Norman Bethune: Anti-Imperialist and Martyr

Final part of a 3-part series on the life of Norman Bethune: Canadian doctor, internationalist, and revolutionary hero.

by J.D. Benjamin
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The year 1937 marked the beginning of full-scale war between the Republic of China and the Japanese empire. Bethune saw China as the next great flashpoint in the worldwide struggle against fascism. "Spain and China, are part of the same battle," he wrote. "I am going to China because that is where the need is the greatest."

In 1938, Norman Bethune arrived in China and insisted on traveling to the North to join the Communists who were fighting a guerrilla war against the Japanese. Once there, he set about performing emergency battlefield surgery, training new medical staff, producing manuals and organizing mobile medical facilities. The conditions were extreme. Bethune traveled 4,800 kilometers in the course of his duties and once operated on 115 cases in 69 hours without rest, even when his team came under heavy artillery fire. Yet Bethune did not complain. "It is true I am tired," he wrote, "but I don't think I have been so happy for a long time. I am needed."

The Chinese were amazed by this foreigner who had adopted their cause as his own and was literally willing to give them his blood. Bethune in turn was humbled by the Chinese dedication to liberate themselves and build a better world.

In late October 1939, Bethune was on a tour inspecting hospitals when a nearby brigade of the People’s Liberation Army came under attack by the Japanese. While operating on wounded soldiers, Bethune cut his finger, something he had done several times before. This time, infection set in. Bethune continued to work as best he could until the regimental commander, seeing Bethune’s deterioration, ordered him sent back. On November 12, in a small village in Hopei Province, Bethune died of blood poisoning.

Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party of China, had only met Bethune once, but upon hearing of his death Mao wrote an essay that would be studied by hundreds of millions of people in China and around the world. ‘In Memory of Norman Bethune’ praised his internationalism and devotion to the people. Mao held up Bethune as a model to be emulated, writing, "We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very helpful to each other. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people."

When we compare Mao's estimation of Bethune with Bethune as a younger man, we can see the profound changes he had gone through. Gone was the Bethune of just a few years previous, with his drinking, womanizing, impatience and individualism. His commitment to serving the people and being part of a movement for a better society made him overcome these problems. He became not just a better person, but a hero for working people all over the world.

Protests in Toronto respond to Ontario immigration raids

by Syed Hussan, Faria Kamal, and Chris Ramsaroop
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Nearly 200 outraged community and labour activists rattled the fences of Rexdale Immigration Detention Centre on April 5, demanding the release of over 100 undocumented workers arrested during unprecedented immigration raids across southwestern Ontario.

Chanting ‘No One Is Illegal! Stop deporting people,’ ‘We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us’ and ’Justice for migrant workers,’ teachers, lawyers and organizers from OSSTF D12, Parkdale Legal Community Services, Mujeres Al Frente, the Sikh Activist Network, the Good Jobs Coalition, CUPE, UFCW, CAW, OPSEU and many others joined family members and friends on Sunday morning. Organized by No One is Illegal-Toronto, Migrante Ontario and Justicia for Migrant Workers, the spirited action was in response to three separate but coordinated attacks against undocumented communities.

This past week, Canada Border Services Agency and South Simcoe Police arrested hundreds of people, detaining over 100 workers. At the same time, in Leamington and Windsor, Ontario, dozens of undocumented people were picked up on their way to work, in their homes and in public spaces. Homes were also raided on the Danforth where absentee workers possessions were confiscated.

''For Justicia, these are our friends and our families that are on the inside," says Chris Ramsaroop from Justicia for Migrant Workers. "For Justicia this isn't just political, it’s personal. Our activists are impacted by these workplace raids."

“Racialized people have been targeted once more while working to pay for the basics while corrupt employers go free. And to this we say No!" he thundered.

No charges have been laid against the employer, Cericola Farms. These raids come the same day the migrant worker community celebrated a victory against recruitment agencies charging large “placement" fees to workers even if no legal work was found. Many workers were forced to work under precarious immigration status in order to secure an income.

As supporters encircled the premises of the detention center, the detainees came to the windows, applauding, cheering, pounding at the glass and waving fists. The action saw both the imprisoned and their community allies demanding an immediate end to immigration raids, detentions and deportations.

