[Thanos]

And after being abandoned altogether by the Toronto school board and Ontario teacher's union after insane accusations of racism destroy his reputation & employment. From the Toronto Star, that horrible right-wing rag that's worse than Der Sturmer.....

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/former ... 1aec9.html

$1:

A former principal who sued the Toronto District School Board after he said he suffered workplace harassment during an anti-racism training session has died by suicide.

Richard Bilkszto, 60, worked for the TDSB for 24 years, primarily in adult education. He retired in 2019, but continued to serve as a fill-in principal on contract, most recently at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute in Etobicoke.

Earlier this year, Bilkszto sued the school board, alleging that his reputation was “systematically demolished” during two anti-Black racism training sessions in the spring of 2021 when, after he challenged some of the speaker’s comments, he was singled out and accused of supporting white supremacy.

Bilkszto allegedly suffered “severe emotional distress” and had to take a stress leave as a result. He filed a “mental stress injury” claim to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, which allowed the claim and provided compensation for two months of lost earnings.

The WSIB adjudicator wrote in their decision that they were “satisfied that the conduct of the speaker on April 26, 2021 and May 3, 2021 was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”

Bilkszto’s lawyer, Lisa Bildy, announced Bilkszto’s death on Thursday, posting a statement on Twitter.

In the statement, Bildy said the “stress and effects” of the incidents in 2021 “continued to plague” Bilkszto in the years since. “Last week he succumbed to this distress.”

Experts say suicide is rarely caused by a single circumstance or event, and there are usually many contributing factors that have developed over a period of time.

The school board released a short statement on Friday, acknowledging Bilkszto’s death without mentioning his lawsuit.

“Our hearts go out to Richard’s family and loved ones,” TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird wrote in an email. “He was a strong advocate for students — particularly those in adult and alternative education — and worked tirelessly to create an environment that fostered student success for students of all ages.”

Bilkszto’s lawsuit, which has not been tested in court, includes a summary of what allegedly occurred in the training sessions.

The sessions were led by Kike Ojo-Thompson, founder of the KOJO Institute, a consulting firm that provides anti-racist training to organizations in both the public and private sector, including large corporations, governments and several school boards. (The Toronto Star has also previously hired the company.)

The conflict arose after Ojo-Thompson is alleged to have suggested that Canada was more racist than the U.S., in part because Canada has “never reckoned with its anti-Black history” in the way the U.S. has.

Bilkszto, who previously taught high school in Buffalo, N.Y., disagreed with the statement. He said it would be “an incredible disservice to our learners” to suggest the U.S. is a more just society than Canada.

Bilkszto’s lawsuit alleges Ojo-Thompson reacted “with vitriol.”

“We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?” she said, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit.

Bilkszto claims he tried to de-escalate the situation, admitting there was anti-Black racism in Canada but argued that the evidence suggests “we are a far more just society” than the U.S.

At this point, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit, another KOJO facilitator intervened, saying what Bilkszto was bringing up was not relevant.

The facilitator allegedly said if Bilkszto wanted to be “an apologist” for Canada or the U.S. the session was “not the forum for that.”

Another session was held a week later. At the beginning of the session, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit, Ojo-Thompson referred to what happened the previous week and described it as a “real-life” example of resistance in support of white supremacy.

Bilkszto claims in his lawsuit that the statement, among others, implicitly referred to him as a racist and white supremacist.

The Star had begun reporting on the lawsuit prior to Bilkszto’s death.

In a July 7 statement, the KOJO Institute said it disputes many of the allegations in Bilkszto’s lawsuit against the TDSB, “including the descriptions of interactions with KOJO Institute staff which paint an inaccurate and incomplete picture” of what happened in the sessions.

They said it would be “inappropriate” to comment further since the matter was before the courts.

The TDSB has not yet filed a statement of defence. They would not address specific allegations in Bilkszto’s lawsuit. (The WSIB decision that awarded Bilkszto compensation in 2021 states the school board did not dispute his version of events.)

