Instead of just being tired from fighting many battles with social and economic conservatism, more and more progressives I’m encountering have become disillusioned with those who ought to be our champions.

There are number of head-scratching events in progressive politics in recent years that tend to sap our energy. In response, we can either cocoon or rebuild. Rebuilding community is the far better choice.

FOOD FOR CYNICISM

Without even describing the litany of right-wing causes of our malaise, here are some left-wing let-downs:

1) Obama is not Jesus and didn’t/couldn’t deliver on really good healthcare. So, we continue to fight harder to protect our system from American privateers while American progressives figure out how much their new president can actually accomplish.

2) The B.C. NDP failed to stop the mean, right-wing Liberal party from winning a third straight election largely because it alienated its base by rejecting its own party policy supporting carbon taxes. In reaching for centrists, the B.C. NDP lost much of its progressive base, who stopped funding, volunteering for, and even voting for, the NDP. Welcome to a third term of abuse after an election with the lowest voter turnout ever.

3) On the Saskatchewan NDP’s website the party leader declares these priorities: “strong business, strong labour, strong government.” Putting business first is disconcerting. Putting government last is no salve.

4) Proportional representation movements across Canada fail to resonate with the masses, in part from corporate media attacks and concerted neglect from mainstream progressive parties.

5) Split electorates in this decade lead to near ties in U.S. presidential elections, and stalemate minority governments in Canada and spurts of stillborn coalitions. But, within days of a minority government election in Britain, two parties form a functioning coalition, with hope for electoral reform. We should not be standing by while politicians form a coalition and pursue electoral reform in the UK when we could mobilize for the same goals. Yet, we do.

POLITICAL ABUSE SYNDROME

American psychologist Bruce Levine wrote on Alternet.org last December about the abuse syndrome that progressives seem to embody. Beaten down by the soft fascism of the corporate-government partnership, interpersonal alienation, consumerism and suburbanization, Canadians, too, seem unable to rise above our humiliation to exercise our democracy and vote out our economic and social abusers.

In his book, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, Paul Rogat Loeb warns against allowing our defeats to push us into a private life, ignoring the public sphere in despair. We cannot subcontract our democratic activism to professional political operatives. Democracy is a muscle that can atrophy. Obama’s healthcare plan is weak, in part, because the millions who mobilized to elect him stopped mobilizing after he was elected, not realizing that the same kind of effort was required for the next four years in order to force Congress to actually implement change.

THE COMMUNITY TONIC

So how do we lift ourselves out of our abuse syndrome? We can take our cue from the hive minds around us: monarch butterflies, bees, ants, starlings – those awesome birds that fly inches from each other in tight formation. If we human beings were able to cooperate to even a fraction of how the hive species cooperate, think what we could accomplish. Yet, our abuse syndrome keeps us from believing that the power of cooperation can defeat the isolation of the consumer individual. It’s so easy to forget the complexity of the social systems we have already created. We built them incrementally, with occasional grand leaps forward (Medicare, CPP). They have been steadily dismantled incrementally as well. And we cower as a people instead of linking arms to regain what we’ve lost.

Beyond recalling the power of human collectivity, we can remember the recent rebirth of the salon movement to fight social decay. We need to re-purpose that positive social movement to embrace those of us who suffer from disillusionment in progressive leaders and institutions. We need to begin by looking to one another.

Instead of retreating to our living rooms, we must invite people into our living rooms to work through the angst of missed expectations. Then we need to throw our hopes and principles into a crucible so we can focus on what matters most. We can’t retreat to the private life; we must be uplifted by the relationships in our private lives! Truly, why belong to a revolution that doesn’t include dancing? When the cynicism beats us down, we need to gather our people together, enrich our souls and our communities, go dancing and build each other up, because, though we might presume so, we are not alone.

We need to build more teddy bear catapults. We need to visit ArtThreat.net regularly to support and take part in artists’ efforts to engage in all things political. We need to write clever, insightful, clear 25-word letters to the editor. We need to follow the Yes Men. Community is the tonic for cynicism and shutting down, that’s for sure. It’s what’s keeping me going.

We really are all in this together – unless we embrace some kind of despairing, free-agent status. And when that happens, we have really lost. It is by restoring each other’s community spirit that we can win.

The above is a version of my commentary piece in the current issue of Our Times, Canada’s independent labour magazine. It was written before the G20 suspension of Canada’s constitution in Toronto.

