Daniel Tarade Responds to Swansea Black Student Success Committee Survey
1. What plan do you have to protect and uplift Black students in the TDSB?
The history of the Canadian state is violent settler-colonialism, where the elite gained immense wealth from the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Black peoples, and the exploitation of all working people.
Systemic racism impacts present-day Canadian society. Generations of exploitation and oppression are statistically proven, with Black communities facing higher violence and poverty rates than White communities. Black people are more likely to be arrested and imprisoned; are more likely to die due to Covid-19 or during childbirth; and are more likely to be suspended from school and streamed into applied courses.
Addressing anti-Black racism requires confronting the systems that maintain and profit from oppression and exploitation. As a member of the Municipal Socialist Alliance, I vow to direct my energy toward anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-capitalist struggles.
First, the Toronto District School Board must disavow and actively oppose all colonial and imperial projects of the Canadian state, including Canadian mining companies profiting from the Tigrayan genocide in Ethiopia and the ecocide perpetrated against Afro-Indigenous communities in Central and South America; Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism in Palestine; and the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen. At home, the TDSB must actively support Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty struggles in Wet’suwet’en, Fairy Creek, Mi'kmaq, 1492 Land Back Lane, Wiigwaasikaa, and across Turtle Island. Solidarity knows no borders.
Second, school board trustees must join the broader struggle to defund, disarm, and disband the police. Policing across colonized Turtle Island traces back to slave patrols and militarized attacks on Indigenous people. Municipal, provincial, and federal police are not accountable to the communities they police and surveil. Police enforce laws written by the wealthy for the wealthy. I support the Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) demand and the 2017 TDSB decision to end the School Resource Officers (SRO) program.
Third, it is clear that the TDSB needs to develop and adopt a trauma-informed approach to address racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic incidents. Student groups like yours have repeatedly called out complicit administrators for not seriously addressing the systemic oppression embedded in the school system. With the full participation of students, particularly marginalized students, the TDSB must develop and implement a trauma-informed model of restorative justice that centers and protects victims of hate and aims to avoid retraumatization. The TDSB must also reallocate more funds to mental health support for all students, including funding for access to culturally-appropriate therapy and support. To this end, I support all outstanding demands of BLM-TO, including;
The implementation of anti-racist training to be mandated at all levels of the Toronto District School Board.
Creating community healing space for Black-identified students in TDSB schools who have experienced racist violence in the school board through harassment by staff and administration.
The creation of representative district-level advisory boards of Black parents, Black students, Black community members, and Black community organizers. Without the approval of these advisory boards, no Black student in the Toronto District School Board should face suspensions, expulsions, or placement in a behavioural or Section 23 program.
The creation of a Black students’ council to advise the board on issues such as:
anti-Black racism by staff and administration,
widespread student disengagement,
culturally inappropriate framing of the curriculum, and
standardized tests used by the Ministry of Education in Ontario.
Fourth, the school-to-prison pipeline must be attacked from both ends. The abolition struggle attacks the prison system, while the socialist fight against capitalist exploitation is necessary to combat poverty in our communities. Poverty, violence, and addiction emerge from the material state of poverty. When people lack affordable housing, access to transit and healthcare, ample nutritious foods, and well-paying job opportunities, communities begin to crumble. The solution is not more police, but the organization and mobilization of our communities to fight against the root cause of mass poverty: the ruling class making billions off of the labour of millions.
While capitalism does maintain systems of racism and oppression, the struggle against racism cannot be reduced to a class struggle. When people in our community suffer bigoted attacks, the best response is the mass mobilization of the community to combat hate - making it clear that racism will not be tolerated. To this end, I will work with and support student and parent groups mobilizing against racism by helping foster connections with the labour movement, anti-poverty organizers and encampment supporters to build solidarity.
If a student suffers a racist attack, students, parents, and workers must march together in solidarity against racism!
As a school board trustee, I will continue the work of organizing with students, parents, and community members against the structural causes of racism, exploitation, and oppression.
2. What work have you done to fight anti-Black racism?
Protested outside TPS 52 Division calling for the release of three BLM activists who dumped paint on the statues of John A. MacDonald and Egerton Ryerson (July 18, 2020).
Protested outside TPS 14 Division calling for the release of Land Back activists arrested by TPS (Sept. 16, 2021).
Joined encampment supports and resisted encampment evictions in Toronto.
Marched to defund, disarm, and disband the police.
Marched for justice for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, D'Andre Campbell, and all victims of police brutality.
Helped organize a “Peel Against Racism” rally in October 2020.
Helped organize a Toronto rally demanding that Canada stop supporting the Tigrayan genocide in November 2021.
Participated in the 2022 Scholar Strike and marched with three of my students (I teach in the Midwifery Department at Toronto Metropolitan University) in the “Reclaim! Abolition Tour Toronto 2022: A Walking Tour of Sites of Resistance to Carcerality and Police Violence.” We held the “No Pride in Policing” and “Midwives for Peace” banners.
I include material informed by critical race theory in my lectures.
I platform Black and Indigenous voices critical of Canadian imperialism and colonialism as a co-host for the Red Review podcast. For example, “Canadian Complicity in Tigrayan Genocide FT. Fifi of Tigrayan Advocacy Canada.”
As a member of the Municipal Socialist Alliance (MSA), I demand that the TPS budget be cut by at least 50%.
3. How can the TDSB better celebrate and showcase Black excellence?
The TDSB can better celebrate and showcase Black excellence by reallocating funds to support student groups like yours. I believe in direct democracy and empowering grassroots organizations.
Second, not only must the TDSB better celebrate Black excellence, they must end their celebration of racists and colonizers. In consultation with the community, they can rename schools like Queen Victoria Public School to celebrate the excellence of Black, Indigenous, and other oppressed peoples.
I also support four relevant BLM-TO demands that have yet to be addressed by the TDSB:
Financially prioritize community-determined initiatives to address the high push-out rates of Black students within the TDSB.
Appropriate allocation of material and human resources to the Africentric Alternative School, the Leonard Braithwaite Program at Winston Churchill Collegiate and the Africentric Program at Downsview Secondary School.
Adequate support (including financial aid) for any community-determined educational programs created to address the achievement gap for Black students in the Toronto District School Board.
Proper support of any community-determined educational programs prioritizing the emotional well-being of Black students, prioritizing programs with an intersectional lens addressing anti-Black racism in conjunction with colonialism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and other systemic oppressions that contribute to the violence inflicted on Black communities.
