Letter of Solidarity to High School Students in Guelph

Students,

We were excited to see you take action on Monday December 17, as you walked out of your classes at GCVI and other schools and marched to your MPP’s office to denounce Bill 115, which strips your teachers of their fundamental rights as workers, and as a result led to your loss of extracurricular activities. The Guelph Young Communist League would like to express our solidarity and offer our support as you engage in a struggle with the government over your rights and your future.

The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. If we don’t join together and push back, the consequences for teachers and students alike will be dire. If we unite, students can help protect democracy, defend workers’ fundamental rights – and force the government to repeal Bill 115.

You have started to boldly organize in this struggle, and you have not been alone in doing this. All across Ontario, from Ottawa to Orangeville, from Stratford to Scarborough, you students have taken the initiative to make your voices heard and let the government know that you will not let it manipulate you!

Since many of us are fellow students, studying at the University of Guelph, we are inspired by your actions. We too suffer from polices that undermine our future and the quality of our education. For years the government has been raising tuition fees and putting us into insurmountable debt. They have also been cutting the quality of teaching and attacking our professors. Like the students in Québec who successfully fought back to resist a tuition hike, you inspire us and we congratulate you for your courage!

Ontario is a province with tremendous natural wealth, a surplus of the super-rich, and many giant corporations and banks. Canadian corporations are currently sitting on $526 billion of unused money in their balance sheets. Canada’s five largest banks have all raked in record profits in 2011. Also, corporations still benefit from one of the lowest tax rates in the world right here in Ontario. In the shadow of this concentrated wealth stand our hospitals, transit system, and schools. All of which remain underfunded and neglected. Who created the crisis in education? It wasn’t the teachers or the students – it was government policies that pay no serious regard to people’s needs, only corporate greed.

As Communists, we are also enthusiastic to see the youth rising up to defend the rights of people against the actions of the capitalist class and their latest offensive through the austerity agenda. We believe you are right to identify your interests alongside those of your teachers, against the lies of the government. You may have read already the pamphlets distributed by some of our members at your rally, but we would like to emphasize this: what you are fighting against is a system, a power structure that’s made to benefit the rich and keep us, the majority of the people, the 99%, under their domination. This is capitalism. They will not stop at this attack against teachers. Already they are moving to shed the pensions of your parents, shut the door to immigrants, continue down a path of environmental devastation and take away your right to access health care and education, for example. If we let things go like this, our future is dark.

But we at the YCL believe that when injustice becomes the law, resistance becomes the duty. The rebellious spirit you have shown is a perfect example of this, and if it grows, it can become an unstoppable force to transform society. Struggles against Bill 115, and for the right to quality education and for democratic and labour rights, are important in order to build the balance of forces necessary to build a world free of exploitation, where equality and democracy can flourish and everyone is allowed to develop their potential to the fullest. If Bill 115 is stopped, we will be stronger and the struggle for fundamental change will continue. We see Socialism as the goal, where the people are in power. We want to work with you, sisters and brothers, to build the youth and student movement.

We are proud to see you hold high the torch of struggle in Guelph,

Solidarity,

The Guelph Young Communist League

Against Misogyny and CAFE, for Equality!

Statement of the YCL-LJC Central Executive Committee

The Young Communist League of Canada calls on all democratic-minded youth and students to redouble theirefforts to defend and extend women’s rights for full equality and expose the misogynistic “Canadian Association for Equality” (CAFE).

We call for an end to their anti-women campaign of disinformation, lies and even hate promoted through so-called “Men’s Awareness” groups.

The claim of these groups is that men and boys are facing equity issues due to ‘misandry’. In fact, the main danger young men face is not at all from pro-women policies and feminists – which help young men – it is from big business and the Harper Conservatives, whose capitalist system has created mass unemployment, rising tuition fees, environmental crisis and poverty — while spending billions on wars and corporate tax cuts.

What is needed is solidarity and for the youth to reinforce the links between the struggles of the labour movement and the working class. We must not blame the victim. When the youth and student movement deepens its unity with the women’s movement and feminism, linking full equality with our struggles against corporate power, reactionary governments and war, it helps workers of all genders to win demands like better work, better pay, more accessible education, unionization, and also prevents them from being used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars like the war in Afghanistan

This kind of sexist and homophobic backlash against the women’s movement, feminism, and our sisters and mothers has long been promoted by capitalism. However, the current offensive on campuses comes at a time when the economic and climate crisis and war are being used by the ruling class to attack everyone – especially women:

• Women, often the ‘last hired and first fired,’ have been hit hard by mass layoffs globally;

• Wars like the US-Israeli bombing of Gaza right now also disproportionately impact women and girls;

• In Canada, the federal Harper Conservatives are cutting funding to women’s groups, turning a blind eye to the 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada, attacking women’s reproductive rights like abortion, and attacking the unemployed by further restricting Employment Insurance.

