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POD: GraceLife, carding, and Madu
76 Plays3 years ago
Ubaka Ogbogu, a law professor with the University of Alberta, joins us to discuss the monster Jason Kenney has created with Gracelife church, carding legislation introduced by the UCP, Justice Minister Kaycee Madu's extraordinary and now-deleted statement about him and much more.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey folks, you're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network, and just a quick message before we get to the show. We're one of several very awesome left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and a new episode that I want to recommend is the latest from the fine folks at the Alberta Advantage. The team investigate the economic and political forces behind Alberta's rat-free status and explore the consequences of what this kind of ecosystem management means. And that's the kind of content you'll get at Harbinger.
00:00:27
Speaker
rat-free, but also a content that challenges corporate and liberal media dominance with a political point of view that you will not find anywhere else. Get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, on to the show.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Ubaka Ogbogu
00:00:55
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skaigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory. And joining us today is Dr. Ubaka Ogbogu, a law professor with the University of Alberta, and really just a tremendous person and a tremendous follow on Twitter. If you're not following Ubaka, you should. Ubaka, welcome to the pod. Thanks, Duncan. I'm happy to be here. You're too kind. Thank you for having me on.
Public Health Order Violations Discussion
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, we've chatted before on background for stories I've been working on, and the reason why I reached out originally is to talk about the carding legislation that the UCP just dropped. But there has just been some extra banana bonkers shit that we just have to talk about first.
00:01:42
Speaker
And that is the events going on at Grace Life, or as some smart Twitter user has called it, Graveside Church, and I'm appropriating that, as well as the Max Bernier rally that happened yesterday outside the legislature. And just a bit of context, we saw around 300, 400 people outside of Grace Life Church protesting that it was
Critique of RCMP's Response to Protests
00:02:05
Speaker
shut down. It was shut down because they obviously have repeatedly
00:02:09
Speaker
not followed public health orders about capacity and masking. They didn't follow rules for months and they were finally shut down just a couple weeks ago. Again, a few hundred people came out to see Max Bernier and a bunch of people rail against vaccines and the general government approach to ... The government of Alberta's wholly inadequate approach to containing COVID-19.
00:02:34
Speaker
And I think we have to start off by really appreciating the Zen Lake calm and dedication to de-escalation that the RCMP brought to Grace Life Church over the weekend as those protesters screamed in their faces and tore down a fence. You know, I saw you were tweeting about this, especially in the context of like the broader issue of policing. And I guess my first question to you, Ibaka, is like,
Systemic Racism in Policing: Can Training Help?
00:03:02
Speaker
Why is training never going to be enough when it comes to making policing a less violent and less racist institution? Well, the, the first reason I think it's never going to be enough is that it's never been enough. Um, it, this is not the first time some reformer has suggested that what we need to do with policing is train police to be better.
00:03:27
Speaker
training initiatives have been tried before. And there's always this assumption or claim that is made whenever police do something bad that, oh, it's because they lack training and now we need to go train them again. But that's a bad claim. I mean, of course, obviously, nobody will deny that.
00:03:51
Speaker
training is important for any profession. But there's always sort of this, it's almost like there's a deficit in our thinking. If they do something bad today, the first thing we go to is train them. And then there's always training initiatives and something bad happens again.
00:04:09
Speaker
And we keep returning to that. And I think what the Grace Life situation shows is that at least when it comes to things like how you do crowd control, how you conduct yourself as a force when it comes to protests and when it comes to de-escalation as it relates to those protests, what we saw with Grace Life Church is just a searing hypocrisy in terms of how the police
00:04:39
Speaker
responded to that compared to how they responded to say the Black Lives Matter protests, which were peaceful. And that tells you that at least with respect to that, training is not the issue. They seem to know what to do. The problem is that they don't do it when it's setting kinds of people or setting kinds of communities involved. And to put the matter very starkly,
00:05:09
Speaker
police find their training when it's white people. And if it's black, indigenous or racialized people, they seem
00:05:20
Speaker
to forget the training and engage in this tactics, which just shows fundamentally that they, as a force, as an institution, have a problem with these communities that is not a matter of training. And it's the failure to address what that deeper problem is, what that broader, more systemic issue is that gets people like me really pissed when we see things like this.
00:05:47
Speaker
I mean, yes, clearly police have the capacity to understand that de-escalation is good and that de-escalation works. They just are simply not interested in using it when it comes to black and brown racialized communities. I mean, this question is a cliche at this point, but it is a cliche because it is true, right? Like what do we think would have been the police reaction if it was black or indigenous people tearing down a fence and violating public health orders?
00:06:15
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think we have evidence of that reaction. You know, there's all these videos we see all the time posted on the internet, numerous reports that have been written about this, you know, how we've seen police intervention then lead to an escalation of what is a peaceful event. There's so many ways.