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That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around for bringing it back further entrenched my concern with the lengths they would go to disenfranchise human beings further.

So I was very happy to see that a modicum of democracy was able to steer a BC legislative committee stacked with provincial neoliberals–a modicum, supported by intense organizing efforts. Though I wouldn’t put it past this government to implement the municipal corporate vote despite the committee report. Remember the impending HST?

In looking at the details of the committee’s report [Report of the Local Government Elections Task Force (PDF 638KB)], I was thrilled to see a few things.

• 6,039 petition signatures for the corporate vote submitted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business

I can’t be surprised they built a petition. I am happy to see they could only find 6,039 future corporate voters and their lackeys in the whole province of 4.2 million people to sign it.

• 2,354 member Facebook page against the corporate vote

Sure, it’s easy to build a Facebook group to push for something. But really it’s a huge effort to build a group and promote it to get this many people signing up in a short period of time. Not every movement can have the nation-wide hatred of abused prorogation behind it.

• 71% of the 920 written submissions commented on the corporate vote, with campaign finance being the topic of next greatest interest.  Many submissions touched on a wide range of other election‐related topics – from alternative voting systems to the date of the vote to elected officials’ accountability. The following identifies the general trends in those 920 written submissions:

1. Corporate vote – total: 223 for; 428 against
2. Local governments:  8 for; 23 against
3. Organizations:  11 for; 29 against
4. Individuals:  204 for; 376 against

I was especially thrilled to see an almost 2:1 ratio of submissions opposing the corporate vote to supporting it, with almost 3/4 of all submissions addressing it.

The following highlight a number of positive recommendations. Not to say that they aren’t controversial in themselves, but the fact that the elements and structure of our democracy are on the table is encouraging. I wonder if whichever of these changes come into force before the next municipal election will have an effect on what the public tolerates in other levels of government.

The report makes 31 recommendations for improvements to local elections to: ensure accountability; enhance transparency; strengthen compliance and enforcement; increase accessibility; and expand education and advice.

Key recommendations include:

* Establish expense limits for all campaign participants (e.g. electors, elector organizations and third party advertisers)

* Regulate third party advertisers, requiring them to register and disclose expenses and contributions

* Ban anonymous contributions

* Require sponsorship information on all election advertising

* Shorten the time for filing campaign finance disclosure statements to 90 days post election

* Establish a central role for Elections BC in enforcement of campaign finance rules and in making campaign finance disclosure statements electronically accessible

* Establish a separate Act for campaign finance rules in local elections

The Task Force recommends a four-year term of office to provide local governments more time to plan and implement their vision, and to reduce the potential for voter fatigue over time. It also recommends no general contribution limits, given proposed expense limits and the need to ensure that all affected by local government decisions can participate in local elections discourse

While it also recommends no corporate vote, the Task Force does recommend that UBCM, the Province and business groups work together to recognize the concerns expressed to the Task Force and to encourage effective local ways to engage with business, further strong relationships and foster a competitive business climate.

via Local Government Elections Task Force – Terms of Reference.

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Unions began by people focussing their political will. Our future lies in reinvigorating this social will to action. We have the capacity to engage our communities, help people see their interconnectedness, and motivate responsible planning for a sustainable future.

The State of the Unions

Unfortunately, however, despite the existence of refreshing exceptions, the union movement is under profound stress due to the following reasons:

* Union density has been declining for over a generation;

* Governments and corporations have declared unions a critical enemy to their neo-liberal agenda, which aims to minimize the role of the state – our public institutions and elected governments – and maximize the role of private business;

* Demographic shifts indicate that many of our core activist members will retire from their jobs and our unions, taking with them core activist wisdom;

* New members replacing retiring workers are open to the superficial charms of neo-liberal messages since they have been raised in an era where cuts to social programs are the norm and the social legitimacy of unions has been under assault;

* Because the fabric of society is no longer so infused with unionism, union members do not necessarily fully know what unions are for or how they need to accomplish their goals, and;

* We too often contract out our political activism, letting organizations (political parties, unions and other NGOs) do the political work for us after we contribute donations or dues to the cause. This reduces our willingness and capacity to actually practice democracy.

The State of the World

Having watched the failure of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, I am now asking: How are we going to re-frame our local, national and international economies to put human beings first, ahead of corporate profiteering – all to avert climate breakdown?