Despite gains from struggle, sexism, homophobia, racism and misogynistic ideologies are still alive and well in 21st century Canada:

• Women work the majority of low-paid, casual, and part-time work, making 70% the wages of men on average for the same work and experience. This wage gap has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s despite an increasingly educated female workforce and despite increasing numbers of women on the job;

• Women continue to perform the majority of repetitive household chores, carry the burden of raising children, and elderly care;

• Women are excluded from political life – the current Canadian Parliament, for example, has less than 35% women;

• Over half of Canadian women have faced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 16. Violence against women is the natural outgrowth of the sexism inherent in the capitalist system;

• Women and girls face sexist and male chauvinist attitudes every day at work, school, on the street, and in the family – reinforced by laws, the police, and the corporate media and the entertainment industry, which promotes an unhealthy, disempowering, unequal, and racist view of women that justifies violence against women and oppressive gender roles as well as promoting macho and divisive notions of “maleness” that manipulate some men into participating in a system of divide and rule.

Pro-Choice RallyUnless there is a strong, powerful and united fight back by young people of all genders, we cannot change this situation. The Quebec student uprising last spring sent a powerful message of resistance and showed that only through mass united struggle on the streets by the 99% can we make gains in the parliament`s of the 1%. Hundreds of thousands of young women activists, as well as the Quebec women`s movement, helped lead and confront sexism in society (and in the movement itself – see the latest issue of Rebel Youth magazine).

We cannot wait for the next election, count on the increasingly tepid demands of the NDP, or limit our strategy to lobbying or isolated confrontations. The youth and student movement needs to forge our own version of a broad and mass strategy, united with projects like labour’s Ontario Common Front — if the progressive forces don’t, we can expect not just fake and misleading ‘men`s rights movements’ but more populist right-wing tea-party style groups and even fascism.

The YCL also supports the demand for a Charter of Youth Rights, including the right to full equality, which could bring together the youth and student movement with a demand for a better world.

The YCL demands that all forms of gender discrimination like pay inequity be made illegal and for full equality between women and men. It isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a class issue. Sexism divides and weakens the people’s fight back. Men suffer from this sexist system as well. This includes a downward depreciation of everyone`s wages caused by a lack of pay equity. As long as women are oppressed, men cannot be free.

Democratic struggles are a vital part of revolutionary struggle as they show that what is blocking social progress is not only a lack of legal rights – it is the capitalist system. Without struggling for full equality we cannot effectively fight for a system that will allow the social and economic basis of all forms of oppression to be removed as well as ecological sustainability and peace, with the working class majority in charge, not the capitalist elite. In the YCL we call this socialism! Now is the time to join the movement! Get involved in the YCL, check us out on facebook or at http://www.ycl-ljc.ca or read RebelYouth-magazine.blogspot.com

JOIN THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF CANADA TODAY!

290A Danforth Ave, Toronto. M4K 1N6 416 469 2446

http://www.ycl-ljc.ca

On the recent murderous aggression against Gaza

The Young Communist League of Canada greets the announcement of a cease-fire in Gaza positively and the halt of the slaughter committed by Israel towards the Palestinian people over the past days.

We call on all youth and students who oppose war to remain vigilant less the aggression be restarted with a ground invasion. We urge youth and students to deny the Netanyahu government any credit or thanks for stopping the bombing, and re-double and continue our mobilization efforts to win a just peace in the Middle East.

Deliberately confusing the way forward to justice, imperialism and the corporate media has again tried to present the Israeli-Palestine conflict as a struggle of equals — while the US government alone pours billions of dollars of military aid to maintain Apartheid Israel. This lie is wearing very thin. Youth should take note that the massive and rapid vocal support for the Palestinian cause in the streets of the world (including by pro-peace voices in Israel and the imperialist countries) was helpful and necessary to win this latest cease-fire.

We cannot have a repeat of 4 years ago where the Israeli state launched a 3 week massacre of 1,400 Palestinians (including over 300 children), targeted Palestinian civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure and used weapons made illegal under international law.

This most recent attack could have also dangerously escalated into a broader regional conflict. We denounce the Harper Conservative government for immediately giving full diplomatic support for the bloodshed (and further note that, shamefully, the Mulcair New Democratic opposition did not even call for a cease-fire). In just a few days the bombing not only further shattered and wounded the social and economic fabric of Gaza — which is already under siege like a giant prison-camp — but also claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, including children and babies.

The so-called ‘Operation Pillar of Defense,’ coming between the US and Israeli elections, cannot be viewed separately from the continuous occupation of Palestine and the genocidal strategy of Zionism with the full support of imperialism. Since 1948 the people of Palestine have been fighting for their right of self- determination. As long as there is occupation there will be resistance.

The Young Communist League of Canada repeats our full support for a viable and truly independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, respecting the Green-line boundaries and including the right of return for all displaced Palestinians, the removal of all the illegal settlements, the total dismantlement of the infrastructure of the occupation like the Apartheid wall, and the de-militarization / de-nuclearization of Israel including its occupation of the Lebanese Shebaa Farms and the Syrian Golan.

Until this is won, the YCL will continue to mobilize in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, including voicing our support for the Palestinian statehood recognition bid at the United Nations and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

November 22
YCL-LJC CEC

Students of Canada – Rise up!

