Hamiltonians have been rightfully and deeply concerned about the many anti-woke trustee candidates in our municipal election, Catherine Kronas and Larry Masters being the most vocal of the bunch.
The anti-woke movement in Canada has roots in and near total overlap with The Campaign Life Coalition and Parents as First Educators. Both organizations are pro-conversion therapy, anti-gender affirming care and go so far as advocating to force teachers to out students to their parents for socially transitioning.
Furthermore, the anti-woke movement is inherently anti-Black. Their tactic is to deny systemic racism exists and to profess colour-blindness.
There’s a pattern of behaviour which reveals the overt and covert anti-woke agenda in candidates. The use of words like “equality,” or “civilized,” to minimize the oppression of marginalized groups and the co-opting and misuse of Civil Rights language are examples of these patterns. Kronas as attempted to use the Civil Rights movement to try to discredit Critical Race Theory (CRT). And by CRT she means any honest, developmentally appropriate teachings about racism and anti-racism. Why does this distorting and tarnishing the language of the Civil Rights movement seem so familiar to those who have been watching the HWDSB closely?
Last year, Becky Buck had the audacity to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when attempting to defend her appointment as Vice Chair in the Bay Observer. While Becky Buck has been exposed and investigated multiple times for racist behaviour, literally at the board table, only recently were the dots connected between Buck and anti-woke when she was endorsed twice by anti-woke accounts. Buck has made zero attempt to distance herself from or denounce the anti-woke endorsement. At the time of writing, aside from Kronas, Masters and Buck, four (previously six) candidates in the public board alone have been endorsed by VoteAgainstWoke.ca.
We know that anti-woke candidates threaten the safety of the most underserved and vulnerablized of HWDSB students. We know that they support and work with incumbent trustees who hide their shared ideas and purpose.
The anti-woke candidates would bring a tsunami of antagonism and harm to HWDSB students, staff and communities. But it’s not enough to keep them away from the board table. The trustees we vote in must bring in equal measure of the opposite qualities and outcomes; integrity, collaboration and care. We need trustees who will create a culture of accountability and transparency, in the true sense of the words. Sabreina Dahab and Ahona Mehdi best exemplify these qualities.
Dahab and Mehdi prioritize real concerns impacting students and they offer research based and creative solutions. They bring imagination and illuminate possibilities. They each have long records of engaging, consulting and advocating with students, parents and school communities. Many other deserving and excellent candidates are running, but Ahona Mehdi and Sabreina Dahab bring something singularly valuable to board leadership.
Telling the truth about history, harm, privilege and power is actually an act of care. Students want to know the wrongs of history and of today and they want to end these wrongs and to repair the harms done. It’s not a kindness to deceive ourselves and our children and to pass the problems we have created or ignored repeatedly onto the next generation. True kindness and care is not always comfortable.
It’s time to be honest about how power operates in our school systems, who is served and who is harmed by the status quo. Anti-woke types will shapeshift into other iterations and update their cloaking devices but systemic oppression in the system will remain until we get serious about supporting courageous leadership that shows up with and for school communities.