Year In Review 2017: Big things planned for Black Lives Matter Toronto in 2018

Black Lives Matter Toronto recently celebrated our third year of community activism. We have accomplished so much in that.

Students from the first year of BLM-TO Freedom School

Black Lives Matter Toronto recently celebrated our third year of community activism. We have accomplished so much in that short time that it seems like it has been much longer.

Even looking back on just this last year seems overwhelming 2017 has been full of many ups and downs.

At the inquest into the police shooting death of Andrew Loku, a family forced to relive that horrible tragedy learned officially for the first time that Toronto Constable Andrew Doyle killed Loku within 21 seconds of arriving at the apartment building where he lived with other clients of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

For the first time, a Coroners inquest made recommendations specifically referencing anti-Black racism as a factor that needs to be addressed by police forces specifically and society in general to prevent similar incidents in the future.

After six Muslim people were killed and 19 injured in a targeted attack of the Islamic Cultural Centre mosque in Quebec City, we worked in a coalition with other groups to coordinate the largest demonstrations against white supremacy in Canada.

We again made our presence felt at Pride, participated in Nuit Blanche and grew our international connections with groups in the United States, Colombia, Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands.

We continued our work to educate young people about Black liberation and self-pride through our Freedom School initiative, and began making our Freedom School workbook available to children outside our own program.

We saw concrete policy changes start to be enacted on the anti-racism front as well as policing reform as a result of our efforts, including the interim Toronto Action Plan To Confront Anti-Black Racism, the Ontario Black Youth Action Plan and changes recommended to the Police Services Act. The Ontario Human Rights Commission announced last week that it would be investigating racial profiling by the Toronto police.

Stateside, the FBI announced a crackdown on Black Identity Extremists, even as we joined members of the Black Lives Matter network internationally in Australia to collect the Sydney Peace Foundation Prize for courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism.

But most of all, this year was the year of education for BLM-TO.

In May, teachers, parents and students walked out of their schools to demand that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) enact policies to nurture a healthier learning environment for Black students.

The most urgent focus of our campaign was the School Resource Officer program, which placed armed police inside schools with high populations of racialized children. Together with the Latin American Education Network, Education Not Incarceration and Educators for Peace and Justice, we launched a social media campaign.

In the end, the TDSB did what the Catholic board, Mayor John Tory and the Police Services Board have refused to do: they recognized that the program did not make students safer and in fact contributed to an environment of fear, becoming the first jurisdiction in North America to do away with the program.

In 2018, were looking to expand our influence across the country and force new conversations about incarceration, migration and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

At the same time, we havent forgotten about the upcoming provincial election in Ontario and municipal elections in Toronto. Well be out there supporting Black candidates who we will count on to create the local changes we desperately need.

Sandy Hudson is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto.

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