Here is a recent statement from the Central Executive Committee of the Young Communist League. One thing it calls for is the implementation of Student Mobilization Committees across Ontario, that work toward year round, escalating actions, and also to push for post-secondary education to be free and accessible for all. At the University of Guelph, the Guelph Student Mobilization Committee has started, and the committee is laying the groundwork for a much more combative and effective student movement than has occurred in the past. Mobilization committees are being set up all across the province! The Guelph Student Mobilization Committee is becoming part of something bigger! Here is the committee blog:

And here is the YCL CEC Statement!

Education is a right, not a privilege!

The unity and militancy of the Quebec student struggle has begun to shake the rest of Canada. Across the country, the youth and student movement has been inspired and emboldened by the struggle in Quebec. Many have correctly concluded that the best form of solidarity is to step-up a united fight back at home.

The Young Communist League of Canada supports this growing mobilization, made stronger by work like the Casserole Night in Canada protests that heard post banging from Antigonish, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia; and here in Ontario, by solidarity tours like that organized by the Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario and the Toronto student strike workshops which drew in over hundred eager participants.

Now is the time to start building a broad, militant and united fight back for accessible education, which is in crisis in our province:

• fees in Ontario are 23 higher than the cross-Canada average
• college tuition has outstripped inflation by 378%
• university tuition has outstripped inflation by 509%
• students graduate with an average debt of $37,000

The McGuinty Liberal government has just announced dangerous plans to compress four year degrees into three. In Canada and around the world we are seeing a new kind of education system where we pay more and learn less. As all students scramble to find work and pay our bills in an economic crisis of capitalism, indigenous peoples, women, and racialized communities face growing barriers to post-secondary education. International students are exploited as ‘cash-cows’.

In place of  accessible education, we are being told to lower our expectations and accept a life of debt and unemployment.
BOOKS NOT BOMBS

The McGuinty Liberal`s sham 30% tuition grant promised to students in the last election is woefully inadequate. Two-thirds of students aren’t eligible. We are told by the government there is not enough money to pay for “luxuries” like education and that we must tighten our belts.

But if there’s billions of dollars that can be spent on corporate tax breaks and fighter jets, why is there no money to spend on education? Free education for Canada would be $5 billion annually. Harper`s annual military budget? $25 billion.

We must see what the government cuts to education really are – an ideological war being waged against students in tandem with attacks on the working class majority.

UNITY AND RESISTANCE IS THE WAY FORWARD

It is tempting to reduce the student struggle to a question of magic leaders — or magic structure. Of course, leadership that understands its duty, listens to members, and shows uniting ways forward is very helpful — as is a democratic approach as expressed by mass all-campus or department level meetings of students (General Assemblies), and especially when the students themselves not only make the decisions but also carry them out.

On the other hand, the main problem student’s face is not a question of personalities or decision-making process: it is the political problem of unity and militancy or bringing together the broadest and most powerful unity of students and their allies, behind a militant political strategy to win access to education.

The vast majority of students already see education as socially positive and support lower fees and greater access. In order to turn this sentiment into a visible force, hard work is required, convincing our campuses of the demand that access to education is a right, and of the urgency and necessity for united and growing strategy. United struggle is the only effective path for students to win.

The way forward for the student struggle must be to place front-and-center the question of a broad, powerful and united fight back with an escalating action plan that reaches beyond access to education and ultimately demands free education. The passive tactics of lobbying, post cards and petitions, isolated or one-day-a-year actions, and campaigns centered on media outreach rather than mass mobilization are simply not enough.

As the most progressive student union in English-speaking Canada, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) is in the best position to build such a plan and win the students of Ontario to a program of united struggle. To its credit, not only reduced fees but free education is the policy (at least on paper) of the CFS. This strong mandate has to be put into action now. There is no contradiction between respecting the autonomy of local campuses and the CFS organizing and making a political battle to win students into struggle — in fact, the opposite.

On the other hand, everywhere reactionary students have won campuses to ditch the CFS, the campus has shifted to the right and political inactivity. If we got rid of the CFS, students would wake up with a big hangover and just have to rebuild.

Many campuses are controlled by right-wing student unions in Ontario, and the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations support tuition increases. Everywhere progressive students must re-double their efforts to win their campuses back from these forces, linked to reactionary political parties like the McGuinty Liberals and Harper Tories.

The vast majority of students view education as socially positive, and strongly support greater access and lower fees!

There is also a new breeze in the air. Emboldened by youth protest internationally, more students are taking up the call of accessible, quality, public not-for-profit education from cradle to grave and challenging the  policies of big business and their  governments.
The neoliberal agenda is being implemented internationally, therefore we must also recognize this international reality in our local struggle. The same struggle is being waged by students in Chile, South Africa, Germany, Britain, Greece, Spain – and Quebec! Across the globe, students are fighting back!

STUDENT STRIKE, PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE!

Hundreds of thousands of students in Québec have mobilized over the last semester, despite violent police repression and the suspension of democratic rights using the strongest tactic to put moral pressure on the government– a student strike – and in doing so, have shown that a broad, mass, united struggle is by far more the most effective strategy.

The Quebec students have won strong support from labour, community groups and the people. Despite the Mulclair NDP`s silence, the sound of casseroles are clanging across Canada!

