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SUMMARY: the Lessons Learned "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger" Nietzche This final chapter reviews the lessons learned and relates them back to the theoretical initial statements from the introduction. Part One dealt with how by picketing and pamphletting we won on the level of the local neighbourhood streets in vicinity of Oakwood C. I. Part Two addressed how although we won in the courts, we were doomed to loose the political struggle on the larger scale of University Avenue, ie. the provincial government (Queen's Park). Part Three dealt with the even larger level of struggle associated with Bay Street and the commercial reality of the situation --which never really came to a head. Accomplishments of the Protest While not successful in gutting bill 160 (University Ave.) or hurting the government commercially (Bay St.) we did succeed in a number of worthwhile accomplishments: we showed the real support in the province for a strong, well-funded public education system; we helped to bring to the attention of the public the Tory plans to slash budgets and lay off teachers; we forced the Tory leadership to admit that they did not plan on reinvesting any savings in education (such as savings from ammalgamation of school boards) but rather would use the savings elsewhere. Lessons to Our Students and the Public of Ontario I would suggest that a number of points were brought home by the protest: that education is too important for one cabinet to have powers which are not balanced by the legislature, the courts, the boards of trustees, the unions, or the school councils. that dissent, civil disobedience, and even illegal strikes are sometimes necessary. that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (demonstrations), as well as freedom of association (labour unions) are democratic rights. that activism and civil disobedience can be peaceful, non-violent, and orderly. that we teachers will stand up for high quality public education, even if our opponents are the powerful provincial government in cahoots with rich corporations. Lessons Concerning the Media While the governments million-dollar-plus advertisement campaigns during the protest were offensive and patronizing, the teachers TV, radio, and press ad were understated, gentle, and did not say as much as they should have. Lessons Concerning the Street The protest reminded us of the importance of streets and sidewalks as forums for public expression. With television and the internet both being inside, the outside must have lost some of its traditional force. Nevertheless, the sight of so many of us in front of our schools throughout the province has made a lasting impression on everyone. Lessons Concerning Anarchal Syndicalism At least within the OSSTF, we were very democratic in that we had many meetings and members had ample opportunity to voice their opinions and have an influence over decisions taken. Lessons Concerning Democratic Centralism Our protest was highly disciplined which is in part due to the structure associated with democratic centralism. CUPE president Sid Ryan said that: "You have shown the labour movement of this province how a political protest should be run." Those who stayed to the end of any of the many rallies may remember how clean the site was left. Lessons Concerning Vanguardism There were many fewer acts of vanguardism than anticipated, partly because the main thrust of the protest seemed to be going so well. The Issue of "Illegality" and Lessons Concerning Non-violent Activism "It takes a just man to break an unjust law" It can be said that the entire protest was an act of non-violent activism and civil disobedience. It is true that we teachers had existing contracts and were not in a legal strike situation (which is very specifically laid out in Bill 100). But Bill 100 is repealed by Bill 160 and Bill 160 also treads over (also legally-negotiated) contracts. Also, part of the tradition of law and the separation between legislative and judicial power is that sometimes people clearly break a law (such as an unjust one) but then are found not guilty in the courts. One must remember that in our legal system the accused is innocent until proven guilty. This and several other (not insignificant) facts seem to have been overlooked by the Premier, the Minister of Education, the media, and many others in their hast to call our work stoppage protest action "illegal" and accuse teachers of being "law-breakers". First, it is a civil contract with our employers, the Boards of Education, that was being broken, not a criminal code. The Ontario Labour Relations Act clearly states that a political protest is not automatically an illegal strike. Nevertheless, Harris and others went many steps further in suggesting that not only had we broken one "law", but that we were altogether "lawless". Teachers have since launched a class action suit against Harris for such slander. What is interesting is that the "law" being broken is not the law which is viewed to be unjust. The former is Bill 100, which requires strikes only after many steps have already occurred, and which also requires principals and vice principals to be in the schools during a strike. This law was originally seen as being very anti-teacher, but we have since come to live with it. Lessons Concerning the Timing of Political Action Without suggesting any comparison between Harris, Hitler, and Pinocett, there is a point to made about how history might have gone differently if people had stood up at a certain point in time. During the mid 1930s, many of the six million German unionized workers wanted to stand up to Nazism but the leadership of both the Communist-led unions and the socialist-led unions said that "no" it was not the right time. They were then slaughtered and those that survived learned a lesson about how to treat a bully. In 1974 the workers in Chile wanted to stand up to Pinocett and the fascist military. The leaders of the unions and the political left said that "no" it was not the right time. They were then slaughtered and those that survived learned a lesson about how to treat a bully. There are many such examples which suggest that timing is an historically significant issue. Our labour leaders are now telling us that this is not the time to stand up to the Harris regime of bullies. Lessons Concerning Internal Differences Despite the tremendous strength shown by 126,000 