(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Melanie Andita is an organizer based in the Vancouver area. An immigrant from Indonesia, Andita’s political journey started when she was a student at Simon Fraser University (SFU). She initially got involved in campus-focused actions – things like challenging the inadequate public health measures being taken by the university …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Martha Paynter is a nurse, a writer, and an academic based in New Brunswick. Her participation in grassroots political work began when she was in her teens and twenties, with a focus on reproductive rights. In those years, she fundraised for legal efforts in defense of abortion rights, escorted …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Jody Chan is a poet, care worker, and organizer based in Toronto. They won the 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry and have published multiple books, including the forthcoming the madness belongs to the people (Brick Books, 2026). They got their start in grassroots political work in the student fossil …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Norman Nawrocki got his start in grassroots political work as a Vancouver high school student protesting the Vietnam War in the 1970s. From there, he got involved in a broad spectrum of issues as a university student, and then in community publishing and community organizing in the working-class neighbourhood …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Chris Ramsaroop is based in Toronto and has organized with Justicia for Migrant Workers for two and a half decades. Jusitica primarily organizes with people who come to Canada as part of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), though according to Ramsaroop they also work with migrant workers brought …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Florence Stratton has been involved in social justice struggles since the 1960s. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, and in the last decade, her work has been particularly focused on efforts to end homelessness. She is also active with many different groups focused on peace, ending poverty, public transit, Palestine …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Emma Jackson is an organizer, trainer, and occasional writer based on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta. She first began organizing over a decade ago in the student fossil fuel divestment movement and has since become involved in climate, migrant justice, Indigenous rights, and Palestine solidarity organizing. Interviewing and …
Tara Ehrcke of Victoria, BC, was initially politicized as part of the global justice movement in the 1990s. As that movement faded after 9/11, she was peripherally involved in anti-war organizing, but put more of her energies into local political work. In the early 2000s, she became a teacher, and for a decade and a …
As part of Toronto’s Shelter and Housing Justice Network (SHJN), Lorraine Lam is active in struggles related to housing, homelessness, and poverty. She connects her commitment to social justice to growing up in a church setting, saying, “It was there that I learned a lot of the values around what it means to love people …
Kerri Claire Neil (she/her) is a community organizer based in St. John’s, Ktaqamkuk (Newfoundland). She is Co-Chair of the Social Justice Co-operative of Newfoundland and Labrador (SJCNL) and recently took over her family’s business, Downtown Comics. Currently, Kerri is actively involved in Tent City 4 Change, a grassroots collective that is advocating for housing justice …