On Fridays for Future

I went to the first #fridaysforfuture protest in our area with my youngest, yesterday, outside my MP's office. The idea is the brainchild of Greta Thunberg who wants all students to strike every Friday until the political system focuses on slowing down climate change so we can avoid hitting that dreaded 1.5 degree ceiling. We've already zipped passed the 350 ppm ceiling with nary an outcry (at about 410 ppm now). We only have 11 more years, until 2030, to act before we won't be able to have any significant effect. She says, "What is the point of learning facts when the most important facts given by our finest scientists are ignored by politicians?". Before I left work, I talked to a few colleagues, discussing the ethics of a teacher taking a half day "family care" day to go to a protest, and everyone I spoke with was supportive of the idea. What's a family care day for if not to fight to sustain the planet for our families! And I decided, even if it's seen as wrong, it's worth the potential consequences. It was a well-run event with about 40 people there on a bitterly cold day (the paper said 30, but I counted at least 40); unfortunately, I think a good 60 or 70% of the crowd were long past their school days.

Energy Conservation in the Home: I'll Show You Mine...

I know this is just one tiny piece of the puzzle, but there IS an effective way to get people to reduce their energy usage in their homes: publicize how much their neighbours use. A recent study found that if people think they're neighbours care about the environment, and if they're shown how much energy their neighbours use relative to their own use, then people will use less energy in a race to be the least wasteful.

"The US firm Opower sends over 60 million households around the world energy bills that show their own energy consumption in relation to how much energy their neighbours consume. Providing this information has led to customers decreasing their energy consumption -- to date, this intervention has saved more than $2 billion USD in energy usage."

Gertz's Nihilism and Technology

I really love this book. First of all, the chapter headings and sub-headings are all clever little in jokes, like "Beyond Google and Evil," that make anyone with a cursory knowledge of Nietzsche feel like part of the gang. But it's not just looking at tech through the lens of Nietzsche in a cut-and-paste way. This is an analysis of our relationship with technology that, while immersed in Nietzsche, and will allow a novice to solidify their understanding of some major works, is really an analysis of human nature that would benefit the a-philosophical as well. This is a brief summary as a memory aid for myself, but the book deserves a close read in full.

He uses Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals to explain how technology is used "to soothe rather than cure" our nihilistic attitudes by applying five tactics the ascetic priest uses "to make nihilism palatable" (21): self-hypnosis, mechanical activity, petty pleasures, herd instinct, and orgies of feeling.

On Taxing the Rich

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshest Democrat to hit the White House, is making headlines for mimicking the dance sequence from The Breakfast Club back in college, and wanting to raise marginal tax rates to 70%. Unfortunately people care a bit too much about her dance moves, and headlines are missing the word "marginal" in tax discussions. People reading about a tax increase to 70% are going to flip out, justifiably. But raising the marginal tax rate is a well-grounded idea.

Paul Krugman explained in today's New York Times:

The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance (although Republicans blocked him from an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board with claims that he was unqualified. Really.) And it’s a policy nobody has every implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history. To be more specific, Diamond, in work with Emmanuel Saez — one of our leading experts on inequality — estimated the optimal top tax rate to be 73 percent. Some put it higher: Christina Romer, top macroeconomist and former head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimates it at more than 80 percent. . . . A policy that makes the rich a bit poorer will affect only a handful of people, and will barely affect their life satisfaction, since they will still be able to buy whatever they want.

In 1953 in the US, the marginal tax rate was 92% on income over $400,000 (it was 84% in Canada), but $400,000 would be about $3.5 million in today’s money. So, if we want our economy to be very strong, anything people made over a few million dollars, should go almost entirely to the government. That would lower the incentive to make huge amounts of money, and CEOs might pay their employees more rather than take such high paycheques. When the highest tax bracket is raised, then the government has more money for education, health care, infrastructure, job creation, and climate change mitigation.

It's possible that a few billionaires will leave, but not enough to stop the benefits to society. Consider it's not just CEOs who make over $3.5 million in a year, but many people in film production and some top athletes. They're not all going to pull a Gérald Depardieu.

On Coddling Our Kids

The Agenda has a video with Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist. I watched it with my kids, and we had a good discussion about it. Haidt published a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, with Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a few months ago to very mixed reviews. He has a few interesting ideas, but many are rehashed or questionable.

His concern with the iGen or the Gen Z group, anyone born after 1995, is that they grew up with social media, which has messed them up. It's mainly the same story we've already heard about cell phones and helicopter parents. But then he said that boys aren't doing so badly since they mainly play video games and bully physically, but girls are really affected by calls for perfection and psychological bullying that happens more online. My kids jumped on this claim with their own stories, but I cautioned that they just had anecdotal evidence from their own lives, and this guy likely did more thorough research. While it's good to consider how much an idea 'rings true,' we need to evaluate the research. I didn't read the book, but one of the citations is Pinker, which makes me a little bit dubious. Then he said the suicide rate for teen girls has gone up by 70%, but not for boys. One article says the CDC says the rate increased 70% for white youth and 77% for black. The CDC site has this graph, which clarifies how much higher the rate for males is to begin with:

On Capitalism's Limitations

Every year, when we get to the part of my philosophy course where we read some Marx & Engels, and I ask for criticisms of the reading, like I do with every other political philosopher we read, instead of thinking and devising astute observations, there's always a few who are adamant: "Communism is fine in theory but doesn't work in real life." This is a truism chanted without much thought needed to repeat it. But then I ask, "Can't the same be said for capitalism?" And, "What do you mean by work? What does it look like when a political theory works?"

On Arguing Facts

It never ceases to amaze me how often I'll be writing or thinking about something, and then the perfect articles drop in my lap. It might help that I've been scrolling through social media endlessly on my days off!

In my prior post, I discussed the need for teachers to step up and actively dismantle arguments based on a mistaken premise or altogether unfounded assumption rather than heed concerns about the self-esteem of our charges or other potential ramification born by speaking our mind, and then I hit this Aeon article from October.

