Youth in Crisis: Capitalism only gives youth a bleak future
- Details
- Friday, 16 November 2012
- Jessica Cassell
A bleak future awaits today's youth as they are being forced to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis despite having had nothing to do with its creation. Youth are facing challenges today that are unprecedented in history and they are living less stable and secure lives than previous generations. While record amounts of wealth is being accumulated in private hands, and billions of public dollars are being handed out for bailouts and tax cuts to the banks and corporations who are responsible for the crisis, our generation is expected to live with increasing barriers to accessing post-secondary education and with fewer opportunities for secure employment. How can youth escape this crisis?
The common goal of every student and their representative union at this point in time should be the complete abolishment of tuition fees. 
The Quebec student movement has not just caught the imagination of youth and workers in Quebec and the rest of Canada — the movement is gaining support all over the world. Today, we publish a few reports and pictures from supporters of the 
We have received word that two student unions in Quebec have passed resolutions in support of the 
Some 300 students in Toronto came out in solidarity with the 250,000-strong demonstration in Montreal on Tuesday, 23rd May. The Toronto rally was spontaneously organized by a loose alliance of Ontario student activists who wished to demonstrate that Quebec students are not alone. This is a direct challenge to the attempts by the corporate-owned press and among pro-business politicians, especially in English Canada, to isolate Quebec students by labelling them as “entitled”. This point has been used to justify state repression. This demonstration served to cut across this isolation, and to show that students across Canada are willing to fight.
Last year the Occupy Wall Street movement took Canadian and American society by storm. However, the movement has seen a number of setbacks over the past few months. By marking the official date of “re-occupation” as May 1st, the Occupy movements in Toronto, New York, and other cities around the continent have chosen a symbolically significant date. In deciding to symbolically identify their call for re-occupation with May Day, perhaps the Occupy movement has learned that their struggle against the “1%” is the same struggle that the working class has been fighting against the bourgeoisie for more than a hundred years.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) local 3903, which represents teaching assistants, contract faculty, graduate assistants, and research assistants at York University, is once again being cornered into a strike position by the pro-business administration at the university. For years, the administration has been taking York University in a direction which has seen underpaid and overworked contract faculty and teaching assistants handling increased course loads and larger class sizes. These individuals now handle more than 50 percent of courses taught at the university. Aside from attacking the working and living standards of academic workers, this also depreciates the education of all students at York. Fightback fully supports the struggle of CUPE 3903 workers to fight for better working conditions, as well as the struggle for improved education for all.
As of 1st March, there are over 100,000 students across Quebec on an all-out unlimited strike against tuition increases. Over the course of March, there will be many days where new student associations join, or vote to join, this movement. So far, however, this demonstration of force and solidarity among students and against the policies of the provincial government has been ignored by the Quebec government; Education minister Line Beauchamp is urging schools to ignore the empty classrooms and picketing students. It is clear that the student movement must spread and become larger and more resounding. How it can do this, and be most effective, is an important question.
The University of Toronto has often prided itself on its prestigious status as a leading academic institution. Unfortunately, this does not mean that it has been willing to give its employees job security, decent pay, or healthy work conditions at the university. Teaching assistants, lab instructors, and a number of other academic staff are challenging these conditions of work, a struggle that we, as Fightback, wholeheartedly support.
Even following the removal of the Occupy Toronto camp at St. James Park, the bourgeois media continues to attack the #Occupy movement. In December, Fightback activists Farshad Azadian and Matt Gardner, both of whom actively participated at Occupy Toronto, appeared on CFRB NewsTalk 1010, a popular Toronto talk-radio station. They debate right-wing host Jerry Agar and discuss why movements like #Occupy have arisen.