A destabilizing global economy, peak oil, and the ecological consequences of tar sands exploitation threaten to change the economic playing field. Pushers of privatization, deregulation, regressive taxes, and de-funding government services essentially assert individual values over community values and action. This challenges our solidarity.

Unions embrace individualism as well when they raid each other for relative power gains in a zero-sum context, instead of organizing the unorganized and mobilizing members for political action. Conservatives attack our solidarity from the outside while we undermine it and our bargaining power from the inside.

So, in this context, the union movement can no longer take for granted an established, respected place in society from which to act. It must re-engage with its current and new members on a core philosophical level to help build a foundation of social, economic and political values.

But how do we do that in a rapidly changing world? We embrace the new world.

Systems of organizing and activism are changing rapidly. After the prime minister literally phoned in his second parliamentary proroguement in December, a grad student in Edmonton started the “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” Facebook group. It collected 225,000 members within weeks, and it led to nation-wide rallies in late January this year. This surprised party politicians. Left far behind the crest of that organizing wave, many of them merely showed up at rallies as citizens. After Parliament resumed, the group transformed itself into Canadians Advocating Political Participation. While using Facebook, Twitter and text message mobilization (a new feature of U2 concerts, even) is no panacea, the use so far of this social media has demonstrated that there are new ways of directly mobilizing political sentiment. Unions need to recognize that the ground is fertile for facilitating political action among their members, their families and communities. Mobilization is still happening, just not inside traditional organizations. We need to join that movement.

At the same time, money works differently now, and we should take advantage of that. Now that corporate and union donations are no longer allowed in federal politics, unions can devote resources to educating and politicizing their members so they can directly engage in politics – with their money and their time. In the end, this will also enrich members’ relationships with their unions, creating stronger organizations.

Unions can also help frame climate dialogue. Activists young and older are increasingly alarmed at the lack of meaningful political action being taken to avert climate breakdown. They don’t necessarily see political parties as organizations that are progressive enough, or powerful enough, to make a difference. Unions have a valuable opportunity to sponsor a dialogue on ecological and climate issues. Some have already taken up this challenge. More than just defining and debating the scope of green jobs, unions can re-establish their historical place as community mobilizing organizations leading a new vision for how we will design our communities, in this case to avoid climate crisis.

Our past really is our future. The labour movement’s origins in the coalescing of political will into a movement – the union movement – is the very kind of union mobilization and activism we need in the 21st century. We must re-establish our place in socially progressive communities. We have been missed and we need to take part again.

The above is from my commentary piece in the current issue of Our Times, Canada’s independent labour magazine.

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Saddest for me is the lack of time and opportunity for children to play. This is why we have Clowns Without Borders.

Here is a brief, yet expansive report from the Canadian Red Cross. There are more details at the Canadian Red Cross Haiti page. Hurricane season is coming. We need to keep building relationships to restore and enhance stability compared to where they were before.

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Let’s start by talking about BuddyPress. It started as a WordPress plugin designed to add social media elements [like Facebook features and Twitter] to people’s WordPress sites. Then BuddyPress grew into its own WordPress paradigm.

If I were Nokia or Boston University running a WordPress platform, I could install BuddyPress to manage social media elements for my thousands of “members” just like Facebook.

When I knew almost nothing about BuddyPress, I had high hopes for what it could be. But now that I get it more [assuming I actually do], BuddyPress seems to still be a ghettoized environment. I could create a social media installation on my site, but people would have to login and use it just like Facebook. That means way too many logins for people on too many different sites.

UnionBook is a great social media website for trade unionists, but with less than 4,000 users right now, it’s hasn’t hit its hundredth monkey yet.

So here’s what I wished BuddyPress were…and it [or something similar] still can be that.

1. It should have all the social media elements it currently has plus the new cool ones when they are invented.
2. It should be open source.
3. It should be non-proprietary, just like the culture of the internet in the early days, or even the 1980s, despite DARPA’s involvement, which was hands-off by then anyway.
4. It should be non-profit [notice 2, 3, and 4 in here are already the opposite of Facebook].
5. It should be non-corporate.
6. It should be decentralized, like the paradigm of the internet itself, so it can promote democracy, transparency and commitment.
7. Most importantly, it should be distributed. This means, for me right now anyway, that if BuddyPress were what I think of now as a solid alternative to the corporate Facebook, every site on the net running either the BuddyPress suite of WordPress plugins or the BuddyPress paradigm would be integrated, interactive and networked…like a web. People could flit among them almost as if Facebook were a jigsaw puzzle or an iceflow that is broken up and we just float around on pieces carrying our social media with us. Sickeningly, that’s what Facebook is doing now. We just take our Facebook with us around the web and share things with others through Facebook, thereby spreading the Facebook corporate cancer to everything we touch.