00:06:41
Speaker
We've seen this. I don't think anyone who denies that there's not a stark difference in the reaction to black, indigenous, and non-directionalized persons compared to white persons when they're out and about their business, that person is just willfully blind. It is very clear that we wouldn't get the kind of reaction we saw with Grace Life Church if
00:07:06
Speaker
This was something that was being done by racialized persons. If racialized persons decided to flout public health rules, the type of enforcement that they will engage in will be vicious. And they will definitely not go in there, you know, arms akimbo, letting people go about their business. And it's not just the police. You have to think about the fact that the police works in an institutional context.
00:07:35
Speaker
where they receive messages from the government, for example. And what we've seen coming from the provincial government is a clear intent to treat racialized persons as if they are the other. And when racialized persons want to speak out and protest things that are happening to them, the government has unleashed legislation on them
00:08:00
Speaker
that treats what they're doing as criminal activity or public offense and something that they will, as we've heard the Premier say, bring down the arm of the law, the strong arm of the law on them. And then you see the opposite when it comes to white people protesting public health regulations and sensible public health regulations at that.
00:08:29
Speaker
Public health regulations that suck and are not nearly enough. That's true, but it is sensible in the sense that for what it's worth. If you're saying let's place restrictions on churches,
00:08:46
Speaker
Look, I am not going to say and say, look, all the public health regulations that have been put out so far, you know, I think for the most part, they do suck. But in terms of the restrictions put on churches, if they even followed that, every little bit helps, right? I think the government has done a really poor job in terms of managing the pandemic. They've sent mixed messages. They've not been able to use
00:09:13
Speaker
whatever tools they have in the arsenal to try and put a stop to the spread of COVID-19 and its impact on our community.
Government's Pandemic Policy & Public Unrest
00:09:23
Speaker
But at the same time, with respect to saying to these churches, we place restrictions on you, we try to create a balance here, I think that's actually sensible. If only they followed it, right? And to not follow it, to me, just seems ridiculous.
00:09:41
Speaker
I mean, they are facing less restrictions than many of us. For example, somebody who lives alone faces
00:09:51
Speaker
more severe restrictions in terms of their movement compared to persons who can in fact conduct their business from anywhere and not within the four walls of a church. So I think even considering that these restrictions don't go as far as they could go, it's just been ridiculous to see people
00:10:14
Speaker
try to flout them and then to see this reaction from the government, where the government is, that is very, very muted and where the government is, you know, not enforcing the police is not reacting or, you know, reacting in a way that shows, like I said before, just searing hypocrisy in terms of how they handle that compared to how they handle, say, situations involved in racialized persons.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, Jason Kenny has created a monster here, right? He is molly coddled and kind of treated with kid gloves, these COVID deniers, these anti-maskers, these anti-vaxxers. And as a result, you see what we saw this weekend and what we saw on Monday. And I think it's worth just like, there's a bit of audio from the Max Bernier rally that I think is worth just playing to understand what we are dealing with. And here's what it sounds like.
00:11:13
Speaker
When they're chanting about just saying no, they're talking about vaccines.
00:11:47
Speaker
And just for context, when they're talking about who they're locking up, they want to lock up Dr. Dina Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health. That is what Jason Kenny has created by again, not by treating these people with the kids' gloves that he is treating them with. It's been a long period of time with this pandemic. People are understandably fatigued.
00:12:16
Speaker
Confusion that's coming from the way it's being managed by the government is enough to get people all riled up and get frustrated. No side is happy. We have to acknowledge that. No side is happy.
00:12:27
Speaker
And when I say aside, I mean, you know, people who want restrictions and people who don't want restrictions. And that's understandable because the provincial government has done a really poor job of managing this. It's also good to make clear that people do have a right to protest public health restrictions that they see as ineffective. And that's really key.
00:12:48
Speaker
they see the public health restrictions as ineffective because the provincial government has played into that narrative by not actually taking a firm stand one way or the other in a bid to, I suppose, not deal with the pandemic because they are trying to pander to this particular group of persons. They have now ended up annoying this particular group of persons who are now protesting. The real issue, I think, is this.
00:13:17
Speaker
is that when they then see these reactions, there's no clear enforcement from government and no clear response to people about how they're supposed to react in this kind of context. This rally is the product of government not having a clear stance on the pandemic. And this put that out there protesting
00:13:45
Speaker
and saying all of these things, we can view them as, okay, these are people who obviously not into public health, people who are bad people, who might call them Trumpists and all that. By the end of the day, we really have to put the blame where the blame is. The blame is the provincial government that has done a start-stop, start-stop, start-stop then, and ultimately has now succeeded
00:14:11
Speaker
in getting people on both sides really frustrated. And I know maybe that's not the kind of answer that people want to hear from someone like me, but I really do believe that. I think this lies squarely with the provincial government and we shouldn't draw a connection to say things like carding and that doesn't have anything to do with
Carding vs Street Checks: Any Real Difference?