Following Bilkszto’s death, KOJO Institute provided a written statement offering condolences to Bilkszto’s loved ones. The statement also said that any interaction with individual employees during the sessions was “brief” and that they had “no involvement” in any investigation by the school board or the WSIB following the sessions.

In addition to claiming reputational damage, Bilkszto’s lawsuit also alleges the incidents led to him losing contract work with the board.

He alleges that after his six-week medical leave in 2021 the TDSB refused to reinstate him at his previous contract position. He alleges the decision was the result of either “reputational damage” or as reprisal for his WSIB claim. He also alleges that a promised 10-week contract to work at another school in 2022 was revoked.

In recent months, Bilkszto became outspoken in his opposition to various initiatives aimed at reducing inequity in education.

In May he appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin and criticized the school board’s new lottery system for specialized schools, arguing that it was anti-meritocratic.

“Ultimately, he was concerned with fairness and respect for all learners,” reads his lawyer’s statement — “a mission from which he thought public education was straying.”

Ahmed Patel, one of Bilkszto’s former students at the City Adult Learning Centre, told the Star that Bilkszto helped him turn his life around when he was in danger of giving up on school.

“The education excellence that he instilled in me motivated me to move on in life, on to bigger things,” Patel said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

I imagine that CKA's hivemind reaction will be one of two things:

1) big deal, it's just another privileged white guy
2) the revolution needs sacrifices, especially from the ranks of the supremacist enemy

This reaction from CKA, given what it's been deliberately turned into over the past couple of years, is entirely predictable. After all, as shown last year, CKA's overall reaction last year when Jon Stewart and a couple of far left race hustlers/grifters ambushed Andrew Sullivan was to fully support the attackers and to call for Sullivan's cancellation/career destruction. Some will pretend that they don't support these sorts of things, when DEI and ESG turns into a psychotic witch hunt that claims the lives & reputations of completely innocent people. But in reality we all know what the "new CKA" is all about - human eggs + glorious breaking = wonderful social justice omelette.

[xerxes]

From the article

$1:

Experts say suicide is rarely caused by a single circumstance or event, and there are usually many contributing factors that have developed over a period of time.

Seriously dude. Stop reading the right wing hate sites you seem to read exclusively now and take up a different hobby. The anger that’s being elicited in you is a powerful emotion. That dopamine hit from reading something that upsets you is hard to ignore but you need to find something to replace it. Otherwise you’re going to either end up attacking someone in fit of misdirected rage, or sucking proud boy cock to show the libs how manly you are.

Try taking up a new hobby. Knitting maybe? Yarn is stupid expensive now like everything else, but it’s an infinitely better investment of your time and energy than this.

[Thanos]

The Toronto Star is a right-wing hate site? Wow, that will be a surprise to all the SJWs who work there.

[Thanos]

CBC, that notable right-wing hate site, reports that government of Ontario is reviewing the failure of the Toronto District School Board to protect Richard Bilkszto from the race-based witch hunt that ended in his suicide.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ ... -1.6917432

[xerxes]

A Toronto principal’s suicide was wrongly linked to anti-racism training. Here’s what was really said

$1:

One man’s fatal mental health crisis has been co-opted by political opportunists and turned into an attack on anti-racism training while also, chillingly, targeting one Black woman.

Former Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto, 60, ended his life July 13. Suicide is a horrendous loss, no ifs, no buts. It’s terrible to contemplate the mental torture that leads to that decision and terrible to experience its crushing aftermath.

While experts say suicides are rarely caused by single factors, the man’s lawyer linked his death to a 10-minute interaction two years ago at a mandatory Toronto school board training run by the highly respected Kike Ojo-Thompson of the KOJO Institute, and her subsequent reference to that interaction.

His lawyer, Lisa Bildy, said in a tweet, “He experienced an affront to that stellar reputation” at that workshop and “succumbed to his distress.”