OpenID is a model I had in mind. I like that I could login to various sites with an ID that travels with me, not like logging into Facebook and doing my community there, in its corporate ghetto/prison. But now that I see who is part of the OpenID foundation, I don’t want to have anything to do with that. But the model is still good.

So maybe some day BuddyPress will evolve into the kind of distributed structure I’m looking for. Maybe it won’t and something else will. Or maybe nothing will, but I doubt that. It’s too good an idea not to happen, and not because I thought of it, but because the internet was built on that model and it works well. It worked really well until the corporations took over. But we can get that sense of distributed community back.

Open source, distributed social media can be a catalyst for that. And if you doubt that, check out Firefox’s market share. :)

OK, now onto removing my self from Facebook!

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The huge contingent of police officers watched as the group blocked traffic in several major intersections and even threw marbles at the feet of horses used by the Vancouver police mounted squad.

Victoria police spokesman Sgt. Grant Hamilton said “restraint was the order of the day” Friday night, explaining that officers did what they could to keep the peace. There were no torch-related arrests in Victoria Friday, Hamilton said.

via Protesters crossed ‘moral line,’ angry torchbearer says.

Let’s start with initial media reports of protesters throwing marbles on the ground in front of or at the feet of police horses.

Then we hear of reports from the protesters and observers that no protesters threw marbles.

Then as of 4pm yesterday, CanWest stories of protesters accusing police of throwing the marbles, on at least the Ottawa Citizen and Victoria Times-Colonist websites, are “not available.” Maybe they’ll return again.

At this stage, it’s unclear who threw marbles, or if they were thrown at all. Civil liberties observers saw no marbles at all.

At this stage, we have ambiguity.

Those who like to believe the police and the $1b VANOC security force are good people who would never lie or entrap or discredit protest can shake their heads at the mean protesters who want to kill horses.

But anyone who paid attention to the FTAA meetings in Montebello, Quebec in August 2007 knows that protesters caught on film 3 police officers dressed as protesters, with faces covered and rocks in hand prepared to incite violence.

If you weren’t one of the almost half a million people to watch the footage, you can see it here.

Within days the Quebec government admitted the masked men were police officers.

And from VANOC’s perspective, that was probably a critical error in their game plan. Don’t admit anything, then the ambiguity allows people who lean your way anyway to believe the dastardly deed was actually committed by the protesters.

So we start with marbles and as the quote above indicates, stoking public sympathy by talking about police retaining order and restraint, keeping the peace and making no arrests.

You can be sure that if the marbles came from the Olympic security forces, the next action from agents provocateurs will take advantage of this goodwill they’re building in the public to step up their interventions.

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The strike is an instance rare in the current climate of workers’ struggling for a political principle rather than immediate wage demands. As such, it has much to teach but also reveals complex challenges that both the labour movement and the Canadian left will have to meet in the near future.

The main issue at stake for both locals is the City’s demand that post-retirement medical benefits be eliminated for all future hires.

…

The future of the union movement as the first line of working class defence against ruling class attempts to make working people pay for the recurrent crises of capitalism depends upon its discovering new ways to mobilize its membership against this new mutation of an old divide and conquer strategy. It also depends on building solidarity, the next critical issue of general significance raised by the strike.

via Cyber-scabbing? Lessons for labour from the Windsor CUPE strike | rabble.ca.

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The NDP’s promise to increase the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $10 would have a disproportionate impact on the food-service industry, she said. “You could see the price of a bacon-cheddar burger at Earl’s jump from $13.55 now to $16 under the NDP. A burger at the Cactus Club could go from $14 to $16.60.”

via NDP’s pledge to up beer prices brews woes.

Before I address twisted arithmetic, let me just say that I don’t buy my BC brew at private liquor stores. Their selection is overpriced and awful, their stores are generally untidy, they are understaffed with usually not-so-thrilled workers who are paid awful wages–no surprise there.

Without injecting any numbers, a private liquor store is making a killing if it sells beer at prices higher than government stores, yet pays people minimum wage, thus less than the BCGEU employees at government stores. That’s got to make some sense, right?

