Renowned Global Communicator - Marie Clarke Walker

She is a dedicated mentor and a strong believer that social justice is essential to an equitable world, she was the first racialized woman to serve as Secretary Treasurer, and was also the first racialized woman elected executive Vice president of the Canadian Labor Congress CLC. To our audience, to our listeners, I you again to Ms. Marie Clark Walker!

At first, I fought it because the Constitution was very clear. Elected leaders needed to be in Ottawa, and when I was first elected in 2002, I asked if I could stay in Toronto because I had two small children. And the answer to that was no. The Constitution was clear. You needed to be in Ottawa. So of course I was a little perplexed as to how come it was okay in 2002 and not okay now? Or vice versa. Not okay. In 2002, but okay now, and I was told not to argue with it and just go along.

After arguing and being unsuccessful at the argument, I came back to Toronto and what I decided to do was to, rather than sit back and continue to be annoyed and upset and just get angrier decided to work more closely with community, so I started working, doing work with the Malvern Community Coalition and other community groups that I had been involved in prior to going to Ottawa, and some knew my position, some did not.

And so I would go in as a community member, they would have challenges, issues, et cetera, and we would talk as a community or organizational group as to how to deal with it. And then I would, I divulge that this is my position. I can help with this. This is the campaign that the union movement is doing. And a lot of the times it was surprise because people, a lot of people think that the union movement is just about picket lines and strikes, but we do so much more.

Everything that we enjoy in the world of work comes through the union movement through the International Labor Organization, through the union movement and comes into community, and I do mean everything. Everything from the amount of money that you are paid, what a minimum wage is, what discrimination looks like, sounds and is what occupational health and safety is and the importance of it. TTC and the struggles around transportation.

Public transportation is also something that we worked on and there was within Melbourne and Scarborough, I know that we were trying to bring a subway and an RT to Scarborough.

So they, there was also the TC Riders organization, so all of those groups would come together and I would talk about whatever the issue was and help to strategize, to bring solutions, and by extension, introducing them to other things that the labor movement did, and again, this is something that I didn't just do in Toronto because of the reach of the movement. It was very easy to talk about some of these community things when I was doing work on health and safety.

For example, in British Columbia or in Alberta or in Nova Scotia. I also, I think I also brought a different perspective because I was community oriented and did understand that every single one of our union members, all three plus million of them, belong to a community first. And if you're not dealing with them from that level, you're not really getting through to. What am I looking? You're not really getting to what their issues are.

So they could have issues at work, but if they're having issues in their community, their mind is not on work even when they're at work. So it was really important to try and get the movement to understand that community issues are just as important or even more important to members. And so it was important for the unions to actually start to work on things like that.

There were a couple of days that didn't happen so when I came home, I think the first or second day, my mother said to me, if you don't take care of that here, you're not gonna have any to take care of. A few weeks later, she took me to Mr. Petro kept saying to her, Beverly, you sure you want to do this? And she kept saying look, I brought her in here for a reason, so just do it.

And everybody in this, and I had very long hair, very thick, but very long hair and Petro started cutting he would cut and he would turn to Momi and say, this good? And she would say, no, I want it off. Take it all off. And everybody in the salon stopped to watch Petro Azan cut my hair off. When I came out of that salon, my hair was an inch off my head. And it was difficult because I was already very tall for a girl, at least at that time.

It was even worse now because I was tall, lanky with no hair. I remember everybody telling me, it's only hair. It will grow back. It will grow back. And the funny thing about it is that's what I tell people now. Because you become a community mom and these things still happen. And so I have that experience to share with them. But if you had asked me at 12 years old what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be, it was not anything as I'm doing now. I wanted to be a, an entertainer.

I wanted to be an actress, I wanted to be a singer. I did not want to be like my mother because to me it wasn't that she was doing anything wrong. But every weekend I didn't have a weekend. I was at the US Consulate demonstrating, I was on a picket line demonstrating I was at a Co J C A doing something or National Black Coalition of Canada on a panel. I was always doing something and I just wanted to be a kid, I wanted to be able to go out and play and everything for a reason.

It definitely informed the way in which I lead and the importance of community in everything that we do. So I'm very thankful and grateful that Beverly Johnson was my mother, is my mother, and continues to be there to support and pull me up. When I need pulling up.

Is respected, you may not agree with, you, may not like, but you need to respect the fact that they have the right to be here and treat them as such. We are, I feel that today we are further away from an equitable world than we were 10 years ago. I joined the union movement to try and make the world a little bit more equitable. I lead and I lead in that way. And if truth be known, when President Number 45 was elected, it changed the trajectory of the world. In my opinion.

It made it things that we didn't want to talk about or didn't like talking about or wasn't proper to talk about just came flying out of his mouth every time he opened it, and so it took the world backwards. I'm not even talking about the fake news foolishness, I'm just talking about the way in which he treated people and it gave others permission. Others who weren't in positions of leadership, it gave them permission to do the same.

And we're finding it's not just in the us you're hearing things here in Canada, you're seeing things here in Canada that I thought in I, I would never see in Canada in my lifetime, not we. And we knew that. We knew that Canada had issues with racism and still do have issues with racism and all of those things, but it was more covert and I think that we were doing a number of things to push it back and once a prominent leader gave permission to do it.