The predictable backlash from the right rested its moral might on two claims:

a statement of claim after Bilkszto filed a civil lawsuit against the TDSB in April for not defending him in that workshop; and
the opinion of an insurance case manager at the WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) that allowed Bilkszto to file a claim for mental stress injury in August 2021. The case manager wrote that Ojo-Thompson’s conduct “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”

This was not a finding based on a credible investigation, but government organizations are often given credulity even when not merited. In a statement on the KOJO website Thursday evening, Ojo-Thompson, who has done training at the Star previously, said she only heard about the lawsuit through media enquiries. “Additionally, KOJO was not part of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) insurance claim adjudication.”

One man’s fatal mental health crisis has been co-opted by political opportunists and turned into an attack on anti-racism training while also, chillingly, targeting one Black woman.

Former Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto, 60, ended his life July 13. Suicide is a horrendous loss, no ifs, no buts. It’s terrible to contemplate the mental torture that leads to that decision and terrible to experience its crushing aftermath.


While experts say suicides are rarely caused by single factors, the man’s lawyer linked his death to a 10-minute interaction two years ago at a mandatory Toronto school board training run by the highly respected Kike Ojo-Thompson of the KOJO Institute, and her subsequent reference to that interaction.


His lawyer, Lisa Bildy, said in a tweet, “He experienced an affront to that stellar reputation” at that workshop and “succumbed to his distress.”

The predictable backlash from the right rested its moral might on two claims:

a statement of claim after Bilkszto filed a civil lawsuit against the TDSB in April for not defending him in that workshop; and
the opinion of an insurance case manager at the WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) that allowed Bilkszto to file a claim for mental stress injury in August 2021. The case manager wrote that Ojo-Thompson’s conduct “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”

This was not a finding based on a credible investigation, but government organizations are often given credulity even when not merited. In a statement on the KOJO website Thursday evening, Ojo-Thompson, who has done training at the Star previously, said she only heard about the lawsuit through media enquiries. “Additionally, KOJO was not part of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) insurance claim adjudication.”

At issue, based on news reports, were two statements. One, Ojo-Thompson challenging a beloved Canadian myth by stating “Canada is more racist than the United States” and, two, “reacting with vitriol” when the former principal objected as well as “humiliating” him by calling him a “white supremacist” and a “resistor.”

The Star obtained a copy of the recording of the two sessions in question from a source who was present at the meetings. Based on it:
Ojo-Thompson never said: “Canada is more racist than the United States.”

She never called Bilkszto a “white supremacist and resistor.”
The recordings reveal for the first time a fuller picture of the conversation and disagreement that has been cherry-picked, shorn off context and nuance, and presented by those with an agenda to villainize diversity initiatives.

They show that the Canada-U.S. comparisons — although perfectly legitimate — were not initiated by Ojo-Thompson but were repeatedly brought up by participants in the “questions, comments, aha-s” that she invites.

For instance, one white TDSB leader says reflectively: “We as Canadians like to say we’re not as bad as our neighbours to the south and we need to stop.” Another leader brings up an example of a Black person from the U.S. moving to Canada “in hopes of a better future for her two sons,” and says “she was furious with me. She said, ‘I thought it was better up here. … I cannot believe it’s worse.’”

In response, Ojo-Thompson leans on her personal experience as a Black woman to say: “I felt more normalized as a Black woman there than I do here. We’re invisibilized from the cultural fabric of this nation. Canada has never reckoned with its anti-Black history,” and, “I lived in the South. And I’m saying this factually without any hiccup. The racism we experience is far worse here than there.”

There is a vast difference between a Black woman comparing her personal experiences of racism in two countries and a blanket statement that one is worse than the other.
About 10 minutes before the session ends, Bilkszto speaks for the first time. He says he spent a lot of time in the U.S. and, “I invite everyone here to do some research and look at things like education and look how you think about a system we have in Ontario where every student is funded equally. But go to United States, they’re funded based on their tax base.”

Ojo-Thompson replies: “What you’re saying is not untrue, but … all I’m saying is that the Jane and Finch kids are not having the same experience as the Forest Hill kids. They’re just not. And that’s despite our equal laws.”

