La Journal de Montréal/ Rue Frontenac employees picket La Journal's offices in Montreal. Quebecor Media Inc. locked-out 253 employees nearly one year ago.

Reporters sans frontières has now waded into the mire that is the lock-out of employees at Le Journal de Montréal.

Unlike many public figures, who have thrown their hats in the union’s ring, RSF’s secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, sided with press freedom, and the public’s right to know about the day-to-day business of their elected politicians. The Montreal Gazette wrote about about Julliard’s Nov. 30 letter to the President of Quebec’s National Assembly:

Julliard says he was surprised to see Vallières side with the National Assembly press gallery’s decision to delay the accreditation of two Journal de Québec reporters because the owner of the paper, Quebecor, is embroiled in a lockout of reporters at the Journal de Montréal. Both are Quebecor-owned papers.

Montrealers are all too aware of the battle raging between Quebecor, Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, and the employees of the french-language daily, but the drama has only been popping up in the English papers recently, leaving les anglophones a little out of the loop.

Nearly a year ago, Quebecor media locked out 253 employees. The reasons for the lock-out varies, depending on who you ask. Pierre Karl Peladeau, Quebecor’s chief executive, says the lock-out resulted from employee resistance to out-sourcing all but editorial and production jobs in an attempt to make the Journal more web friendly. The union cites proposed contract changes, which included staff and wage cutbacks, and the especially contentious removal of a clause promising staff 100 percent job security, as their reason.

NDP, Bloc and Liberal politicians, most notably Michael Ignatieff, said they would not grant interviews to the paper until the dispute was resolved.

Le Journal de Montréal’s journalists and other employees banded together to form the online news site Rue Frontenac. The site’s name, cannon logo and tag line, “Par la bouche de nos crayons!” are a play on Governor Frontenac’s retort, memorialized in a Historic Minute,  that he would respond from the mouth of his cannons. A healthy union strike fund is estimated to be enough to pay employees 76 per cent of their salary for two full years—at which point Rue Frontenac may have enough advertisers to  stand on its own feet.

In the months that followed, employees picketed the Journal building, and management staff alleged they had been threatened. Quebecor responded  with a court injunction dictating the maximum number of picketers allowed at one time, and banned locked-out staff from entering the building, which didn’t stop them from rushing the building on the six month anniversary of the lock-out.

Flash forward to November, when things  got really dirty: Lyne Robitaille, a Quebecor Editor, called for two Rue Frontenac journalists to be stripped of their access to the National Assembly. The charge was that they were writing under Le Journal de Montréal accreditation—but not writing for the paper—because they were locked-out by Le Journal de Montréal management, which includes Lyne Robitaille.

Around the same time, the National Assembly denied Quebecor’s request for immediate accreditation for two Le Journal de Québec journalists, the idea being that accrediting them would allow Quebecor, and by proxy, Le Journal de Montréal, to work around the lockout and Quebec’s rules against replacement workers.

Where and when the lockout will end is anyone’s guess, but it’s not likely to be anytime soon. The National Post reported last week that the two sides have only sat down once since the begining of the lock-out.

Le Journal de Montréal is still publishing under the steam of management, freelancers and copy from Quebecor’s other holdings like free daily 24 heures and TVA television. And Rue Frontentac is building its own readership with no signs of giving up the fight. Given that Le Journal de Montréal was originally born out of the 1964 typographer’s union strike at another French daily, La Presse, the writing may already be on the wall.

[Photo credit: Rue Frontenac's Facebook group]

Kevin McHale takes centre stage and heat for playing wheelchair using Artie Abrams. Image from The Fox Network

Sometimes it seems that no minority sits on a higher horse than people with disabilities—give an inch and they want a mile.

I bet that’s what creator Ryan Murphy,  executive producer Brad Falchuck and the rest of the creative muscle behind Glee thought, in their most private moments, once they started hearing the complaints from disabled viewers and those actors with disabilities still fighting to break through television’s representational barriers.

At issue is one character in particular, Artie Abrams. He is probably the most complex and nuanced wheelchair-using teen on television. I would hazard to say we’re finally seeing ourselves accurately and respectfully, not just represented, but legitimized on a hit television show.  Artie is fully realized, you might even mumble “reality” under your breath when no one was looking, if it weren’t for one major detail that has the activist and soapbox crowd among us up in arms. Artie is played by able-bodied actor, and former boy-band member, Kevin McHale. He is not a paraplegic and for those advocating for disabled talent in Hollywood, along with those who truly want to see themselves on television, this is yet another sign of Hollywood’s glass ceiling where disabled people are concerned.