And why do the privateers get a 16% discount on products compared to government liquor stores? Because Gordon Campbell will subsidize privatization wherever he can. Corporate welfare 101.

So, I have absolutely no sympathy for the privateers. Their criticisms make me just shake my head at their baldfaced greed.

The best part, though, is that if you buy your beer at public liquor stores, none of this neoLiberal Party fear-mongering will affect you at all! And the threatened restaurant burger price increases are made up as well, so have no fear.

That said, let’s look at the math. You can take a look at the BC NDP’s analysis of public and private liquor costs here.

But here’s my first question. If a 6-pack of beer costs $12 at a private liquor store [already $2 more than at a government store] and the privateer owners are claiming that a $2 minimum wage increase from $8 to $10 will cause the $12 6-pack to cost $15, what kind of labour costs must they have? I know this sounds like a word problem from grade 9 Math or something, but just think it through.

If there are [an unrealistically high] 3 employees making $8/hour on duty over 12 hours each day in a privateer’s store, the daily labour cost is $288. At $10/hour, the labour costs go up by $72. In this scenario, and looking at labour costs alone, the only way $3 can be passed on to consumers is if they sell merely 24 6-packs each day–and nothing else. That’s clearly just nonsense.

When we add in the loss of the privateers’ discount of 16% to 10%, that 6% will affect final costs too, but not significantly. Even if the $12 6-pack were being sold at cost, the loss of the extra 6% discount would increase the 6-pack by 96 cents. Since the privateers’ mark-up is a whopper, the real final cost increase of the 6% discount reduction is far less.

So how does the privateer industry get a $12 to $15 price jump in their wonky arithmetic? They add 25% to the final product cost. Why 25%?  Because if the minimum wage goes from $8 to $10, that’s a 25% jump. I do enjoy my beer, but honestly, I’m not that stupid. And anyone who thinks it through for just a short time isn’t that stupid either.

I think the industry, the Alliance of Beverage Licensees of B.C., is simply lying with these numbers by suggesting that’s how labour costs factor into retail prices. I also think the neoLiberal Party is promoting the lie to scare beer fans away from the NDP and their plan of cutting back on the corporate welfare program for privateer, profit-gouging liquor vendors. Enough already!

I also think the industry and the neoLiberal Party are expecting people are stumped by grade 9 Math word problems to the point that they’d believe the crazy arithmetic without working through the problem with a pencil and paper.

They must think we’re stupid. Oh right. This is consistent with the neoLiberals’ disdain for the population it governs.

Doing similar math with the burger costs, we find more PR and rhetoric masquerading as arithmetic.

With a 25% increase in minimum wage from $8 to $10, Earl’s and the Cactus Club claim they will pass 18% and 19% of that increase on to their burger consumers. This isn’t as pathetic as the alcohol privateers’ lame arithmetic, but it is also impossible to find plausible. The last time I was at Earl’s they were going to charge me $4 for there to be vegetables on the plate of my entree.

So, we have the BC neoLiberal Party candidates ducking all-candidates meetings, telling people to just “get over” the BC Rail corruption scandal, lying about social service improvements, watching their lead in the polls evaporate to within the margin of error, seeing female voters favour the NDP by a back-breaking margin and the Canucks in the playoffs distracting loyal Liberal voters from all things political.

And now we have the arithmetically-challenged fear-mongering trying to scare beer drinkers into thinking the NDP is going to rip them off.

But in the end, if you buy your BC brew from a government liquor store, the minimum wage increase and the reduced discount for privateer liquor vendors will simply not affect you at all!

So, even though I’m not a BCGEU member, I’ve been a proud member of 3 unions in my life. I feel wonderful buying my beer at government stores because I know the workers are at the very least being paid a living wage and the product costs less than at the privateers’ stores where they have been getting their 16% discount in Campbell’s New Era of corporate welfare for privatized services.

So, do your grade 9 Math word problem above, get your result, keep shopping at public liquor stores, wag your finger at the neoLiberal Party’s desperate fear-mongering, vote NDP and STV with a smile and enjoy a new era for human beings starting on May 13th.

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The BCTF’s YouTube videos [above] are pretty powerful. One of the best ideas in them is for each of us to make sure we take 5 people to vote for public education.

Do a quick mental survey of people you know, those that are politically curious, those that tend to avoid political topics.

Send them this link to pro-education videos and ask them if they’re registered to vote. Then be their democracy guardian angel.