Bilkszto responds by adding: “We have a health-care system here where everyone has access to health care. It is not the same way in the United States. So to sit here and say, in all honesty, we’re talking about facts and figures and to walk into the classroom tomorrow and say Canada is just as bad as the United States, I think we’re doing an incredible disservice to our learners.”

That’s not a help-me-understand question typically posed by workshop participants to trainers. That’s a man saying to a woman, an expert on anti-racism, at the end of a session that is replete with history, data, experience and nuance, that she’s flat-out wrong.

Ojo-Thompson points out a fallacy in his argument. “What I’m finding interesting is that this is in the middle of this COVID disaster, where the inequities in this fair and equal health care system have been properly shown to all of us.”
She then pivots to the principle of the point behind his original challenge of her experience of racism as a Black woman in Canada versus the U.S.

“So we’re here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people? Like, is that what you’re doing? Because I think that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure. So I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now.”

Anti-racism training sessions are by definition challenging discussions. In every session, Ojo-Thompson references the normalcy of emotions coming up and the importance of accepting them rather than going into flight or freeze defensive postures.

At in-person sessions, defensiveness comes across in the body language, in whether an attendee is participating or avoiding engaging, in whether they choose to cry (you’ll be surprised). You can also tell by the tone of the questions.

Since this was a Zoom session, Ojo-Thompson made a note about that last point. She noted that there were people in the session who were Black, well-informed, well-educated. “Part of this work is listening to Black people,” she says. “Remember, as white people. There’s a whole bunch going on that isn’t your personal experience. … You will never know it to be so. So your job in this work as white people is to believe. And if what you want is clarification, ask for that. Truly. Not with a foot in the: ‘Yeah, but I’m going to tell you how you’re wrong.’ It’s the: ‘Help me understand further, please, because I actually don’t know.’”

She concludes by calling it “a profound and an appropriate teachable moment.”
That was 10 minutes done. Disagreement? Yes. Bullying and harassment? Not seeing it.
At a subsequent meeting the next week, Ojo-Thompson began by revisiting the concept of resistance that she mentioned even before the interaction with Bilkszto and how resistance upholds white supremacy. “I want to open by going back to the concept of resistance,” which “is going to be the most transformational, because we don’t talk enough about the many, many responses to the work, what they look like.”

Soon after she says, “One of the ways that white supremacy is upheld, protected, reproduced, upkept, defended is through resistance.”
Then she references the interaction with Bilkszto from the previous week, saying, “who would have thought my luck would show up so well last week that we got perfect evidence of a wonderful example of resistance that you all got to bear witness to. So we’re going to talk about it, because it doesn’t get better than this.”

This is Ojo-Thompson, doing the hard job of managing a zoom session with 199 people, training leaders on not just the presumptions that lead to discriminations but also how to recognize the resistance to it. This cannot be considered shaming Bilkszto by calling him “a resistor.” Nor is suggesting upholding white supremacy the same as calling someone a white supremacist.

In the previous session, before Bilkszto spoke, Ojo-Thompson had pointed out how one doesn’t even having to be white to uphold white supremacy, that there are “all kinds of kickbacks and rewards” for upholding white supremacy and “you see all kinds of non-white people, for example, attempting to uphold the values of white supremacy, even among Indigenous people, Black people.”

The far-right media ecosystem — organizations and commentators — quickly plumbed the depths of opportunism after Bilkszto ended his life and turned it into an international firestorm.

They martyred Bilkszto to their cause of villainizing diversity, equity and inclusion work and made a target of Ojo-Thompson not just by framing her as a bully but by suggesting her words drove him to suicide. They splashed her face across stories, sometimes multiple times in one story.

The malice spread, and in short order Ontario announced a review of these allegations with a view to “reform professional training.”
On Thursday, the TDSB said it launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Bilksztoszto’s death.

Consider this: On the one hand, reams of data that show racism maims and kills. That the system of white supremacy has caused an epidemic of suicides among Indigenous peoples. That the risk of suicide among LGBTQ2+ people is rising.

