It's starting to become known so it's time I address what has happened with PSAC and my doing a webinar for them.

Yesterday, I was axed from a panel I was set to do on Monday and Tuesday (in En and Fr) with @paigelinaG about antiracism. The decision was made by PSAC's president

The idea for the webinar was that we would talk through antiracism for a specifically white audience. The webinar was open but we would be imagining the audience to be white. This is obviously an important frame and we were both really excited to do this work.

While I was at a cabin last weekend, Chief Clown Correspondent for The Rebel David Menzies crashed the PSAC offices in Toronto and did a highly boring 6-minute video about me and this workshop. It mostly centred on my Humboldt tweet (not tweets of course, to rouse up the racists)

The video was viewed like 70K times. I got a wave of hate - twitter messages, the white nationalists at Metacanada, emails to my employer (ok that came right to me), Facebook messages. I told one of the bots responding about this to eat some shit.

This represented an inappropriate response for PSAC's leadership (I don't think they've actually condemned the video yet, fwiw) and they made the decision that they couldn't be associated with such vulgarity. So I was dropped.

Now this webinar already had almost 1000 people *signed up*. Aside from being left personally exposed, the signal this sends to PSAC members and staff is that their leadership cares more about fake decorum on Twitter than doing this workshop properly.

They intend to find other facilitators. That's their right, of course. I am not calling for them to change their decision -- I told Chris he needed to, and he disagreed. So that's fine. But I know that this has caused intense harm towards PSAC's Black and Indigenous members ...

(The webinar idea came from a Black worker!)

Recall: PSAC members were fired after a video surfaced of them re-enacting George Floyd's death. I'm not sure if the union issued a statement to condemn this or not. I hope they have. Anyway ...

Last night, nearly 3000 people tuned into a live chat between Paige and I, organized by @meetnicholas and with @seanjmcneill. It was a really great conversation and we explored many of the themes we were supposed to talk about next week. Clearly, there is an appetite and need.

If you're angry about this, I encourage you to be in touch with PSAC's leadership, regardless of if you're a member or not. Clearly, the pressure they got from people mobilized by the Rebel was enough to make them nervous.

But more importantly ...

This is the first time, ever, I've been uninvited to do a talk. Last year, when our event in Winnipeg with @lsarsour was protested and our venue cancelled the booking, the resulting event was AMAZING and the courage that the organizers showed to do the right thing was critical.

PSAC's leadership is on the wrong side of this and I suspect they know it. Handing a victory to the Rebel by cancelling me will embolden them and throw more heat my way while also sending a clear message that they are not prepared to confront racism head on when things get hairy.

The webinar will go ahead in some way. There are lots of other leaders and staff who are committed to this. They're also really hurting, angry with management for creating such a useless and damaging crisis. As a unionist, it's been so disappointing to see too ...

And labour ... my god ... I have said this before. Do not allow right-wing mobs to define your actions! Do not cave to these pressures! If labour leaders say an injury to one is an injury to all, but they *cause* that injury, they need to think hard about what they really mean...

White supremacy is maintained by the labour movement too. White labour segmentation is often entrenched by collective agreements and legal decisions and policing racialized members. Unions tango with the same anti-Blackness, anti-Indigenousness that the employer tangos with ...

and it's the Black and Indigenous workers who then must survive and navigate both.

*This weakens the labour movement for all*