Key parts of the escalating mobilization in Québec include (1) campus “mobilization committees,” which operate under the regular direction of student General Assemblies, as well as (2) militant and relatively united leadership by student unions, and (3) an escalating action plan that the grassroots membership and all levels of activists feel they are democratically driving forward.
Quebec also shows that the demand for free education can open mass, democratic debate about people`s alternatives and social transformation.

Mass mobilization and cooperation between students and other movements, especially labour, is the only way we can effectively defeat corporate and government attacks on education.  Ontario students cannot afford to wait to find the best direct democratic structure or for spontaneous opportunities, or the next election to fight back. Every month, every week we delay organizing has a cost.

GET ORGANIZED, FIGHT BACK!

• Show solidarity– wear a red square!
• Get vocal– demand accessible education as a right, not a privilege!
• Get involved — help build or grow a local action or mobilization committee
• Support and attend General Assemblies, student elections, and  build your student union
• Demand an escalating plan of action for a broad and united fight back
• Open a broad democratic debate about free and emancipatory education.

Free education should be federally funded. Cut military spending by 75%! The YCL also supports the Post-Secondary Education Act, not least as the Feds and Premiers negotiate transfer payments currently. But unity with the Quebec student movement and Aboriginal students (for whom access to education is also a treaty right continually denied) must be found on a new basis of justice and equality of nations, not Canada`s existing Constitution.

The YCL thinks that a bold counter-offensive is necessary, and we propose a Charter of Youth Rights as a basis to bring together the youth movement behind a social vision of a better Canada.

Ultimately, we can and must win future that guarantees free education, peace, equality, ecological sustainability, and real democracy – which we call socialism!

CEC statement on Federal Election 2011

Struggle and resistance is the way forward…

The results of the 2011 Federal election are a call to action for the youth and student movement. It is time to pick up our picket signs and banners for major mobilization against the extremely dangerous Harper Conservative majority government.

The Conservatives have no mandate from the young people, nor from the people in general, to accelerate their pro-capitalist, anti-peace, anti-environment agenda – and this must not pass! In confronting our emergency situation, young people should take heart in the fact that Harper won the support of less than 25% of registered voters.

The election has also shown how flawed the Canadian voting system is. The situation calls out for mixed-member proportional representation.

Pirates and bloodsuckers

The greater number of the parliament is now a rouge’s gallery of bloodsuckers, pirates, psychopaths, vultures, and thugs masquerading in business suits under the cover of a legal political party. They are the happy prisoners of racism, sexism and homophobia, the architects of the G20 mass arrests, and represent an agenda of billion-dollar corporate climate crime, imperialist war and pillage and a vicious attack on accessible education, good jobs, and justice, dignity and fundamental rights – like women’s reproductive rights.

To win, the Conservatives fought selective campaigns in target ridings. Automated mysterious phone calls even mis-informed voters on election day about the location of polling stations. A Tory campaign’s communication director tried to grab a ballot box at one advanced campus poll box with the hopes of intimidating voters. Throughout the campaign the Conservatives ran from dialogue with youth, refused to respond to surveys from people’s movements like the “report card on education”, and fired-off cheap Quebec-bashing (warning of a “coalition with separatists”).

Youth vote pushes for change

The youth vote turnout was apparently, like the general turnout, not significantly higher – despite comedian Rick Mercer’s Maple-leaf enwrapped non-partisan “Vote Mobs” on campuses and much hype about social media, etc.

The voting ID rules still frustrate young people voting. Many youth lack, for example, proof of a physical address or their name on utility bills. The first-past-the-post system also discourages voting when a vote for a progressive candidate is supposedly ‘wasted.’

The major election debates appear more and more to be a choice between Capitalism Lite, or Capitalism Classic. The parties are not identical, however, and had more youth voted they likely would have pushed for what was perceived as change and elected larger bloc of parties not aligned directly with big business, suggested by the “student vote” drive in public schools.

We welcome the NDP’s victory as official opposition, the new young Quebec NDP MPs in Ottawa, and the election of the first Green MP. The sharp turn towards the New Democrats in Quebec away from the Bloc Québécois is a rejection of the Conservatives, not a resolution of the national inequalities in the Canadian constitution. In fact, these three non-big business parties have inconsistent records of fighting for social progress and peace (all supporting, for example, the current imperialist war in Libya).

Can’t stop, can’t wait

In practice the ‘Orange surge’ has limited capacity to block the big business agenda. The Tories are in full control of the Commons and the Senate.

We can’t wait four years to fight-back in another election. Urgent, direct and united mass action is needed now. The youth movement must seek-out every platform to combine our efforts, resist and defeat the Harper Tories starting this summer. The first battleground struggles will likely be Harper’s law and order legislation, as well as military spending and austerity measures with the new budget that will include cut-backs to education.

Finding ways to mobilize as many youth as possible behind a people’s agenda must be an important topic for the young workers gathering at the Canadian Labour Congress and the Quebec Confederation of National Trade Unions, the Rebelles feminist gathering in Winnipeg, and the Canadian Federation of Students General meeting at the end of the month.

Instead of ignorance, poverty, prisons and war as the future for youth, the YCL expresses its support for the new campaign for a Charter of Youth Rights (www.youthcharter.ca).  The people’s of Europe and the Arab world are rising up, making history, and pushing for a better future. Look at the bold occupation of State Capitol building in Wisconsin. We need to create many Wisconsins, many of these mass mobilizations.

