● Alumni Feature: “Fight for those liberties that make a democracy so wonderful.”

Alumni Feature: “Fight for those liberties that make a democracy so wonderful.”

Andrew Michalski Pro Tem Alumnus ‘71

Note from the Editor: The content of this article does not reflect the views of the Pro Tem team. This article is meant to present an opposing viewpoint to the vaccine mandate debate and coverage by journalists. In the fall of 1970, Pro Tem took a stand against the federal government’s implementation of the War Measures Act, a law that led to the arbitrary arrest and detention of hundreds of political activists. When asked by a CBC reporter how far he would trample on civil liberties, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously warned the country, “Just watch me.” Many students opposed the Act, but some made a “rally around the flag” demonstration on the main campus to support the Trudeau government. Open debate and dissenters were encouraged. 52 years later, Justin, son of Pierre, has invoked the Emergencies Act, hybrid child of the War Measures Act, to get rid of protesters he has described – and I paraphrase here – as misogynistic, racist and expressing unacceptable views about the vaccine mandate. It is worse this time because the draconian law comes from a guy who groped a female reporter in B.C., fired an Indigenous woman who served as his Attorney General, and wore black face to parties so many times he can’t remember how many. Yet, anyone who disagrees with him is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” The progressive parties, who received my vote for those 52 years, have supported him in Parliament to implement emergency powers including the right to freeze an individual’s bank account and financial transactions anywhere in the country. The vast majority of Canadians support the law’s imposition while 27 percent also want the unvaccinated, like me, put in jail. Dissent about vaccines or their mandate is not tolerated. This whole pandemic has a sinister edge to it. We’re told to trust the approval of drugs by U.S. regulators and institutions who annually receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the drug companies. To trust Pfizer research despite its pre-Covid payouts totalling $11 billion for criminal fraud and faking data. To trust the government narrative despite physicians, researchers, and big pharma whistleblowers being told to stop asking questions about the science or get turfed from their profession. To trust an experimental first world vaccine costing $35 per person over proven third world alternatives to be had for pennies. But then again, it was never about science. It’s about politics, money, and one of the most effective fear campaigns ever generated on a world population. Two years ago, I could never have imagined my friends – including some former radical students– gush so eloquently over every detail about how they jumped the queue to get the shot for themselves and family members. Did they not think that it might come at the expense of the more vulnerable? Pro Tem no longer seems to boast a prominently placed editorial page where the journal takes a formal stand on issues. No place to comment on Glendon students and staff having been forced to take the vaccine to keep their place at the college. No commentary on the Ottawa truck demonstration where police, without bodycam proof, claimed that demonstrators threw a bicycle at a police horse and its rider, but demonstrators with cell phones recorded an elderly Mohawk woman with a walker being trampled by the horse. Like many immigrants, my extended family has experienced the tyranny of authoritarian regimes. One of my core values is a profound sense of gratitude for living in a democracy that now appears in free fall. What should the writers do at Glendon? Fight for those liberties that make a democracy so wonderful. Learn every effective communication skill the college has to offer. Good writing takes

Photo par Ringo Chiu/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images

you a lot of places. As a former journalist, social worker, and teacher, I can attest to the importance of defining your core values and, if they’re of any substance, you will be swimming against the stream and turning heads. Determine your level of courage in expressing them. Find a group of digital journalists where you can fine tune your skills, and if you can make some money to survive, that would be good too.