It’s September of 2021. COVID vaccines have been available for several months and governments are trying to find a path back to some kind of normal by imposing vaccination mandates.
In several Canadian communities, protesters gathered outside hospitals, protesting these mandates and harassing the health care workers who had been holding things together through 18 long months of the pandemic.
Fast forward two years, and some of those same protesters are rallying “4children” in various Canadian cities. Where nurses, doctors and scientists were the villains in 2021, now it’s teachers and the education establishment being accused of all manner of evil.
For a small but vocal segment of the population, public sector workers doing their jobs (saving lives, delivering vaccines, creating an inclusive environment for all kids) is a travesty. Suspicion of government and “experts” is a gateway that leaves people susceptible to believing conspiracy theories. And there’s no shortage of bad actors spreading such conspiracies around the Internet.
What’s more alarming is the willingness of conservative politicians to validate these hateful views. Already today, the Premier of New Brunswick has popped out to say hello to the protesters there, and last week the Premier of Saskatchewan mused about using the notwithstanding clause to ward off Charter challenges to his policy requiring parental permission for transgender and non-binary students under 16 to use different names or pronouns at school.
[Let’s just pause here for a moment and take in the irony of the protesters screaming about their Charter rights and bodily autonomy when it comes to vaccines cheering on a Premier willing to override Charter rights for the bodily autonomy of trans kids.]
I’d like to think that this will be a one-day wonder that will fizzle out. But here in Alberta, the question of ‘parental rights’ is unlikely to fade away. The leader of Take Back Alberta is all in on the issue, pushing for war. Registrations for the UCP’s annual general meeting later this fall are reportedly high, likely a result of TBA mobilization. Premier Smith has, up to this point, stayed out of the fray. The question is whether she will be able to maintain her silence, and what it will cost her (in other policy concessions) to do so.
The protests outside the hospitals had a lasting impact. They contributed to the declining morale of health care workers, even as they treated patients who denied the reality of their illness. Today’s protests, and the more general attack on teachers as agents of the state intent on corrupting children, will make teachers’ work harder as they manage parents and students caught up in conspiratorial thinking.
To the ATA, to the elected officials standing up to the protests: thank you. It’s essential that we not normalize the hateful conspiratorial thinking on display today.
Perhaps what needs to happen is that more of us who see the danger....and the ludicrous nature of the TBA outrage....find ways to get publicly involved. It has long seemed to me that there is a silencing that goes on in Alberta.......and has for years.
The result may be that many of us don't know how to raise our voice in civil discourse....let alone how to defend the front line workers we all depend on.
During the pandemic my partner and I attended a couple of rallies held in Calgary in support of the mandates. It was informative (and shocking) to see how a gaggle of 12-15 crazies with megaphones essentially held at least a couple hundred of us kettled at the McDougle centre. They patrolled the perimeter of the meeting.....yelling none sense, none stop about corrupt nurses and teachers....and the evils of the Liberal government. One old girl held a silly sign saying: CORRUPT TEACHERS AND NURSES: FOLLOW THE MONEY.
As a retired teacher, that gave me a laugh...but it also brought me and my partner to the perimeter of the gathering to share our pro-mandate signs with the passing motorists.
We're far too polite....too timid and too easily rattled by a relatively few noise makers.
Perhaps we need to strategize some street smart activist ways to outnumber them without resorting to a counter productive exchange of rude slogans. We honked and put up signs on our balconies saying we supported our essential workers during the pandemic.
We also learned how much those essential workers get paid and how hard they work for a living. Perhaps its time to ACT on their behalf and find ways to counter the misinformation and fear that a few are trying to fuel in our public spaces. If we learned better how to walk our talk......TBA would pretty soon find themselves 'lost in the crowd.'.
What's stopping us?
So true. And pollsters need a good swift kick for using questions that implicitly buy into the "parental rights" narrative. If they were to frame their poll questions around the kids and their well being (perhaps including data on self-harm), I wonder whether respondents would be so quick to support "parental rights." Certainly one doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to imagine how the children of these protesting parents would get treated at home following one of those phone calls from a school. Are poll respondents OK with that??