Struggle and resistance is the way forward!

YCL CEC, May 2011

We encourage youth and student activists to also read the analysis of the Communist Party of Canada, which can be found at http://www.parti-communiste.ca/?p=442

Build Israeli Apartheid Week and the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign!

Build Israeli Apartheid Week and the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign! – Expand democratic rights on campus!

The Young Communist League of Canada fully endorses Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2011 from March 7th-20th and salutes the upcoming organizing taking place on campuses and in communities across Canada to help build IAW and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Apartheid Israel.

Last year’s events took place in over 55 cities world wide and this year’s
actions will be expanded and strengthened.

Click here for Guelph IAW events!

A HISTORICAL MOMENT!

IAW 2011 is coming at a historical juncture where a new wave of revolution has discredited the racist ideas that the Arab peoples do not struggle for democracy and against imperialism. Israel remains the favored outpost of American imperialism in the region and IAW plays an important role in exposing Apartheid Israel’s most heinous crimes against Palestinians, and the role it plays in securing US corporate interests which have savaged the Middle East and the globe.

We proudly support the use of the term “Apartheid” despite the attacks on free speech by Zionists and Conservatives. How else can one describe a situation where occupied Palestinians are denied statehood and are colonized by illegal Israeli settlements that continue to expand?  What is it when Arab Israelis are denied access to the majority of land in Israel itself and suffer severe discrimination on a daily basis?  Israel has escalated its policies of war, occupation, assassination, kidnapping, torture and detention, partition, economic de-stabilization, starvation, the withholding of water, the bulldozing of homes and shops, and the targeting of civilians.

We stand with South African anti-Apartheid veterans, such as Desmond Tutu, Ronnie Kasrils, COSATU, the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Young Communist League of South Africa, in refusing to be intimidated and referring to Israel’s racist policies by their name as defined under the UN’s 1973 Convention: the “Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”.

CONDEMN HARPER

The vast majority of the world, through the UN, has opposed Israeli
Apartheid for over 40 years as one of the principle road blocks to peace in the region.  But this is not reflected in Harper’s unconditional support for the most extreme pro-Zionist and genocidal measures taken by the Israeli state.  Canada has more than doubled its bi-lateral trade with Israel since the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement was signed.  This trade is now $1.3 billion a year.

Harper’s foreign policy now stands virtually alone in the world in terms of this uncritical support.

In 2006, when a Hamas majority was elected by Palestinians, Canada was among the first countries in the world to cut funding to the democratically elected government of Palestine.  Harper also supported the invasion of Lebanon and “Operation Cast Lead” – Israel’s three week massacre of 1,400 Gazans (including over 300 children).

Most recently Stephen Harper appeared with Israeli PM and war criminal
Netanyahu the morning after the brazen military attack against unarmed peace activists bringing humanitarian aid to the imprisoned people of Gaza.  The courageous Freedom Flotilla activists, including Victoria BC’s human rights activist Kevin Neish, were carrying baby food, clothing, medicines, building materials and other supplies desperately needed by the people of Gaza, who continue to suffer under a vicious blockade intended to starve the Palestinians into submission.

REVERSE THE ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH

Free speech in Canada has also been a casualty of Stephen Harper’s support for Imperialism and Apartheid Israel as the federal government has attacked voices for Human Rights at home.

In 2009, Jason Kenney, Minister of Censorship and Deportation, banned
British MP George Galloway from entering Canada, because he had recently led a humanitarian convoy to Gaza.  The Harper Tories have cut funding to Canadian organizations that have spoke out against Israel, including the Canadian Arab Federation and KAIROS, and have founded the “Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism” which is attempting to label all criticism of Israel as “the new anti-Semitism”.

This new attack on our democratic rights has also been felt by IAW and BDS activists, many of whom are youth and students.

Last spring the Ontario Legislature passed a motion by Tory MPP Peter
Shurman condemning Israeli Apartheid Week as “inciting hatred against
Israel”.  In previous years university administrations have banned IAW
posters and put up road blocks for booking space on campuses for Palestinian solidarity events.  In February 2011, Mohawk College in Hamilton Ontario, tried to bankrupt a speaking event involving Jewish anti-Zionist scholar Norman Finkelstein by arguing that exorbitant security expenditures were necessary.

YOUTH FIGHT BACK!

But youth and students are fighting back against this repression with a
renewed counter-offensive.  Across Canada there have been important
victories.  This includes the growing BDS movement which held a pan-Canadian conference in Montreal in October 2010.   We call on youth, students to continue this work and to coordinate and organize a cross-Canada BDS organization.  Important victories have already been won, such as the recent move by the Hudson Bay Company to discontinue Ahava products (an Israeli cosmetics line) in January 2011.

The proof that this movement has real potential to weaken Apartheid
Israel is that the Israeli Knesset is currently discussing a bill that
will criminalize the promotion of BDS within Israel.

The BDS campaign was launched in 2005 by a call put forth by over 170
Palestinian civil society organizations.  The YCL-LJC echoes their demands.

