Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

U of T’s fossil fuel divestment brief

As promised, Toronto350.org got the electronic version of our final fossil fuel divestment brief to the committee members a week before our presentation: The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Case for Divestment: Update.

My friend Anne designed a great cover, using a photo from our November 2014 divestment march. I also have a version of the cover which prints perfectly at 11×17″ to serve as a cover for a bound book.

We are having paperback versions of the brief with glossy colour covers printed for the committee members, our presenters, and to deposit with the U of T library system and Library and Archives Canada. We are required to provide a legal deposit copy to them, since the work has been issued an ISBN: 978-0-9947524-0-6. The book is being printed by the Asquith Press at the Toronto Reference Library.

The next step is to adapt the brief into a kit version that can be easily employed by other campaigns. Long parts of the brief are applicable to every fossil fuel divestment campaign, such as the parts on climate science and the economics of the fossil fuel industry. Other parts need to be tailored for each institution. Particularly given that Glasgow has already succeeded using our basic text, putting in some effort to make a kit seems worthwhile.

Some lessons from the strike

I wrote this before seeing the result of the latest CUPE 3902 ratification vote.

One element of the strike for which I am grateful was being able to meet so many fellow students and teachers on the picket lines. I have often likened U of T to an amoeba with no centre – just a collection of loosely bound parts which are considered in some rough sense to be a single organism. Being out on the pickets has exposed me to a wider variety of fellow U of T people than anything that has happened before during my three years here. I have dozens of new people to follow on Twitter.

The strike has also been another example of a political struggle against difficult odds, and the way in which the strength of a moral argument is often overwhelmed by the relative power of those involved in it. The strike has also been a demonstration of how difficult it is to even bring people to the fight. Only a small subset of CUPE members ever showed up on the picket lines and an impossible-to-fully-know but at least moderate proportion just kept working.

The strike also demonstrated tensions between hierarchy, democracy, and strategic success. All the picket line chants were about democracy and universal involvement, but the union administration is inevitably an entity with interests of its own. It’s certainly hard for 6,000 people to make any kind of coherent decision – especially when those who are best informed tend to favour secrecy the most, and when there is a militant band full of enthusiasm for shutting down any public discussion aside from pep and slogans in the name of tactics and strategy.

For the big fights confronting us – climate change, most notably – we need to deal with both of those problems: find ways for the moral demands of the many to win over the entrenched power structures of the few, and find ways to make people active, political, and part of movements that can win.

CUPE 3902 meeting and Fellows’ Gaudy

Yesterday afternoon, CUPE 3902 met to decide whether to send the latest offer from the university to the full union for ratification. The deal includes the same reworked funding and tuition numbers from the union’s last proposal, but without the structural changes to the funding package that many saw as the realistic best-case outcome for the strike.

I had to leave the meeting an hour before the end to get to the Massey College Fellows’ Gaudy, the last high table of the year. We learned later in the evening that those present at the meeting had voted narrowly in favour of sending the deal to a ratification vote.

The vote is happening today and tomorrow, and could conceivably result in us going back to work Monday. If so, I will be in even more trouble than before. My cold has become substantially worse, and a return to work will mean a sudden avalanche of grading – all six days before the brief update is meant to be finished.

More thoughts about the strike

I am in a bit of a vise right now. Nobody else can finish the fossil fuel divestment brief update, but the strike and picket duties are ongoing. Even totally neglecting my PhD work, reconciling the two is impossible. And now I have come down with a cold.

The prospect of pulling back from union duties is uncomfortable. The University of Toronto’s position remains unconscionable. They are failing to recognize how running an institution of learning requires mutual respect, and some respect for social justice. Being unable to be fully effective for two social justice fights – and two distinct groups of allies – is vexing.

Tomorrow afternoon there is a union meeting to discuss the latest offer from the employer. It is based in a way on the proposal from our meeting last Friday, where we decided to give up on aspirations like poverty-line pay for TAs in exchange for structural gains in the contract: recognition that tuition and the funding package are appropriate bargaining items for the union, and that funding assigned to individuals makes more sense and is more just than pools of funding that must be split among as many TA graduate students as the university cares to admit. The offer from the administration being voted on tomorrow jettisons the structural gains being sought, raising questions about what purpose the strike has served and how much more corroded and precarious the position of graduate students at U of T will become.

As far as TA work goes, I am happy to strike for as long as is required to get a deal with real gains. At the same time, the special burden of completing the brief weighs heavily on me.

Consequences of nuclear weapon proliferation

The Economist draws attention to the risk of nuclear war:

New actors with more versatile weapons have turned nuclear doctrine into guesswork. Even during the cold war, despite all that game theory and brainpower, the Soviet Union and America frequently misread what the other was up to. India and Pakistan, with little experience and less contact, have virtually nothing to guide them in a crisis but mistrust and paranoia. If weapons proliferate in the Middle East, as Iran and then Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt join Israel in the ranks of nuclear powers, each will have to manage a bewildering four-dimensional stand-off.

Related:

CUPE strike day 3

Today’s 1pm – 5pm picket shift was good fun. We occupied the Munk Centre, where President Gertler was meant to be taking part in an event:

Then we marched all over campus: to the administration offices at Simcoe Hall, over to Queen’s Park, through University College, around Robarts, and back to Munk:

The university has not yet accepted the union’s offer to resume negotiations.

Twitter is probably one of the best places to watch the strike. Search CUPE3902 and #WeAreUofT.

Update on Ebola

From The Economist:

“Body-disposal teams are credited with checking Ebola in Liberia. But such teams are often attacked in Guinea. Resistance is reported in over a third of prefectures.

…

At times last year it looked as if Ebola was under control in Guinea, the largest of the affected countries. But health workers have trouble finding the sick. Poor publicity campaigns make it less likely that they come forward. Many believe that foreigners are infecting them. The WHO is now hiring anthropologists to help co-opt local leaders.

…

Getting to zero infections will be harder the longer it takes. Heavy rains will soon make it difficult to reach remote areas. Health officials also fear complacency. America is pulling its troops out of Liberia. Others may follow. WHO officials complain of a dwindling budget. The jungles of Guinea hid the first case; as long as they hide the last ones, the outbreak is not over.