The Place of Teachers in this Mess

Once, about twenty years ago, when I was talking about teaching both sides of the climate change debate in the classroom, a colleague told me, "There's just one side; the right side." I admired her chutzpa, but I silently disagreed. We have to raise both sides and scrutinize them both if we want to adequately address the issue. More recently, a student told me that he had been very alt-right until a supply teacher took him aside and explained to him the errors of his ways. That discussion left me remorseful for the number of times a student said something leaning that way, and I pussy-footed around the issue, trying to subtly sway their view, and typically failing. If a neo-Nazi happened to be in my class, I'd likely call his ideas interesting and question some premises, but never outright condemn them. That might harm their self-esteem!

Courage Over Hope

This got a little out of control, so I added in pictures! But there is suddenly tons in the news about climate change, and many excellent videos to watch.

Jeremy Deaton wrote in the Huffington Post last week:

Ultimately, the idea that regular people can’t be told the full implications of climate change is condescending. Scientists, writers and advocates might consider that they go to work every day understanding the enormity of climate change, and yet they are able to do their jobs. The men and women who work on climate change are not made of tougher stuff, and they need not obscure the awful truth about the carbon crisis. People can take it. In fact, they’ll have to. Perhaps what makes it possible for advocates to continue their work is not a surplus of hope or an absence of fear, but a sense of duty. They respond to their grief with a righteous anger, to their panic with bravery, to their desolation with solidarity.

Ontario's Education: Call for Ideas

Today's the last chance to tell Doug Ford and the Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson, what we should do with the educational system.

As if it matters.

At least it presents the illusion of being heard. People revolt less if they have a chance to speak to the political elites. For hundreds of years, commoners were allowed to speak at assemblies without any actual voting power to affect change there, yet it kept people relatively content. Plus ça change....

Fighting for Midwives: The Personal is Political

Peter Beinart recently wrote a perceptive article in The Atlantic: "The New Authoritarians are Waging War on Women," that argues that the one thing in common with all the authoritarian-type regimes sprouting everywhere, is keeping women in place:

"The problem with both American-born story lines [that Trump was voted by the  impoverished fearing immigrants taking their jobs] is that authoritarian nationalism is rising in a diverse set of countries. Some are mired in recession; others are booming. Some are consumed by fears of immigration; others are not. But besides their hostility to liberal democracy, the right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women. . . . it’s vital to remember that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects forged a social contract: 'Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women.' . . . Many revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries have used the specter of women’s power to discredit the regime they sought to overthrow. Then, once in power themselves, they have validated their authority by reducing women’s rights. . . . 

The Toll of the Gig Economy

From an article in today's New York Times by Ruth Whippman:

"Buying, promoting or sharing your friend’s “thing” is now a tax payable for modern friendship. But this expectation becomes its own monster. I find myself auditing my friends’ loyalty based on their efforts. Who bought it? Who shared it on Facebook? Was it a share from the heart, or a “duty share” — with that telltale, torturous phrasing that squeaks past the minimum social requirement but deftly dissociates the sharer from the product: “My friend wrote a book — I haven’t read it, but maybe you should.” In this cutthroat human marketplace, we are worth only as much as the sum of our metrics, so checking those metrics can become obsessive. What’s my Amazon ranking? How many likes? How many retweets? How many followers? (The word “followers” is in itself a clear indicator of something psychologically unhealthy going on — the standard term for the people we now spend the bulk of our time with sounds less like a functioning human relationship than the P.R. materials of the Branch Davidians.) . . . 

After a couple of decades of constant advice to “follow our passions” and “live our dreams,” for a certain type of relatively privileged modern freelancer, nothing less than total self-actualization at work now seems enough. But this leaves us with an angsty mismatch between personal expectation and economic reality. So we shackle our self-worth to the success of these projects — the book or blog post or range of crocheted stuffed penguins becomes a proxy for our very soul. . . . this trend toward increasingly market-driven human interaction is making us paranoid, jittery, self-critical and judgmental."

On Extinction Rebellion

Here's climate scientist Dr. Kate Marvel on hope and courage as quoted in Truthout:

"Hope is a creature of privilege….[T]he opposite of hope is not despair. It is grief. Even while resolving to limit the damage we can mourn. And here, the sheer scale of the problem provides a perverse comfort: we are in this together. The swiftness of the change, its scale, and inevitability binds us into one, broken hearts trapped together under a warming atmosphere. We need courage, not hope…Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending."

The full article is a call for rebellion with Dr. Gail Bradbrook, an architect of the movement in the UK, which advocates for ongoing, non-violent, civil disobedience:

Dr. Bradbrook said she is willing to risk “everything” because “the stakes are so high,” and went on to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” She notes how environmental activists in other parts of the world are being killed on a regular basis, and said this: “I come from a place of deep privilege, which is another reason to step out of its comforting deadly embrace and offer service.” . . . Dr. Bradbrook believes we are all locked into a damaging individualism, a constant and personal asking of “what about me” and “what do I need” and “how can I feel better.” She believes this is precisely what must change in order to raise our consciousness. “I feel the time has come to be fully initiated into our service, to give up hope as a drug for our hidden worries that we are suppressing. To fully face the grief of these times and to act accordingly is what we are called upon now, which means being willing to take risks,” she said.

It's not dissimilar to what Chris Hedges advocate: to continue to disrupt the system in many ways. 

On the Origins of Cultural Marxism

From an article by Samuel Moyn in the New York Times:

"'Classical Marxists, where they obtained power, expropriated the bourgeoisie and gave their property to the state,' [Cultural Marxism, he claims, is] 'Where you obtained power, you expropriated the rights of white men and gave special privileges to feminists, blacks, gays, and the like.' . . . And today, it’s true that on campus and off, many people are directing their ire at the advantages that white males have historically enjoyed. But neither the defense of the workers nor of other disempowered groups was a conspiracy on its own, and never was there a malignant plot to convert the first into the second — which is what “cultural Marxism” implies. Deployed to avoid claims of injustice, the charge functions to whip up agitated frenzy or inspire visions of revenge. . . . 

These zany stories of the Frankfurt School’s role in fomenting political correctness would be entertaining, except that they echo the baseless allegations of tiny cabals ruling the world that fed the right’s paranoid imagination in prior eras. The wider discourse around cultural Marxism today resembles nothing so much as a version of the Judeobolshevik myth updated for a new age. . . . 