00:14:33
Speaker
this. I think the police, I actually don't support the police brutalizing anyone. I think there's a hypocrisy that is inherent in the way they deal with
00:14:42
Speaker
to white people at this protest and what they do, racialized persons, but I don't support them beating up white people either. Let me be very clear about that. I am not equal. Well, I think I should be clear that I don't support that either. The conversation around carding, the conversation around street checks is one that is fraught and one that police have spent a lot of time and effort trying to stage manage, and this government is doing
00:15:06
Speaker
this exact same thing. And whether or not protesters are being carded, I obviously don't think that should happen. But again, police people can be carded on the street or have street checked on the street for any fucking reason. So it's again, I don't want it to happen to anyone. But again, you don't hear or see any reports and it's not shocking that police are not carding or street checking white people. But this is the segue into the new legislation that just runs in regards to carding that the UCP
00:15:35
Speaker
have recently introduced. And you've studied it quite closely. You've studied this issue quite closely for some time. I thought this was all settled months ago. The UCP claim to have banned carding with some regulations, they said, oh yeah, you can't card anymore, but street checks are good. And so we fixed the law and you can't do it anymore. But apparently it wasn't clear enough and they've introduced this new legislation.
00:16:01
Speaker
Why don't you start by perhaps explaining the difference between carding and street checks and then diving a bit into the legislation? Sure. What I'm actually not going to do is to try and define these terms because I think that's where the problem lies.
00:16:23
Speaker
when we focus on definitions and trying to determine what the two of them mean. Because what definitions do is definitions summarize a world that is not real. So I'm going to approach it more from the perspective of what those two things actually are in the lives of racialized persons. But let me explain very quickly what those two things are supposed to be. So street checks.
00:16:48
Speaker
It's a term that captures the idea that the police can go into the community and simply observe the streets. It's quite literal. They can observe the streets. So they can observe things like, you know, there's a stray dog over there, and then they make a note of it. Stray dog returned it to the owner.
00:17:07
Speaker
You know, we stopped, somebody had a traffic light because we were running the light and we found that the person had a gang tattoo, so we're taking a note of that. So it's just worth observing the streets. Now we can talk about.
00:17:22
Speaker
why in a society like ours we need police going around observing things like that. It goes back in history to when the police was used to fish out Bolsheviks and pro-Nazi people, and then it sort of evolved into, so it was the idea that the police have a right to be in the street checking things. Now, what it's not is the police actually responding to a possible crime. That's not the same thing.
00:17:50
Speaker
you know, routine stuff that they do where they go about checking the streets. Carding is the type of street check. It's the type of street check where the police randomly and arbitrarily stops a person and collects their personal information, right? So that's sort of how this is supposed to be.
00:18:15
Speaker
Now, like I said, definitions don't work for me here. The real gist of this is that when it comes to racialized persons, to Black, Indigenous, and other racialized persons, these two terms, the meanings, merge. The only formal street check that police do with racialized persons is what we call carding. Essentially, stop them.
00:18:42
Speaker
where they're not committing a crime, they're not suspected of committing a crime, there's no reasonable basis to stop them and then collect the information and attend to a database which leads to more policing. And so that's one part of it we have to really sort of note. The second thing is among police forces, they are not even clear on the difference between street checks and carding.
00:19:10
Speaker
what they call carding, when it became something that they couldn't say or stand behind anymore, they changed the name of that. All police forces have different, it goes by different names in different forces. They call it by different names. Sometimes they call it a street check. They call it surveillance. They rename it, but the idea is basically the same. When they are checking streets, they check only certain kinds of streets.
00:19:40
Speaker
So they check on certain kinds of neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, they are not returning straight dogs to their owners. They are basically stopping people who they have no reason to stop and collecting information from them. Now, what the legislation, this bill that has been introduced does is try to play on the meaning of these words and try to create a distinction between carding, which is this random and arbitrary stop of a person.
00:20:11
Speaker
to collect information from them and this idea of checking the streets just to see what's happening. But what the two things have in common is that the police don't have any basis to be doing either, right? And one is just the sort of the other. And when it comes to the kind of communities where they actually do this and the people they do it to, it makes no difference. So let's say the police is in a neighborhood that is heavily policed.
00:20:41
Speaker
and they see someone walking by, this person is black or indigenous, right? And then they decide that they have reason to stop this person and that they're doing a street check for whatever reason. Yeah, they can make up a reason. They can make up a reason, right? It could be, you know, you looked at your officer the wrong way, or you're hanging around, you know, a 7-Eleven, for example,
00:21:11
Speaker
Uh, yeah. Lordering, mash a description. Right. They can come up with anything. Let's say that's what's happening. The minute they approach you, even before they approach you, you're no longer a free person. You're somebody who now because of the color of your skin or because of your race now has to do with an officer. Now how you respond to them can actually be the issue. So if he says to them, leave me alone. I'm just going to buy my business.
