“We’ve heard that people like to make memes about Doug Ford. Could you describe one of them?” asks a journalist from a mainstream media outlet.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” replies Amina Vance, an 18-year-old organizer of the Students Say No (SSN) group fighting Ford’s cuts to public education. “Let me tell you another story.”
Memes are low-hanging fruit for reporters hoping to play up the youth and social-media savvy of high-school organizers – but a bustling social movement they do not make. Amina is right: there is a better story here.
Since coming to power, Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, has relentlessly attacked public education: proposing a 20 per cent education funding cut; introducing targeted erosion of arts courses; increasing class sizes and cutting at least 5,844 teachers’ jobs; slashing the Ontario Autism Program, Indigenous curricula, and post-secondary financial assistance; introducing mandatory e-learning and a classroom cellphone ban; and slashing $100 million from a school repair fund.
But students of all ages have been relentless, too. On April 4, nearly 200,000 high-school and middle-school students across Ontario walked out of their classes in protest of Ford’s devastating cuts to education. More than 700 schools participated in the largest student walkout in Canadian history. Reporters and older activists alike are asking: how did high schoolers pull it off?
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