Clarification

The article “Quebec: Down With Anti-Muslim Headscarf Bill!” (WV No. 1156, 31 May), translated from République ouvrière No. 3 (Winter/Spring 2019), the French-language newspaper of the Ligue trotskyste/Trotskyist League in Quebec and Canada, denounced the push by the new Quebec government to “ban the wearing of religious symbols by teachers, judges and police officers.” It went on to identify the cops and courts as a core part of the capitalist state machinery of repression. However, as Workers Tribune (No. 2, Summer/Fall 2019), the TLQC’s English-language paper, noted: “The article bore a weakness in that it did not distinguish clearly between teachers on the one hand, and police officers and judges on the other, all of whom the now enacted Bill 21 falsely puts on the same plane as ‘state employees’ with the same ‘position of authority.’ We oppose this racist law regardless of who it applies to, but the false equation between teachers and those carrying out the repressive functions of the state only serves to cover for the true target: Muslim women teachers.”