teachers, 60,000 custodians, secretaries, and other non-teaching workers, as well as many parents and others walking the line in solidarity, there were internal differences which came out more and more as the protest wore on. Some of these were responsible for the eventual falling out of the affiliates on the ninth day. Four major long term differences came to the fore. 1. Professionalism vs. Unionism This old difference of opinion about how to conceptualize teachers comes out during such a protest. There are many teachers, like myself, who see our positions as educational workers and the federations, such as the OSSTF, as full fledged unions. These are legal entities which exist for many purposes including serving the collective interests of the members and the larger society. As such, they have certain rights, including organizing us to withdraw our labour. However, there are also many teachers, who see themselves as professionals. They have more serious reservations about withdrawing their services. 2. Connections with Organized Labour Closely following from the above difference, there are also differences in how teachers view our relationship with organized labour. Those, like myself, who see ourselves as a union of educational workers, would like to see closer ties with our brothers and sisters in other unions. We were happy to join the Canadian Labour Congress. In fact I voted for this motion at the March, 1996, annual convention. Many of us would also like to see our union, and the entire OTF, join the Ontario Federation of Labour. However, the many teachers who see themselves as professionals, object to such ties. Perhaps they are afraid that we would be drawn into struggles which they see as none of our business. 3. Differences Between Affiliates The above differences also correlate to the different affiliates. More of the elementary and Catholic federation teachers tend to think of themselves as more professionals and less unionists. For this and other reasons, the elementary teachers balked at the thought of a general strike. As one fellow OSSTF member said to me: "they wanted to win, but not that much". 4. Different Types of Consciousness Of course different people place as a highest priority different types of consciousness. Many of us in the OSSTF see gender equity, racial equity, sexual orientation equity, the environment, etc. as extremely important --and as a result we have fought for them for years. However, many of us see consciousness of class differences as a prime type of awareness. We place overcoming class differences and class politics as even more important than the (also important) other differences and identity politics. These differences, however, do make for different priorities amongst the union membership and general population. 5. Business Unionism versus Social Activism Another difference between federation members is how they see the prime mission of the federation. Some, from both sides of the union/federation split, see taking care of business as fundamental. By this, is meant organizing, collective bargaining, servicing the members, and other basic functions. As important as these are, some members, such as myself, see the union as also being about functions which build upon (but which are larger than) these foundational activities. These have to do with social activism and political action. Unions are part of the means in the struggle for social justice rather than an end in themselves. Those that support This complexity is represented in the table below: . Unionists Federationists Social Activism priority non-elected activists old guard tends to not place larger social activism as a high priority. Some do, however, and these tend to be leftists. Taking Care of Federation Business priority elected leadership and bureaucrats within the affiliates old guard of members tend to place taking care of members' needs as highest priority. CONCLUSIONS To repeat, the opinions expressed here are my own. I do not pretend to represent my union, the OSSTF, or my OSSTF district, Toronto (D15). Failure? We teachers and other protesters failed in our objective to gut Bill 160 or even to amend it. If it were to be thought, therefore, that we had failed, then there would be some utility in speculating as to the reasons for this. One reason is that we failed to adequately know what we were up against. While political activists within the unions knew that we were up against intractable neo-conservatives with a strong and vicious agenda, this information was not adequately understood broadly. Many acted as if a "Days of Action" limited type of protest was enough. I believe that some of the reasons for this failure also have to do with the differences within our ranks outlined above. Some of the reasons also have to do with the leadership of the affiliates being more "taking care of affiliate business" oriented rather than social activism oriented. I don't believe that this is a criticism of our affiliate leadership because most of the members most of the time want this kind of leadership. We consistently elect such people and I believe that over the years they have done excellent work. However, duing such times of crisis, one wonders whether efficient bureaucrats are the kind of leaders required. In hindsight I see that we could have gone into the action in one of two ways and won. Firstly, we could have treated it as a strike within a collective bargaining situation. In which case we should have more fully prepared the membership for all-member strike votes. All affiliates, not just the OSSTF should have taken all-member votes. Finally the conditions under which we go back (and do not go back) should have been made clear. "We won't back down" should not have been a slogan but a collective bargaining priority with teeth. This would have likely lead to a very long strike -for which few of us were prepared. Alternatively, we could have treated it as a serious political action. In this case, my perspective of three progressively escalating steps: (1) local residential street action; (2) next political street action; and last (3) commercial street action; might have worked. Few members seriously considered the second step, and even fewer considered the third. Very few members participated in any political demonstrations beyond showing up at Queen's Park. Even fewer would have done what was required to harm the government where it is vulnerable -commercially. Instead, however, we