On the other hand, an isolated tragedy, contentiously linked to a conversation the anti-anti-racists don’t want to have.
Guess which of the two the system comes down on.

If Canadians want to do nothing about our racism, then let’s be open about it. Otherwise, we better believe Black women. Protect Black women.

https://archive.is/RWzEE#selection-5641.0-5819.141

[Thanos]

I assume that in that copypasta mess of a word salad there's some sort of point other than "she's black therefore she's not liable".

And news article >>>>>>> opinion column.

[xerxes]

More like the usual, 'more to the story than initially reported.

[herbie]

Make up inflammatory headline.
State your opinion on a subject.
People will believe it is news, not that the opinion is news.

If your not in the last throes of dying from painful cancer, no one 'drove you to' suicide. You're just a genuinely weak and mentally defective person.

[Thanos]

Suicide is actually perfectly logical, especially considering that it's the most effective way possible for a person who can't take the non-stop mean-spirited bullshit anymore to get away permanently from a planet full of people like you.

[DrCaleb]

Why a Toronto high school principal’s death is wrongly linked to anti-racist training

[Thanos]

You are aware that when Richard Bilkszto was outed as a white supremacist for daring to disagree one of the more staunch leftists on the TDSB created several tweets (long since deleted of course) congratulating KOJO for uncovering the unforgivable racist and his obvious racist racism? All in all the exposing of Bilkszto as a suppressive was one of the great days in Canadian DEI history. They were all basically like at the justice that had just occurred.....



Bilkszto was also gay and about as progressive* over the course of his career as one can possibly be. Yet that personal & professional history still wasn't anywhere near enough to save him once they had the scent of his blood inside their snouts.

* well, he was the sort of old-timey progressive who preferred to help people as opposed to destroying them apparently - more the fool him, obviously

$1:

Importantly, Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board conducted an investigation and concluded that Bilkszto had been the victim of workplace harassment and bullying. Not only did the TDSB not dispute Bilkszto’s version of events, it did not even appeal the compensation award. Thus, there’s no question that Bilkszto was the victim of wrongdoing.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/zw ... r-AA1eKt10

The bureaucrats at the compensation board typically fight tooth & nail against either paying out or reducing the payout on almost every claim that comes in front of them. In this case what the employer did (the TDSB) was so egregious and outright cruel that even the cold-hearted and dead-eyed apparatchiks at compo gave up altogether on even thinking of contesting the award. The only ones still defending DEI are those who, like KOJO, are also in this as a business because of the massive profit to be made off of virtue signaling governments & corporations. And this is virtue of a sort, in the sense of how virtue was seen by Robespierre, in that the number of victims claimed by virtue is entirely justifiable in order to achieve the promised utopia of pure equity.

Don't double down on this one. It's not in your best interest to do so. One of yours caused the death of someone who didn't deserve it. Go find yourselves a much better hill on which to fight for the revolution.

[rickc]

herbie herbie:

Make up inflammatory headline.
State your opinion on a subject.
People will believe it is news, not that the opinion is news.

If your not in the last throes of dying from painful cancer, no one 'drove you to' suicide. You're just a genuinely weak and mentally defective person.

So let me see if I have this straight. A person considering suicide is a genuinely weak and mentally defective person as far as you are concerned.......but a grown ass man wanting to live out his life as Tinkerbell and occupy the same restrooms as pre pubescent little girls is perfectly normal to you. Good to know.

That tells me all I need to know about the left these days.

[Thanos]

Includes important audio recording excerpts from the session where Richard Bilkszto was defamed as a racist luxuriating in his "whiteness", and thus needed to be merciless destroyed.....



And so many of you are cheering this process on. I can think of at least two or three current CKA members who are showing with their ideology that they just wouldn't have any problem with a show trial designed to annihilate a social/cultural enemy, they'd actively enjoy being the judge that gets to sentence someone to obliteration.

[DrCaleb]

Oh! Megyn Kelly! That is going to be a hard hitting journalism piece!

Zzzzzz

[Thanos]

Predicted response 100% achieved. As consistent as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. But, but my tribe is always good!