00:21:41
Speaker
they can interpret that as you're being rude. That then leads them to find some kind of thing that they call reasonable cause to be able to come after you. But even before you enter the streets, and a lot of Black and Indigenous folk can attest to this, before you even leave your house, you live in fear of being stopped by police. It doesn't matter whether it's a street check or it's a garden. It is a fear you live with if you live in certain neighborhoods and certain communities.
00:22:12
Speaker
in the city. And that's the problem. People like to define these things like they're different. But in reality, there's no difference. And even the police do not know the difference. Maddow's legislation attempts to, you know, make the two terms seem different. Says Cardin is when they stop you randomly for no reason, right?
00:22:41
Speaker
And then it says street checks is when they stop you to collect information for the
Legislation and Racial Profiling
00:22:46
Speaker
following reasons. And the very first one is crime prevention activities. What is that? What is a crime prevention activity?
00:22:56
Speaker
Well, they suspect that this black or brown person may commit a crime in the future, so they have to talk to them. Right. So how is that different from Cardin? I mean, crime prevention activity is the most, it sounds like the kind of thing, like people said, you hear minority reports, like pre-crime. What is that? What is a crime prevention activity?
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, cops don't prevent crime. I mean, that's the easy thing. Even if they do, what has to trigger that? I mean, I think the minister needs to explain what needs to trigger a crime prevention activity. So it could be, is it, I don't even know, I can't even find an example in my head, right? So maybe they see you and your friends gathered, maybe let's even sort of take a next, maybe you're smoking pot with your friends outside.
00:23:49
Speaker
And is that it? I mean, what crime is what crime is at the back of it? Right. Yeah, that's legal now. Yeah, I mean, they can't even harass people about that. What crime is about or maybe you know, you you let's say you're like driving a vehicle and you're kind of playing music loud, right? What crime is behind that?
00:24:13
Speaker
So I don't understand what a crime prevention activity is. And all it does is give police. So they can actually manufacture reasons for the stop after the fact. They can manufacture reasons for the stop while dealing with you. But what is most frustrating about this is that street checks or whatever you want to call it only happens in certain communities.
00:24:44
Speaker
I'd like to see people who live in the posh neighborhoods in Edmonton explain to me how many times they've seen police checking their streets. I'd also like to know whether these people think that what makes their community safe is the presence of police checking the streets. Communities are safe.
00:25:15
Speaker
because people have social supports, all their needs, and in the affluent communities, the safety is just built in. And in these communities that are over policed, we fail to acknowledge that what we have is a failure of policy, a failure to support people
00:25:42
Speaker
Nobody is born a criminal. And the lack of social supports is what leads certain communities to have these things that we then focus on as crime. And for all the time we've been doing street checks, street checks go back a long time. For all the time we've been doing it, why have we not stopped crime?
00:26:10
Speaker
I mean, that is the hilarious thing when you do ask for examples of how street checks have prevented crime. And it's like, well, back in 1992, like their examples are so infinitesimal, especially compared to the amount of street checks that they have done over the past 20, 30 years. Like we are talking about hundreds of thousands of these illegal and unconstitutional interactions, in my view. And I'm not a lawyer, but they certainly seem
00:26:37
Speaker
to be unreasonable detention of people. And then they've got like, oh yeah, one time, one time we stopped a crime. It was like, okay, right. So, so what? Yeah. And it seems like our justice minister Casey Medue is really just introducing a legal framework so that Cardin can continue just as it ever did. Precisely. And that's what I think, you know,
00:27:04
Speaker
is the problem, is that he's taking with one hand, he's giving with one hand and taking with the other. He's trying to get recognition and acclaim for stopping carding. Police forces around the country have said years ago that they no longer do carding. Edmonton Police will tell you that years back they've stopped doing carding. But the police believes in this thing they call street checks.