Begging for Blood Money: Sri Lanka’s Genocidal War Funded by the “International Community”

by Minnalkodi Sivan Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

To many people Sri Lanka might be just a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. However, Sri Lanka is the most militarized country in South Asia, spending billions of dollars on military expenditure that makes countries like India look like dwarfs. Records indicate that Sri Lanka’s military budget has swollen to $1.8 billion in 2009, quite an ambitious figure for a small country.

Sri Lanka is only able to sustain this racist war with the help of external funding from their donor countries and imperialist-controlled organizations like the IMF. Sri Lanka‘s biggest contributors donate in millions, if not billions. Some of their top funders are Iran, EU, Japan, China, India, US and Canada. Additionally, Sri Lanka has requested for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $1.9 billion with no conditions. However, the reality is that the reason for the island’s weak economic state is the diversion of funds into militarization to buy weapons from countries like Israel and China to fight the Tamil resistance and wage a genocidal war on Tamil civilians.

According to various bodies such as the U.N, Human Rights Watch, and International Committee of the Red Cross, the current situation of Tamil civilians is extremely grim. Sri Lanka has violated most (if not all) international laws and has taken human rights violations to a new dimension. So far, in 2009, over 200 Tamils have been arbitrarily disappeared from areas under Sri Lankan occupation. Over 4,000 civilians have died and 8,500 severely injured in the conflict areas where 80% of the population are women and children. Reports from the conflict tell of the horrendous scenarios where government-declared “Safety Zones” are being bombarded daily. Maimed bodies, torn limbs and blood-drenched soil has filled the landscape. Make-shift, overcrowded hospitals that are functioning at bare-minimum levels are shelled regularly. According to the Sri Lankan Defense Secretary, brother of the current President, “hospitals are legitimate targets”.

The barbarism of the Sinhalese Army has not spared a single Tamil. There have been reports where new born babies are born with shell pieces stuck to their bodies and even a case where an unborn baby died inside its womb with an exploded head. Concentration camps have sprung up in the Vanni region where people are exposed to extreme conditions, harassments, intimidation and their state of mental health, especially children, are in inconceivable conditions. The Sinhalese Army’s plan is to end the “War on Terror” by eliminating the Tamil resistance which was sparked out of a long history of extremely ruthless discrimination and massacres against Tamils, and then the transfer all the civilians into detention centers for three years to “filter out terrorists”. The latest reports indicate that the war has taken a new phase where chemical weapons have been used against LTTE and civilians, killing thousands! Chemical warfare was used by Sri Lanka in the past and it now appears that the option has been taking down from the shelf.

The world is yet to respond to this silent genocide that is worsening by the day. So far the only response from the “international community” has been to line the pockets of a government that is following the path of the Nazis and pursing unrealistic goals to eliminate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Meanwhile, as conscious beings Canadians should start boycotting blood-stained Sri Lankan products and join in solidarity with the Tamil Diaspora in Canada to demand that the Canadian government stop supporting Sri Lanka’s genocidal policies.

Capital Getting Bailed Out, Workers Getting Kicked Out

by Enver Harbans
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The current economic crisis is being repeatedly used to justify capital’s assault on the working-class. Whether it’s in the form of cutbacks on hours in a non-union grocery store, a freeze or cutback of wages and benefits at the bargaining table, or closures at unionized car plants, the recession has been used as an excuse for owners to cut labour costs at every opportunity.

Job losses in Canada for the month of January alone were at 129,000, the largest since the government started recording such data. February wasn’t much better, with 82,600 jobs shed mostly in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Ontario in particular has been hit hard, as 1,500 workers at the Stelco plant in Hamilton were laid off and 900 workers at the Dofasco plant got pink slips in March. With the unemployment numbers growing (officially, 7.7%, but in reality much higher) employed workers can expect an attack on their wages and benefits. Just ask union members who are in the process of bargaining new collective agreements and being expected to make countless concessions before talks even begin. Owners and bosses are telling us that we should be happy that we even have a job and they threaten cutbacks, layoffs and closures when we demand a share of the company’s profits.