It’s not like their concerns are unfounded. The stats, so often cited, come from the Screen Actors Guild [SAG] UCLA Study on Employment of People with Disabilities in the Entertainment Industry, commissioned in 2005. It tells us that 20% of the American population between the ages of 5-64 is living with a disability and yet, they are represented by less than 2% of the characters on television. Worse than that, only one-half of 1% of the words spoken on television are spoken by someone with a disability.

When I asked Adam Moore, SAG’s associate U.S. national director of affirmative action and diversity, last winter for my “Coming Attractions” article in Abilities Magazine, why this was the case, it essentially came down to an inability to prove discrimination was taking place beyond anecdotal statistics. Disabled performers don’t want to self-identify, for fear of being passed over in auditions, and producers are uncomfortable with keeping track of the number of disabled people on set (the way they’re required to for other minorities in the union) because they feel unable to tell what counts as a disability.  Their questions surround whether they should count invisible disabilities or temporary injuries. All in all, not having the proper information prevents SAG from doing anything on their own because they can’t prove it.  Even when they joined forces with American Federation of Television and Radio Artists [AFTRA]  and Actors Equity Association [AEA] at the beginning of the year for the I AM PWD tri-union campaign, the initiative has gone largely unnoticed by mainstream audiences and there’s no real visible employment spike to be found.

Right now, articles like this one from Associated Press have Glee in the employment inequity crosshairs. The barbs have already started flying, especially in light of the show’s recent disability-focused episode called “Wheels”.  Robert David Hall the chairman of the I AM PWD campaign, who is best known for playing C.S.I: Las Vegas coroner Al Robbins, had this to say to Associated Press.

“I think there’s a fear of litigation, that a person with disabilities might slow a production down, fear that viewers might be uncomfortable. All of that is nonsense, I’ve made my living as an actor for 30 years and I walk on two artificial legs.”

What Hall says is true; it also costs productions more to implement adaptations for disabled talent in some cases, but none of those reasons or excuses should be laid at the feet of Glee. If anything, Glee’s creative team did a better job striving to achieve employment equity and represent minorities on television than their critics in the disabled community did in assessing the validity of their criticism against the show.

Glee is a hit series working in the tradition of  High School Musical and Fame. It follows a fictional high school glee club through the ups and downs of teen life. It is known for mixing hit songs past and present into musical mash-ups and then giving them the full Broadway treatment. It also goes a step beyond: conscious of the fact that television has the ability to shape attitudes and perceptions, their creative team intentionally built a cast representing every culture and visible minority. There are white characters, black characters, Asian characters, gay characters, Latino  characters, Jewish characters, Christian characters, male characters and female characters. The principal of the school is not white, but South Asian, and, of course, there’s McHale’s character Artie as the person with a disability.

Falchuck told the AP that they did this to not just reflect the so-called “mainstream,” but to reflect America as it really is. Of course, critics can turn around and say that they aren’t really reflecting America because there isn’t a real disabled person in the cast. In the same article though, Falchuck does say that they did look at people in wheelchairs for the role of Artie.

“We brought in anyone: white, black, Asian, in a wheelchair,” Falchuck said.

Really, that’s all you can expect from casting directors. The disabled community is absolutely right in cases where disabled actors aren’t even allowed to audition.  Joanne Smith, former host of CBC’s Moving On, revealed in a recent Abilities article that some casting directors point blank told her they don’t want to hire people with disabilities because of a lack of talent or too much politics involved in the decision.  However, even Robert David Hall admits that you have to earn the role you audition for, disability or not.

“Society has had a telethon mentality for a lot of years. If we’re doing a story on Aaron, then we will play soft piano music and talk about the brave little writer with a cane—that sucks. The best way to avoid that is to always do good work. We’re competitive with the entire world and our job is to do the best work we can,” he told me when I interviewed him for Abilities last winter.

