There is so much out there to get mad about. Social injustices, class warfare, continued

colonization, the act of destruction of our planet by those focused on prophets and not

people. We can find it overwhelming at times. The good news is there are equally as many,

if not more, stories of people coming together and rising up against the forces at play. So

the creators of Blueprints of Disruption have added a new weekly segment, Ravel Rants, where

we will unpack the stories that have us most riled up, share calls to action, and most importantly,

celebrate resistance. Another Catholic school board. has confirmed they won't be flying a

Pride flag during the month of June. This time around it's the York Catholic School Board

in Ontario and this isn't new to them either. Last year was quite contentious in their board

meetings. Parents and allies and really hostile environments were surrounding a lot of these

meetings where it seems like as we've talked about before the anti-LGBTQ movement. if we

can call it that, is really mobilized around school boards right across Canada. And we're

starting to really see the impact. But in this particular case, it's a mix of bigoted parental

pressures. And then, of course, going into the Catholic school board system, which has a long

history of banning pride flags. I have been wanting to just stop public funding for Catholic

school. It's been on my... kind of side agenda, my B agenda, everything else just always seems

so much more pressing. But you know, with the rise of anti LGBT organizing and rhetoric and

policies now, I think the time is to really examine how these school systems feed into

that. This is a funny one for me, right? I graduated high school in 2016. So really not all that

long ago. and I was into York Catholic District School Board. I can't believe how much things

have changed in such little time because I feel like when I was in high school, there was a

lot of really good progress being made. Like when I was a bit younger, like when I was in

elementary school, I remember there was quite a bit of homophobia, pretty common to hear

different homophobic slang being thrown around and... And by the time I got into high school,

that kind of really started to disappear. And I'd say my high school was a place where there

was very little homophobia, both from teachers and from students. And, and friends of mine

actually started what was called the identity squad, which was a club that met on Mondays

where people could, you know, talk about their experiences. It was a safe space for people

of all different identities. And We had a pride flag in there. It was in the drama room. The

drama teacher was the faculty that hosted it. And that was completely okay at the time. There

was no one who tried to shut it down. It was just kind of accepted for what it was, right?

The pride flag, that wasn't a taboo thing. It was normal. There was many, many students who

were out and it was normal. There was nothing strange about it. There was nothing taboo at

all. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore, right? No, I mean, if you've seen footage of

some of the meetings that have happened around the school board decisions. So like, yeah,

the York Catholic School Board is not the first even in Ontario, Peterborough, Northumberland

and Halton region, which are two very large school boards. They made these decisions a

couple of years ago. And you know, the move that's before York. is also unique in that

it's not just the exterior, but it would become against school policy or school board policy

to even have it inside. So even in that affirming safe space created, it would have to be void

of any flags other than Canada, Ontario, I guess York region has a flag apparently, the Vatican

and a school flag. It's so funny that they allow these flags without question as though they're

not each problematic in themselves, except maybe the school flag. I haven't seen, you know.

I'm sure there's some that we could criticize. But generally the nationalism and the Vatican

flag in itself have such rooted history and oppression and controversy, but that's not

what they're targeting at all. Those are green flags, those are good to go, but obviously

the pride flag and there's another one that schools typically fly that we can guess why

the Catholic school system would not want to fly and that is the Every Child Matters.

the guys of it's trying to bring consensus, you know, we're not going to fight over flags

because we're only going to fly the uncontroversial flags. It's so political in itself, right?

We talked about that for almost like the absence of bias, the pretending that there's no bias

in something is so evidently biased. Does that make sense? Yeah. I can understand why Catholic

school boards don't want to do this, but the fact that they have any leeway, and there's

some stories around Catholic- publicly funded hospitals as well that get to kind of pick

and choose whether or not they're going to follow the human rights code of the province. And

in general, it's this religious exceptionalism that we allow to leak in. I mean, I guess as

we talk about this, you'll probably find I'm definitely not happy with organized religion.