However, while the attacks on workers have been hard and swift, workers’ resistance is beginning to develop. Workers at Aradco in Windsor, Ontario occupied their car parts plant after the company withheld over $1.3 million in severance pay, vacation pay and other benefits. On March 18, workers welded the doors of the plant shut, refusing to take the measly $200,000 the company offered to share amongst the 80 workers. Unfortunately, to date, this example of workers uniting to take control over the factories to demand a little bit of justice has not been replicated to meet the gross injustices unfolding around us.

In the 2009 Federal Budget, the Canadian government passed another $200 billion in bailout money for the banks, on top of the $75 billion already passed in the end of 2008. With banks and other major financial corporations in the U.S. and Canada getting bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions, why are workers being asked to forget about their severance pay, and why is their EI lost in the mix? While the rich can count on the State for bailouts and assistance, workers need to count on each other, and organize in their communities, workplaces and schools to fundamentally change the way this system works.

K’NAAN’s Troubadour

by Thom Saczkowski
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

K’Naan is a new and rising musician, having released his sophomore album in February of this year. After the success of his first album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, his second has been much anticipated. K’Naan receives press not only for his diverse music styles and lyrical flow, but also because of what he says. Somali born, K’Naan now makes his home in Toronto. Though he has been asked to provide his viewpoint of the situation in Somalia, he rarely addresses the influence of Western capitalism and imperialism within his home nation. In addition, K’Naan lived in the Toronto community of Rexdale for some time, and words in interviews and his music doesn’t express the struggles of local communities. His lyrics and messages in his new album are nowhere near as overt as the artists that we generally associate with politically focused music, such as Immortal Technique, Dead Prez, or The Coup. K’Naan seems to be aware of this and embrace his choice of music, in which he has said “My art is not a place where I feel like I voice these things. It’s not like my art is a political mission … but it’s me that I bring fully to the table, so you’ll get some of those things.”

K’Naan does make some statements about the struggles of people, such as migrants and people in marginalized communities that face the oppression of our system. However, many famous hip-hop musicians make comments about the social system, such as artists like Mos Def, Black Star, and K-os, but those musicians are not usually associated with sending politically strong messages. K’Naan’s music is more associated with these artists in his ability to produce high quality hip-hop and provide artistic lyrics with an impressive flow. K’Naan’s music is complex in not only its musical composition but its lyrical presentation, such as the song Somalia, which tells about his life in Mogadishu and incorporating sounds and samples from various genres. K’Naan’s first single ‘ABC’s’ is already on the charts and will be played throughout nightclubs in Toronto.

Charges Against Sison Dropped

Dutch prosecutors drop false murder rap against poet and Filipino people's leader for lack of evidence

by J.D. Benjamin
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Prof. Sison and his supporters are celebrating the decision of the Dutch prosecutors to end their year and a half long investigation into his alleged involvement in the murders of two military assets working for the Philippine government. Sison is a poet, writer and activist living in exile in the Netherlands.

"I've long expected the decision to be dismissed because in the first place I'm innocent of the charge," Sison said during a press conference.

The accusation was a result of false information fed by the Philippine government of current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is eager to silence one of her most prominent opponents. The false charges were an attempt to distract Sison from his role as chairman of the International League of Peoples' Struggles, a coalition of democratic and anti-imperialist people's organizations from around the world, as well as his work as a political consultant for the National Democratic Front (NDF). The NDF has been fighting a 40-year-long civil war against the brutal and corrupt government of the Philippines.

Despite the clearing of Sison, the legal harassment against him has not ended. The Arroyo regime has announced that they will seek extradition of Sison, despite his recognized status as a political refugee.

Sison has announced his plans to sue Dutch prosecutors for legal costs as well as moral and material damages.

5 Years of Occupation in Haiti

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The end of February marked the fifth anniversary of the Canadian, American and French backed coup in Haiti. It was the country’s 35th coup, the second against the popular President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the first carried out directly by foreign soldiers, including American Marines and Canada’s Joint Task Force II. It would be the latest interlude in Haiti’s sad history of constant interference and intervention from foreign powers working in collusion with Haiti’s tiny and corrupt elite. It would violently derail the remarkable popular movement of Haiti’s poor majority which had organized itself in the streets, in the fields and in the churches into a formidable democratic force. This grassroots movement demanded an end to their social and political exclusion, and had given Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party an indisputable mandate, with a massive 75% share of the vote in the 2000 elections.