Even the most staunch disability activists don’t want to be hired to fill a visible minority quota. In the case of Artie, casting directors needed a triple threat performer. He needed to sing, act and follow choreography. In Kevin McHale, they found someone who could do all that and play an instrument as well.  ”It was very hard to find people who could really sing, really act, and have that charisma you need on TV. It’s hard to say no to someone that talented,” Falchuck told AP and so far, he seems to be right. There are disabled people who can sing, act and dance (either in pairs or individually), but I have yet to find any disabled person who can do all three.

So while the casting directors need to give us a shot at auditioning, performing arts schools need to be willing to train us and agents need to be willing to represent us. That way, when when casting directors try to cast a disabled triple threat they might actually be able to find one.  When I say represent and train us, I mean not in a Special Olympics, everyone’s a winner, it’s enough just to participate, pat you on the head and give you a lollipop kind of way.  Not even in a segregated-under-one-roof, institutional, Famous People Players kind of way. There are a few organizations, like Lights, Camera, Access and Witt Entertainment Management Inc. willing to train and represent disabled actors, but both of these are small potatoes compared to the amount of professional talent with disabilities that needs to be out there to penetrate the market in big numbers.

Remember, just because a disabled actor with talent makes it through, even when they get a supporting and speaking role, doesn’t mean the creative team knows what to do with them. Vince Gilligan cast RJ Mitte in Breaking Bad in tribute to his friend with cerebral palsy, but after that stand-up move, the show has been on for two seasons and Mitte’s character hasn’t been given a significant storyline while everyone else in the principal cast has. Mitte has had his moments and he has had his scenes, but often he simply walks on set, says a line and walks off again—a clear indication that Gilligan doesn’t know how to write for him.

I’d rather have a non-disabled actor (who obviously takes the responsibility of playing a disabled character seriously) shown as a full  participant of the show, whether it be through a solo, playing a guitar, prominent roles in the choreography, or having a whole episode devoted to him, than have a truly talented disabled actor on set used as a token.  All of those articles that feature criticism from the disabled community over Glee’s casting, neglect to mention that they added a supporting role that is a person with a disability. Lauren Potter is an actress with Down’s syndrome who takes Quinn Fabray’s spot on the cheerleding team, but who isn’t given a free pass just because of her disability. Coach Sue Sylvester is realistically tough on her.

That’s another thing about Glee. In the “Wheels” episode, they dealt with disability issues in a tongue-in-cheek, but not mocking or stereotypical manner. They dealt with things like sex and disability realistically. (I have actually had to confirm the functionality of my penis in real life and I’m not the only one) It seems Kevin McHale appreciated how the show handled disability as well, as he told the New York Post:

“Going in, none of us knew anything about our characters so we kind of made up back stories for them, so when I read what happened to him, I thought it was very cool. And I love how they did it too, how his story fit into the context of the episode. It just kind of sums up ‘Glee’—you have this sweet story and then I say, ‘but I still have full use of my penis.’ That’s like a metaphor for our show.”

People seem to forget that it’s okay to have a sense of humour about disability.  Recently, deaf organizations have been squawking about how offensive the Family Guy Presents live special was for making fun of deaf actor Marlee Matlin. They seem to forget that the cast was laughing with her because she was in on the joke the whole time.

I often think that if disability organizations put as much effort towards creating and fostering disabled talent as they seem to in their whining and issuing press releases regarding injustices towards them, then casting directors may actually see a lot more talent with disabilities. People with disabilities need to start opening up about their circumstances. More people with disabilities need to pursue jobs in Hollywood, rather than avoid them out of fear. If you really have problems with the way the able-bodied world represents us on television or in any other media, maybe you should write a script, make a film or study acting. Who better to write dialogue for a disabled character than someone with a disability?

Watch the entire “Wheels” episode of Glee and tell us what you think.

Students, faculty, workers and community members will march today, November 5th, as part of the Campaign for a Poverty-Free Ontario. Organized by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and allied groups, this Day of Action calls on the McGuinty government to take concrete steps to eliminate poverty in Ontario by adequately funding social services and equity measures.

A CFS press release states that:

In the wake of high job-loss and other effects caused by the recession, Ontarians are calling on the McGuinty government to recognise the important role that social services play in mitigating hardship and equalising opportunity. Record-high student unemployment coupled with record-high tuition fees have placed students in a particularly precarious position….In response, students are adding their voices to broad-based demands for Employment Insurance and social assistance reform, a liveable minimum wage, affordable childcare and housing, good jobs for all and reduced tuition fees.