I feel like religion is another one of those things that divide the working class into segments

and a lot of them have, you know, a level of superiority. built into them, like their God

is the right God, and so you're on the right side, therefore everyone else is on the wrong

side. And it's generally very polarizing when you look at it from a global perspective. And

I don't think I need to remind anybody of the complications that arise or the ability to

veil issues. Like right now, a lot of people are looking at the issue in Gaza, the siege

on Gaza, as rooted in religion. and we're looking to religion to explain its history and to justify

things and to call certain things off limits. And I generally just have a beef with religion

and the level of toleration that will allow because you look at these Catholic school systems,

I know that they are open to non-Catholics as students. You know, in Ontario, that is like

a third of the students are in Catholic schools. That surprised me. But then when I thought

about it, I actually, the closest schools to me are Catholic. And my kid actually has to

take a bus past the Catholic school to get to his school, even though they're both publicly

funded. Yeah. But you know, as teachers in Ontario for the Catholic school system, they need a

letter from a priest. And that is literally the only job in Ontario that allows you to

discriminate based on religious affiliation. Like, I don't know, maybe you can get it. Maybe

I could convince a priest to write me a letter. I don't know what the letter has to say, but

generally like that. There's exceptions made there and I just don't understand. It's funny

though. It's funny because, um, most of the faculty are not Catholic. Most of the students

are not Catholic. Yeah. I'd say it was very rare for someone to legitimately be Catholic

or for it to be important to them, uh, other students who were there. In fact, you know,

there's a lot, there's, there's a pretty, uh, common joke for people who went through that

system, which is that Catholic school made me an atheist. You know, ironically, I was probably

the most Catholic one out of my friends at the time I was at least. And yeah, it was more

common for there to be Catholic schools and non-Catholic schools. And from my school, for

example, we had people who came from all over. You know, my school was in the south of Aurora,

but we had people from North York, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Markham, Newmarket. And that's

what makes this a little bit ridiculous, because to an extent, I would understand. I wouldn't.

I wouldn't. accept it but I would understand if you know this was a really religious institution

but it wasn't you know most people skipped the masses that there were and we did all kinds

of things while we were there to kind of I guess rebel against that institution in general.

My parents sent me to catholic school because they thought it was better or whatever. or

you know people hear bad things about the public school system and they assume it doesn't apply

to the catholic school system and It's just not the case and we also had to wear those

god-awful uniforms and people did everything in their power to rebel against those and I

think the uniform is actually quite a symbolic thing to What like it really represents what

catholic school represents which is like that level of authority authoritarianism, right?

That limiting self-expression, individuality, and people in a very important stage of their

life to be expressing individuality, right? It's supposed to be, don't do that. But of

course, when you tell teenagers not to do something, it's oftentimes that that's the thing they

most want to do. Another one of the things that Catholic schools, specifically in Ontario,

have the right to make exceptions to is the sexual education curriculum. And in Ontario,

folks will know that... Premier Four did everything possible to really simplify and make as many

erasures as possible to references to the LGBTQ community, delaying those conversations with

kids. In the end, there was some pullback and they settled on a curriculum. But you know

what? Either way, the Catholic school gets to decide what they will, they've always had a

different curriculum. And it's all based on this. faith-based exceptions. And when you

think about a third of kids in the public school system in Ontario, so we're talking about 600,000

students are taking a sex ed curriculum that's funded by public dollars that is determined

by bishops and not based on what is best for those kids, upholding a certain set of values.

And that's what banning the flag is about. Can you imagine the message that sends to those

public school system kids when they know none of this is about unity? It's about not letting

them fly that pride flag, about erasing them and forcing them back into the closet. You

pair this with the anti-trans policies coming out of the Ministry of Education. And all of

a sudden, these Catholic schools are not safe places for... queer kids at all and the fact

that we fund them. You know, I'm trying to build an argument around defunding the Catholic school

system or really just dismantling it, right? And just having a public school system. And

I stumble across a pamphlet that the Catholic School Trustees Association put together and

it's almost designed specifically to refute common arguments. And I will link it so you

folks can know that I'm probably being generous. The arguments that they put back are so antiquated

and weak. It's basically like because we've always had it and it would be really disappointing

to the Catholic school students and the Catholic community. And historically we had to protect

Catholics because they were minorities and they don't really have any argument for it at all

because they can't say it's to maintain Catholic identity. I mean, they can try to say that.