We call that Israel respect the right of return for all Palestinian
refugees; that Israel dismantle the wall and put an end to its colonization; the creation of a viable and genuinely independent, sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem; the certifiable de-nuclearization of Israel, and mutual security guarantees for all states in the region.

The time has come to impose sanctions and a full boycott against the rouge state of Israel, beginning with an immediate ban on all Canadian military exports.  Canada must end its complicity with Israeli war crimes and adopt a foriegn policy of peace and disarmament including support of UN resolutions and developing peaceful and cooperative relations with all states in the Middle East.  There is no other “road map” to a just and lasting peace in the region.

Central Executive Committee

YCL-LJC Canada

Youth against U.S. “Steal” – We demand decent jobs!

The battle against U.S. Steel by local 1005, and its members and pensioners, is more than just a local labour dispute.

It’s a battle for the future of Hamilton’s young workers and a battle for all Canadians to protect their future. This is only the latest attack on young workers by big multi-national corporations trying to erode working conditions, wages, pensions and a quality of life that past generations fought so hard for. This so-called “labour dispute” is about the company trying to stop indexing pensions and denying new hires the existing defined benefit pension plan, without which workers will retire into poverty.

Hamilton has a long history of working class people not giving in to policies that aren’t in their interests; a history of militancy and unity. Hamilton is a community that demands a fair wage for a fair day’s work.  Hamilton workers, youth, students and all those fighting for social justice will stand up and fight for people’s needs over profits and greed.

In Canada, we have been told that the recession is over and that we have been in recovery for a few months. Repeatedly we are told this. Why is the message so often repeated by the corporate owned news? Because the people don’t believe it. We don’t see it! The “recovery” has been for the profits going to the super rich who have saved themselves at the expense of the workers, whether by massive injections of public funds or through “stimulus funds” (essentially theft from the people, in both cases). While they have restored fat corporate salaries, and bonuses, they continue to cut wages, benefits and pensions. The people’s quality of life continues to decline.

Our future as a community and as a country will be bleak indeed if we allow the multi-nationals to dictate our wages, working and living conditions according to their profit margins. We must unite and stand together against the practices of companies like U.S. Steel. They cannot pull the wool over our eyes. If a particular “foreign investment” won’t maintain our living standards – such as defined benefit, indexed pensions – then the ICA (Investment Canada Act) must be used to fix the situation, up to and including measures such as divestiture and public take-over.

Two-tier contracts, like the one US Steel is pushing, means poverty and no future for young workers.  Already, youth unemployment is at record highs. Underemployment and part-time McJobs are the only option for most youth. Now they want to gut the last unionized jobs left. This will mean further roll-backs across the board in every sector. The solution is unity and struggle!

The youth and young workers of Hamilton, Ontario and Canada, will not stay silent and watch the destruction brought about by these firms. We stand in solidarity with the over 900 members and 9000 retirees of USW local 1005 who demand nothing more than fair treatment and what they were promised when U.S. Steel came to our city.  These promises have been flagrantly broken, and the federal and provincial governments have done nothing to stand up for the workers.  A Canadian future that involves Harper at the helm means more collusion with the largest and most vicious trans-nationals and a low-wage economy for the rest of us.

The Young Communist League – Ontario demands the following immediate measures be taken by the McGuinty and Harper governments to provide a future for youth and workers in Ontario:

• the provincial government compel US Steel to return to the bargaining table to negotiate an early and just settlement with Local 1005
• prosecute US Steel to the full extent of the law, including for price fixing and bargaining in bad faith
• enact foreign investment laws that protect jobs and benefit Canada – not US Steel, Vale Inco, and the rest of these corporate criminals
• substantially increase CPP pensions and reduce the voluntary pension age to 60
• put through tough anti-scab legislation
• a Bill of Rights for Labour guaranteeing the right to strike, picket and organize
• the nationalization of US Steel’s Canadian operations; put them under public ownership and democratic control
• a $16/hr minimum wage, no more poverty wages!
• bankruptcy protection for workers’ wages and pensions
• end tuition fees, by rolling back and eliminating them – Education is a right!
• massive public investment to create jobs, expand manufacturing and secondary industry; build a Canadian car, build affordable housing, expand public services and Medicare, and build a national child care program

But the solution won’t come from government without a massive and militant fight back, with organized Labour leading the way.  The YCL-O realizes that it is capitalism itself that has spawned this most recent sharpened attack on the living conditions of the global working-class.  Ultimately, socialism, which would put workers in the driver’s seat in this country, is the only way to offer an end to re-occurring crisis and struggle against capitalist regression.

As one of the chants against US Steel goes: “What do we make? Steel! What do they do?  Steal!”

Solidarity with Hamilton Steelworkers!  Youth and young workers of Ontario, unite to defend our future!

Unite to kick out Jason Kenney and the Harper Tories!

Jason Kenney not welcome in Guelph!

This Tuesday, August 31^st, Guelph Conservatives welcome federal Citizenship and Immigration (Censorship and Deportation) minister Jason Kenney.  Mr. Kenney is coming as a special guest to a BBQ hosted by the Guelph Conservative Party, along with their candidate for the next federal election.  But he isn’t just here to enjoy the food, the company, the summer weather – or even the beautiful scenery at Riverside Park. Mr. Kenney is here on a mission: to portray the Harper government’s immigration program as being about creating a welcoming, multicultural Canada for immigrants from all over the world by playing on the popular sentiments of Canadians who genuinely hope that this is the case.