As the historian Paul Hanebrink recounts in an unnerving new study, according to the Judeobolshevik myth, the instigators of communism were the Jews as a whole, not some tiny band of thinkers, conniving as a people to bring communist irreligion and revolution worldwide. The results of such beliefs weren’t pretty. . . . The defense of the West in the name of “order” and against “chaos,” which really seems to mean unjustifiable privilege against new claimants, is an old affair posing as new insight. It led to grievous harm in the last century. And though today’s critics of “cultural Marxism” purport to be very learned, they proceed seemingly unaware of the heavy baggage involved in alleging that conspiracies have ruined the land."

Stuck Between Fear and Hope

Graham Saul was on TVO's The Agenda:

"We need a better narrative to motivate us towards change. We need to be dragged from our ethical fog. The best leaders we have on this, with moral clarity, are in Indigenous groups. Great social movements use powerful words, like survival, sustainability, justice, human health, preservation. But "survival" isn't inspirational the way "freedom" is. Humanity is destroying the life support systems of the planet, but MLK didn't say, "I have a nightmare." We need a more inspiring vision. This is a collective action problem that needs collective action. We have to move beyond talking about science towards talking about values and immediate implications if we expect to get more people on board. Climate change is fueled by the wealthiest, but most affects the poorest, which is a justice issue that must be addressed. We don't have an energy problem; we have a fossil fuel problem. The time has come to put those resources to bed, like we did with CFCs and asbestos. Humanity doesn't have to be cancerous to the broader world. These are solvable problems. We have the opportunity to be part of the most hopeful thing happening in the history of the human race!"

On J.S. Mill and Free Speech

More on "Just say 'no' to hate speech."

Maverick Philosopher wrote about free speech today, and I'd love to comment there, but there seems to be no means. So I'll bring it here. He's reading Mill and questions two things:

First, he's baffled by Mill's suggestion that we can never actually know any opinion. His example to the contrary is the opinion of Holocaust deniers despite much evidence of the actual existence of the Holocaust. But I'm afraid he's making the same mistake most people make (apparently, particularly us old schoolers) according to this recent study.

The Holocaust is a fact, so denying it is a falsehood. It's a factual mistake, not a false opinion. We can know false facts, clearly, since all we have to do is verify them, but determining a false opinion isn't as clear. For example, consider the opinion, abortion is immoral.  It really can't be known if that's a false opinion. It's just unknowable. We might all come to agreement that it should be legal and that it's the lesser of two evils, but we can't know that it's moral.

That being said, we're also getting pretty comfortable allowing people to spout false facts (aka lies) all over the place.

Secondly, he's amazed at Mill's insistence that we should allow free debate about opinions that are spectacularly disagreeable.

Mill takes that Evelyn Beatrice Hall position of, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's not unlike the idea that being kind to horrible people is the mark of the truly moral because anyone can be kind to wonderful people. It's really easy to defend free speech when we agree with it.

Whether or not we should stifle disagreeable opinions is an interesting question that I can go on about for ages. Consider this opinion: Muslims/Mexicans/Whathaveyou are going to destroy America. I write from a no-platform stance because of exactly this kind of claim. I fear it will lead to violence, and I strongly agree with Maverick that these kinds of opinions shouldn't be permitted on a public stage.

Why would Mill disagree? I think Mill grew up cloistered by intensely intelligent people who debated heartily but reasonably. If I were only surrounded by the brightest minds, I would be happy to debate any notion raised. However, I think if Mill were alive in these days of social media inanity, he would quickly change his view.

Munk Debates: Is Populism the Way of the Future?

I watched the recent, heavily protested, Munk Debate between good buddies on the right, Steve Bannon and David Frum. The issue they were debating was, "Be it resolved, the future of western politics is populist, not liberal."

Spoiler alert, the results were a draw, in that the audience in general didn't change their opinion on the issue. At the end of the debate, the moderators revealed incorrect results indicating a sweeping win for Bannon, but here's their retraction:

72% of the audience still disagrees with populism regardless Bannon's arguments. Nobody defined populism throughout the evening, but I take it to mean politics that focuses or appeals to the ordinary person as if society is all the same. It's an ideology that pits the common folk against the elites. It's being juxtaposed with liberalism, which generally means politics that focuses on individual liberty and equality. I'm not sure they're as different as is being suggested, but I'll get to that at the end.

from Cas Mudde 

The Toronto Star reported on the protest on Friday. Twelve were arrested (mainly for trespassing and public mischief) and two officers were injured. Protesters interrupted the debate when Bannon first began speaking, but they were given a choice to either be quiet or leave, and things calmed down after that. Protesters took what's now labelled as a "no-platform" position that fights to deny a platform for profoundly bigoted views. There's an excellent thread by Bashir Mohamed on Twitter that explains the rationale, arguing that the belief that preventing the speech of hate groups will in any way harm the marginalized goes against all we've seen in history. The gist of it is here:

"Do you really think slaveowners, Nazis, and the Klan were defeated by a bunch of fucking 'free thinkers' in a debate hall? . . . Canadians allowed the Klan to operate in Canada until 2003 due to complacency. . . . Canadians allowed apartheid supporters a podium because of 'free speech.' Do you think this defeated apartheid? . . . Alberta allowed the Klan to be formally incorporated from the 1930s - 2003. . . . A more local example is from the 80s when U of T students protested the Klan's presence on their campus. They were lead by Gary Yee. How did the Government of Ontario respond? By saying the Klan had a right to 'free speech.' . . . It wasn't the 'free speech' advocates who defeated the Klan. But instead, it was activists like Gary Yee who reduced the power of the Klan through their advocacy. . . . After today, there will be even more columns from our predominately white pundit class. They will argue that the protesters were the ones who gave Bannon power. Instead, history shows us that those very pundits and those who stand in line are the ones who give him power."

We are clearly seeing a rise in supremacy groups, and Janet Reitman reports in today's New York Times Magazine that law enforcement officers don't know how to respond effectively to white nationalism.

