were around from 1947-77 (Keynes' economics) worked for the general prosperity of all.

• Higher education was a priority, and universities expanded. 
• Labour unions were strong, and more than a third belonged to a union.
• The middle class bought more, so companies could hire more, providing a stronger tax base for governments to invest more in people.

Today tuition is rising as the government is taking money out of education.  Infrastructure is crumbling and becoming dangerous.  There isn't a tax base to use to fix the problems because we've lowered taxes on the very wealthy, shipped jobs overseas, and flattened middle class wages so they no longer keep up with inflation.  If the wealthy don't pay their fair share, and the middle class doesn't have enough to pay tax on, then there's less revenue for social services like public education and health care.  Then tuitions go up, and the population becomes less educated, and, globally, less competitive.  In the 1960s, tuition at Berkeley was free.  In the 1970s, it was $700 in today's dollars. Now it's $15,000/year.

In the 1980s, we coped with declining incomes for a time by introducing double wage families with more women in the workforce.  Families worked longer hours, taking on second and third jobs.  And we borrowed money with fewer restrictions on loans - that, to some, seemed like a good idea at the time, but later blew up.  Now the coping mechanisms the middle class used are exhausted.

The Effect on Democracy

Inequality is a problem for democracy too.  When so many resources accumulate at the top, there comes the capacity to control politics through wealthy lobby groups who give the maximum amount allowed to election campaigns.  All politics have shifted to the right, so that Reich maintained the same views, but shifted from a Republican to a Democrat over a few decades.  (And some of us NDP supporters are left without a truly leftist party to back.)  High inequality brings with it a high degree of political polarization with politicians disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing instead of working together for the good of the country (like Howarth rejecting a very left-leaning budget).  For $300 million, you can buy a president.  We can't have government on an auction block.

Here's an illustration of how lobby groups work:



There's a polarization of citizens too.  Losers of a rigged game can get very angry.  These trends of society pulling apart are very dangerous.  Reich sees fights on the Berkeley campus.

Solutions

The economy does better when everyone does better, and history is on the side of positive social change.  There's no "single magic bullet," be we need to mobilize, organize, and energize other people, from what I gleaned from the film, to...

• shop locally - avoid automated check-out line, on-line shopping, or anything that reduces jobs
• decrease technological use in manufacturing to increase jobs for the working class at home which will increase wages, increase shopping, and increase our tax base
• put tax money into infrastructure to decrease risk of collapse and create jobs
• support union creation and maintenance
• convince the government to invest in education, skills, and infrastructure
• regulate corporations to prevent companies from being allowed to deduct executive pay
• raise the tax rate for the very wealthy to increase the tax base which will allow for more money in education and health care

But the question, as always, is... how do we get from here to there?  I can do the shop locally thing, and support unions, but everything else seems horrifically out of reach.

But then...  There's always art: