Sukhmeet Bhasin
Bathinda, March 2
More than 100 labour, community and civil society organisations in Canada and other countries have issued joint statement in solidarity with farmers of India.
The organisations include Canadian Labour Congress, Alberta Federation of Labour, British Columbia Federation of Labour, British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Manitoba Federation of Labour, National Union of Public and General Employees and many more.
In the statement, they have stated that the farmers’ agitation for the repeal of the agricultural laws has become the largest and longest sustained non-violent movement in the Indian history, surpassing Mahatma Gandhi’s historic Dandi March against the abhorrent salt law of the British colonial regime.
Canadian Labour, Civil Society Groups Express Solidarity With Protesting Farmers The farmers are literally sacrificing their well-being and putting their lives on the line to uphold these constitutional guarantees on behalf of all the people of India and are setting a glorious example to the entire world.
Members of various farmer organisations during a protest against the Centre s new farm laws, in Tarn Taran district, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021. Photo: PTI
Rights28/Feb/2021
New Delhi:Â A group of labour, community and civil society organisations from Canada and elsewhere have issued a statement supporting protesting farmers in India.
“These laws were drafted without any consultation with farmers or their representatives, the farmersâ unions. The farmers have consistently opposed these laws, which go against the promises and commitments made to farmers by different governments over several decades,” the statement reads.
Canadian educators must mount a political struggle to oppose school reopenings and save lives
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages out of control across the country, pushing health care systems to the brink of collapse, the ruling elite is determined to reopen schools for in-class instruction as quickly as possible. Their main concern in so doing is to free up parents from childcare responsibilities so that they can return to work and churning out profits for big business.
Schools reopened in Quebec, Alberta and northern Ontario on January 11. Other regions of Ontario will reopen on January 25, while schools in Toronto, Peel Region, Hamilton and Windsor-Essex will remain closed for in-person learning until February 10. In British Columbia, the New Democratic Party government began reopening schools January 4 in the face of widespread public opposition, including a petition that obtained over 40,000 signatures demanding a lengthening of the winter holiday break.
USA
Thursday 17 December 2020, by Lois Weiner
Teachers’ activism since the pandemic began has focused on COVID-19’s deadly dangers, for all who use and work in schools. The GOP, Trump, and DeVos, once champions of online learning [1], in charter schools, suddenly reversed themselves, demanding face-to-face instruction everywhere, a stance that paralleled Trumpism’s disavowal of scientific evidence for how to save lives being lost to COVID-19. The most comprehensive movement for school safety and economic and racial justice among teacher union activists, demanding “safe, quality, equitable” schools, has been navigating the complex, often contradictory needs of students, parents, and teachers. [2] Still, as one Black teachers union president with deep personal roots in his low-income, BIPOC community told me, all of the options in school reopenings are harmful for some children, especially those who are most vulnerable because of historic social, political, and econ