She writes,

“The F.B.I. knows how many bank robberies there were last year,” says Michael German, an author of the Brennan Center report and a former F.B.I. agent, “but it doesn’t know how many white supremacists attacked people, how many they injured or killed.” More concerning to German, though, is that law enforcement seems uninterested in policing the violent far right. . . . In at least one instance, the police have in fact coordinated with far-right groups. In 2017, a law-enforcement official stationed at a rally in downtown Portland, Ore., turned to a member of a far-right militia group and asked for his assistance in cuffing a left-wing counterprotester, who had been tackled by a Proud Boy. “This is what public demonstration looks like in an era when white nationalism isn’t on the fringes, but on the inside of the political mainstream,” says Brian Levin, a former New York City police officer who now leads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

So, why would the Munk Debates invite two similarly minded men to debate on such a non-issue right before an election? Here's one answer:

Why would any Canadian organize a local debate between two factions of the American corporatist right and try to pass it off as a serious policy dialogue between a conservative and a relative liberal, a notion that is preposterous on its face yet seems to be the predominating media narrative. Actually, this is easier to understand if we consider the apparent agenda of the organization behind last night’s event. Press Progress reminded us earlier yesterday that the Munk Debates are bankrolled by the Aurea Foundation, established in 2006 by the late Peter Munk, the Canadian gold-mining billionaire. The Aurea Foundation says on its website it “gives special attention to the investigation of issues related to the political and economic foundations of freedom, the strengthening of the free market system, the protection and enhancement of democratic values, human rights and human dignity, and the role of responsible citizenship.” Whatever that means in practice, former Munk Debate participants include Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair, so obviously the foundation isn’t allergic to war criminals.

So, there's that. I've written from the no-platform perspective before, and I agree that it's important to prevent the spreading of hate speech. It seems clear that allowing it to continue provokes acceptance of shooting unarmed migrants and killing protesters, and it's not unreasonable to fear even worse. But, once it's out there, it's important to listen to in order to call out the slippery debating tactics. This is loosely, but accurately, paraphrased or quoted from the debate, largely abridged because it was very repetitious.


BANNON'S POSITION

It's not a question of populism, but of whether we'll have populist nationalism or socialism. We have to go back to the inciting incident, [the bank bailout], on December 18th, 2008, in Washington, when Hank Paulson told Bush that we need $1 trillion by 5pm or the U.S. financial system will implode, and we'll have global anarchy. Nobody has brought the U.S. to its knees like that day, and it was the financial and corporate elites. . . . It wasn't a free bail out as pension funds were affected. The little guy bore the burden. 60% of jobs were gone.

Then he insisted that Trump had turned that around - to much audience laughter. This happened a few time. He'd say something that's an outright lie, and the audience would respond as if it's all a joke, and he'd comment, with a flirty grin, "It's a very tough crowd." He's a schmoozy kind of guy.

The party of Davos left a financial wasteland. It's why we have Brexit and Bolsonaro. Trump's economic nationalism doesn't care about your race. [laughter] Economic nationalism cares if you're a citizen. Populist nationalism is working and it's spreading. We're at the beginning of a new political revolution. The only question is if is national or the socialism of Corbyn and Sanders. The party of Davos and the elites have blown to many calls: the rise of China, $7 trillion spent on wars, deregulation that caused financial crises, and we're headed to another one. But the question here is what form of populism will win. . . . 

Why is the nation state so demonized and scorned? The alternative is socialism for the elites and brutal poverty for the poor. 

Bannon's rebuttals to Frum's points were all about soothing the fears of the little guy. We're going to take care of everyone and overthrow the elites. And then he added in lots of bald-faced lies about how much Trump has or is about to improve the economy, get back jobs, fix NAFTA, bring back manufacturing jobs, stop China gains through Mexico, make NATO work, support Muslims, work for the Black working class, etc. Bannon's playing the long game with Trump. "We're just in the top of the first inning. I believe we'll hold the Senate, and it's a dogfight over the House. It's a process. . . . Trump's getting his sea legs. . . . I haven't seen a bad decision from Trump yet." And he insists there's no correlation with Trump and the growing violence in the country: "The violence raised by the left is far worse. . . . Trump is an imperfect instrument, and the deplorables are the finest people."


FRUM'S POSITION

We hope to accomplish three things here: 1. to speak to those who are undecided. It's important. Bannon's politics offers you nothing. It doesn't care about you. It does not respect you. It is anger and fear that drives people to the polls. 2. to speak to those who see Trump for what it is and resist it. I know the fear many feel, and I stand to reignite your faith and speak to your courage. This is not the first time democrats faced thugs and dictators. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now. We're here to show that we are what our grandparents were, and we can face the challenges. And 3. for those who see Trump and support him anyway because they enjoy destruction. Bannon is burning everything down. We are nearing the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. We understand burning non-metaphorically. You have been winning, but you will lose. And when you lose, your children will be ashamed of you. And the future will not belong to you.  And it starts tonight.   

I'm a conservative who seeks to conserve a liberal heritage. I want a state that doesn't steal, media that doesn't lie, courts that don't lie, and voting that counts every vote. Populism claims to speak for the people, but they begin by dividing people by religion, gender, race. Some of the people are not the people; they are those people. We see Trump doing this again and again. Populism will lose because it's a scam. . . . Liberal democracy is stronger than it looks.  

The failures of a good system are not the reason to turn to an evil one. We have to renew and repair. Bannon and I have one thing in common: we see the stress on middle class incomes. The populist response is to see this as opportunities to exploit and overthrow instead of flaws that need reform and constructive repair and renewal. Our choices are destruction or renewal, freedom or servitude with politics that excludes and oppresses part of the nation. . . . The idea of America first gets progressively less attractive when it leaves behind communities. We're stronger when we work cooperatively. This has been argued for 200 years: domination or potential fruitful cooperation. That's the key question. . . .  The cruel always think the kind are weak. . . . 

Populism is not interested in results. It's an attempt to exploit emotions to gain power. . . . The people can feel when they're respected and will demonstrate on Tuesday who they feel is not protecting them. The future belongs to those who care about it, not who will  immolate it for temporary gain. Populists don't know what to do; they only know who to hate. . . . These parties all have sinister connection to Russia power.