00:27:34
Speaker
Now, if you dig into street checks, police officers actually get rewarded for doing street checks, right? Their performance, their job performance, merit, promotion relies on the ability to be able to log this information. Now, keep in mind, and this is really important to make clear, they are not collecting information from persons who are committing a crime. That's not what this is about. They are also not collecting information from persons
00:28:04
Speaker
who are suspected of committing a crime. They are stopping and collecting information from persons who are ordinary citizens going about their business. And what they then do is engineer reasons to demarcate what they are trying to do from the thing that they said they're no longer going to do, which is carding. So the reasons they engineer, like I said before,
00:28:35
Speaker
is what we now have hidden on that is minority report type phrases like crime prevention activities. And if you look at the statistics, I know you guys have published statistics before of who's affected by this. It is largely racialized persons. White people are crowded sometimes too, but it is largely racialized persons. I think indigenous women are suddenly
00:29:06
Speaker
biggest category, you know, they harass. Yeah. Nine times more likely to be harassed or sorry, carded than, than white women. Right. Yeah. We dug up these, we dug up these stats with Bishop Mohammed a few years ago. I dug up Lethbridge, he dug up Edmonton and yeah, they're incredibly stark, black and indigenous people are incredibly more likely to be carded just based on their own, their own stats. Right. And what's really, what's really sad about this is Madhu has a real opportunity here. The minister has a real opportunity here to actually
00:29:38
Speaker
reverse course and get a handle on this problem. For a minister who himself is racialized, his focus, I think, should be on creating a system that serves racialized persons as well as it serves the white person who lives in Glenora or Forest Heights.
00:30:09
Speaker
That's what his aim should be. He should be wanting to see the numbers of racialized persons in the criminal justice system go down. He should be wanting to see that his child and my child can walk the streets or that we can let them walk the streets without fear that we're gonna get a call saying they've done something wrong. That's what he should be wanting to create. And to me, half measures like this are not nearly enough.
00:30:36
Speaker
We can get lost in the semantics of what street checks and what's carding. Point of fact is to racialized persons, there is no difference. And to the police, they don't know the goddamn difference.
00:30:51
Speaker
And Madhu has been justice minister since August of last year. That's when he was brought in as justice minister. When he was brought in, he immediately said, he called the push to defund the police ridiculous. He has quotes where he's like, he has said, I've had nothing but friendly encounters with the police and he has the utmost respect for officers.
00:31:12
Speaker
Quote, the justice system had been applied in a way that negatively targets minority communities. Madhu said he now has the opportunity to deal with those issues as a justice minister and solicitor general. I mean, you've been paying close attention to this and Madhu's performance for the past nine months. Is there anything that makes you believe that he has been dealing with the issue of violent racing policing since he has been brought in as justice minister?
Justice Minister's Role in Policing Issues
00:31:36
Speaker
No, I'm sad to say, but I think it's actually made matters worse.
00:31:41
Speaker
Because it's one thing to not stop police from harassing racialized persons. It's another to actually rail against racialized persons who are trying to change the system and to undermine the cause for persons who are advocating
00:32:10
Speaker
for what is better treatment of racialized persons. His actions and words with respect to the Black Lives Matter movement, to defund the police movement are just disappointing. He doesn't seem to understand what these things represent and what they mean.
00:32:36
Speaker
I mean, he's soft-taken his law and order approach where he's brought into the notion that police keep communities safe and that because they do, they can acquire
00:32:58
Speaker
a ton of social capital, probably more social capital than any other institution in our society. And that police can spend that social capital without checks as they wish. And this is a fundamental problem. Look, being in the police is a job. It's a job that the community needs. But the police does enjoy a ton of social capital.
00:33:28
Speaker
and very little accountability for that social capital. And because it's made up, it's a human institution, they will spend freely and abuse the abundance of riches that they enjoy in the form of social capital. And as a justice minister, his job is to make sure that they do not. And as a black justice minister, it is particularly incumbent on him to ensure
00:33:58
Speaker
that they don't spend that to the detriment of people like him. That's the kind of, that when I look at him as a black person, that's what I expect of him. It's not an easy position to get into. And it's one where I know it's unfair to say, you know, look, Maddow carries the burden of saving black people, but it is what it is. He's there now. And it's his job to not make matters worse. To say things like defund the police,
00:34:28
Speaker
I don't know why he wouldn't support that. I don't know why he wouldn't support not allowing police to do the jobs that are not well equipped to do. I don't know why he wouldn't support moving money into raising the lives of persons who are like him. You know, I suppose there's a point where you get to where you're able as a racialized person.
00:34:58
Speaker
to insulate yourself from the things that many racialized persons face in our city. You know, it's possible to get to the point where you only have pleasant interactions with police. But your singular experience is clearly not and obviously not the experience of many in the city. And then, you know,
00:35:27
Speaker
reason from that single experience to me just shows a feeling of imagination and it's a gross disappointment in my view.
00:35:35
Speaker
You have, you know, tussled with Madhu before. You have been a vocal critic of him online in your writings. And there was an exchange that I think is worth bringing up simply for how extraordinary it was, which was, you know, you tweeted at him about, Casey Madhu had published a video about the curriculum
00:36:02
Speaker
And you had a Twitter thread about this. And the Twitter thread, I'll just read from the first one here. Quote, the tokenization of a black MLA is evident here. It is telling that Casey Medue, the justice minister, is the one who is defending the curriculum and specifically referencing a lie about it, about how it is an anti-racist curriculum. Even more sad that he let himself be tokenized.
