This week @ rabble.ca: Revolution 101

Details: Published on Friday, 25 April 2014 14:40; Written by editor

25 Apr 2014

Hey rabble readers!

This week we launched Revolution 101, our new series on movement building and strategies for social change -- it connects with activist movements and then gives you the tools to make change happen! In the first instalment, Meg Borthwick speaks with author and activist Steve D'Arcy about how social movements can use militant protest to strengthen democracy, and Steff Pinch presents tools that embrace confrontation as a catalyst for change. You can follow the series here.

On April 22 we celebrated 10 years of columns from rabble.ca president and political affairs columnist Duncan Cameron. To mark the occasion, we brought out his very first column from 2004 and assembled a collection of his favourites over the years. You can read a selection of them in... our archives, and find his latest right here.

Could a postal bank save our public postal service? Watch the rabbletv livestream from the CUPW Symposium on Postal Banking April 26-27 to learn more!

May Day is just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate workers as artists and artists as workers than with the Mayday Festival of Working People and the Arts in Toronto May 1-15? Visit mayworks.ca for the program of exciting visual art exhibits, panel discussions, poetry readings, musical performances and more.

Also kicking off on May Day is the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Labour Media in Quebec. The conference features over 20 workshops, panel presentations, strategy sessions, and runs through May 3.

Stop the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership before it's too late! Join the Stop The Secrecy campaign and speak out.

This week's top news

Hassan Yussuff wants to bring fresh approach to the CLC
Hassan Yussuff is running for the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress. H.G. Watson sat down with him to talk about his bid for the CLC leadership.
By H.G Watson

Newfoundland and Labrador to replace student loans with grants
Newfoundland and Labrador has maintained a decade-long tuition freeze, had earlier removed loan interest and has now become the first province set to replace student loans with grants.
By Cory Collins

Canadian cities and the future of democracy
Canada is now past 80 per cent of the population living in urban areas. Cities are showing a capacity to solve problems together and now is the time for Canadian cities to be more ambitious.
By Tobi Nussbaum

Struggling for citizen control of community TV in Montreal
The modern cable industry is not community-TV friendly, so a not-for-profit is proposing to take over community TV from Videotron.
By Catherine Edwards

Calling on Canada to protect fair elections in Hong Kong
Pro-democracy leaders from Hong Kong ask Canadian politicians to help safeguard elections and democratic freedom in Hong Kong.
By Ellie Ng

This week's top blogs

Elections Canada report no whitewash -- it's far, far worse than that
With both hands tied behind its back, Elections Canada could not access evidence of deliberate vote suppression in 2011. That's not quite the exoneration that the Conservatives are claiming.
By John Baglow

Supreme Court Senate ruling challenges all federal parties
The Supreme Court ruling on the Senate came in this morning, and it is a significant loss for the Conservative Party, but it is going to affect all the parties. Karl Nerenberg talks about why.
By Karl Nerenberg

Why underage drinking at 24 Sussex Drive is no joke for the Harper Government
Yesterday's boozy little incident has the potential to do more harm to the Harper Government than scandals in the Senate, unfair elections acts and unpopular pipelines galore. Here's why.
By David J. Climenhaga

Follow the Money, Part 5 -- The Tobacco Papers revisited
It took a court case to prove it, but Fraser Institute research results that questioned whether smoking can cause cancer were funded by Big Tobacco. Who funds today's research?
By Donald Gutstein

'If you know our land, you know our life': An Earth Day call for reconciliation
In March I travelled to Edmonton for the last National Event of the TRC. I am on a journey of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, which is also a journey of reconciliation with the land.
By Sara Stratton

Capitalism, veganism and the animal industrial complex
The animal industrial complex offers a tradeoff between more affordable and widely available meat and dairy products and the welfare of animals whose existences necessarily become more invisible.
By Lauren Corman

Finding religion in the Vegan Challenge
I also happen to be a person of faith who believes that it's OK to eat animals and consume animal products. But this week, I was compelled to think deeply about it all.
By Amira Elghawaby

This week's top columns

Living organisms caused the 'Great Dying': Are humans behind the next extinction?
Skeptics who claim that humans can't trigger mass climate disruption and mass biological extinction may find their position increasingly uncomfortable.
By Ole Hendrickson

Harper and the taste for war
Under Harper, Ottawa has shown an enthusiasm for the institution of war, making something of a fetish out of celebrating Canada's war history and pumping up our military spending.
By Linda McQuaig

Why was the humpback whale taken off the 'threatened species' list?
This week the federal government was legally obligated to establish protected habitat for threatened North Pacific humpback whales. Instead the humpback was taken off the "threatened species" list.
By Stephen Leahy

Canada's coup-supporting corporate cowboy diplomacy
The Ukraine debacle represents the latest in a pattern of Stephen Harper and John Baird supporting coups and ignoring human rights violations as a nasty but necessary part of doing business.
By Matthew Behrens

