Articles
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Bangladesh: Learning The Right Lessons
The deaths of more than 1,000 workers in the Rana Plaza building collapse in April provoked a flurry of activity among campaigning organizations around the world. In particular, the online campaigners - groups like Avaaz, Change.org, and the relatively new SumOfUs.org - rushed to get out campaigns in response. These were all roughly along the same lines: we Western consumers must pres… Keep reading…
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Why So Little Public Response From Labour To Bangladesh’s Giant Tragedy?
Letters to Our Times’ Editor
I am writing on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress Pensioners’ and Retirees’ Association to protest the weak response from the Canadian labour movement to the factory fires in Bangladesh, and to the recent building collapse there, which killed over 1,100 workers. While there have been quite a few online statements of outrage and solidarity, some fundraising efforts, and support for LabourStart’s onli… Keep reading…
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Look Who’s Lying About The Temporary Foreign Worker Program
The window was broken. The stones around my young feet and the one in my hand made it clear who was the culprit. No point in denying it. That is what I remembered as I watched Tory MP Jason Kenney and Parliamentary Secretary Kellie Leitch take the stage at the National Press Theatre on Wellington Street in Ottawa, at the end of April. Both appeared determined to deny the damage their government has made to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.It never occurred to me as a child tha… Keep reading…
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Take Back The Net
I often make references here to “digital utopians,” the folks of the ‘90s who kept telling us the internet would set our minds and news media free from the constraints and censorship imposed by corporate ownership. We could all be our own newspaper, TV and radio outlets. Always implicit, and sometimes embarrassingly explicit, in the online utopian screeds of that decade was the hope or assumption that nastiness like racism and sexism were ideological impositions on workers and that, on… Keep reading…
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The Promise Of Idle No More
Dalhousie University, Halifax, January 10, 2013: the entire foyer of the Scotia Bank Auditorium is buzzing with the energy of close to 200 people. What they all share is audible anticipation for the Solidarity Halifax-hosted Why Are We #IdleNoMore? teach-in this evening. By the time the auditorium doors open to the public, over 400 people have shown up for the event. Keep reading…
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Send In Your Work Poems!
An artist and poet born in North Burnaby, B.C., Lena Wilson Endicott (or “LWE,” as she often liked to sign her paintings) cared deeply for the world and social justice, and loved Our Times, reading every issue from cover to cover.Our Times is sponsoring a Canadian poetry contest in her name. Send us your poems about work, working people and social justice. (Maximum five.) They need to not have been published before, and be a maximum of 40 lines each.We are… Keep reading…
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Educating For Equity Now, And Always
This past winter I was asked to speak at the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s human rights conference. With the name “Social Change Through Social Media,” its focus was on how to use social media in organizing for equity. The only such conference that I’m aware of, it was a great idea, well-executed. (If there have been others, let me know.)One old question was given a new spin: Why do some social media campaigns ... Keep reading…
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Teaching Is What I Am
I laugh with my Grade 4 and 5 students each day. I’m quick with a hug or a high five, a granola bar for a kid who’s hungry, or a quiet word with a kid who needs that instead. Keep reading…
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A New Year Round-up
As my deadline for this column approached (okay, as it receded in the rearview mirror, much to Our Times’ editor’s chagrin) two announcements generated another tidal wave of how-to articles on using social media in organizing: 1) Facebook now has more than 1 billion users, a number rising almost as fast as FB’s share price is dropping, and 2) during the coverage of the American elections, polling seemed to have fallen out of favour and been replaced with Twitter-follower and FB “friend… Keep reading…
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Long-term Care And Lousy Conditions
“If we don’t die young, we’re all going to age.” Serena Palmer, a personal support worker (PSW) in a long-term care facility in Toronto, reminded me of this fact when we sat down together recently to talk about her job and the impact of racism, sexism, and violence on her work. Keep reading…
