posted on Canadian Dimensions
Recently, (as always) there has been much hullabaloo about the Canadian Federation of Students in the student media, as well as the usual suspects over at Macleans (here’s hoping the National Post somehow takes Macleans down with it). It’s mostly the usual stuff regarding disaffiliation campaigns, but with a twist this time. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t seem like it is just Tiny Tories anymore. A website titled Dear CFS appears to be run by a section of the Montreal radical left which is opposed to the CFS and actively working for disaffiliation campaigns. Signatoried to the letter include Yves Engler, author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. As someone who identifies as an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist if you want to get picky) and proudly carries my red card, yet is also active in my CFS-affiliated student union (to the point where I sometimes catch myself referring to it as “Local 103”), I find this interesting. I’m not sure I’m qualified to speak about all of their concerns because my experience with the student movement and the CFS is limited to the colonial backwater of Manitoba, but I think there are a few things which should be addressed here.
First, the CFS is far from perfect. Student union bureaucrats, especially at universities which have an active right, a history of right-wing governance, or a hostile student media, often fear conflict which could threaten the prospects of the re-election of a “progressive” slate and the self-preservation of any sort of official progressive politics at a university. They think that everyone is out to get them and to some extent they are right, as evidenced by the exposure of Tiny Tory plots over the years. However, this understandable paranoia can cause sections of the bureaucracy to start to become insular and bureaucratic, which results in some of the issues that we see in our student unions.
Also, despite what it says on my hoodie, there is a difference between the CFS and a student movement. The CFS is a bureaucratic (meant without any negative connotations) mass membership organization, somewhat analogous to a labour unions, with elected positions, an office, a big (by activist standards) budget, and a lobbying machine. While a student movement, where one has any presence, is a grassroots movement of students organizing in their spare time with every student an organizer – think SDS, or the Palestinian solidarity movement on campus. And as we all can figure out, a bureaucracy detached from a movement inevitably results in all sorts of issues. And perhaps the praxis of the CFS does need a lot of work. This is an organization that needs more organization at the bottom and to move a little from the liberal politics of awareness to the radical politics of disruption and fucking shit up.
All that said, there are things in this supposedly left critique which seriously need to be addressed.
The CFS has alienated real activists by highjacking our campaigns, stamping glossy brands on our hard work, and attracting bad press across the country. So here’s the truth. The real student movement can’t be put on a pin or a sticker, can’t be sold to us in a bus ad, and can’t hide behind superficial and obsolete rhetoric. The CFS has been a driving force behind the active and ongoing co-optation of legitimate social justice organizing for too long.
I haven’t really seen this happening. From “Drop Fees” to “No Means No” to “Target Poverty”, it seems as though rather than hijacking campaigns, the CFS is at the forefront of creating and pushing campaigns. I don’t think the CFS attracts bad press to external campaigns it signs on to, if anything, it grants them a bit of legitimacy, resources and muscle, and may generate some positive publicity or an increase in support for the issues on campus. In Manitoba, instead of attempting to co-opt social justice organizing, the CFS and local student unions are the only mass membership organizations really making an effort to mobilize their members or even lend some bureaucratic support for any sort of campaign these days (oh, the perils of having a “friendly government”). This might be different over in Montreal, but in my experience, I have seen the CFS take part in campaigns, but I have never seen them attempt to co-opt them.
sell shamelessly corporate CFS-Services contracts to our unions behind closed doors
As for CFS-Services, I don’t see any problem with student-run services, especially under the model they have with CFS-Services as a legally seperate branch of the CFS. In fact, I would say that students do benefit from some of these services, especially bulk buying and economies of scale. Incidentally, if I am not mistaken, all of the t-shirts ordered by the CFS or by individual student unions through their bulk buying programs are made by a worker co-op of single mothers in El Salvador – hardly the corporate behemoth that CFS-Services is portrayed as.