Everybody, because we also have political party leaders that say things and do things right here in Canada that I just have to shake my head at.

The union movement has been doing work on equity for quite some time, and I am the first to say that the movement has not always been kind to us. People look to the union movement now for that equitable work that we do, but it didn't start out that way we have to remember that, and we have to remember that the movement like society, Is a microcosm, right? It has everybody in it. Everybody in it and so there is much education that needs to happen. There is much understanding that needs to happen.

There is much dialogue and communication that needs to happen. That's not happening now and in a lot of the work that I do. I praise Black Lives Matter. I know that it's not an organization that everybody likes or everybody understands, but it's more about them understanding who they are and what their role is in trying to make this world a better place, and in doing so, becoming allies. To the other equity seeking groups that are out there that needs that support. And that's what they did.

They went out and supported the trans community by having a sit-in at Pride. They went out and supported the indigenous community by joining with, I don't No more. And that's just, two of the things that they have done that shows people that it's important. For all of us to work together if we're going to make progress or going to make strides towards an equitable and better society. Agree, we can agree, we can't continue to work in silos.

So in terms of housing, there are too many unhoused people on the on, on the streets. Government, after government have talked about affordable housing, but that is not there. People are in it for profits. Child care we finally got $10 a day childcare, but if. People, parents can't find childcare spaces, then it doesn't help because if you have no childcare space, you can't go to work. If you can't go to work, you can't make ends meet to support your family.

So it's a vicious cycle and that's the reason that we talked earlier about the looking at the holistic community or holistic person. That's why that's important I don't think that every, everyone in the union movement does that yet, every union, every level of government, I don't think that they're doing, they're looking at those individual issues as individual issues, housing, education, healthcare, et cetera, but not looking at the impact that all of them have together on society.

And if you are at the bottom of society and you don't have any of those things, Then what?

The privilege of sitting on that body showed me that various government departments don't talk to each other. So Labor and global Affairs work together at the International Labor Organization, but there's no known, not necessarily cooperation in terms of particular items. We were negotiating, a convention on violence and harassment in 2018 and 2019. There were some, you would think the Canadian government was very involved in that negotiation.

You would think that all the levels of government would understand Ministry of Health, ministry of environment, et cetera, because all of it came. But they did not, and we find out that they don't know these things. When we go to these meetings and we ask a question or we make a comment and they say, huh, what are you talking about? So the assumption that government Big G government knows what's going on is...

Was it successful To some extent amongst our members, but I don't think it was successful amongst community for community because if it was then in 2023, you still wouldn't have community organizations or community parts of various communities asking what's the labor movement doing? A again, it's about. Changing strategy, changing how you do things.

And we all know that change is very difficult for a lot, particularly organizations that are set in their ways that are part of a system that was set up not for us to be successful, but in a lot of cases for us to fail. And when I'm talking about us, I'm talking about black workers. I'm talking about indigenous workers, I'm talking about racialized workers. We have been talking in the labor movement for quite some time about the importance of human rights.

It didn't start any, it didn't start in the two thousands. It didn't start in the 1990s it started back when the labor movement was set up. In Canada in any event in the early 19 hundreds, and things progressed along the way with, people like Bramley Armstrong doing, the, his, the sit-ins with Dennis McDermott and Roy Lansky and others. It went from there.

To the 1990s when the Canadian Labor Congress did an anti-racism task force report that talked about the issue of racism and discrimination in every facet of life, from housing to criminal justice to education, we did a complete task force report complete with recommendations. And then the two thousands when those recommendations just sat there and nothing, although there were people within the movement pushing for something to happen. Various or individual unions were not ready.

They had their own their own method of doing things their own issues that were of importance to their members. And so human rights and fairness, yes, was there, but it wasn't their front and center, and there was no understanding, in my opinion, that those are the things we needed to work on if we wanted people from those communities to really get involved and understand what the movement was doing and the fact that the movement may have been doing something positive for them.

But when you take an entire segment of society and put them on display and make it seem as if you're doing the work, but every time they ask for resources or every time they ask for a campaign, the answer is no. Then you have a problem and today it's still that way. Equity issues are at the bottom and resources are usually the reason the excuse given as to why it is work can't be done in that area and that piece has failed, I think within the Fairness Works campaign.

Committees and positions don't create fairness, don't create equity. It is the power that those positions and those committees have to actually make change that matters and in most cases, the committees are just that, committees. They have no reporting structure, nowhere for their information to go only amongst each other. And I'll give an example, working wall block. It's something we all experience. It's something black workers have been talking about for decades.

But it wasn't looked at in terms we couldn't even talk about it at the C L C. In 2014 when I was reelected, it was one of the things that I insisted happen. We needed to have an honest conversation about what was happening to black workers in the system. It became part of ending discrimination, became part of the Fairness Works campaign, and that's when it fizzled out.