But from your description and from what we know, there isn't a whole lot of indoctrinating going

on. And that really isn't an excuse for public dollars. No. Surely we can agree that my tax

dollars shouldn't go to maintaining someone else's religious identity. Especially, I don't

feel like that really contributes to the social fabric in a positive way overall. No. And it's

something that, you know, when we look at what's the actual underground difference between Catholic

school and the public school, right? What would really change if you just turned them into

public schools? You could save $1.5 billion every year in Ontario. Yeah, I mean, for one,

public schools already have, you know, religious freedom and like Catholic schools have students

from all different backgrounds, like I said, right? Like it's not just that many of them

were not religious. You had plenty of students who were religious, just not Catholic. And

so for them, being in those schools where you're forced to follow the certain Catholic things,

it's not fair to them, right? It's not that they made the decision to be in these schools

in the first place, right? It's decisions that parents made for them. And it's such a, oh

God, I'm remembering things as we're talking about this now. Like I remember grade 12 religion

class, because we had to take religion every year, right? I got into a big fight with my

religion teacher because they were talking about the morality, it wasn't a religion class, it

was a ethics and morality class where we studied different moral theories, but it was done applying

Catholic religious lens to it. And I remember the topic of sex work came up and I was obviously

defending it and one of the students was saying all of these things about how it was wrong,

it was ethically wrong and uh, and The teacher said something along the lines of how, oh,

it's so nice to see a guy standing up for women's rights to that other student. And I was like,

oh my goodness. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Clearly haven't, like I got into

it with them and I boycotted the class after that. I walked in on the last day of the semester

with a stack of all of the assignments. Like I had like a stack of papers, handed them in,

passed the class, and I never went back after that because I was not having it. See, that's

troubling though. If you hadn't said anything, this would have been a conversation largely

gone unchecked, the demonized sex workers, which in turn actually is misogyny. And there's a

lot of kids in this system. Yeah. And the thing is, many of them told me privately that they

agreed with me, but they were afraid to kind of voice that in that environment. They didn't

feel safe and comfortable disagreeing with the teacher's stance on this. You know, because

it's one of those things that when you bring it up, it's immediately thrown out by a lot

of people who might even agree with you in principle, but they go to ye olde, you'd have to reopen

the constitution, right? And so, yes. Back in 1867, the British North America Act did enshrine

that the education rights that were held by minorities, I'm going to make sure I get into

this minority word after I'm done, that the minorities at the time of confederation would

be constitutionally protected. No other minorities. This is important. This is an important point.

Not to necessarily talk about the political possibilities of reopening the Constitution.

I mean, here in Ontario right now, Ford would not even entertain this idea. His Minister

of Education spent all his time either in a Catholic school or a private school. So that

issue isn't moving in this province anytime soon. And often it's not a very politically

popular one either. John Tory pretty much almost sunk his hole in... political career suggesting

in the 2007 provincial election that we should perhaps not fund Catholic schools publicly.

And like you hate to agree with them, but that didn't turn out very well. But let's talk about

minority. I know if you're talking about math and statistics, technically the minority is

the fewer number. But when you're talking about socio-economic issues... Minority is a power-based

concept. So there's no fucking way Catholics can get away with calling themselves a minority

back at the time of confederation. Most of the, uh, quote-unquote, founding fathers were Catholic.

And that's why it had to be written in. If you get your shit written into the Constitution,

you're- pretty much guaranteed not to be a minority. If you hold so much sway over the negotiations

that the country, the formation of the country just wouldn't be possible without your agreeing,

you aren't a minority. You are the powerful. You are the majority. And they tried this shit

with the Senate. The Senate was created to secure minority rights. When they said that, they

meant the rich, just because there's fewer in number of them. And so it's framed as though

it's like a necessity, a protector of minorities. And it's not, it's a secure of power. And we

know this because the Catholic Church is so full of shit to begin with. Those folks still

haven't paid reparations that they were supposed to pay in terms of the residential school.