Too many people will end up not voting, but the world is run by people who show up, especially in a democracy that is struggling with legitimacy in our electoral system. Let’s make sure that the people we know who care about solid policy that respects what a healthy future requires, actually cast a ballot.

And many grade 12 students are eligible to vote. Do you know any of them? Ask if they’re mad as hell yet. If they’re not going to take it anymore, make sure you help them along to being registered and vote.

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It’s time to let Colombia–and our federal government–know that human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Follow the link to read the details and email Colombian President Uribe to let him know that we won’t stand for this: Colombia liquidates Cali unions < Global Justice | CUPE.

Paul Moist is asking CUPE members to send email to president Alvaro Uribe Velez after riot police and soldiers evicted city workers in Cali, Colombia and liquidated their union.

Sixteen members of Cali’s public sector unions have been killed since 2004, including union executive Carlos Alberto Chicaiza Betancourt.

“This is privatization at gun point,” said Moist. “It’s chilling to think that the people who are doing this are those with whom our government has just signed a trade agreement.”

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So when I read this piece today about the activities at the BCTF AGM, I just started nodding. I used to enjoy attending AGMs over spring break to discuss the state of the profession and ways of improving the public education system. It’s nice to see that is still happening.

I remember distinctly the last few semesters I taught. With changes in evaluation [I won't even go into how much I hate the FSAs and other standardized tests], we ended up in a no-win situation.

School districts had to meet arbitrary, “objective” accountability contracts for improvement. This led to students being discouraged from taking skill-appropriate courses, struggling students encouraged to not take provincial final exams to keep the scores up, that sort of thing.

We were suddenly not allowed to give zeros for incomplete assignments or deduct late marks. This idea I actually agreed with. The process meant that students had a chance to complete assignments sincerely with integrity. That was the idea. The problem was how to help students know the importance of time management and meeting deadlines. But those were non-content skills that should not be reflected in the evaluation of students’ work.

So many schools used the GSN system for evaluating work habits: good, satisfactory and needs improvement. I embraced no late marks, but I let my students know that good work habits meant actually handing in all but maybe 1 or 2 assignments. Missing more assignments than that was satisfactory and after missing a significant number of assignments, they’d get an N. This made great sense because poor time management and deadline meeting skills were work habits issues, after all.

I’d send home assignment reports to parents indicating missing assignments with a reasonable, extended period [with a deadline] to hand in outstanding work. After setting such a deadline, I was entitled to not accept outstanding assignments. Only then would the assignment get a zero.

The blowback came from several fronts. GSN evaluations had real consequences. Often athletes wouldn’t be allowed to play with Ns. Honour roll rules required no Ns; this also had implications for post-secondary admissions and scholarships. Parents would complain that their students were missing extra-curricular opportunities. Coaches complained that key players were benched. Administrators were complaint departments putting out blowback fires and began to hassle teachers who followed the new grading regime and used work habits marks as intended.

So we had a new grading system, but the institution did not display the integrity to follow it through by supporting its own work habits evaluation system.

Enter the standardized testing [non-] solution for a problem manufactured to halt the flow of an education system.

This kind of professional hypocrisy was one of the things that I didn’t miss when I finally resigned.

Since I left teaching, my profession has championed profound social and political causes: draconian labour relations from the government, to confronting “that’s so gay” hate rhetoric.

Every March when I read about the BCTF AGM, I nod, thinking of how proud I am to have been a teacher, a member of a profession with such integrity in the face of assaults from a neoLiberal government and misanthropes pretending to be educational leaders.

Principals ‘dumbing down’ B.C. schools, teachers say

Complain they’ve been ordered to allow rewrites, never give zeros, accept late work

By Janet Steffenhagen, Canwest News Service March 15, 2009

VANCOUVER — B.C. teachers complained Sunday that school principals are ordering them to never give zeros when marking class assignments, to accept late work and to allow students to rewrite tests as many times as it takes for them to get good marks.

Such orders are being delivered in many schools around the province by principals who have embraced a program called Assessment for Learning, and it’s undermining teachers’ professional autonomy in the classroom, delegates said at the annual meeting of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation in Vancouver.

“When principals say you have to retest over and over and over again, that is a violation of professional autonomy,” Burnaby teacher James Sanyshin told the three-day meeting.

It’s as though B.C. principals recently attended a “can’t-give-a-kid-a-zero conference,” another delegate added.