After deposing the President, the “international community” dismantled Haiti’s entire government structure and removed thousands of elected officials from every region of the country. The United Nations Security Council officially sanctioned the illegal intervention, and then consolidated the coup with the deployment of a United Nations military occupation and endorsement of a brutal foreign-imposed dictatorship for two years.

Today, Haiti remains administratively, economically and militarily occupied. The five coup years have served to culminate years of American and international financial institution economic policy impositions that have maintained Haiti as a low-wage, export-friendly, most open world economy providing profitable business and resource extraction opportunities for foreign investors. The coup has resulted in thousands killed, raped, displaced, imprisoned and exiled; a political and social setback of decades; termination of every one of Aristide’s progressive social programs; a crippled economy; and increased poverty, misery and hopelessness.

The storms in the fall of 2007 exposed the perilous state of Haiti under foreign domination, when with more money coming into the country, the international community was incapable or unwilling to even come close to reinstating the disaster relief programs in place under Aristide. The networks and offices of Aristide’s Civil Protection Committees were attacked after the coup, and committee officials were killed, arrested or driven into hiding. The fall-out from the lack of preparation for the expected hurricanes was 1000 people killed, several thousand displaced, destruction of the season’s entire harvest and an aggregated loss to agriculture and infrastructure of 900 million dollars, representing the largest disaster to take place in Haiti for more than 100 years! The Haitian government complained that it became impossible to coordinate relief efforts among the numerous and disconnected NGOs (non-government agencies) who control all of the foreign aid coming into Haiti. Incredibly, the Haitian government was unable to access some 197 million dollars for relief from its own Central Bank because the funds had been placed in U.S. financial markets without the consultation of the Haitian parliament!

So while the international community marked the 5th anniversary of the coup with promises to stay their disastrous course in Haiti, the fatigued but defiant popular movements filled the streets with thousands and thousands of people (as they have consistently done since 2004).Their demands? Release all political prisoners; end the neoliberal policies and associated occupation; end the repression against Lavalas; and return the exiled President Jean Bertrand Aristide. It is a course that Haiti’s poor majority has not altered for five years, and one with which people in Canada need to stand in solidarity!

The Film Notorious: Censoring Biggie’s Legacy

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Biggie Smalls, one of the greatest hip hop artists in history, was assassinated 13 years ago by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and corporate thug Suge Knight in an operation that was both assisted and approved by the American state. The year before that, Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Vegas by the same forces. Both men were murdered because they spoke about the realities facing black people in the ghettos of America: poverty, crime, racism and state violence. ‘Pac was a genuine revolutionary carrying on the legacy of his Black Panther mother by organizing a truce between the Bloods and Crips in LA in 1992. Although not as politically educated, Biggie still rapped about the struggles he faced growing up. Their murders had everything to do with crushing the revival of a black revolutionary movement in the US and silencing two positive figures for young racialized youth. But you’ll get none of that from watching the new Biggie film, ‘Notorious.’

Instead, you’ll hear the entertaining, but fictional story, of an artist who reached the American dream through skill and hard work, but because of some dumb rap beef was killed before he could really mature as a man and performer. Notorious runs through Biggie’s childhood and youth without showing a single example of police brutality or systematic discrimination. According to the film, Smalls chooses to hustle dope before realizing he is wasting his lyrical abilities, and dedicates himself to the rap game. His success is then attributed more to the skill of his manager Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs (the corporate snake who owned Biggie’s label ‘Bad Boy’, and produced the film), than to his personal talent. But the movie’s biggest lie is its portrayal of the supposed East Coast - West Coast feud between ‘Bad Boy Records’ and Tupac’s rap label ‘Death Row’, owned by the criminal Suge Knight. In reality, the rivalry was created by the American state working with Suge and Puffy in order to break the unity being built by ‘Pac’s community organizing, and replace the positive hip hop being recorded at the time with diss tracks. Notorious plays into the east/west rivalry myth by presenting Biggie’s murder as revenge for Tupac’s death, and even more destructively, by casting Tupac in the film as naïve and aggressive and even mocking his revolutionary politics.