Frum's rebuttals to Bannon were largely a reiteration that we're going to fix the system from within, and a correction on all the Trump "facts," largely connecting corporate elites to the Trump administration, sometimes getting snarky: "If Trump thought blacks would vote for him, they would allow them to vote." When asked why Trump was able to win, he said it's all due to false promises around protecting health insurance. Trump offers no details, but presents a strong commitment to the people, and then nothing happens. "The best defense of Trump, is that the job's just too hard for him."


SO IT GOES... 

At this point, it just becomes clear they're both saying the same thing about how broken the system is. Can it be overthrown by elites that are so clearly part of it, or can it be fixed from within by elites that are so clearly part of it? Those were the options on offer. The people voted with Frum and against racism and laughable lies, which is good to see.

BUT, if you have 90 minutes to spare to watch a video, maybe watch this one instead:



Thomas Frank takes down both sides of this debate. He starts with Bannon's inciting incident: the bank bailout. "This was the turning point, but we missed the turn."

In a nutshell, he says,

The system needs to be fixed, but it won't happen on its own. The bailout happened under Bush, but Obama followed along, continuing Bush's policies unchanged. [The best illustration of this is the last ten minutes of Inside Job.] The Tea Party was a fake protest movement, and Paul Ryan was "down with big business," but then made it worse once in office. Trump's a "blue-collar billionaire." We're stuck in a vicious cycle of raging against elites by electing elites who make it all worse.

The Democrats used to stand for protecting the lower and middle class. But then they started saying there's nothing we can do about technology and globalization. They're more honest about their refusal to change the system. But it's not because they lacked the power to change things; they did it because they wanted to do it that way.

Back in the 70s, Democrats argued over who they were, but agreed on turning away from the New Deal fixation of the working class and embrace the post-industrial economy. They identified with the winners of the new order: the professional class. These were people who used to vote Republican. American liberalism started out as populist, but now it's all about winners, the "wired workers who will inherit the future." They're the creative class, the innovators, and we're encouraged to build zones in cities to lure them to come as if creativity and innovation are the property of a class. They protected the banks because these are their classmates.

This is only possible when the party on the left is not interested in its history of helping the working class. Meritocracy is faith that professionals deserve their rewards. They're all defined by how they did in school. Their solution for inequity is education. Instead of actually actively reducing inequity, they rationalize it. Frank's solutions are identical to Robert Reich's in Inequality for All: change the policies that allow the rich to get richer. It seems so easy, but it's not when the rich are your friends and peers.

According to Frank, who is very pessimistic about it all, this will end only when citizens take back the Democratic party. The most popular position is for them to hold big business accountable, but political consultants tell them not to, and they listen. And everyone in Washington hates Bernie Sanders.

He's concerned that, "The gravity of discontent pulls to the right." When people are upset or afraid, they vote conservatively, and the current Republican party is incompetent. Only two more sleeps.

ETA: Here's another good video of Frank where he explains how right-wing populism is a "freakish historical anomaly" that's only a few decades old. It's full of contradictions in that it "worships the working man while steadily worsening his conditions." The political divide was one the few against the many, but now it's the few against the few: the enlightened technocrats against the resentful billionaires. His solution this time: get the majority together and it will be unstoppable.

ETA: A Guardian series on populism.

Climate Change Education: Maybe Too Little, Too Late?

I've been teaching about climate change since I started teaching in 1991. Back then, most students just laughed, and I came across as a crazy person. I was fine with that mainly because my favourite teacher from high school was also seen as a bit looney. Thinking the bearers of bad news insane is a handy defence from a difficult reality.

In the early 80s, my old history teacher, immersed as he was in details of war, turned his basement into a bunker with 2' concrete walls and a two year supply of food and water, just in case. He'd show us, on a globe, that Canada was smack dab in the middle of the U.S. - U.S.S.R. conflict, and if we lived through a nuclear strike, we'd be scrounging for clean food and water for years. The fear of that potential sat at the back of my head until the mutual disarmament started. Whew! Dodged that missile! (Except, not so fast....) I wasn't openly troubled at the time, but I do continue to blame Reagan's election for my teenaged drug experimentation. How could we possibly make it with that cowboy in command? In hindsight, it could be argued that he wasn't nearly as bad as what we're dealing with now. That's not good news.

In the early 90s, most students thought climate change was a hoax despite my well researched and carefully compiled data to the contrary, and some tried to soothe my concerns, genuinely worried that I had been sucked into a conspiracy theory. It was 15 years of slogging through a sea of profound disbelief until Al Gore's movie finally opened some eyes. An Inconvenient Truth changed everything - for a little while. We had the smallest of windows to get things going, and we failed. When the time was finally ripe for action, we had Bush and Harper at the helm.

And then that moment of belief and concern and burgeoning action largely went away again for about a decade. Since the widespread sharing of the most recent IPCC report that suggests we've got about a dozen years to turn things around before we're completely out of options, lots of regular people are suddenly paying attention again.

Some students still think that climate change is a myth started by companies to sell green products using the same methods Nestle used to sell water bottles: they convinced the masses that we don't absorb any water from food or beverages, so we need to drink 8 glasses of water a day but never from the toxic tap in our homes. They created a multi-million dollar scam that most people fell for. Some people still won't drink tap water despite the reality that it's far more regulated than the bottled water industry. But people with any wherewithal or common sense could look up reputable studies on necessary water consumption and tap water regulations and easily see the lies. This is different. The top climate scientists in the world agree that we have a serious problem. People can easily look up the research.

Yes, absolutely, some companies are using this current reality to try to make a buck. But most reputable scientists will tell you we can't buy our way out of this problem, that consumerism has to stop and that includes greenwashed products. No company would propagate a myth that we should stop buying anything that's not absolutely necessary. It's definitely the case that companies are making products to profit if off climate change, but that's not evidence that climate change doesn't exist. That's evidence of corporations benefiting from a traumatic event, something we should be used to by now. And absolutely any shift in consumerism that actually takes place will affect the economy. We didn't always follow an economic growth model, and we can't continue on this way. There are alternatives.

