By Sarah Smith
The ongoing uproar over Toronto District School Board (TDSB) students attending a September 18 field trip to the Grassy Narrows River Run (see photo), where some participants voiced solidarity with Palestine, lays bare the hypocrisy of public institutions who are happy to pay lip service to social justice causes, insofar as they don’t challenge the status quo.
As part of the TDSB’s stated commitment to supporting the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, student participation is common at this annual rally which is organized to demand accountability for the industrial mercury contamination in the Grassy Narrows First Nation community.
Understandably, at this year’s rally some attendees voiced solidarity with Palestine amid the ongoing genocide. Following the event, a twenty-second video began circulating online showing students participating in the rally, where one attendee is heard leading the chant, “from Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”
Some parent groups quickly mobilized, contacting the TDSB and the media, and taking to social media to voice concerns that the field trip had “exposed” students to “other activist causes” and that it had turned into a “Palestinian protest.” A media firestorm followed, with major outlets proclaiming various degrees of alarm, suggesting that students were being subject to “indoctrination,” characterizing participants at the rally as “radical elements, including delegations from the Communist Party of Canada,” and calling for the immediate removal of the “miscreants in education” involved.
This discourse precipitated a rush of institutional reaction and by September 20, the TDSB had released a statement apologizing for the “harm that some students may have experienced.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford referred to the field trip as “disgusting” and announced that the provincial Ministry of Education was launching an investigation.
On the evening of September 25, school board trustees convened a “Special Board Meeting,” many symbolically donning orange shirts in honour of the approaching National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as they unanimously approved a motion confirming the board’s full cooperation with the Ministry’s investigation and review of relevant policies and procedure.
A few days later, the TDSB went so far as to cancel their annual field trip to the National Truth and Reconciliation Day ceremony at Nathan Phillips Square out of an “abundance of caution.” The message was clear: the commitment to Truth and Reconciliation is at best, provisional, and at worst, just an empty gesture. As the Elementary Teachers of Toronto union aptly noted in their statement on the issue, “once again we see an Indigenous community’s issues dismissed, and their story buried. We see the vilification of links made between solidarity movements on Turtle Island and Palestine. And we see TDSB Staff and Trustees publicly weighing in before any process has actually been undertaken or completed.”
The fallout over the Grassy Narrows field trip echoes a similar episode that took place this past summer with the Capital Pride event in Ottawa. Capital Pride, which has previously enjoyed vast political and corporate support, released a Palestine solidarity statement eleven days prior to this year’s event. The statement drew attention to “the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic.” It continued that, “by portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians.”
Capital Pride received swift condemnation from B’nai Brith Canada and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa who insisted that “their statement turns Pride into a protest against Israel.” The backlash that followed saw many groups withdraw participation and support, including both federal and provincial Liberal Parties, the city of Ottawa, several Ottawa-area school boards, hospitals and post-secondary institutions, as well as large corporate sponsors Loblaw, Ikea and Giant Tiger. The federal Liberal Party spokesperson stated that, “in light of recent decisions made by the Capital Pride board, the Liberal Party has decided not to participate in Capital Pride events this year, and instead will host our own event to celebrate Ottawa’s 2SLGBTQI+ communities.”
These two incidents expose the cynicism of political and corporate institutions that are happy to wear an orange shirt or wave a rainbow flag on the condition that the messaging remains anodyne and controlled. While it is tempting to conclude that Palestinian solidarity represents an exceptional red line for the status quo, the truth is that these institutions benefit when movements remain siloed.
Solidarity across struggles threatens the status quo, since it builds the capacity for a people’s movement that can demand accountability and action. While the events of the past few months reveal the nature of fair-weather institutional support, they also, importantly, highlight two exemplary cases of groups willing to risk that support to unite in solidarity and struggle.
[Photo of Grassy Narrows River Run: SEIU]
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