(The following article is from the July 1-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
PV Youth Fightback Column

This resolution was passed unanimously at the June 21-22 convention of the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario). We present here an slightly abridged version.

      Youth and students are under increasing attack by the neo‑liberal agenda in Ontario. Youth unemployment and underemployment, debt, and impoverishment are all rising ‑ spiked by the manufacturing job crisis. It is particularly acute among youth of colour, especially black youth. The vast majority of young workers are entering non‑unionized jobs, many double‑exploited by temporary agencies. Job security, benefits and even existing labour code laws are often denied to them, forcing them into working at poverty minimum wages or low wages.

     High school students continue to face the repercussions of the flawed funding formula which short changes schools. This is reflected in the high drop‑out rates and racialized school violence. The School Safety Act continues to criminalize youth, disproportionately expelling students of colour, aboriginal students, queer students and students with disabilities. Police  target teenagers and use racial profiling.

     Post‑secondary education continues to face an aggressive campaign to hike‑up and eventually deregulate tuition fees, shifting the financial burden from public funding onto the hard‑earned wages and savings of students and their families. Barriers to access particularly exclude working class and youth from oppressed communities from college, university and the trades. Perhaps the most excluded are aboriginal youth. Ontario is a province where no Aboriginal‑run university exists. Trade schools are churning out more and more students with promises of jobs that simply may not be there.

     Especially on university campuses, there has been an increasingly aggressive clamp‑down on student dissent, with attacks on free speech and restrictions on academic freedom.  The scope of corporate and military involvement on campus continues to widen ‑ ranging from military recruitment and research to the binding of scholars and students to the interests of big business funders. At many schools, the struggle for solidarity with the Palestinian peoples has been met with a heavy‑handed response, including the expulsion of students and the banning of the slogan "Israeli Apartheid." This has been coupled with anti‑Islamic racism, and student codes of conduct are now in place that restrict students' rights, chief among them the ability to organize without interference from the administration.

     In contrast with the overall approach of youth in support of peace and environmental sustainability, the government is actively stepping‑up American‑style military recruitment with paid co‑op programmes at high schools (essentially training child soldiers) as well as mass advertising and campus recruitment supposedly offering free education. This is the solution to youth who cannot afford education, or even good housing, public transit or their own car. This is the message when children are being shot in high schools and volumes of hot air and paper are spent on addressing "gang violence."

     There are, however, growing signs of resistance as students begin to stand up and fight back against these attacks. This is a front‑line and often fluid, spontaneous and sometimes contradictory struggle, not always coordinated across the province except where organizations such as the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario get involved. It is expressed by students organizing queer proms and gay‑straight alliances despite harassment; in the songs of young hip hop artists, who are forming networks that are broadly progressive and often anti‑capitalist and anti‑imperialist; by the militancy of campaigns like No One Is Illegal, whose ranks are largely youth; by the discontent coming from trade union youth at conventions; by the new Committee for Just Education (fourteen of the CJE's members have been arrested because of a peaceful sit‑in at the President's Office for reduced fees, and we express our solidarity with these activists, who face strict bail conditions banning them from campus and from protest); by the announcement by the CFS that it will step‑up a broad drop‑fees campaign in the fall; and by the challenges to Codes of Conducts across Ontario campuses.

     And it is expressed by the recent growth of the YCL and our Party among youth, including the success of the $2 PV subscriptions, as well as Rebel Youth.

     Therefore, be it resolved that this convention recognizes the youth movement as a dynamic force in the movement for a better future, a struggle the CPC Ontario both identifies with and is part of, and salutes the youth who refuse to accept the ruling class agenda!