Furthermore, according to the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union:

This year is a critical year to lobby as the province is currently revising all of its funding policies to institute a new multi-year agreement for funding schemes to post-secondary education.

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), an allied community organization participating in the march, is demanding:

Affordable and accessible housing: increased social housing and access to proper shelter supports

Decent income: increase social assistance by 40%, increased (Un) Employment Insurance and minimum wage

Status for all immigrants and refugees: access to services without fear

Justice for First Nations: stop economic warfare and recognize sovereignty

Currently 1.3 million people in Ontario live in poverty and the province is facing a $24.7 billion deficit. Since deficits usually mean greater cuts for education and social services, it’s crucial that people gather today to express their concern.

Marches are taking place in thirteen communities across Ontario. To learn more visit dropfees.ca.

(For those in Toronto, action is taking place at U of T at 1 p.m. at Sidney Smith Hall, at 2 p.m. for a city-wide march starting at U of T’s Convocation Hall, and at 4 p.m. at the Queen’s Park Legislature.)

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) speculate on the future of their newly disabled colleague in "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency"--copyright AMC 2009

While most of Mad Men’s devoted fan base was surely whipped into a frenzy thanks to “The Big Reveal” this past Sunday, [Sorry folks, I'm going to be good and keep the spoilers behind the link] with only three episodes left this season, I’ve been noticing something other than the plot.

Technically, disability was introduced as part of the ultra-realistic, ultra-accurate Mad Men landscape in the very first season, when the neighbour kid is invited to Sally’s birthday party at the Draper house and this kid happens to be a polio survivor, walking around on old school forearm crutches.

Back then, viewers got a little taste of 1960s ableism when the mother hens started clucking around the kitchen counter: “Oh, how sad, a child with polio.”… “The father’s a real stand-up guy for sicking it out and staying with them.”…”I don’t know how they do it.” But, It wasn’t until episode 3.6 “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency,” when a British ad exec gets his foot run over by a John Deere during an office joyride, (don’t ask) that I really got the message that creator Matt Wiener was intentionally raising the issue as yet another cultural sticking point of the era.

Below is the scene in the hospital waiting room, once the bosses realize their rising star will have to have his foot amputated:

Joan: I’ll bet he felt great when he woke up this morning. But that’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the next, some secretary is running over you with a lawnmower.

Don laughs.

The three British executives enter the hospital waiting room.

Saint-John: I’m heart broken.

Don: It’s a terrible tragedy.

Harold Ford: One that surely could have been avoided. Mrs. Harris, thank you for your quick thinking.

Lane Pryce: You may have saved his life.

Saint-John: Such as it is. He was a great account man. A prodigy. Could talk a Scotsman out of a penny. Now that’s over.

Don: I don’t know if that’s true.

Harold Ford: The man is missing a foot. How’s he going to work? He can’t walk.

Saint-John: The doctor said he will never golf again.

Harold Ford: I’m afraid we’ll have to reevaluate our entire strategy (referring to the reorganization of Sterling Cooper.)

Saint-John: Lane will remain here permanently.

Unlike many of the “isms” that Mad Men explores, ableism isn’t one where we can look back and see many inroads. I would guess there were just as many people who watched this episode, looked at their partner on the couch and said, “Isn’t that awful,” as there were those that said, “They have a point.  In the above fictional conversation, it’s suggested that the disabled man’s life is over because he can’t play golf and golf is everything in business. Well, once again, the truth is stranger.  Casey Martin is a pro-golfer who, in 2001, needed to sue the PGA for the right to use a golf cart on the PGA Tour because of his disability — that was in 2001, not 1963.

Normally, I wouldn’t spotlight a one-off episode tackling disability issues, (countless other shows have done that in the past) but the issue was revisited this week with the introduction of Don’s mistress’s brother, Danny Farrell, who feels socially shunned because of his epilepsy. His admission to Don that he’s not going to their destination to mop floors at yet another job, says it all: “People are nice enough at first, but when you come to [consciousness], having pissed your pants, people step much more gingerly.”

Anyone with a disability who has ever gone to a job interview, where perma-grins seem fused to the interviewer’s face and everything seems just a little too fine, will tell you they often wonder what those people say about them when they leave.  While there are laws now, meant to protect people like Danny from taking to the streets, unofficially, Danny’s reality of being bounced around by a society that doesn’t know what to do with him, is still very much alive today.