Now that we're at a very critical point of no return, if not completely past it, teachers have finally been sent curriculum and lesson plans, from Ingenium, to help talk to students about climate change. The lesson plans start with brainstorming what we think we can do about it. If my classes are any indication, many people really think littering is a significant contributor. I hit the last straw (ha!) when someone used examples of littering as mitigating factors on a test, and I wrote and posted a poem to help them remember, but they still forget (or just can't possibly hear it). The Ingenium site links to a useful site that demonstrates flaws in the denialist arguments. As a proponent of direct instruction, I'm not big on all the brainstorming and word cloud creations, but at least this huge dilemma is becoming a bigger part of our lessons.

More importantly, for the first time ever I feel like I have overt permission to discuss this in class. I have had students question my discussions because it can be upsetting just to consider the idea that, as George Monbiot suggests in Heat, this will be the last generation to luxuriate in long, hot showers. Just considering the privations we'll have to attempt is too much for some teenagers. I don't even much touch on what the world will look like if we don't. Now I feel like I can.

I think, for students, it will be like it was with me in the cold war. I largely ignored it, but there was a tiny bit that got in and made me worried. If I avoided the news it would quiet down a bit. In the 80s, ignoring it all was fine. We no longer have that luxury. All the legal pot and free beer won't mitigate that reality.

Here's the thing: some scholars think we have to abandon any misplaced notion that we can still avert disaster. The best we can do at this point is to postpone the inevitable. However, prolonging our future for a few more decades isn't nothing. Jem Bendell's "paper’s key point — that the velocity of climate change appears to have shifted so dramatically upward since 2014 that its progression is no longer 'linear' — aligns with other mainstream research." We had a window that closed, and now we have to deal with the consequences. We've ignored it too long for the option to turn it around through GHG cuts or technological fixes, and our only option left is Deep Adaptation:

"He has a three-part strategy in mind. It starts with that “resilience” component that everybody is already behind — seawalls and reinforced roofing, etc. . . .  a second stage of “relinquishment” (giving up treasured things that make climate chaos worse, like present-day living standards and homes that overlook the ocean). And then a third: “restoration” of cultural values and practices “that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded”: Examples include re-wilding landscapes, so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, changing diets back to match the seasons, rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of play, and increased community-level productivity and support."

A reporter from Australia describes the corporate and political system that got us here as a form of crimes against humanities:

"A small number of insanely wealthy individuals and immensely powerful corporations are making out like bandits from the business of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They don’t much feel like stopping. . . . if human civilisation somehow survives this existential threat, climate-change denial will come to be thought of the way postwar Germany conceived of holocaust denial; an intolerable danger. . . . But time is running out. Twelve years, according to this latest IPCC report. To put that in context, we have a lot less than half the time The Simpsons have been on air before we may as well just give up and start lobbing nukes at each other over the last few drops of clean drinking water and arable land. But they have to stop, or be stopped."

If this weren't bad enough, we're also running out of oxygen. We've got several centuries left, so it's not as urgent an issue, but the quality of the air we're breathing sure is. I once wrote a short story about four elderly residents of a retirement centre who were the last survivors in the area because they were all breathing from oxygen tanks. I'm horrible at story writing, and I failed to finish it because I got too swept away researching what the world would look like with too much sulphur dioxide and not enough oxygen in the air and whether or not solar panels would continue to work to continue to have electricity in the centre and how oxygen tanks even work, but it was really going to be a vehicle to explore various philosophies of death and dying. I'll make a comprehensive chart one day (that's more my speed), so we can each identify our attitude of choice for our remaining time here.

And then there's the fact that mammals can't evolve fast enough keep up with the extinction of the species.

Absolutely, we should be discussing this in schools, and, much more so than my old history teacher, we'd be very wise to take some real life precautions, but I'm in a different place on the climate change education curve. I'm not sure it matters that the next generations mind maps their thoughts on some pretty images, or play some games that explore their individual footprint. They should definitely aim to reduce their own impact: forgo that pivotal first car purchase as a measure of adulthood, learn to tolerate the heat instead of blasting the A/C, and understanding the importance of meat-free meals. It would be really useful to teach them all how to grow and preserve their own food and how to fix their own clothes (and the general attitude that fixes things instead of throwing them away). But most importantly, we need to teach them how to take to the streets to force a much more pivotal change in the direction we're headed. If we can't get Trump and Trudeau to really get involved, then I can't see how we'll possibly turn this corner.

ETA - And then I just read activist Bill McKibben's article about getting death threats. I'll give him the last word:

"It was, in this case, a public call for someone to murder me, and not long afterward another commenter, 'Carbon Bigfoot,' supplied my home address. All of which stopped me cold. I thought I was inured to social media abuse. But this was something new: a calm public discussion about how to find me and what to do to me. . . . 207 environmentalists or defenders were killed last year around the world. . . . What does it say about a society when people just routinely call for the killing of those they disagree with? . . . A society in which critics fear death is a society with fewer critics, and hence with fewer chances for change."

Can We Turn This Corner?

September is always a busy month for me, and typically I don't get the luxury of reading the news significantly, but this time was different. It's been a car crash that I just can't stop looking at. When the Charter was first developed in Canada, largely a spin off of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, it seemed like we turned a corner with respect to human rights. It seemed like we were on a linear progression that would, bit by bit, get better and better. For sure there would be times it would slip back and have to be propped up again, keeping the quest for free speech at the expense of individual rights at bay, but I didn't expect it to be dismissed. And then, next door, we came to the harsh conclusion that they believed a woman's depiction of sexual assault, but they Just. Don't. Care.

Brutal.

Conservatives are winning elections everywhere, but not the normal types of fiscal conservatives that just want to lower taxes so we can benefit from a bit more cash in our pockets, but hateful, discriminatory radical right wingnuts who hang out with white nationalists or want to ban religious symbols for public servants or so much worse, like Brazil's Bolsonaro whose solution to poverty is to allow police to indiscriminately murder suspected criminals.

A B.C. teacher was called to the carpet to justify a civics survey (likely abridged from The Political Compass, which I also use) because the survey associated the right wing end of the spectrum with racism. The school board has assured the parent that the worksheet won't be used again because, of course, racism comes in all kind of boxes. But that's true of everything that we look at to deduce where we are on the political spectrum. Is it just a stereotype that the far right have a prejudicial agenda, or is that a legitimate claim? At least one set of studies suggests there's a correlation between conservative values and discriminating attitudes. Isn't it becoming clear from recent events that voting conservative is more likely to result in more overtly discriminatory policies on the books, or did I just imagine that? And, are we not allowed to make this connection in a classroom? Of course not all conservatives are prejudiced, but if MPs and MPPs continue to follow the party line, and their leader is racist, then that reflects on the entire party.

