This week, I’ve been thinking about figuring out how to act in the world when we genuinely don’t understand what’s happening in the world. Last Sunday night, I was reading an article about one particular aspect of the instabilities in the global economy caused by the authoritarian regime in the United States. As I was …
I’ve been thinking, this week, about how we talk about the people who rule us. I think often we have trouble recognizing the fact that most of the people with power in our society — the political leaders, the business magnates, and so on — are just ordinary people. Sure, once in awhile one comes …
This week, I’ve been thinking about a couple of things I observed at a recent community meeting. So…the other week I went to a community meeting. I don’t want to say too much about who called it or what it was about or anything like that. I will say it was put together by an …
I’ve been thinking, this week, about how we, as Canadians, should be doing whatever we can to support grassroots struggles in the US. Contrary to what you might think based on the tide of popular sentiment at the moment, the bad things that ordinary people in so-called Canada are facing are, first and foremost, brought …
This week, I’ve been thinking about Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction by Maia Szalavitz, published by Hachette Go in 2021. It’s a history of the harm reduction movement. The author is herself a former injection drug user and she’s been covering harm reduction and related issues as …
As a federal election looms here in Canada, I have been thinking lately about how voting for liberals – small ‘l’ or large – is never going to save us. Mainstream political life in lots of countries in the 21st century takes the shape of an electoral choice between the hard right or the far …
(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 …
This week, I’ve been thinking about a book – You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024 by Tariq Ali, published by Verso in 2024. I’ve been thinking about it, but I’ve been quite uncertain how to talk about it. Let me explain. Tariq Ali is a well-known radical and writer. He was born into a prominent …
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 …