They still have records they refuse to release. This is a garbage institution that shouldn't

be associated with our public school system, if I'm going to be frank. But- The fact that

this relationship continues is because they design themselves to be too big to fail. You

know, other provinces got rid of them. Quebec, even Quebec, Quebec was notoriously the most

Catholic area of Upper and Lower Canada. Okay. Like, and even they got rid of it back in 1997,

although it's to make sure they focused on like French language as opposed to wasting time

on religion. That might have its own issues that we could talk about later. But you know,

Newfoundland, they asked the people in a referendum. The answer was, we don't want to fund that

anymore. We're going to do one school system. So it's not unheard of, but on a material,

once they secured equal funding. So they were funded at a less rate, which went through the

courts or whatever. They secured equal funding back in the eighties and then opened it up

to more people, even though that kind of goes against the idea of maintaining a Catholic

identity. And they kind of balance that. And you wonder why. And I. I think it's largely

to do with the part that it would then become something like what it is now. A third of students

in Ontario are in these systems. They have their own separate school boards. And so another

one of the main arguments that's used to not do this is that at the onset, like any kind

of amalgamation, there's cost, right? Rebranding, shuffling, whatever needs to happen. People

are like, oh, it's going to cost money at first, but it will save money in the long run, but

it's a principal thing. It's like we're maintaining two different school boards that are just another

mechanism to divide the working class. And we shouldn't be paying for that. I don't even

think private schools should exist. Oh, God, no, the private schools are such a... Like,

there was one close by to my school. And I remember when I went there. It's ridiculous. The resources

that they had that we didn't have. was almost offensive. I remember we borrowed their theater

to do a con at one point and it was just, it felt like such a slap in the face. Like why

is it that this group of people over here gets such an advantage over us? But anyways, there's

a certain irony which is that I'm pretty sure that Catholics are probably a minority within

the Catholic school system. Like I don't think that they make up a majority of uh... of either

the student or the faculty. One of the things that you really notice is that, because in

the suburbs, demographics are a little bit different. It was, there wasn't a lot of students of color

in my high school. And you go to the public schools and there were a lot more students

of color, right? So there's also like a certain segregation that happens because of that. And

I don't think that's the benefit of anybody to isolate people. There was almost no Asian

students, for example, in my high school, but my neighborhood had a very large Asian population.

What kind of division does that create even within the communities? I don't think that

that's a good thing. Absolutely not. And whenever you put a religious symbol atop of a public

institution, you immediately are going to make a segment of the population feel unwelcome.

That's just natural because it's almost like you're showing preference to one particular

religion and in public institutions that simply just can't exist. I had somebody ask me if

only Jewish patients could go to Mount Sinai. What does it mean it's a Jewish hospital? I

didn't know that. Olivia Chow said her family was there. How is that possible they're not

Jewish? And so it set this misconception up. that it's actually a segregated system, but

it's a public hospital. And one thing that does create here, because we started talking about

transphobia, homophobia. Those were not primarily my experience in these schools, but what was

my experience? Islamophobia, anti-Asian racism, anti-black racism, communities that were not

represented within these institutions. Because there was plenty of people who were not religious,

but we didn't have a lot of Muslim students. We didn't have a lot of black students. They

might not be there, but they're in an environment where Catholicism is set as the ideal. Yeah.

But so what I'm saying is that just being in these schools, being like in that environment,

created an environment where that kind of racism thrived. Yeah, I bet. That alone. Yeah. And

it's obvious why that would happen. When you look at... the damage versus the pen, there's

just no argument in favor of this. You know, this is, and we look at like the history of

residential schools. We haven't even mentioned that as much, right? And the forced Catholic

education within residential schools, right? We can see the history here. You think that's

gonna be taught in a Catholic school? You think they were teaching about those things in a