Some warned the imposition of top-down assessment practices is “dumbing down” public education and will ultimately result in more families turning to private schools.

Burnaby delegates were particularly incensed, saying teachers are in the best position to evaluate student performance and they should decide what assessment tools they will use. The BCTF says principals are using Assessment for Learning to boost student performance and graduation rates in their schools.

It’s being presented as a cure-all and a best practice, Burnaby teacher Frank Bonvino said, adding: “It’s good that these new theories are being discussed … but it’s got to be up to the individual teacher to decide how or if or when they’re going to implement these things in their classroom.

“Sometimes when I hear administrators talk about best practices, I think … that’s just a buzzword they use for ‘teachers’ autonomy is going to get screwed,’ ” he said. “At the end of the day, you have to have control and you have to be comfortable with what you’re going to teach in the classroom.”

Union vice-president Susan Lambert said student assessment has become a political issue in schools because of standardized tests and a requirement for schools to show continual improvement in student achievement. “There’s huge pressure on [principals],” she said. “You set a goal for your school and if you don’t meet that goal, you’re seen as a failing principal.”

Delegates also approved plans for an aggressive, year-round media campaign to promote public education over private education and to increase pressure for more public-school funding.

But creative action must be the priority leading up to the May 12 provincial election if teachers hope to make education a vote-determining issue, union president Irene Lanzinger told delegates. That’s because the government’s so-called “gag law” restricts advertising by the BCTF and all other third parties.

“We need to make news, use new technologies and engage our members like never before,” said Lanzinger, who is unopposed in her bid for a third one-year term as president. “We all need to make sure the public and our members know how important this election is.”

Delegates plan to protest today in downtown Vancouver.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

via Principals ‘dumbing down’ B.C. schools, teachers say.

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• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)

Now, I won’t go into who from the NPA ranks phoned me the other night, mostly because I block out trauma, explaining to him that I would never in a million years vote for the NPA. He was jovial, wanting to engage with me despite our differences of opinion: a total waste of time.

He said he phoned me because my sister gave him my number and that I would consider voting for him, so he should call me. Right. I have no sister. Maybe the woman he said who came into his store and gave him a phone number wrote it down incorrectly and this hapless fellow phoned me. Or maybe the NPA candidates are cold-calling people in the phone book because that’s where they’re at now.

The phone book seems to me to be the best explanation. It reflects how desperate the NPA is, poised to lose all their seats on city, school and parks boards as they are, what with the COPE-Vision-Green coordinated slate. Well done Mayor Sam Sullivan, destroying the NPA brand in but one term.

But the synchronicity arrived this evening at dinner time when a pollster phoned. It was Innovative Research Group, another group I’ve written about before [see "Racist Survey Questions on a Survey about Multi-Culturalism" from October 15, 2007 at http://PoliticsReSpun.org]. A year ago I wrote about one of their omnibus online polls that asked me many things, including to rank how I felt about a variety of racial groups living in our multi-cultural Canada, on a scale of 0-10 on whether I have a favourable or unfavourable impression of each race. I included a screenshot of those poll questions in my article last year.

Tonight’s IRG poll asked about my awareness and voting intentions in the Vancouver election. And while the poll wasn’t as offensive as last year’s, it did ask one question that bothered me: was I concerned about the number of Vision and COPE school board candidates who have been education union members.

The poll didn’t at all ask how I felt about the number of business owners or candidates with corporate connections in any of the parties. This reflects an ongoing, ingrained mentality in our society that there is a “normal” group of people, and then there are the special interest groups, like unions. This is the same mythology that the NPA has perpetuated for decades, pretending that they are neutral, objective or somehow not beholden to any ideology or group. This is nonsense. Everyone has a bias. Pretending you don’t is a lie.

And while it was far from clear that the NPA commissioned tonight’s IRG poll and loaded it up with that union question, the presence of the question indicates a mindset that special interest groups are treated as marginalized.

Now with the global economic meltdown in full swing and former US Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan testifying before Congress this week that deregulated, neoliberal capitalism doesn’t work, I think that questioning people with corporate connections should be fair game.

An interesting twist came this evening when I swung by the website of Innovative Research Group: http://InnovativeResearch.ca. It turns out they’ve gone off the radar. Here’s a screenshot of their website tonight:

When you click on the image you can see that their entire website consists of one page saying “Welcome to the future home of www.innovativeresearch.ca. This Page is currently under construction.”

