Activism

MissRepresentation.org

FTW Friday: Ethical shopping with Apptivism

Earlier this month Disney stores pulled sexist Avengers girls’ T-shirts with slogans like “I need a hero” and “I only kiss heroes” off the shelves. The boys’ shirts reading, “Be a hero” remained. These old clichés were quickly called out on the internet. The message to boys that they need to be tough, the notion that… More »

Protesters gather outside the Enbridgeannual general meeting. Photo by Jen Chow

Hundreds gather at Enbridge AGM in Toronto to protest pipelines

About 200 protesters gathered on King Street today as Enbridge held their annual general meeting inside the King Edward Hotel. The mass of protesters had congregated on the street to voice their opinions on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 1,172 kilometres from Bruderheim, Alta., to the port of Kitimat, B.C. The proposed… More »

Can we define Occupy?

My Occupy thesis: In my quest to follow the Occupy movement this summer, I realized it’s imperative to first understand what Occupy is and who it represents. We have all seen the signs and heard the slogans about the 99 percent, but is everyone involved and do they even care? Given, it’s rather a complicated… More »

First Nations rally as part of the Occupy Vancouver demonstrations, October 17, 2011. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Unlikely Ghost.

“The process is the message”: why the Occupy movement keeps stumping the pundit class

Early in the occupation of Wall Street, David Graeber characterized it as a re-awakening of the radical imagination. One way to conceptualize the imaginative dimension of the Occupy Together movement is to think of it as analogous to an art project undertaken in Dionne Brand’s 2005 novel, What We All Long For. Tuyen, one of… More »

Postcard from Cambodia: How a new law threatens Canada’s aid to millions

A new law will impair Canadian development investments in Cambodia and tighten its government’s grip on civil society. More than two months have passed since the Cambodian government released the second draft of the controversial Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations (known colloquially as the NGO law),and the country’s civil society organizations are still holding… More »

Angry black dragon puppet

G20 Roundup: What's happened in the first five days of protest

Have you been stuck inside working all week? Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much—just the largest and most disruptive set of mobilizations Toronto has seen in quite some time. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network spent six months coordinating with various groups to create Themed Days of Action, which took place between June 21 and June… More »

Protesters gather outside Union Station dressed as an oil spill in demonstration against Harper's environmental policy, June 17, 2010. Photo credit: Jesse Mintz

Why You Should Give a Damn: 5 Reasons to Care About the G8/G20

Unless you have been living under a fake rock beside a fake lake, chances are you’ve heard about this G8/G20 business in some way, shape, or form. The reasons why many people are protesting, however, may not be as clear. That’s probably because there isn’t any single issue uniting all protesters. And, despite what you… More »

Screenshots of the 5 independent news sources to follow the G20 with

5 independent news sources to follow the G20 with

The G20 is less than two weeks away, and there’s a lot going on. You could just turn to the usual media suspects to get your news about the G20, but when it comes to the street-level collision of neoconservative colonialist plutocrats and anti-globalization activists (among many other blocs of interests), it pays to look… More »

verbatim1

Interview: Barbara Freeman on the Abortion Caravan Campaign of 1970

Today we’ve got a new entry in the Verbatim series, the transcripts we provide of our Listen to This podcast. (Just a reminder that you can catch new, original interviews every other Monday—you can subscribe with any podcast listening program by grabbing the podcast rss feed, or easily subscribing through iTunes.) In this interview, Nick… More »

Costumed activists pretend to revoke aid cheque

Friday FTW: Protesting the G8 with paintbrushes and teddy bear catapults

With all this hand-wringing over firebombs and security perimeters, perhaps it’s time to put our hands to better use. I’m talking, of course, about getting creative when the G8/G20 rolls into the province next month. John Greyson, filmmaker and York University professor, posted this short film on his Vimeo site a few days ago. Greyson’s… More »