Catholic school? No, they didn't teach any dark. aspects of Catholic history at all. I went

through, like I said, I took every history class possible and they're burying those sins as

deep as they can. Not just that, but it's naive to assume that they have drastically changed

the model in which they run schools. I know they might not have graveyards in the back

of their Catholic schools, but just the ideology that comes from the Catholic institution that

attempts to indoctrinate people. It intends to teach people that Catholicism is the one

and only way. And that is very similar to a lot of religions, but that was always the purpose

of Catholic schools and especially the residential schools. It was to mold those indigenous children

into what they considered the ideal. And I imagine that although they've moved beyond the more

atrocious ways of doing that, the idea is still there. The idea is still that there is a set

of values determined by one set of religion. And we've really just, we think we've rejected

that. I mean, we can point to a lot of examples where Canada still has really kind of Christian

rooted policy decisions and has to deal with that. But generally, if you ask people, we

believe in the separation of church and state. And the fact that this has been able to maintain

itself in so many provinces to me is a little unusual, but I think indicative of the power

that Catholics hold in politics, because there's just there's really not a whole lot of rationale

behind them. You talked about homophobia and Islamophobia. One of the troubling aspects

that I've witnessed kind of anecdotally of the Catholic school system is I have a young relative.

And at some point in a conversation, the pride flag came up and we were talking about it.

We were describing it and I could tell she was very puzzled by the conversation. So I asked

her, I believe she was 10, 11. Do you know what this is? And she had no idea. She had no idea.

And so for me, that was really upsetting. I know that sounds really young, but in today's

world, surely 11. was too old in my mind for her to have never really been experienced to

pride. Not just the flag. What it does is it asks questions because the reason... Well,

I've had this conversation with my kids many times, but it becomes a conversation in June.

When the flag is on the pole, it may seem so trivial, but when that flag is on the pole,

kids ask their parents. So maybe it's not in their curriculum. Maybe it's not being taught

well enough in school tolerance and different... folks' identities and all of that. But if it's

never, if it's always hidden away, then that conversation is surely much less likely to

happen. And then the tolerance level of straight students is also impacted, right? It's not

just alienating LGBTQ youth and anybody else who feels like their flag won't be flown because

of bigotry, but it's the students that need exposure the most too, right? The ones that

are possibly causing the bullying. because they've not properly had these conversations at home.

And there's no way to kind of undo that if you're always going to allow religions to make exceptions

in those environments. Yeah, I think it's about time we reopen this conversation, although

it's hard to prioritize it amongst all of the other things that are happening. But I don't

think LGBTQ parents and queer students perhaps would agree, right? It probably feels quite

pressing. in these times that they not roll back all the work that's been done. Because

that's how it feels, right? It's like we got to a certain, we talked about this before,

like we got to a certain point where I felt like queer rights were a given, you know, and

that's maybe naive of me, but it felt like it got to a point where, you know, a lot of derogatory

terms, like people know not to use them and that there's an acceptance level and it seems

like it's just rolling back. So to me, that's scary. Yeah. in a really short period of time

too. Like it felt like a lot of good progress was made and then we've gone so far back. And

I really feel for the students who are having to go through that right now, right? Because

I've said it before, but I think one of the most vulnerable groups of people is high school

students. Like when people are in that age range, right? Because you lack a lot of autonomy,

but you're like the... the amount of autonomy you have versus the amount of autonomy that

you should have for someone of that cognitive ability of, you know, like of development.

You're making all of these decisions about your life, you know, what you're going to do is

like a really fundamental period in your life and yet other people have such control over

you, whether it's your parents, whether or not it's your educational institute and the ability

to escape from harmful environments. It's quite difficult, lack of financial means to do so,

lack of, well, just the damage that it can do to your future. I think it's really important

to do everything we can to help protect people who are in those situations. And, you know,