Ironically, 1963 was also a banner year in firming up the rights for people with disabilities. Prior to the year this season of Mad Men inhabits, things were still a lot worse.

Institutionalization was the “catch-all” answer for the severely disabled in the 60s, but at least in 1963, lead by the Kennedy Administration, legislative improvements were beginning in America. Some highlights from The Museum of Disability History Timeline can be found below:

1963

• Mental Hygiene Facilities Improvement Fund (MHFIF) bill submitted by Rockefeller and passed by the legislature to fund the construction of facilities through the sale of government “moral obligation” bonds. Re-payment of these bonds was relegated to the families of institutional residents. The ARC of Massachusetts rejected this plan, but failed in their attempts to change the legislation.
• De-institutionalization and community services for people with mental disabilities moves another step forward when President Kennedy calls on Congress for legislation to reduce the number of individuals under custodial care in institutions.
• The “Mills-Ribicoff” Bill amends the Social Security Act to assist states and communities in preventing and combating mental retardation by providing pre-natal care and services for infants born with disabilities.
• The Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act was signed by President Kennedy, providing federal grants for building public and private non-profit community mental health centers.

If several high-profile individuals have their way, one of Canada’s major political parties could be on the way to a rebranding even before the summer is out. The New Democratic Party could enter the fall session of parliament with a new name, simply called the “Democratic Party.” The move has been promoted by a mounting number of MPs and other party members at the grassroots.

Two NDP riding associations have passed resolutions calling for a rebranding—simply dropping the “New” from the party name—that will be debated at the party’s national convention in August.

Victoria MP Denise Savoie recently made headlines for expressing support for the idea in Public Eye Online, but she is not the first sitting MP to call for such a rebranding.

Windsor MP Brian Masse says he has favoured a change since his first by-election win in 2002. His reasons are the same as his colleague from Victoria: the party is no longer new.

“Those that are coming into politics or getting interested in Canadian politics need to know that we’re a mainstream political party that has established itself in the Canadian system,” he says.

“This is not an attempt to rewrite our history. It’s an attempt to bring our history forward and to show confidence and pride in a party that has shaped Canadian politics and actually shaped the lives of Canadians—often punching above its weight.”

Masse says he expects other members of parliament and party operatives to come forward with support for the idea in the weeks leading to the convention.

Ian Capstick was for several years a member of Jack Layton’s inner circle. He has since moved into the private sector but remains an NDP member—and he aggressively supports the idea of a name change.

“To be blunt, we’re not new anymore,” he says, adding that he’s aware of support for the resolutions from one end of the country to the other.

MP Peter Stoffer, who has represented a riding on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore for 12 years, says he has advocated a name change for many of those years. He says he has also heard calls for the party to be renamed the Social Democratic Party of Canada.

“I don’t think it’s much of a major discussion that you have to worry about, but I think the grassroots would probably accept it once they’ve heard the arguments,” he says.

Stoffer believes that a name change would be almost purely cosmetic, but Capstick thinks a rebranding would—and should—get the party thinking about more than its name.

“That has to involve policy,” he says.

Capstick suggested that the NDP ought to re-examine its relationship with organized labour. He says that the party isn’t winning the labour vote and that there is no “labour” party in Canada.

“Does it make sense to have so many of the party’s decisions—particularly the leadership—weighted towards the organized labour movement in Canada?” he asks. “I don’t know. I think there is a healthy discussion to be had around that.”

He added that he didn’t want to advocate shutting labour out.

Masse emphasizes that he wants the name-change debate to be a positive one.

“There are a lot of people who like the current acronym, so there will be those who are tied to that,” he says. “But at the same time, once [members] start to think things through, I’m hopeful that we can see some unity on this.”

Recently, long-time party activist Gerald Caplan wrote in the Globe and Mail that, at the party’s August convention, “the only faux-excitement will be an elite-led attempt to change the name.” Capstick disagrees with the assessment that this move is elite-driven.

“Quite frankly, I think the leadership of the party is not entirely impressed with this,” he says, because the change will be costly. It will also spark discussions among provincial parties, some of which have had considerable success with the current name.

Masse says that his riding association’s resolution doesn’t directly impact any provincial NDP.

“We don’t want to force this upon any of the provincial parties, because they are different organizations affiliated together,” he says.