Still, Notorious did manage to do justice to Biggie in some ways. Jamal Woolard’s performance in the title role is incredible, and every hip hop fan will appreciate seeing B.I.G come back to life on the screen. But it’s an insult to Biggie’s memory to present his assassination at the hands of the LAPD and Death Row as the result of a simple ‘rap battle’, and to censor any political content from his story.

R.I.P. Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and all other victims of political assassinations by the US government!

FMLN Triumphs in Elections in El Salvador, But the Struggle Continues

by Nicolas Lopez of Barrio Nuevo Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Patiently enduring a long road of suffering and disillusionment, the FMLN, the main people’s party of El Salvador, has set an example of how perseverance and conviction can achieve what it aims for. On March 15, 2009 the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) triumphed in El Salvador’s presidential elections, bringing a major political defeat to the right-wing governing party, ARENA, and bringing the people one step closer to the reality of social and economic justice.

During the 1980s, five insurgent groups united to form the FMLN coalition, which they named after the internationalist-minded Farabundo Marti, a Salvadorian leader of a peasant and working class uprising against electoral fraud in January 1932. Dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez reacted with furious violence against the movement, backed by U.S. and British military support. During an event known as ‘La Matanza’ (The Massacre), Farabundo Marti was executed and historians estimate that some 30,000 people were killed during four days. Since then, the people’s movement in El Salvador took to the underground to organize themselves clandestinely to overcome repression. In response, the Salvadorian government began using death squads to kill the revolutionaries’ social base. During those years of fierce repression, the people’s movement was forced to take up armed struggle as a way to defend the poor from the violence imposed on them, enduring the hardships of a gruesome civil war that lasted from 1979 until 1992. Although the people’s movement was unable to seize power from the powerful Salvadorian army aided by a million-dollar-a-day U.S. investment in paramilitary squads, the movement was still able to achieve wide political support and legitimacy, laying the foundation of what today is a victorious movement.

This is the brutal history that set the tone for the 2009 Presidential elections in El Salvador.

A week before the elections, the FMLN closed the campaign in the capital, San Salvador. Hundreds of thousands of people participated in a public gathering, the largest crowd for a political event in decades. It was a show of support far superior to what the right wing party displayed the next day. It was obvious by then that the FMLN had a greater following than the opposing party, and during the days of that week ARENA (Republican Nationalist Alliance) desperately tried to convince people through an intensive media bombardment that if FMLN were to be elected, El Salvador would become subordinate to Venezuela and “President Hugo Chavez’s expansionist project”, and that Salvadorians would risk having remittances from family members in the U.S. halted by the U.S. government.

ARENA’s maneuvers to discredit the revolutionaries included personal attacks against FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes, to which Funes responded by highlighting his party’s proposals to overcome the devastating effects of the neoliberal capitalist policies implemented by ARENA since 1993. ARENA has a long track record of using tricks and foul play to maintain power, but this time the frustrated population would not allow another fraud to occur and perhaps wouldn’t limit their furious reaction.

ARENA has in past handed out thousands of fake IDs to people they brought in from neighboring countries to fraudulently vote for their party. Although widespread evidence indicates this also happened on March 15th, 2009 FMLN was still able to move their voters and supporters to the vote and defend their electoral rights against these ‘tactricks’ of ARENA.

However, change will only occur gradually in El Salvador, with the right still firmly entrenched in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and with the FMLN lacking a majority of seats in the Parliament. At best, the FMLN’s presence in the government will only be able to pave the ground for future rounds of struggle. For a start, it will begin by opening the books and taxing big business and recover the U$2 billion lost every year on tax evasion. This could allow them to increase wages and subsidies to basic social services, implement land reform and increase agricultural production, increase employment and scholarship opportunities and reduce gang violence in urban areas. Also, the FMLN’s political presence will give them the opportunity to strengthen the social and political capacity of the mass movements, for example by strengthening community media. Furthermore, with the FMLN at the head of the executive branch of government, they will be able to establish independent foreign relations, which under ARENA’s governments were so submissive to U.S. policy.

All of this, however, will only be possible through the continued participation and increased development of an organized mass movement to defend and advance the struggle for the economic and social power of the people.