I think there was no exception. Like the amount of people I knew, the amount of friends I had,

or just stories I had heard of people who were living through extremely abusive situations

at that age, you know, seeing them now. eight years removed, many of them still processing

that trauma, still dealing with the consequences of what they were forced to live through. It

seems like, oh, you know, flag this or not in these, you know, just graduate and then you

can do whatever you want. It's not like that. You know, these are formative years. You carry

that shit with you. It's important to do everything possible to make it easier for them. It's important

to note here that Suicide takes a lot of LGBTQ youth from us. And the people making these

decisions, they know that. And so to think that they wouldn't do everything within their possibility

to help the youth who demographically speaking and statistically speaking are likely in the

same percentage as public schools, as public English schools, what do we call them? Secular

schools. because they're all public schools. But it doesn't make sense to me too that people

go into these trustees positions, these school trustee positions and don't have students'

best interests in mind. Because surely it's not harming one straight student to put that

flag up. We know that it doesn't. Their main concern is a faith-based model of decision-making

or protecting the Catholic school system or appeasing. really angry parents that have no

vested interest in that flag going up or down in reality. And that's a real danger that's

kind of repeating itself. We interviewed on our episode, Community Defenses, a group that

does a lot of work, but much of it is focused on countering all of this mobilization around

the school systems. And so organizing around these trustee positions in the school board.

is perhaps a mechanism of disruption that folks can attempt to weigh in on this subject. Yeah,

I briefly mentioned it before, but again, like we do this with hospitals, right? There's hospitals

out there that are gonna refuse to do MADE. They're refusing to perform abortions. They're

forcing patients that are often terminally ill in the last days, hours to... go down an elevator,

go down the street and go into a different facility or worse, go across the city to try to get

it or across the province. And they're able to do that not based on the Hippocratic oath

or the other values rooted in the medical system, well, the ones that they're supposed to have.

And BC now is going as far as building separate facilities near Catholic hospitals that are

publicly funded. because they're refusing to perform procedures, refusing to do the assisted

deaths in the province. And I think at this point in time, when you've got governments

pretending to like be penny pinchers and trying to implement the most efficient healthcare,

all of this, you know, falls under that, right? There's really, the only excuse would be to

maintain some sort of supremacy here that only one religion gets a school system. that no

one's willing to do anything about. If you were to reverse, if you were to switch out the names

here for a second and imagine that there was a Muslim school system that was as funded and

as prominent and widespread as a Catholic school system, I think we all know what would happen.

There's no way it would still be funded. You know, my argument isn't here that we should

fund, we should segregate people and fund a bunch of different specific school systems.

No, my argument is especially when we're talking about people who are still figuring out what

they believe, what you know, what they value out of life uh independent from whatever their

parents raised them to be because you know times change people have the right to make their

own decisions. We shouldn't be have, we shouldn't be forcing people into religious schools at

all. It should all be public schools freedom of religion and let kids figure out what they

value and what's important to them. Don't try and segregate people off and hope that they

end up believing whatever their parents believed, right? Life doesn't work that way. No way,

we need kids thinking like they're one, right? Like that global singular identity is the ideal

for me. So anything that detracts from that is a detriment to that. that global revolution.

Okay, well, you know what? I want a socialist school system then. Let's just... That is your

public school system, right? One system, no private schools, because then you got your

leches out there that go to St. Mike's. They get better protected during COVID. They get

a better education, and their parents and their families don't give a shit about a well-funded

public school system. So once you have a wealth under public school system, obviously, then

you have to seize power. And then any changes you make to that school system to better the

social fabric, to better the experience of kids, you don't have to do it 10 times over and then

just have someone put down their UNO card and be like, guess what? We're religious, we don't

have to do it. Well, let's just take this to the extremes, I say. Let's have... a hundred

different school systems with different identities and see where we all end up after that. I'm

sure we'll have a healthier society out of it, right? I'm sure it'll be great. I look forward

to the... I mean, we can't even have just a socialist school system, though we've got to

have different schools of thoughts, right? You'll have your Marxist You know, let's separate

it out, see where we end up. We'll all be better for it, right? Let's, anyone who doesn't think

like us should be somewhere else, right? Well, you can be my minister of education. Oh God.

That is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining us. Also,

a very big thank you to the producer of our show, Santiago Helu-Quintero. Blueprints of

Disruption is an independent production operated cooperatively. You can follow us on Twitter

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