In the real world, if not in the minds of Harper’s propagandists, the citizenship and immigration regime Kenney is presiding over is about:

• Bringing in US-style raids and national security policies, part of a broader strategy of changing the definition of acceptable policing in Canada, including racial profiling, workplace raids and harassing people at women’s shelters
• Using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to bring hundreds of thousands of workers to Canada, to work for very low wages with almost no legal protections and no path to permanent residency
• Using powers brought in by Bill C-50 to reject valid refugee claims for political reasons from certain countries and giving quotas for immigration to certain countries
• More generally, creating a climate of fear among migrants (with and without status), making it dangerous for targeted communities to speak out, for example, about unfair or unsafe working conditions
• Promoting racist ideas about “good immigrants” and “bad immigrants” – racist ideas which also attack non-migrant working class people and seek to divide domestic workers and foreign workers, whose unity is a threat to the Harper Tories’ corporate agenda
• Removing LGBT rights from history taught to new immigrants
• Defunding the ESL programs of major NGOs, such as the Canadian Arab Federation, when they speak out against the Harper government’s uncritical and unconditional support for the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians
• Attacking free speech by denying George Galloway, a British member of parliament, entry to Canada because of he opposes the occupation of Afghanistan
• Curtailing democratic rights by setting up a “Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism” which has sought to equate democratic criticism of Israel with “hate speech”, this is a danger to free speech as well as the very real struggle against hate speech and crimes
• Denying American soldiers and their families refusing to participate in the illegal war and immoral war in Iraq asylum in Canada, despite motions passed in the House of Commons demanding that they be allowed to stay
• The recent Tory demonizing of the Tamil refugees, who have fled violence in their homeland and applied for refugee status in keeping with international law

The Guelph Young Communist League rejects these policies.  We demand that the Harper government end their racist attacks on the “Canadian” working class and all workers working in Canada, whether they be immigrant, migrant or non-status.  We condemn Harper’s immigration policy which is deeply connected to his broader big-business, anti-people policies.

No One is “Illegal”!

Treat the Tamil Refugees with Humanitarian Respect & Dignity!

Youth Unite to Defeat the Harper Tories!

The Youth Demand an Inquiry!

Defend the right to protest!  For a full, independent inquiry into police repression now.

Ontario Executive Committee and Central Executive Committee of the Young Communist League of Canada

On the weekend of June 26-27, 2010, the leaders of the top 20 capitalist economies met to devise an agenda for the interests of “private demand” (i.e. the very rich and major transnational corporations), including halving deficits by 2013 which translates into increasing the burden on and cutting public services to working people since neither will corporate profits be taxed more nor will the military spending on wars be cut.

Over 30,000 people from across Canada (particularly from Quebec) and the world in the labour, womens’, aboriginal, youth and student, migrant, environmental, international solidarity, socialist, and many other movements peacefully demonstrated against this criminal agenda and most were able to participate from start to finish united without any incident or attacks.

This democratic right and necessity to protest should have been enjoyed by all demonstrators, but in the last few days peaceful protesters as well as journalists, legal observers, and by-standers who had no involvement in the protests have been subjected to a police riot.  

The mainstream media has endlessly played images of isolated incidences of mayhem, where the police were absent, that occurred not because of insufficient security budgets but in spite of the $1 billion that should have gone for education, health care, and public services at a time when many are suffering from the economic crisis that is not over.

Police had refused to provide assurances that they would not use provocateurs, despite being pressed on this point by Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan after such agents had been exposed in the 2007 demonstrations in Quebec against the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

What has been ignored is not only the main peaceful demonstration organized by the Canadian Labour Congress and Ontario Federation of Labour, but also the orgy of police violence with rubber bullets, indiscriminate mass arrests, acts of physical assault and intimidation, and night-time arrests of people simply sleeping in student residences.  Mainstream media personalities such as Steve Paikin have tweeted that the police assaults were more frightening than war zone reporting from “Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Lebanon, and Israel (Palestine)”.

Youth and students, Québécois, as well as people of colour are being disproportionately targeted and need our support at this crucial time.

The Young Communist League stands in solidarity with and calls for on-going mobilizations against the G20 agenda and to support the rights of those who continue to be subjected to police harassment as the unleashing of the police on protesters and by-standards alike is an attack on our democratic rights, an attempt to demobilize us while we continue to be robbed by the G20’s capitalist agenda.

Witness statements show that it is sufficient just to be young to be arrested and beaten, regardless of having no connection to the demonstrations.  Baseless arrests have occurred not just in Toronto but as far as Vancouver.

We demand an immediate end to police violence and a full public inquiry into police brutality, infringement on our human rights and where these repressive orders came from.  For many youth this is a time of new and renewed radicalization which demands leadership that will challenge the capitalist ruling class’s assaults with a movement for socialism.