BUT none of that seems to matter nearly as much as climate change. Well, actually, it all really, really matters because, as I've said over and over here, we have to commit to a path of profound and intentional compassion if we're going to make it through the next few decades without slaughtering each other. It also matters because that same side of the political spectrum also generally wants to ignore climate change. Again, that's not to say everyone on the right thinks we should keep burning coal instead of investing in solar, wind, and tidal power, but, in general, that's the attitude of the parties in question. Ontario ministries are banned from using the term 'climate change,' Québec is looking at fewer environmental oversights, and Bolsonaro plans to withdraw from the Paris accord. And, according to one reporter, Trump has entered "stage 5 climate denial" - the "it's too late" stage.

Another IPCC report is out that suggests we really ought to do something about all this. We've got 12 years to cut our emissions by half if we want to have any hope of slowing this down. Here's the report, and here's an explanation on the scope and process of the report. The next one comes out in 2021. And here's a history of climate change science since 1824.

ETA: Naomi Klein expressed the gist of this long-winded post in a brief tweet:

A New York Times climate reporter says the IPCC report,

"paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.' . . . The report . . . describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by [2℃] . . . The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much sooner, at the [1.5℃] mark. . . . the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide emissions . . . would be required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the United States, the world's largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. . . . President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement."

"The report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal." But the World Coal Association plan to "continue to see a role for coal in the foreseeable future."

This raises the question about the ethics and feasibility of corporations self-regulating themselves out of business - specifically including these 100 companies. We're not at a place in our embracing of ethics to actually stop harmful actions that come with huge personal rewards. Which airline or factory farm is going to willingly close their doors? Trump's statement say, specifically: "We reiterate that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement at the earliest opportunity absent the identification of terms that are better for the American people." But what's better for the American people is what's better for us all: the ability to continue to survive into the future. Preventing warming will also help reduce migration into the states. His focus is too short term. Obviously.

The BBC says,

"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW, IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers . . . And they have. . . . The report says there must be rapid and significant changes in four big global systems: energy, land use, cities, industry. But it adds that the world cannot meet its target without changes by individuals, urging people to: buy less meat, milk, cheese and butter and more locally sourced seasonal food - and throw less of it away .  . . use videoconferencing instead of business travel . . . insulate homes, demand low carbon in every consumer product. . . . You might say you don't have control over land use, but you do have control over what you eat and that determines land use. . . . the report's 'pathways' for keeping a lid on temperatures all mean that hard decisions cannot be delayed. . . . Ultimately, politicians will face a difficult choice: persuade their voters that the revolutionary change outlined in the report is urgently needed or ignore it and say the scientists have got it wrong. . . . If the nations of the world don't act soon, they will have to rely even more on unproven technologies to take carbon out of the air - an expensive and uncertain road."

According to Nature, here are those numbers:

"Limiting global warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels would be a herculean task, involving rapid, dramatic changes in the way that government, industries and societies function. . . . The world would have to curb its carbon emissions by at least 49% of 2017 levels by 2030 and then achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. . . . Scientists have 'high confidence' that 1.5℃ of warming would result in more severe heat waves on land. . . . Temperatures on extreme hot days in mid-latitudes could increase by 3℃ [5.4℉]. . . . Two degrees of warming could destroy around 13% of the world's land ecosystems, increasing the risk of extinction for many insects, plants and animals. Holding warming to 1.5℃ would reduce that risk by half. . . . Without aggressive action, the world could become an almost impossible place to live for most people . . . As we go toward the end of the century, we have to get this right."

At the current rate, if we don't make any changes, we could expect to reach the 1.5℃ mark in about a dozen years at the earliest, which is actually a few years longer than originally estimated, so there's that silver lining.

"Many scientists have argued that meeting even the 2℃ goal is virtually impossible. But the IPCC report sidestepped questions of feasibility and focused instead of determining what government, businesses and individuals would need to do to meet the 1.5℃ goal. These include ramping up installation of low-carbon energy systems such as wind and solar . . . and expanding forests to increase their capacity to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. . . . Other proposed options involve changing lifestyles: eating less meat, riding bicycles, and flying less."

Greenpeace executives commented,

"The world is on fire. In order to avoid more of these tragic fires, severe storms and loss of life, the world must halve global emissions in the next decade. This is a huge challenge, but is is doable and the costs of not following the right path are a matter of life and death to millions around the world, particularly the vulnerable. . . . What matters now is that we decide to try and that we make it our absolute priority. . . . Those who say it's unrealistic are actually telling us to give up on people, to give up on species . . . We do not give up on human ingenuity, courage or hope against political apathy and corporate greed. We will never give up on us."

In the New York Times, "Why Half a Degree of Global Warming is a Big Deal" graphs some of the differences between a 1.5 and 2℃ change, like ten times the chance of no sea ice in the Arctic, over a third of the world's population affected by extreme heat, and coral reefs mostly disappearing.

The Guardian tries to take a more positive spin, that we can limit warming to 1.5 C with political will. Figueres says, "Most striking to me, therefore, is the fact that the determinants of whether we head for 2C or for 1.5C are mainly political; they are not technical or economic." We've been saying this for a long time now, "We have the technology, we just have to put it in place," and it's still true, but it just feels so incredibly unlikely given the current sway in voting. I'm not sure it matters that "the price of large-scale solar and wind energy has fallen" when the elites have put all their money in oil. However, perhaps my pessimism is a result of location, since, "China, India and the EU appear to be ahead of their Paris targets."

Except, George Monbiot, on the other side of the pond, is also not entirely convinced of a rosy future.