Stoffer expects a name change—if it happens—to coincide with the NDP’s fiftieth anniversary in 2011, but he added that any decision about that is up the party’s members.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey is an Ottawa-based freelancer who writes about federal politics and higher education. His work has appeared in print and online publications across the country, including University Affairs, Capital Xtra and Maclean’s OnCampus. He writes about the effects of the recession on arts groups in the July-August 2009 issue of This Magazine.

From Flickr. As the original caption points out, Torontonians will apparently do anything to avoid actually littering.

The phenomenon gets coverage, amongst other places, in this month’s Atlantic. A firm called Positive Energy did a test project in Sacramento in which they sent people power bills with either lots of smiley faces (“you used 58 percent less electricity than your neighbor this month”) … or none (“you used 39 percent more electricity and it cost you $741 more”). This led to a 2 percent reduction in energy usage in the neighborhood, or the equivalent of 700 fewer homes on the grid, according to the Atlantic. That’s a huge reduction for something with few costs and no real drawbacks.

I read the Atlantic article while sitting on the patio of a Starbucks at Bathurst and Bloor on an oppressively hot Toronto evening. Despite the strike, the store had whisked away its trash and worked some of its Starbucks magic to ensure those piles of discarded coffee cups were never seen by its guilt-prone, environment-conscious clientele. In contrast, the public garbage bin outside the store provided stark proof of just how much garbage our city produces. Someone had pried open the taped-up receptacles, but still the bin was full and garbage had spilled onto the street.

Faced with the prospect of littering in front of a patio of onlookers, most people instead shamefacedly tucked their newspapers or water bottles under their arms and kept on walking. Of course, I have no illusions that not throwing that particular piece of garbage into that particular bin made any difference. But I also suspect that the person who carries his trash around for 20 minutes before finding a discreet corner in which to throw it will think twice before buying the next newspaper or water bottle. It’s a rare welcome consequence of the strike that there are no more magical city employees to make our garbage disappear, forcing us to grapple in a very public way with the mess we create.

The problem I have with this new application of social proof theory is the same problem I have with writing blog posts about the environment. It feels a lot like nagging. And no one likes being nagged – especially on an issue like waste production, on which we are all far from perfect. However, at it’s best, the idea is not about creating more shame and self-loathing about the environment, but about turning that shame into something productive. It’s about taking the same competitive instinct that makes us mow our lawns or get our kids haircuts and using it to help our world.

This morning when I realized my garbage can was getting full, I thought, “Ugh, what if the strike drags on and these bags start to pile up in front of my apartment. That will be embarrassing.” And then I thought, maybe I’ll take that extra 10 minutes and bring my mug and use some Tupperware today. Not that I think it will save the world – too grand a goal for a Thursday morning – but it will help save face. It may not have been the noblest thing I’ve done all week, but it just might be the best.

CUPE workers on strike in Toronto. Image source: Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC

[Disclosure: CUPE is a This Magazine advertiser]

Toronto is now about half a day into a municipal workers’ strike, and the usual braying chorus has sprung up on radio, television, and the op-ed pages, alternately condemning or defending the strike action. Generally, there are three viewpoints expressed:

1. This is inconvenient, but overall I support the union’s strike;
2. Unions (all unions) are “extortionists” that are “holding us hostage”;
3. I don’t really care who’s to blame—what am I going to do with my garbage?

Already the sentiment that seemed to be gaining media traction this morning was “In this Post-Global-Recession World, shouldn’t CUPE just suck it up and accept that the benefits they negotiated are no longer viable, and they should just give them up now so we can all get on with our lives?” It’s one of those arguments that’s appealing to centrist media, because they get to slap the “Irrelevant!” sticker on the union, without being anti-union per se. It’s just that this strike crosses, you know, some arbitrary threshold of acceptability, and look, all these easily agitated people who like to call talk radio shows are worked up about it! Well, sorry, that’s not how it works. It’s not CUPE’s job to roll over and die every time management has a cashflow problem. The union exists to preserve existing benefits, negotiate for new ones, and stand up for their members’ job rights. That’s their job—they’re not running for Miss Congeniality.

And, despite their grumbling, many Canadians believe that collective bargaining and the right to strike are not negotiable based on the convenience or inconvenience of this particular strike, or the next one. The benefits of the union movement—even for those who don’t belong to one—outweigh the occasional frustrations.

