Unions join call for inquiry into police actions

Last Sunday night, I wrote a blog post expressing dismay that not one union had yet spoken out against the mass police arrests during the G20 meetings in Toronto last weekend.  Tonight, I am so pleased to see that several unions and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) have issued statements that recognize the abuse of police authority and join the call for an inquiry into police actions.

The CLC had originally posted a statement on its web site denouncing the individuals who vandalized store windows and set fire to a police cruiser.  That statement was taken down today, and a new one posted. The PSAC issued a media release condemning police brutality, and CUPE also added its voice to the call for an inquiry.

The widespread and growing outcry about events during the G20 is heartening and unions can play an important role in keeping up the pressure on the federal, Ontario and Toronto governments to launch a full and impartial investigation into how hundreds of people ended up being arrested, held for hours in impossible conditions, for apparently no reason since almost all were released without charges.  Unions can also work to make sure that those charged in the mass arrests are able to defend themselves in court.  Most important of all, unions can help ensure that the story of the G20 debacle does not get buried when other events take over the front pages of the newspapers. This is the only way to ensure that there is never a repeat of what happened last weekend.

Of course if Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter is right, the Toronto G20 script will be replayed again and again.  In an article published before the mass arrests last Saturday night and Sunday, she wrote of the Miami Model, referring to police tactics used during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in 2003 and every global summit since.  As described, this security model has several key elements including:

• information warfare a few weeks before the event (often police announce the discovery of a cache of items they describe as “weapons”)
• Intimidation, including random searches or interviews of activists
• Clamp down on civil liberties, including the passing of regulations or emergency measures
• Some violent acts by a few followed by excessive police force against many, and mass arrests.

In Miami, 270 people were arrested, according to Porter.  In the end, no convictions.

We can put an end to the Miami model by keeping the issue of the Toronto G20 burning. More unions and other organizations have to speak out.  It took a few days, but the momentum is building.

Why aren’t union leaders speaking out?

Police detained more than 900 people during the G20 summit in Toronto this past weekend. The vast majority of those taken into custody were protesting peacefully, or happened to be passing by at the moment police encircled people. By their accounts, those arrested were held in deplorable conditions. It is thought that 90 per cent of the detainees were then released without charges after waiting hours in overcrowded cells, with little water and almost no food.

Like thousands of Canadians, I am in shock. I am obsessed with finding out as much as I can about what happened. I can’t tear myself away from the computer and the growing number of video and eyewitness accounts of police brutality.

In my search for information, I have visited many union web sites. I am stunned that so far I haven’t found a single condemnation of the actions by the police forces. The Canadian Labour Congress has a front page post critical of the small group of violent thugs who broke away from the labour demonstration to smash windows and damage properly. The CLC says nothing of the police’s failure to stop the vandalism even though these self-proclaimed Black Bloc members acted within reach of the riot police, and easy riding distance of hundreds of cops on bikes.

I suspect union leaders have been silent to distance themselves as much as possible from the Black Block. But the mass arrests took place when hundreds of citizens came together in spontaneous peaceful gatherings long after the windows were smashed, and long after the labour march ended. Citizens went into the streets to show that they would not be intimidated by either the excessive show of security in Toronto or the violent actions of a few. The union silence about these arrests reflects a growing unease with street action, and it creates distance between unions and an activist citizenry.

It is wrong for unions not to speak out, and a mistake. Public opinion will start shifting very soon to the side of those who tried to protest peacefully only to be arrested for their efforts. Videos are being circulated showing that police fired into crowds without provocation. Mainstream journalists are starting to tell the true story of what police did to innocent people. Thousands of people have joined the call for a public inquiry into the events.

The G20 leaders agreed on a plan to slash government deficits over the next three years. We know it is the poor and workers who wills suffer the brunt of the spending cuts. Trade unions will have to step up the resistance to defend jobs and services. They will have to rebuild the vibrant coalitions of people’s movements that existed in the past.

A good start would be to speak out agains the gross violations of democratic rights and to express solidarity with those who had the courage to protest without police permission.

What’s the secret to Board success?

I just spent three days in meetings of the Council of Canadians’ Board of Directors.  Each year at this time we meet at a lovely but modest retreat location to take stock of where we are as an organization and to make plans for the year ahead.

As always, it was a great Board meeting.  We looked back and to the future.  We reviewed the finances and approved next year’s budget.  We debated and amended the operational plans.  We arrived at consensus, after good discussion, on some key organizational questions.

