Worker Bashing 101
For those people on your Christmas list who think you’re full of hot air when you complain that there has been a concerted attack on workers in the last few decades, here are a few examples of demonizing rhetoric to introduce them to, courtesy of Adrian MacNair: We don’t need no stinkin’ unions | National [...]
Harper Ignores Positive Trade Opportunity: ALBA
Trade has occurred for thousands of years, not just in the capitalist context of the last few hundred years, and not just in the current neoliberal, free trade context of the last 30 years. For over five years I have been tracking Latin America’s ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, as an alternative model [...]
Building Community as a Tonic for Political Cynicism
More than just political burnout, there is a malaise of cynicism present in many progressives across Canada right now. Instead of just being tired from fighting many battles with social and economic conservatism, more and more progressives I’m encountering have become disillusioned with those who ought to be our champions. There are number of head-scratching [...]
Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably
As it turns out, corporations have been able to vote in BC municipal elections for most of our constituted history. That this appalled me is a testament to a new regime of rights and entitlements of humans over corporations that makes me smile. That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around [...]
Our Past is Our Future: The Place of Union Mobilization
For generations unions have been profound agents of social change, pursuing some of the noblest of goals, including equity and justice for workers. But changing our world is a different task in this new century. Today we face climate change; increasingly strong anti-union employers and governments; and several generations of young people who have little [...]
Reports from Haiti by CUPE and the Red Cross
Claude Genereux, Secretary-Treasurer of CUPE, Canada’s largest union, shares his impressions on where Haiti is at 4 months after their devastating earthquake, which compounded the neoliberal economic earthquake Canada and others have been perpetrating on Haiti for decades. Saddest for me is the lack of time and opportunity for children to play. This is why [...]
What Distributed Social Media Looks Like
Having already written about reasons why I’m leaving Facebook, I’d like to explore how new, open source, non-proprietary, non-profit, non-corporate, decentralized, distributed social media could work. Let’s start by talking about BuddyPress. It started as a WordPress plugin designed to add social media elements [like Facebook features and Twitter] to people’s WordPress sites. Then BuddyPress [...]
Live-Blogging Layton/James the CUPE BC Convention
Today I’ll be live-blogging Jack Layton and Carole James at the CUPE BC convention in Vancouver today. Enjoy! CUPE BC Convention with Jack Layton and Carole James Share the Love: Twitter del.icio.us email RSS Facebook Google Bookmarks Digg LinkedIn StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Buzz
Agents Provocateurs Launch Olympic Torch Relay?
Agents provocateurs were outed at the FTAA protest in Montebello in August 2007. I expect they’re at it again in BC on the first day of the Olympic torch relay, this time with marbles. The huge contingent of police officers watched as the group blocked traffic in several major intersections and even threw marbles at [...]
Why the Windsor CUPE Strike Will Inspire You
Read on and enrich your spirit for progressive social change, understand the need to build solidarity on the ground, and learn about the threat of cyber-scabbing! The strike is an instance rare in the current climate of workers’ struggling for a political principle rather than immediate wage demands. As such, it has much to teach [...]
Alcohol Privateer Fear-Mongerers, With Flaky Arithmetic
In what the industry is calling the NDP’s “six-pack attack,” private store owners are warning an NDP win on May 12 could increase the price of a half-sack of suds by three dollars The NDP’s promise to increase the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $10 would have a disproportionate impact on the food-service [...]
The BCTF Says to Take 5 People When You Vote
YouTube – BCTFvids’s Channel. The BCTF’s YouTube videos [above] are pretty powerful. One of the best ideas in them is for each of us to make sure we take 5 people to vote for public education. Do a quick mental survey of people you know, those that are politically curious, those that tend to avoid [...]
Stop Colombia From Privatization at Gun Point
In BC we know too well what a rabidly anti-union government can do to the lives of unionized and non-unionized working people. Colombia is the poster child in this hemisphere for extremism among these neoliberal, anti-human carnage-mongers. And our federal government wants to increase trade with this murderous regime! It’s time to let Colombia–and our [...]
Remembering Fondly the Professionalism of Teachers
Every once in a while I lament how drastically the public education system degraded over my 11 year high school teaching career. The system in the early 1990s was a dream compared to how it ended for me 4 years ago, with Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark and the gang robbing me of what I expected [...]
Welcome Back to Civilization, America!
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