did a kind of neither fish nor fowl approach. We aimed at somewhere in between: neither a strike nor a serious political action. As a reflection of this approach, we seemed to not have a plan of action. After the third day we basically did not know what to do. No, Not Failure, a Moral Victory Personally, I do not think that "failure" is the correct characterization when considering the protest. We were tremendously successful at raising awareness about education, the government's power grab, budget cuts, the attack on education by the Tories with their Bill 160 specifically , and their agenda generally. Had we held out for another week the government may have been even more seriously weakened and as a result may have given in to major concessions. This alone was historic. More importantly though, we showed that ordinary citizens can stand up against the powers that be. While the government has been mean-spirited and vindictive, the vast majority of protesters kept their sense of humour, humanity, and tolerance of differences of opinion. Even though there is great diversity amongst our members (including many conservatives) we showed solidarity without resorting to coercion. The protest was grassroots driven and not imposed from above by the federation executives. Through the vigilance, determination, and strength of the individual educational workers (coordinated by the leaders) we took on deceitful and dictatorial ideologues in an orderly and honest way. Perhaps the most important thing to be said about the protest was that it was a consciousness-raising activity. Even though we did not achieve our goal to gut Bill 160, there was (and is) a sense of solidarity and empowerment which developed. Since this involved at least 200,000 active participants in the protest, one could say that there was a kind of collective consciousness-raising. We did provide a good role model to students and to the public, refusing to bow to tyranny and stand up (at great personal expense) for public education. While we can argue about tactics in hindsight, in general we did do what was right. While some teachers are still upset that their union leaders called off the strike, others claimed a moral victory. The latter view is supported by the fact that we brought the issues associated with Bill 160 to the attention of the public and received tremendous support. This was evident on the picket lines on a daily basis. We destroyed the credibility of the Harris government by revealing their real agenda -to seize control over education, to cut $1 billion, and move us further away from a quality public education system. Proposals for the Future The Tories have tried to drive a wedge between the unions and their members and between teachers and the public. To combat this and the Tory agenda in general, one recommendation is to integrate an ongoing organizing approach into all of the unions' activities in order to foster greater membership involvement and activism. This organizing approach means more of an emphasis on two-way communication, involving members in both strategy and tactics, more emphasis on class consciousness, and greater effort at building networks. The latter need to be both within the union, between unions, and between unions and the public. There need to be political action committees in every school and school councils need to include active teachers. Solidarity is a challenge because of the virtual absense of labour education for most of our members combined with the fact that some of our members are predisposed to accepting the Tory-corporate line. Right-wing ideas are accepted by some members, in part because some teachers see themselves more as individual professionals and less as trade unionists (and even less as members of the working class). Rather than pretend that these differences do not exist, we should address them head on within our schools and union meetings. The protest must and will continue this spring, as the government tries to implement Bill 160. Unfortunately, implementing the bill will create chaos in the schools. Already the (newly amalgamated) mega-Boards don't know what their budgets will be like -and this is being felt in the schools as plans which would normally be made now are being postponed. Many teachers, including myself, are expecting to be laid-off. We must see the protest in terms of a larger time frame. To me, the verdict as to wether or not this protest was successful will be known on election night sometime in 1999. If our actions contributed to the defeat of this government and to the preservation of quality public education, then the protest will have been highly successful. I believe that social justice activism, the labour movement, and electoral politics must come together to replace the Tory government with a real labour democratic socialist government. The activism of our job action must be channelled into re-invigorating the union and our political activism. At an even larger scale, we must address the real enemy -the real source of stress on the system. Just as the York University Faculty Association strike last spring raised awareness that the public interest in higher education is under threat from corporate interests, the teachers' protest this fall has shown that public education is under stress from the same sources. In the current polarized context we need to focus on the real source of the problem, not simply one local symptom. The local symptom of the provincial Tory government can be turfed out in the next election but then come back in another form. The long-term sources driving the right-wing agenda must also be recognized and opposed. The teachers disdain to conceal their views and aims. Let the Tories tremble as their "common sense revolution" fails. It is not just the teachers who stand to lose if the Tories succeed, but Ontario will loose the quality of its educational system. Teachers of all schools, unite! . I've written the following amongst other songs during the strike: . Come gather 'round teachers other ed. staff too And let the public know the work that you do We're on strike and you know against who If public education is worth savin' Then better start organizin' with vigilance and solidarity too for the Tories are attackin' with apologies to Bob Dylan and the Bank of Montreal . .

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E -mail address: dfletcher@oise.utoronto.ca

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