Toronto Star's digital journalists and the market devalue of journalism
A digital journalist is still a journalist and must be doing the same work as a print journalist. So why is one employee paid less just because his or her work doesn't end up as ink on cellulose?
By Wayne MacPhail

A new direction for Canada
A new direction for Canada means rebuilding the inter-generational bargain between young and old; focusing spending on improving social determinants of health; and making the economy climate-friendly.
By Duncan Cameron

Climate change, capitalism and our climate crisis mismatch
We are suffering from a terrible case of climate-related mistiming -- because the climate crisis hatched at a time when conditions were uniquely hostile to a problem of this nature and magnitude.
By Naomi Klein

Harper on Russia: America's useful idiot?
Is Stephen Harper just a useful idiot to the U.S. -- ranting and raving about Russian expansionism and imperialism so that the U.S. position looks more reasonable by comparison?
By Murray Dobbin

MORE FROM...
Naomi Klein, Linda McQuaig, Rick Salutin, Duncan Cameron, Wayne MacPhail, Murray Dobbin and others! Read columns...

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This week's top podcasts

Donald Cameron on the legal right to a clean environment
In Canada we don't have the right to clean air or clean water. Donald Cameron is exploring the movement to secure rights for nature, as well as the human right to a healthy environment.
By Erica Butler

Learning for peace and justice: The Canadian School of Peacebuilding
Valerie Smith and Jarem Sawatsky talk about their Winnipeg-based summer school for peacebuilders from Canada and around the world.
By Scott Neigh

Liberation movements then and now: Interview with author and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Interview with author and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about the history of liberation movements, her work with the UN Indigenous Rights working group, pipelines and the state of activism today.
By Tanya Hill

Conversation with author of 'Misogyny Re-loaded'
Meghan Murphy speaks with Abigail Bray about her new book, 'Misogyny Re-loaded,' which has been described as 'an explosive manifesto against the resurgent sexual fascism of the new world order.'
By Meghan Murphy

Resisting burnout in feminist activism
A rebroadcast of Ariana Barer's interview with Vikki Reynolds about resisting burnout through solidarity building and community responses to oppression.
By The F Word

This week's top rabbletv

Widows of Chemical Valley Part 1 -- Ada
In Sarnia, Ontario's Chemical Valley, life can end painfully because of industry's silent killers. About 1,000 workers a year die each year on the job in Canada.
By Humberto DaSilva

This week's top books

'The Sixth Extinction' and our looming catastrophe
'The Sixth Extinction' makes abundantly clear that carbon dioxide emissions are serious and we urgently need to cut our reliance on fossil fuel energy.
By Al Engler

In this issue

Upcoming events

OttawaMin Fami: Arab Feminist Reﬂections on Identity, Space and Resistance
Ghadeer Malek and Ghaida Moussa, editors of Min Fami: Arab Feminist Reﬂections on Identity, Space and Resistance, are on a two-day Ottawa tour.
By Inanna Publications

WinnipegWinnipeg 2014 Alternative Municipal Budget Launch
The Alternative Municipal budget outlines what the City of Winnipeg could do if it were truly committed to social justice, environmental sustainability and sustained economic growth.
By Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives -MB

Occupied Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver)Beat the Pipelines May 1
Join us this May Day for the first in a series of demonstrations that celebrate the example of the Unist'ot'en and the resistance that pipelines have met so far.

This week's top in cahoots

All Together Now! campaign's Fairness Express rolls across Ontario
The popular travelling road show focusing on income inequality is revving its engines for another leg of its cross-Canada tour on income inequality.
By National Union of Public and General Employees

Another round of cuts to our food inspection system? The raw truth about tax cuts.
It looks like $35 million and 192 inspectors are on the chopping block according to documents posted by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and major media reports.
By Canadians for Tax Fairness

One year after Rana Plaza tragedy, UFCW Canada embarks on fact-finding mission to Bangladesh
The Rana Plaza tragedy highlighted garment retailers' complacency in protecting workers' rights and safety in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
By United Food and Commercial Workers

Active babble topics

Happy 13th birthday, rabble.ca!!!
By Unionist

Cuts to Radio-Canada Enquête program budget
By lagatta

Before and after -- 35 years of change in Latin America
By DaveW

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This week's top tool

Demand compensation for the victims of Rana Plaza
It's been a year since Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,138 people. Demand that the brands responsible compensate those injured and their families!

Poll

Do you agree with the Supreme Court's decision on Senate reform?

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled today that if the federal government wants to fundamentally change the Senate, in any significant way -- ranging from elections to term limits to abolition -- it will need provincial consent as laid out in the 1981 amending formula.

Those procedures for amendment mean either approval of the federal government plus seven provinces that make up at least 50 per cent of the population or, in some cases, unanimous agreement of all ten provinces.

Do you agree with the Supreme Court's decision on Senate reform?

Choices Yes. The Senate is supposed to be a central institution of the federal system and senators represent their province's interests. No. This is seriously problematic for any party proposing Senate reform. Kind of. I think senators should still own $4,000 worth of property in the provinces in which they "are resident." None of the above.