RAISE THE RED FLAG OF RESISTANCE! Call to action against the G20

(note from the YCL-Ontario:  March with the YCL against the G20!  YCLers, friends and allies will be meeting at 11:45am on Saturday June 26th at the south-west corner of Bloor and Spadina to participate in the student feeder march; “From the Classroom to the Streets: Keep Education Public”.  We will then be marching to the “People First: We deserve better!” rally at Queen’s Park.  Come out and take action against the G20’s corporate agenda and for a people’s agenda!)

RAISE THE RED FLAG OF RESISTANCE!

FOR A YOUTH AND STUDENT AGENDA

CALL TO ACTION BY THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF CANADA

“Bloodsuckers, pirates, cannibals, murders, psychopaths, traitors, thugs, vultures, gangsters and terrorists!”

For centuries, these labels have been placed on everyone — aboriginal peoples, workers, youth, women, racialized communities and countless more — who dared resist the agenda of the ruling class. But isn’t the truth the opposite from what we have been sold?

These words best describe the G8 and their host — the Harper Conservative regime, the bankers, big business men, government leaders and the imperialist system they represent, meeting behind billion-dollar iron bars.

FLASH-POINT

The G8-G20 is flash-point for the peoples resistance. We fully support all those seeking to expose, denounce, confront and overcome the plans of the G8-G20 — and bring about an alternative agenda for the people, by the people!

The capitalists’ plans are secret. They could not even stand the heat of public, democratic review. Unprecedented costly security operations hide the proceedings. We condemn the shut-down of the University of Toronto and the use of the “sonic cannon” weapon. And there is no such thing as a “Free Speech Zone” — other than the world itself.

Major topics of discussion and the full decisions will likely never be revealed. Yet these decisions will impact millions across Canada, and billions of people around the world. These dangerous measures show imperialism’s fear of the people.

FOR A YOUTH AND PEOPLE’S AGENDA
The G8-G20 police brutality, the lack of democracy — this is a crime. It is only one crime in many. Consider the Harper’s remarks that global warming is a ‘side-show’ ; or Canada’s decision to exclude abortion
from its global maternal health commitment and the Conservative Senator’s “shut the fuck up” response to dissent.

In our view, this meeting has a special context, ‘Round two’ of the economic crisis: giant transfers of wealth to the corporations are now being paid for by the people. This is the main attack on the youth and the people today. Therefore we call for a youth agenda:

1. Books not bombs!
– No more $22 billions for the war in Afghanistan
– Troops out now, cut the military budget by half
– Ban military recruitment from schools

2. Make a job a right!
– No more poverty wages and union busting
– Raise minimum wage to $16, for shorter work week
– Massive job creation for youth — start with build affordable, green housing

3. Climate justice
– No more supporting the tar sands
– Legislate emergency action to surpass Kyoto
– Nationalize energy — shift to conservation and renewables

4. Free Education
– Eliminate tuition fees, grants not loans
– Reverse all school privatization and cutbacks
– National public, accessible childcare
– Protect free speech on campuses

5. Full equality now!
– Strengthen employment equity for Aboriginal youth, young women, racialized youth, youth with (dis)abilities
– Enshrine a women’s right to choice, close the wage gap
– Restore and expand all funding to programmes for women and girls
– Ban neo-fascist groups

6. Sovereignty and self-determination
– Justice for Aboriginal peoples and Quebec
– For a foreign policy of peace and disarmament

7. Democracy!
– Lower the voting age to 16; for proportional representation
– No One Is Illegal — democratic immigration policy
– Defend and expand the right of youth to leisure, sports and recreation

Now is the time to make a sharp break with the agenda of the Harper Conservatives and imperialism. If these meetings had even an ounce of integrity, the world ’leaders’ would redirect their energy and trillions (our trillions!) to the global crisis of unemployment, food, health care, education and childcare and ending imperialist war. They would immediately condemn the brutality of the Israeli regime and support a Palestinian state.

But capitalism is fundamentally driven by profits. Therefore all its activities will forever be morally bankrupt by any humanist measure. More and more youth will continue to reject capitalism and imperialism.

YOUTH RISE UP!

We appeal to all young people to join the mobilizations against the G8-G20. The YCL denounce Harper’s so-called ‘youth-summit’ of careerist children and stand with all our courageous sisters and brothers on the streets, who represent the real spirit of our generation. The fear-tactics of the Toronto police — who have told parents “Your parenting has to be a key role” against demonstrators, “Ask your children to avoid the downtown core” — will fail, rejected by the youth and parents together.

For inspiration, we look to Cuba and Latin America, and to the resistance

Every week, mass demonstrations like this one are hitting the streets of Greece, sending the clear message that the working class won't pay for capitalist crisis

in Greek workers today. The needs of the broad majority of the youth can never be divided from those of the working class and the people on the road to a better world. Provocation and other attempts to fracture the vital militancy and unity of the people can not reverse the fact that, on a global scale, the working class and progressive forces are strengthening.

These meetings are a historically developed strategy of imperialism, especially US imperialism. History, however, is not on the side of the oppressors. It is on the side of freedom, peace, ecology, and the people. We remain committed to joining with all those in the struggle on the streets, in our workplaces, schools, and communities, today while bravely championing a better future.

THE YOUTH ARE THE FUTURE, THE FUTURE IS SOCIALISM!

Central Committee, YCL-LJC
June 2010