Numerous Studies Show Cops in Schools Make Matters Worse

by James Campbell
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The first School Resource Officer (SRO) programs began, unsurprisingly, in the United States. The goal of the first programs, started in Flint, Michigan during the 1950s, was to “improve relations between police and young people”. Despite the long history of these programs and their growing expansion to school districts all over the U.S. and Canada, a report by the International Center for Crime Prevention (ICCP) suggests that these programs have no long-term measurable benefit to student engagement or school safety.

If these programs have no measurable benefit, then why would Toronto Police Services (TPS) and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) be spending invaluable financial and institutional capital on an SRO Program at a time when our schools and our students are in crisis?

The answer, according to the ICCP report, is the move made by most police forces in the 1990s towards “community policing”. In the wake of the release of the Falconer Report, in response to the shooting of Jordan Manners at C.W. Jeffries Collegiate Institute, Toronto's own champion of “community policing” Police Chief Bill Blair made his own pitch to the TDSB to install armed police officers in schools.

In keeping with the history of SRO programs, and despite the dire warnings of the Falconer report, about the urgent need to make schools safer places for students, teachers, and staff, the goal of Blair's program is not to make schools safer but to “improve relations between police and young people”.

Despite being explicitly part of the TPS's 'community policing' mandate, there was absolutely no community consultation before the pilot program was implemented in September 2008. The decision to create the program was made in a series of back-room meetings with members of the Safe and Caring Schools department of the TDSB and members of the TPS.

Not only was the program created without consultation, it explicitly ignores two major community consultations done at the cost of millions of precious taxpayer dollars. Both the Falconer Report on School Safety and the Curling-McMurtry report on the Roots of Youth Violence spent months talking with and listening to students, parents, teachers, and school support workers. Out of these direct and extensive consultations, both reports painted a picture of a system in critical need of repair, and outlined extensive and specific recommendations to both engage marginalized youth and make our schools safer. Not once did either report recommend putting armed and uniformed officers in schools. In fact, the Curling-McMurtry report explicitly points to the racial profiling of racialized youth by Toronto police as a major contributing factor to the increased climate of fear for many youth:

“Many youth also told us that they felt uncomfortable walking through policed areas within their neighbourhoods for fear of being harassed. One senior civic official highlighted this for us when he explained that in one community the youth favoured the use of surveillance cameras in public areas because they created zones where the police did not harass the youth”

While the TDSB is still struggling to come up with funds to hire the highly-trained youth and social workers recommended by the Falconer and Curling-McMurty Reports, the TPS has stepped in with funding to replace social workers with the very police officers many youth fear.

Despite explicit assurances that the SRO program is not about school safety, the TDSB continues to justify the program on the grounds that it's making schools safer. This February, the TDSB released its preliminary report on the 5-month-old SRO program. In glowing articles in both The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, school administrators as well as TDSB and TPS officials told seemingly charming stories about police officers staying late to coach teams and participating in school-wide events by dancing in tutus. Based on these stories and other “anecdotal” reports, journalists and administrators happily concluded that the program was so far a great success in making schools safer.

Not only did these stories ignore the numerous reports by students, teachers, and staff of police harassment and an increasing climate of fear and repression, but they also ignored the TDSB report's own data.

While TDSB data shows a reduction in suspensions and police charges in schools with SROs, there is nothing to support the claim that these reductions are the direct result of the SRO's presence. Indeed, these drops are consistent with a similar drop in suspensions and police charges in schools without SROs, which have been credited to the changes made to the Safe Schools Act explicitly intended to reduce suspensions and the intervention of police.

There is only one significant difference when it comes to data comparing schools with and schools without SROs: while the report indicates a 24% drop in violent incidents board-wide, it shows a 15% increase in violent incidents in schools with SROs. (Officials blamed this increase in violence in SRO schools on two major incidents in two different schools, and then conveniently chose to exclude these two incidents from the data set because it “skewed” the results.)

With no contemporary or historical data to suggest SRO programs have any measurable benefit for students, and with much historical and contemporary data that suggests that increased police presence alienates and marginalizes many youth, both the TDSB and the TPS continue to struggle to come up with a rationale for the program. At a time when there is almost universal consensus on what our schools and students need, our police force and school board are spending precious time, energy and resources on a program whose stated goal is not to benefit students in need, but to benefit the police force itself.