‘Erodes the public trust’: Elected officials react to TDSB field trip rally with anti-Israel chants

The CJN Daily with Ellin Bessner

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has blasted the Toronto District School Board for allowing some teachers to “indoctrinate” students with anti-Israel chants during a recent field trip that was ostensibly a learning event about justice for Canada’s Indigenous people. :"It's disgusting," Ford told reporters on Monday. Meanwhile, Ford’s education minister, Jill Dunlop, also slammed what she called “activist” public school teachers, who she said compromised student safety and breached the trust of the parents who had signed permission forms. The event in question involved 15 public schools, which brought students to the annual Grassy Narrows River Run on Sept. 18. The rally and march spreads awareness about the First Nation community in remote Northwestern Ontario that has spent decades fighting for justice after a local factory poisoned their water system with mercury. But parents have reported that a few teachers with a pro-Palestine agenda used the event to spread their own message about a totally separate issue: the Middle East conflict. In videos posted online, they can be seen using a megaphone to lead their students in chanting anti-Israel slogans; some participants in the event are wearing keffiyehs, and carrying banners calling for "From Wabigoon (the lake near Grassy Narrows) to the Dead Sea, We will all be free." Shelley Laskin is a school board trustee who represents the heavily Jewish Ward 8 (Eglinton-Lawrence and Toronto-St. Paul’s). Laskin joins The CJN Daily to explain why she demanded a special public school board meeting be held this Wednesday, Sept. 25, to look into the incident that “erodes the public trust” in Canada’s largest school board.

What we talked about

• Read about the TDSB's reaction to the incident in The CJN.
• Read how the TDSB adopted an anti racism policy that includes anti-Palestinian racism but, at first, didn’t include antisemitism, in The CJN.
• Watch the TDSB special meeting live on Wednesday Sept. 25 at 7 p.m.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Dov Beck-Levine

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