(Originally published at The Breach) By all accounts, this year has been a grim one. Genocidal violence continues unabated in Palestine and Sudan. Authoritarianism is rapidly consolidating in the United States. In Canada, the housing crisis is worsening, while chaotic, tariff-driven policies from our southern neighbour deepen economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, the nationalist “elbows up” rhetoric …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op.) Editor’s note: We are pleased to be publishing an excerpt from Listen!: Knowing the World and Fighting to Change It, by Scott Neigh, who is also a Media Co-op editor. In the book, Neigh, drawing on his extensive experience interviewing people who are active in social movements, examines how …
(Originally published at The Media Co-op!) For people who value things like social justice and the common good, the world is a pretty grim place right now. Many of us are feeling the need to do something, to get active, to make change. And it is not unusual to encounter generic exhortations telling us to …
(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 …
The new mayor could push for a cut in the police budget to make up for a big budget gap, but it’s unlikely that she will. In the spirit of Toronto’s long history of communities resisting the harms of policing, however, grassroots groups are campaigning for her to make that choice. In December, the Toronto …
We live in a culture that tells us to face the world’s problems on our own—but any chance we have of making transformative change can only come from organizing collectively. This past year, governments around the world responded to sustained popular pressure—Portugal announced a radical plan to tackle the housing crisis; Chile signalled that it …
I alluded in a few places last week to the fact that a substantial piece of writing was rather rapidly coming together, and today I officially set Chapter 7 of my current book project aside as “done enough” for the time being – so, more polished than a raw first draft, but probably pretty different …
Working on a book in 2020 has been quite a ride. I mean, I can’t complain too much – the horrors of the world have at points made it hard to generate the focus that writing requires, but I’ve managed. And I have, long after I had hoped, a draft of what is provisionally Chapter …