"We can now leave fossil fuels in the ground and thwart climate breakdown. . . . So how come oil production, for the first time in history, is about to hit 100m barrels a day? . . . How is it that in Germany, whose energy transition was supposed to be a model for the world, protesters are being beaten up by police as they try to defend the 12,000-year-old Hambacher forest from an opencast min extracting lignite - the dirtiest form of coal? Why have investments in Canadian tar sands - the dirtiest source of oil - doubled in a year? The answer is, growth. . . . It doesn't matter how many good things we do: preventing climate breakdown means ceasing to do bad things. Given that economic growth, in nations that are already rich enough to meet the needs of all, requires an increase in pointless consumption, it is hard so see how it can ever be decoupled from the assault on the living planet. . . . Clean growth is as much of an oxymoron as clean coal. But making this obvious statement in public life is treated as political suicide."

He concedes that New Zealand is starting to make the change away from a growth model, and warns that we all play a part in this,

"No politician can act without support. If we want political parties to address these issues, we too must start addressing them. We cannot rely on the media to do it for us. . . . A crucial factor in the remarkable shift in attitudes towards LGBT people was the determination of activists to break the silence. They overcame social embarrassment to broach issues that other people found uncomfortable. We need . . . to do the same for climate breakdown. . . . Let's create the political space in which well-intentioned parties can act. Let us talk a better world into being."

Well, we can only try.

On Anita Hill

My time at university was split down the middle by the news of the Montréal Massacre, and the subsequent years were plagued with fears of the Scarborough rapist. We proactively organized walking groups to move around on and off campus, started a "No Means No" campaign, and then, at one point, I rejected the sense of preemptive imprisonment created by my own fear, and I walked to a bar alone just to prove that I could. I came home to my boyfriend on my couch with the phone on his lap, white knuckled. These assaults weren't just terrifying to women.

Leslie Mahaffy went missing from a street near her home in broad daylight a couple weeks after I graduated.

It was just a few months later, in the fall of my first year of teaching at my current high school, when Anita Hill was being called to testify about her experiences working with Clarence Thomas, about the repeated sexual harassment she endured from him. A group of strong-willed students in my school, young women and men passionate about gender issues, wanted to start a gender equity club, and I was right on board to facilitate.

Perhaps naively so.

Having spent the previous five years openly debating the most controversial issues in the classroom and writing op eds in the school paper and the local paper regularly, it hadn't occurred to be cautious and to temper my enthusiasm for equity issues for a high school audience. I almost wrote controversial issues, but surely there's nothing controversial about sexual harassment and assault being a problem, right?

Our club paid rapt attention to the hearing that fall and then determined to bring awareness to these issues potentially faced by students in our own school. We decided on an awareness campaign and put up posters around the halls with definitions, legal rights legislation information, and Canadian sexual assault and harassment statistics.

And then I found out that teachers are not supposed to talk about things like that. I didn't respond to the accusations of "assaulting young minds" that came my way during the following staff meeting. I sat stunned silent, baffled that this form of education could possibly be inappropriate in a school setting of young adults, or that the information was "disgusting" as one colleague insisted.

I think a better word for it, one that nobody used, was "upsetting." It was upsetting to people to be confronted with the concerns that hide just beneath the surface of many students. Those students in the club and I believed that the best tactic to deal with it all was to make it overt, make it clear, and make it known that it's wrong. Isn't it more upsetting to know it's a reality yet do nothing?

I didn't recognize that I had crossed a line with my colleagues maybe because I was fresh from a humanities degree, or maybe it was because I was closer in age to my charges than the staff at the time. I was in grade 9 less than a decade previously, and I remember happening on information by pure chance. A friend's mother had given her a pamphlet on sexual assault. I was hungry for tips on dealing with creepy strangers and handsy distant relatives. The only real advice we got was to put your finger down your throat and throw up on perverts, but do we do that if they just brush by us too closely? We needed specifics! Harassment is complicated, and we needed more guidance

Anita Hill brought into focus the unwanted sexual innuendo that plagued our social lives, that made it feel reasonable to complain about the behaviours we encountered far too regularly. Articles and whole books were written about sexual harassment. The headlines in the news felt a little vindicating after being told the topic wasn't allowed in the halls.

Then that spring of my first year, Kristen French went missing.

The Kavanaugh case has opened up all these issues again, and made it painfully clear how little has changed in the past 27 years. Anita Hill recently wrote,

"It’s impossible to miss the parallels between the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing of 2018 and the 1991 confirmation hearing for Justice Clarence Thomas. . . . That the Senate Judiciary Committee still lacks a protocol for vetting sexual harassment and assault claims that surface during a confirmation hearing suggests that the committee has learned little from the Thomas hearing, much less the more recent #MeToo movement. . . . But, as Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair. In 1991, the phrase “they just don’t get it” became a popular way of describing senators’ reaction to sexual violence. With years of hindsight, mounds of evidence of the prevalence and harm that sexual violence causes individuals and our institutions, as well as a Senate with more women than ever, 'not getting it' isn’t an option for our elected representatives. In 2018, our senators must get it right."

Recently it was suggest to me, by someone I actually admire, unfortunately, that women claim they were assaulted by rich men in order to get some money, and we can't just believe everybody. I can't quite understand how that's still an openly expressed opinion when Christine Blasey Ford is receiving death threats.

As Maureen Dowd wrote,

"It has been almost exactly 27 years since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, and we are still defensively explaining — including to our troglodyte president — why women do not always tell the authorities about verbal and physical sexual assaults, why they bury episodes or try to maneuver past them. We are still watching a bookish university professor from the West, who tried to anonymously report an alleged blight on the character of a man about to ascend to a lifetime of power, get smeared as a demanding, mixed-up, uptight, loony fantasist. . . . We haven’t forgotten our history. But we still seem doomed to repeat it."

By the end of my second year of teaching, our little club made the attention of the local news, and I found out the article was syndicated when my brother in B.C. called to say I was on the front page of the paper there. I've run similar clubs since, and I've been more seriously chastised for so much less. The fact that I'm afraid to even discuss the specifics speaks volumes. I still have problems with that line, and I've lost my warrior zeal for it all.

(I'm in the middle, with the 80s hair.)

In that first club, we had some conversations, that didn't make the article, about calling it the Gender Equity Club rather than the Equality, a more accurate representation of our concerns. But whatever. Trudeau is starting off the first ever Gender Equality week today. The theme this year (we have themes!), more or less, is that it's better for everyone if we're all treated with respect. Let's hope this week gives us something to celebrate.