Moreover, we consider the adoption of progressive campaigns by the CFS deeply problematic regardless of whether or not we agree with their stance. The reason is simple: the CFS has a clear mandate to provide a voice for all students–on student issues–at the federal level, and no matter what we think about Palestine, copyright, gender, Cuba, abortion, or land claims it is unrepresentative to speak for all students on such divisive issues. Some of us have dedicated our lives to these causes, but it’s inappropriate for a federal lobby organization to adopt these campaigns while matters of urgent importance to all students (rising tuition, accessibility, corporate control of university bodies, declining subsidies) go completely untouched.”
Why should this be “deeply problematic”? First off, there are more to “student issues” than just the ones which are seen as directly affecting students. Attacks on students are just one part of something bigger, capital’s global offensive known as neoliberalism. We should be building coalitions and working in solidarity with people opposing an incredibly brutal intensification of the capitalist system around the world, not dismissing it as “unrepresentative”. The CFS is a civil society organization and a democratic organization of students. Why should it be prevented from taking stances on issues?
Also, copyright is a “student issue” (did I mention I hate this dichotomy of student issues and non-student issues?). We often come across it in our research, and the commodification of knowledge and culture has deep implications for any student doing any sort of research.
Furthermore, the CFS represents a broad cross-section of society – women, LGBT students, students of colour, aboriginal students, and international students from nations oppressed by global imperialism. It seems a little privileged to argue that the CFS, as their representative, should completely ignore their issues and refuse to take positions in support of their rights, especially given what myself and others have seen about the racist nature of our university.
It also seems awkward to complain about the CFS taking stances on issues such as gender when above the authors are complaining that “While quick to pay lip service to marginalized and disenfranchised communities, evidence of actual progress is hardly forthcoming.” The authors decry the CFS for not making progress, then complain about the CFS taking stands on these issues. Do they want this acutal progress or not?
It is also absurd to claim that it is inapproprate to claim that the CFS is adopting campaigns such as Palestinian solidarity. First off, only the CFS-Ontario has a position on Palestine. I wish the national CFS, my provincial wing, or my local student union did, but they don’t (I wrote about this issue a few months ago). Also, CUPE Ontario and CUPW have voted to endorse the BDS movement against Israel – would it be logically consistent for these activists to also call for a decertification of these unions on that basis? Are they opposed to CUPE Ontario and CUPW’s endorsement of the BDS movement as well? Also, as someone who has a bit of experience in the Palestinian solidarity movement, I was under the impression that one of the goals of the BDS movement was to get large organizations to sign on and use their political and economic clout to end apartheid in Israel. It seems absurd to me that any Palestinian solidarity activist would oppose a civil society organization representing hundreds of thousands of students signing on to a BDS campaign. If anything, this only advances the cause and should make genuine Palestinian solidarity activists happy.
Finally, to address the notion that these “matters of urgent importance to all students” are going untouched, that is flat out wrong. It is the absolute height of absurdity to claim that the tuition issue has gone untouched when it is pretty much the biggest thing the CFS has done last year, and the CFS has been routinely and unfairly criticized for focusing too much on tuition. Has the writer of this document ever seen this?
Some people may say that any “other” issues should be ignored until such time as the CFS has won on all the “core student issues”, but when you are a large civil society organization like a student union or a labour union, solidarity and coalition building is not something you maybe get around to at some point when everything is peachy, it is something that you make time for. If we all decided to stop doing solidarity work until we’ve sorted out our own issues, no solidarity work would ever get done.
All in all, the CFS is far from perfect and I am sympathetic to genuine left critiques of the organization. And I am very intrigued by radical student federations such as ASSÈ in Quebec. But all that aside, I think we’re better off with the CFS than without. If you’re going to convince me that opposition to the CFS is a left position, you’re going to need a lot more than recycled Tiny Tory talking points and a rejection of any sort of solidarity campaigns.
Brian Latour is a student, activist, and student activist living in Winnipeg.