I had to go through the President, and if he didn't agree, it didn't get done. No matter how you pushed, and again, the more they said no, the more I pushed. And that is why I ended up back in Toronto. That's why I was in exile because I continuously pushed for change that I believe the community needed and called out racism when I saw it. And you know that when we call out racism in a way in, or in organizations like labor, there is guilt and that guilt on the other side makes them push back.

And put the problem on you or the person who is calling it out.

I like them both we're so sad.

I had it, I had, my health was important and I, it was failing because when you are stressed in that environment, women tend to hold things inside and then you end up getting sick, getting tumors, getting, illnesses that you don't even, didn't even think were anything near you or part of your family or anything like that because you're holding all that stress inside and. Hassan Yusuf came to speak to me and asked if I would run, and initially I said no. And then he said I will suppo.

I wanted my story out there. And he said, I will support your story. I will support you. I will talk about what I did. That was not the correct thing and I was invited to speak at it was still CAW the CAW education Center in Port Elgan to a number of CAW leadership and members. And I remember Hassan going up to introduce me and telling the people, she's going to tell you a story. Everything she says in that story is true.

I played a part and I am ashamed of the part that I played and I'm, and he put that out there. And I thought doing that there would've been an understanding of really what needed to happen at the movement. Anyway, I decided to run, told my story, and the president at the time was also reoffering and chose three women to run with him, one of whom was a black woman. I, a very young black woman who was brand new to the labor movement.

She actually was a staff member of another union and convinced her to run. Since then she's now a staff member at the Canadian Labor Congress. She did not win, but he brought her on as staff and there were people who supported that and there were others who didn't. I fell somewhere in, in between and decided that she was a young black woman, and so I was going to take her under my wing and support her. She is still thriving at the Congress.

She's actually thriving now because I think she is in a position that she was meant for, but she didn't understand. We've had several conversations since then. She didn't understand, but the movement felt that it was okay. To do that.

It was meetings that were happening in living rooms about the type of organization that the black community needed. And a number of people that I know, including my mom, was involved in all of that. So I was around when the concept came up and when they got funding and when the organization finally came to fruition and so I was very happy. To leave Catholic Family Services and go to Harbi because it was my community. It was an organization that I was proud of.

It was an organization that I felt could do so much good for the community, and I took a serious pay cut. I was a young, a new mom. With a young child. But I took a very serious pay cut because community was important and I loved working at Harbi. Harbi was so different from any other social social service agency that was out there. We had block cap that was with us dealing with the issue of HIV and aids. We had an education component led by Le Lek Hendrix.

We had Jobs Ontario component and another adult education Velma and Jackie and all the people that were around doing community work outside. Anyway, so for me, I was happy to join that family.

I would come home on a weekend and I didn't get home The first few years I didn't get home very often, but when I did come home, it was going to my son's games and just being amongst the parents, the moms and just being able to relax and be myself, it was very difficult. To just be myself outside when I got the position because the expectation of that I had on myself as well as I felt that the community had of me. Was enormous. And so there were certain things that I wouldn't do.

I do them now because I realized somewhere along the line they can't, you can't remove your authentic self from yourself. You have to be your authentic self all the time. And so now I am, and what relaxes me now is my granddaughter and number two, which is who's coming tomorrow? My grand, my grandbabies relax. Me just playing and knowing that I still have the ability to try and make the world a little bit better for them.

So I wanna put that out there because I have huge love for the former North York Board of Education and for the people who helped me to get through that, Evelyn Steinberg, Mag Logan, Stephanie Payne those were the three that made the program happen. Unfortunately, it's no longer I left the board and the program stopped.

But that is something I think that people really need to know because a lot of people don't know that program existed and it existed in three schools, Gulfstream Public School, O'Connor, and Shepherd Avenue Public School. And to the best advice that I've been given. Best advice I've ever been given was by my grandmother. Simplest thing, treat people the way that you want to be treated. It's what I continuously use in my work.

The proudest moment for me in the last number of years, work related was my participation as the spokesperson at the International Labor Conference and the spokesperson for the convention, the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work. That because that convention, which was ratified by Canada in January of this year. Took two years to negotiate, and it is the first right that has been negotiated in 75 years.

That is what I am proudest of because that, and I have a copy of the book here, so it's a tiny book available online through the International Labor Organization. That little book will save and has saved millions of lives because of what it stands for. The words in it, how it was negotiated. It was negotiated very differently from any other I L O convention, and it is very different from every other I L O convention. And that I think is what I'm most proud of.

And the team that I worked with on this were phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. And I used my grandmother's teachings to bring it right back full circle. I used my grandmother's teachings. Treat people the way that you want to be treated and walk a mile in somebody else's shoes and you'll understand and in between the two years of negotiating this, I gave the government's homework.

And their homework was to put yourself in someone else's shoes and then come back and let's talk about what is in this book. And for the most part, they did that. I set up a WhatsApp group with. The spokesperson for France, who was the European Union spokesperson and the spokesperson for Uganda, which was the African Union spokesperson, set up a WhatsApp group with them and then forced them to talk and come up with language that would work.

And again, it goes right back to if we don't work together to create a world that we want to see, not for us, for our children, and for our grandchildren and their children, and going on and on. If we don't work together, that's not going to happen, and we need to understand that.