This week, I’ve been thinking about left political sensibility…and about how I’m worried that mine is not the best suited for the era that we’re entering. I’m not a big believer in generational explanations for political things. Sure, your age, or your life stage, or the fact that you’re a Boomer or a Millenial or …
I’ve been thinking, this week, about the politics of communication and about an older radical that I used to do activist stuff with. The starting point for this reflection is an article that I read. The topic of the article doesn’t matter, but it was smart and I mostly agreed with it. But I was …
I’ve been thinking, this past week, about the distinctly chaotic, disorienting feel that the world has when Donald Trump is sitting on the throne in the United States. In saying this, I’m not claiming he has some sort of monopoly on awfulness – to give just one example, clearly that is not the case given …
I’ve been thinking, lately, about elections. This is probably not a shock – I live in Ontario, Canada, and there is a provincial election in Ontario happening in late February, and there will probably be a federal election not too long after that. I don’t particularly want to talk about the specifics of those elections, …
As I write, Los Angeles is burning. At this stage in the climate crisis, there is nothing new about hearing that fires, floods, storms, or other disasters clearly connected to the crisis are doing massive damage to people, places, ecosystems. The progression of such things is one terrible metric of how the crisis is getting …
This week, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about a book I read – Art Works: How Organizers and Artists are Creating a Better World Together by Ken Grossinger (New York: The New Press, 2023). It is a short, richly researched book about – as the title suggests – the integration of arts and music …
One very obvious component of the writing practice that I’ve taken up in these “Creating Through the Crisis” posts is the need to come up with something to write about each week. My basic approach to doing that is to think about what has been on my mind lately, and then choose one of those …
I don’t generally pay a lot of attention to transitions dictated by the calendar. I don’t do much to mark my birthday, for instance, and I’ve never been given to making resolutions just because the count of years clicks up by one. I’m not claiming that this is any better than any other way of …
(Originally published at The Breach) As 2024 draws to a close, there are many good reasons for liberation-minded people to feel concern about the state of the world. But there are also many victories to celebrate—victories that were achieved by ordinary people joining together to fight for a better future. With right-wing forces celebrating their …
For the last few years, I’ve written an article each December looking back at social movement victories in so-called Canada over that year. In the last week or two, I’ve been working on the version for 2024. As is true every year, I’m finding it inspiring. Even though this is something I track throughout the …