Maybe it’s semantics, but honestly, they used to have a full website functioning at that location. Thanks to the marvels of the Way Back Machine, you can see various incarnations of their past websites at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://innovativeresearch.ca. There could be lots of reasons why they’ve gone under the radar, no longer promoting the coverage of their polls or letting people easily contact them. But their lack of presence, especially because they used to have one, just looks fishy to me.

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Start the email with fear and the calming words of a leader out to protect us all. Boo. Truly scary is during the civic strike he spoke in similarly glowing terms of municipal employees. His walk did not match his talk there. Further, invoking Stockwell Day shows how much Sam is out of touch with the kind of figures who resonate with Vancouverites.

Then Sam moves on to his personal, unscientific, but sure to be quoted for the next 54 weeks of the municipal election campaign [and even longer] survey of citizens on the necessity of extending Skytrain to UBC.

The context of this is important. In order to force the TransLink leadership [democratically elected, pesky as that was] to commit to the Canada Line privateer-megaproject for the Olympics, after failed votes, eventually northeast suburb politicians were bribed with the Evergreen Line to Coquitlam Centre in exchange for voting for the Canada Line.

Democracy is an inconvenient truth in BC. The BC neoLiberal government is currently in the legislature ramming through a bill that will remove all democracy from TransLink and put the board directly in the hands of corporate appointees.

I seem to remember something before our time about the American revolution being about taxation without representation. Now in the 21st century we are embracing it in BC, legislatively so. Shame.

Back to Sam, though. His personal, unscientific, qualitative survey is all about justifying a future bid to supplant the Evergreen Line timeline to get the next Skytrain leg out West Broadway to UBC. Maybe this isn’t his plan, but since it may be a decade before this extension is supposed to occur, after the northeast sector, what is Sam’s rush to meet with West Broadway businesses now and embark on this poll on his personal website?

The pdf on his site on why we should complete the Millenium Line [to UBC] has some sound arguments. As a fan of transit, I think they’re great. But they’re second in line behind the Evergreen Line. The day Sam starts squawking about why the northeast sector should wait–again–is the day I look back to his website survey with complete cynicism.

Message from Mayor Sullivan regarding recent shootings

Like all residents, I am very concerned about the recent shootings that have taken place. We are taking this situation very seriously.

Late this afternoon I held a meeting with Chief Constable Jim Chu to discuss the issue of gang violence in our city. Yesterday I met with federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, and Chief Chu and I will be meeting with the federal Justice Minister tomorrow. In addition, I have written to the provincial government and will be meeting with mayors from Metro Vancouver next week to discuss ways to coordinate our efforts and attack organized crime.

I want to reassure residents that the men and women of the Vancouver Police Department are among the best in the world. They are working with our partners in the region to solve these crimes and bring these criminals to justice.

The solution to addressing these problems requires a coordinated and intelligent response. We will deliver that for our citizens.

- Mayor Sam Sullivan

Mayor’s Millennium Line Survey – Have Your Say

Mayor Sam Sullivan invites residents, businesses and community organizations to provide their views about plans to complete the Millennium Rapid Transit Line from VCC Station to Central Broadway – and ultimately UBC.

Disclaimer: this is a qualitative survey of website visitors. Results are not considered as scientific.

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Sears has also been involved in impeding unionization in Belleville in 2006.

I’m sure Sears will blame it on the strong Canadian dollar.

Service Technicians employed by Sears in the lower
mainland of BC were locked out on October 1, 2007
because they would not work under a collective
agreement that was imposed. Bargaining broke off
on September 27 when Sears demanded that the
Bargaining Committee either reject or accept the
offer right then and there prior to taking it to
their members. Sears locked them out On October 1,
first thing in the morning and then offered them a
chance to come in and work under the company’s new
agreement. The “agreement” contained many
concessions and was inferior to what the employees
had previously. These long term employees joined
the Union in 1997 because of poor management and a
constant chipping away at terms and conditions of
employment by Sears. They are represented by IBEW
Local 213. They are asking that others do not
patronize Sears until this dispute is resolved
regardless of where they live in Canada.

We are asking all of our members to show support
for these workers who are fighting for dignity and
respect by not doing any business with this unfair
employer. If you would like to express your
opinion to Sears management, call: 1-800-973-7579
(Sears President’s Line) or 1-800-469-4663.

Thank you for not shopping at Sears until this
dispute is resolved.

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