00:36:24
Speaker
And you kind of go on to talk about, you know, how the UCP are despicable, why isn't the education minister the one standing up and defending it? Do you stand behind those statements? Of course. He's the minister of justice. This is not his file. And it's not the first time he's being used in this way. And, you know, in his defense, this is something that white will actually do.
00:36:50
Speaker
You know, the only black person in my faculty, for example, and I have first situations where people actually sort of put on my shoulders something that they feel I am the best face for it. I faced this situation in the past, for example, and I'm not gonna name names here, but where, you know, someone very important in my faculty approached me to move emotion on something
00:37:19
Speaker
that was being sold to immigrants and persons who are likely to be racialized students. And I rejected that. And that's kind of what I saw in Madhu's actions in recording that video. He's not his file. He's not Idrena Lagrange. He's not Jesse Kenny. You know, there's a ton of other, he's not Lila here.
00:37:46
Speaker
There are a ton of other white MLAs who could have been asked to record that video. But he did it. And he focused on the claim that the curriculum was anti-racist, right? I mean, it's so obvious.
00:38:10
Speaker
why he was made to record that video. And it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing when the only black MLA in the caucus is being made to record a video defending something that has no business defending and making claims that I'm pretty sure he does not actually believe himself. Anyone with a brain who reads that curriculum knows it's a racist curriculum.
00:38:39
Speaker
So to claim it's anti-racist is utterly ridiculous. But be that as it may, he records this video. And what I would like for him to do is to actually respond by saying, this is not how it happened. I defended the curriculum for these reasons. I would have liked him to answer the charge that I made that this is not his portfolio. I don't see Tyler Chandra
00:39:09
Speaker
or Adrenaline Lagrange defending the card in so-called street checks bill. I don't see them speaking up about it. So I'd like him to explain that. Instead, he goes and does a personal attack, which I suppose with UCP MLAs is never too far. It's kind of expected reaction because
00:39:37
Speaker
they lack a sort of basic common sense and they're unable to restrain themselves from going personal, even though they're in a public office and they should understand that when they're there, people are going to criticize what they do.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just worth saying out loud what Casey Medew, he responded to you and then quickly deleted the tweet, but it was of course captured because the internet never forgets. But here's Casey Medew's response, just so people know what the hell we're talking about. Quote, for the first and last time I will respond to you, you represent only the interests of the entitled and triggered white leftists who have zero interests in the black community. You represent their selfish, ideological and electoral interests. Interests the black community gets it, unquote.
00:40:27
Speaker
Congratulations, you are now an entitled and triggered white leftist, or at least you represent us. Yeah, welcome, welcome to. Yeah, it's it's it's actually, you know, it's such a wild accusation. You know, he, I don't even know what to say to that. It's, it's very clear that this is the only thing he has. And I think he he's doing that sort of
00:40:57
Speaker
characterize me in a certain way for the benefit of whatever audience he thinks he's selling that to. If I did in fact deem this as a political thing, and I think that's what he's hinting at here is that for me it's political. If I didn't do it as a political thing, I will get into politics and I'm not even a member of a political party in Alberta.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I care about this issue because I have followed the issue closely. I've been to events in the city where members of our community talk about the experiences we're caught in. And these events leave you in tatters when you hear about people's experiences in the city, when you hear about what racialization does to someone in the city.
00:41:48
Speaker
And as somebody who has some sort of audience, I don't view this matter as political. I view it as informing people about what black people and what indigenous people and other racialized persons face in this community. I view it as necessary work, as work that we have to do as persons who have somehow managed to reach a position that most racialized persons don't reach to no fault of theirs. I view it as a responsibility to use my voice
00:42:17
Speaker
to say these things. And even when I make claims that seem jarring and to his mind unfounded, his responsibility is to respond to those claims by setting me straight. He can't go personal or make up things like, oh, I represent white leftists. That is just, you know, I don't know what to say to that. It's ridiculous and it's silly. In many ways, it doesn't even deserve comment.
00:42:48
Speaker
What he ought to do is respond to it, and I'm happy to meet him anywhere he wants, and we can talk about it. We can talk about what kind of message he's sending when he records a video saying a curriculum that has been panned widely by everyone who has read it, a curriculum that does not in any way center racialized persons
00:43:18
Speaker
and the experiences and one that in fact will deepen the issues that we face and that exposes our children to systems of thought that do not in any way accommodate our values and our perspectives. I'd like to see him come out and defend that and stop resorting to his usual, oh, the leftists are here. It's idiotic.
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Madhu has a history of making outlandish claims, one of which was that it was the NDP conspiring with BLM to keep him away from the mic at a Black Lives Matter rally, which is preposterous on its face. I mean, you brought it up though, so I do have to ask, do you want to run against Casey Madhu in the next election? No, I do not have any interest whatsoever in entering politics.
