BY JEFF SHANTZ

TORONTO — Picket lines went up at Canada's third-largest university, York University, on March 5 as students went on strike as part of a day of international student actions against the war.

In one of winter's heaviest snowfalls, students and workers held spirited information pickets, talking with drivers and pedestrians about the connections between decreased funding for education, increased tuition fees and increasing military budgets and growing corporate influence on campuses across Canada.

Picketers pointed out that the C$43 billion spent by the Canadian government on six navy frigates could have eliminated tuition fees. Similarly, the $2 billion spent for six military transport planes could have provided a $4000 grant to every student that has taken out a student loan.

Picketers also pointed out that York is a prime example of a university that has a direct link to the state's military and security services through its Institute for Security Studies.

After three hours, the university administration ordered Toronto police to clear the roads and force picketers to the curbs. When organisers questioned the decision, two were arrested. In the turmoil that followed, two more picketers were arrested. They were charged with “trespassing”, despite all being York students.

In response to the arrests, students occupied the offices of York's president, Lorna Marsden, demanding that the charges be dropped. Marsden, a former president of the Liberal Party of Canada (the ruling party that has held federal power for the last 10 years), has also come under fire recently for ensuring that a forum be provided at York for the racist, anti-Palestinian “academic” Daniel Pipes, after student protests had forced his talk to be cancelled.

Later in the day, several hundred students, workers and teachers from Toronto's high schools, colleges and three universities converged downtown for a boisterous rally.

The day's activities were an important step in bringing student groups, from various levels of education and from across the city, together to start building for a broader mobilisation in opposition to war. Plans are underway to organise a teaching moratorium at the city's colleges and universities if war begins. The moratorium will involve either a walkout or the replacement of regular classes with workshops on the effects of the war.

From Green Left Weekly, March 12, 2003.
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