I linked to this essay, “In Search of Solidarity” by Christopher Hayes on Twitter last week, but it’s stuck with me over the weekend and seemed particularly apt today. It’s worth reading in full, but here’s a great excerpt, related to the New York transit strike in 2005. Keep this in mind in the next few days.

Among liberals–people who loathe Bush, oppose the war, favor national healthcare—there’s an ambivalence about the strikers’ demands: Who gets to retire at 55 with a half-salary pension? The New York Times editorial page calls the strike “unnecessary,” the union’s account of negotiations “ridiculous,” and bellows that [the union] “should not have the ability to hold the city hostage.”

But despite the near-unanimous condemnation by the city’s mandarins and negative round-the-clock coverage, New Yorkers, astonishingly, support the strikers.

I get an inkling of this when I walk past an MTA bus depot in East Harlem on the strike’s second day. Instead of a riotous mob shouting insults, cars honk approval as they zip past the picketers.

Polls commissioned by local news outlets bear this out, though you’d hardly know it from the coverage. One, commissioned by a local ABC affiliate and conducted by Survey USA on the first day of the strike, asked the question: “In the transit strike…whose side are you on?” Fifty-two percent of respondents said the union. Forty percent said the MTA. A poll from local radio station WWRL found that 71 percent of respondents blamed the MTA for the strike and 14 percent blamed the union. A poll by local cable channel NY1 found a majority of New Yorkers thought the union’s demands “fair.”

The real story of the strike is not the epic hassle it created. It is the fact that despite universal condemnation from opinion makers, millions of New Yorkers were in solidarity with the strikers.

“In Search of Solidarity” by Christopher Hayes [originally appeared in In These Times] [image source]

The new new new new new new new new new new economy.

Wired magazine’s current issue contains an interesting essay that’s worth a read, called (in Wired’s loveable hyperbolic style) “The New Socialism.” With the U.S. economy still in a tailspin and “socialism” back on the political radar there (Obama: is he, or isn’t he?) the time is ripe to seriously ask whether the various political ideologies of Socialism still have traction. (Around here, we certainly believe they do.)

A couple things bothered me about Kevin Kelly’s analysis. In the first place, he spreads his net too wide, so that everything from tagging a photo on flickr to running a huge open-source software project is part of this “socialist” spectrum. Co-operation and collaboration, now nicknamed “crowdsourcing” has nothing by itself to do with any sort of larger social contract. Volunteering for stuff (and he acknowledges this) does not make you a socialist. Second, the range of examples Kelly provides are confined to the web and the software that runs it (fair enough, this is Wired, after all). I’m a huge nerd for the web and I believe it’s fantastically important. But contributing to open source projects like the Apache Web Server software—which is built and maintained for free by a few hundred volunteers and runs about half of all the world’s websites, including this one—is also not the same thing as political engagement. The task of writing that software is driven by the project of providing a free tool for people to express themselves online, because the organizers of the group believe that to be important.

In Canada, there are tasks associated with providing health care—building hospitals, training doctors, driving ambulances—but we do those things because there’s a general social and political consensus that health care is a universal right. The “social” aspect of our health care system isn’t that your GP collaborates—gosh, maybe over the internet!—with your radiologist. The secret socialist sauce is ideology: my deeply held belief that my neighbour should be healthy—and not only do I believe it, I’m willing to help pay for it.

In the U.S., no such ideology has a substantial foothold, even among large groups of techno-utopians who write Wikipedia articles, tag each other’s Flickr photos, or contribute lines of code to Firefox, for free, because they believe it’s important. The “Socialism 2.0″ that Kevin Kelly has identified is politically inert, concerned with how to get stuff done—not what deserves doing.

“Mr. Layton has an interest in finding out more about the campaign. It’s had quite a lot of attention here in Canada and we do share a lot of the same values and messaging [of] hope for working families here in Canada.
Back when Naftagate happened, We wrote to Senator Obama and Senator Clinton calling on them to stand together with us in order to favour reopening of Nafta. That’s the kind of dialogue that we hope to keep going with the Democrats.”

I’ll update this post if I hear back from the Liberals and Conservatives. Do they have operatives in Denver, officially or un-? Or are they too busy playing electoral chicken?
UPDATE: The Conservatives tell me they have four people working the floor at the DNC. Director of Communications Ryan Sparrow says they have no specific aim, just that “Canada-U.S. relations are always important.”