The substance of our Board deliberations always fascinates me.  But as a student of organizations,  I am equally interested in the Board itself: how it functions, how it makes decisions, what role it plays in directing the organization, what it discusses (and what it doesn’t).

As we all know, boards of activist organizations (whether unions or social justice groups)  take all kinds of different forms.  Regardless of shape and size, they often suffer from one of two tendencies:  (a) too much focus on the detail of the organization’s operations and plans at the expense of setting broader strategies and direction, or  (b) too much distance from the day-to-day work of the organization, resulting in big picture discussions that fail to provide meaningful direction (and often lead to Board members feeling disengaged).

One way  to avoid giving into one tendency or the other is to pay greater attention to the meeting agenda.   Every time a Board meets all members should be clear about the purpose of the meeting and the agenda should be crafted to serve that purpose.

Too many meetings in too many organizations take place simply because it is time to meet again.  Too many groups follow the same agenda each time they meet.  The agenda usually consists of a listing of topics allowing participants to take the discussion pretty much any place.  They can dive into the operational detail or fly into the blue sky, or go back and forth between the two, which they often do.

Through the Art of Hosting, I learned that the best to plan a meeting is to ask the question: what is the purpose of this meeting?  Don’t be put off by such a simple device.  Figuring out the purpose of a meeting involves deep and important thinking.

The next question is: what questions do we need to answer in this meeting to best serve its purpose? These are the questions that should make up the agenda.

Other questions of course follow logically:  Who needs to be at this meeting, given the questions that need to be answered?  What information or documentation will those attending need to answer the questions before them?

Next time you plan a meeting, give it a try.

Could our pension campaign learn from George Lakoff?

At a recent symposium organized by Straight Goods, George Lakoff shared his oft-repeated chilling account of how well organized the conservative forces are in spreading their gospel.  Think tanks, media columnists, book tours, booking agents, breakfast briefings, luncheons, foundations and leadership institutes are just some of the vehicles they use to deliver a well crafted and consistent message on the key issues of the day.  The message penetrates, says Lakoff, because conservatives choose words that connect to our hard-wired beliefs and emotions and trigger a conservative response.

Lakoff speaks and writes of the US experience, but  Canadian conservatives are following the same winning formula.  Take the issue of public service pensions, for example.  In the last six months there has been a deluge of conservative commentary through talk show guests, op-ed articles, and think tank reports  decrying the gold-plated pension plans of public employees. Whoever the messenger, the message is always the same.  It plays to the notions of fairness and justice: it’s just not right that public employees should get pensions when so many victims of the economic crisis have lost their savings.  It plays to Canadians’ fear and insecurity: governments should stop contributing as much to their own employees’ old age security and instead get its financial house in order.

In contrast, the message that unions and other progressive forces deliver on pensions is…well…not so organized.  It isn’t that we aren’t trying to respond effectively.  I bet every union communications department scrambles each time Catherine Swift is published.  Occasionally we get a letter to the editor published, or a mention in the media, but we aren’t registering on the public radar.  We don’t have a booking agency getting our spokespeople on talk shows.  We haven’t pulled together a significant coalition of anti-poverty groups, churches, seniors, people on disability pensions, women, young people, students and others and organized each group to same message.

And what about the content of our message?  George Lakoff says one of the problems with progressives is we can’t let go of our belief that people respond to logical arguments even though research reveals that human brains don’t work that way.  Lakoff says that

Conservatives get this; they choose their words carefully invoking images and emotions that both trigger and reinforce a conservative view point.  Progressives tend to dish out facts and figures assuming that people will reach the right conclusions.

Recently, federal finance minister Jim Flaherty proposed to the provinces that CPP premiums be increased, presumably to fund better pension coverage and more generous benefits.  At the same time he called for incentives to encourage more private retirement savings by individuals or through defined contribution employer pension plans.

These two very different reform proposals will bring conservatives and progressives into battle for public opinion (unless progressives decide not to oppose further government expenditures on enhancing private savings).  The CPP proposal opens the door to the expansion of one of the most important public programs in Canada but success will require a much greater effort than the current Canadian Labour Congress pension campaign.  This is an opportunity to take up Lakoff’s challenge and develop a well-organized broad-based push with all participating groups organized to deliver a common message using language that sets off the rusty progressive synapses in people’s brains.

Click here to see video of Lakoff’s presentation to the symposium.