00:44:15
Speaker
Um, in fact, I just wanted to get that on the record because he brought it up and you brought it up. So I figured I'd ask, you know, and I should explain that, you know, once and for all, I, you know, look. One can, you know, hubris, you can sort of get a, a sense of your own self importance and then decide to, to do things. And I've thought about this matter. You know, I, I've thought about even on the best view of it, going out there, uh, to try.
00:44:43
Speaker
and be part of the conversation and to try and bring about change. And as you start to look into it, and I start to think about it, you cannot realize one thing. Politics is for persons who are politicians. And you have to be somebody who is willing to, I suppose,
00:45:11
Speaker
toward the party line, the way we practice it in Canada. You have to be willing to sort of work with others, I suppose, on the best view of it to achieve certain things. And you have to be able to align yourself with things that may not even be the things that interest you. And this is the best view of it. And I've kind of sort of decided that for me, there are fundamentally certain things that I care about right now
00:45:39
Speaker
that neither political party is paying enough attention to. It makes more sense for me to sit on the sidelines and watch their actions and point out to them that are not paying attention to these things than to get into the fray and then be forced to shut up about the things that they don't want to talk about. And I'm saying this because I think both political parties are quite guilty of ignoring many of the issues that affect racialized persons in our province.
00:46:07
Speaker
Oh yeah. I mean, it was hilarious to see the NDP outflanked on carding by the UCP of all political parties. Just, they just didn't do anything for their four years in office and then the UCP did something and the something isn't very good, but it is, they at least talked about it and they said it was bad. Well, no, I don't think the UCP actually did anything. What they've done, they haven't changed anything. What they've done actually is try to score political points by pretending to do something. But I agree with you completely. I was at a carding event a few years back.
00:46:37
Speaker
when the NDP was in government. And I recall Desmond Cole was visiting and was at the University of Alberta. Yeah, we brought him there. We were probably there as well. And at some point, he placed a call to the justice minister at the time. I think it was Katlyn Gunley, I believe.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yes, Kathleen. And, you know, said, look, you've got to do something about this. And the NDP did not do anything about it. So I am not entering politics to the part of some, you know, system that does not care deeply about the pain of racialized people. I don't care whether it's not caring light or not caring heavy. It's just not caring. And I'd rather sit on the sidelines
00:47:31
Speaker
and yell as loud as I can in the hopes that someone will hear, and not just people in politics, that the so-called allies will hear that people who hate Black people will hear. Anyone who's listening should at least hear and understand that the journey that racialized people are taking through this province is not an easy one. And now until we actually start to care about the problems that they face,
00:48:00
Speaker
We're not gonna create a kind of community where we actually feel like we're doing something, we're moving ahead.
00:48:11
Speaker
Okay. Well, I have no good segue into this question, but when I put out on Twitter, Hey, is there anything you want to ask? Uh, one of the DMS I got was about a thing, a story that's been going around
Impact of Proposed Tuition Increase at U of A
00:48:22
Speaker
recently. And that is of a massive, a proposed 45% tuition increase to the U of A law program. You are a professor, a law professor at the U of A, you know, I've seen Avanish Nanda friend of the show kind of talking to this about on his Twitter account.
00:48:37
Speaker
What is your take on this proposed 45% tuition increase? Oh, boy. Okay, so I'm going to be very frank about this since you've put the question to me. I'm a faculty member and I don't want this to be interpreted as disrespect for anyone or me.
00:49:04
Speaker
You know, I worked there. So let me attempt an answer here. I got a law degree on tuition that is less than $200. I got a PhD and, you know, through my graduate education to a PhD, I never paid more than $3,000 in tuition.
00:49:32
Speaker
it is difficult for me to accept any tuition increase as warranted or sensible. I in fact think education should be free. So I fundamentally do not support tuition increases. But I do have to say that as I understand it, this is a problem
00:50:03
Speaker
that is created by how we fund post-secondary education in the province. And what's interesting about institution increase is that the government is making it seem as if it's not about that. They're saying, you know, make a case for it and tell us how, what value that increase is gonna bring. My sense is
00:50:35
Speaker
It is not right to make students be at the burden of something that improves us as a society. And I think it's gonna create real issues for access to legal education. Yeah, if just the rich get to be lawyers and then you could only pay off your
00:51:00
Speaker
Or say you're not rich and you get out, you get, you go through law school and you become a lawyer and you have the six figure fucking debt hanging around your neck. What kind of law do you think you're going to practice when you get out of law school in order to pay off that monstrously large student debt, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the problem. Like I said, you know, my, my general personal position on this is as always being that any society that
00:51:31
Speaker
is what its weight in gold or whatever the expression is, should be educating its citizens for free. Because education brings so much value to our community and people give back when they're educated to the community in ways that multiply whatever it is that a society put into it. It's an investment in the future of our society.
00:52:00
Speaker
you know, to put that burden on students is not something I support. That's not to say, you know, that there might not be reasons why the faculty feels the need to increase tuition. I just don't support tuition increases personally of any kind. It's just not, you know, like I said, it'd be hypocritical for me to do so. I got a PhD
00:52:24
Speaker
on $3,000. So it'd be critical for me to say tuition increases are a good thing. And I just don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it should be necessarily one that rests on students.
00:52:40
Speaker
No, I mean the solution is to have a government that properly funds post-secondary institution. It doesn't force faculties to do this because the UCP have gutted. And not just the UCP, government after government here in Alberta has kind of
00:52:54
Speaker
gone after post-secondary education. And we've talked about it on this show. It's for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is that post-secondary students, they're young, they're not engaged, they don't vote in high numbers, they're not wealthy, they're not a political constituency that has much power, and they're also just not organized.
00:53:14
Speaker
You know, graduate students are simply the student unions and the student activist movement in this province is pitiful. And as a result, students just continually get rolled by conservative government after conservative government and costs are just downloaded onto them and tuitions are raised and things are cut, buildings get torn down, et cetera, et cetera. Like I remember the very first budget
00:53:39
Speaker
the UCP dropped. There's just simply breathtaking drops in the amount of money invested in the infrastructure, the actual buildings on campuses. These buildings are just going to wither and eventually fail and have to be torn down because the governments at the time did not decide that it was worth enough money simply to keep them standing and investing just the bare minimum of maintenance and
00:54:05
Speaker
and capital investment to keep these things standing. It is shocking. The student unions and the students who are out there, you need better representation and you need to get organized because things like this are going to continue to happen if
Student Activism and Funding Cuts
00:54:21
Speaker
you don't. I agree completely with that, with all you've said. In fact, one of the things that surprised me when I moved to Canada, when I came here for my master's degree,
00:54:31
Speaker
One of the things that surprised me is, as you said, just sort of a fairly muted level of student activism in the province. It's in many ways not a thing. I went to university in a very activist culture. There was always someone with a megaphone standing on some makeshift
00:54:56
Speaker
stand or podium just blasting out information about what's right and wrong with the world. And, you know, students were up in arms all the time just engaging with social issues. And, you know, I think students here don't quite appreciate how much power they have if they organize and how much power they have to sort of, you know, change the outcome of elections to move things in the direction that favors them.
00:55:25
Speaker
And I think more of that, we're going to start to see more of that as some of these sort of systemic and large scale issues start to impact their lives in a very direct way. I think this distribution increase, as you know, rightly noted, is linked to levels of provincial funding. I don't like it, but I don't know if
00:55:50
Speaker
there are any easy answers. And I don't want to be critical of anyone. I just don't know if there are any easy answers. The only thing I do know is that if I was, and I'm being, since you put me on the spot here, I know that if I was a student or a parent or, I mean, I am a parent and my kids are going to be in school someday. And so this worries me. And especially when it's something that
00:56:19
Speaker
you know, it's gonna impact racialized communities a lot more because we have access to legal education is already very bad. And this is just gonna make you worse. Yeah.
Conclusion and Call for Support
00:56:36
Speaker
Well, that's been an hour. Dr. Ibaka, thank you so much for coming on. Is there any way that people can follow along any social media accounts? I assume Twitter is your preferred social media kind of platform of choice. Is there any way else people can follow you? Twitter is the only social media that I use. So yeah, social media is a way to get a hold of me.
00:57:02
Speaker
It's true, I did connect with you through a deal, so you need to get a hold of Dr. Bhagavan. Yeah, I'm very wary of all the means of getting in touch with me since the incident involving people emailing me, resist comments and calling my phone and whatnot. So, Twitter is, since it's public at least, and I get to choose who comes in and who doesn't, I think is the best way. Awesome.
00:57:30
Speaker
Well, again, thanks so much for coming on. And if you like this podcast and you want to keep hearing it and more like it, there are a few easy things you can do to help us out. One of the things is to leave a review. One of those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts actually go a long way to helping people discover the podcast.
00:57:46
Speaker
And the other kind of big thing you can do to help us out is you can join the nearly 500 other folks who help keep this independent media project going with monthly donations. And the easy way to do that is just to go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons. If you just go to the website, there's a big donate button on it. Put in your credit card and contribute $5, $10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford. We really appreciate it, Jim and I.
00:58:10
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I messed up on, things you think I need to hear about, I'm very easy to reach. You can reach me on Twitter as well. I am on Twitter entirely too much, and I am at Dunkin' Kinney. And you can reach me by email at dunkincayatprogressalberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic FamU Communist for the amazing theme. Thanks again to Dr. Ubaka Ugbogu for coming on the pod, and thank you for listening. Goodbye.