Articles by Robyn Maynard

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Robyn Maynard is a writer, radio journalist and community organizer based in Montreal, focusing primarily on issues of migrant justice, police violence and racial profiling. She is active with No One is Illegal and blogs at robynmaynard.wordpress.com.

  • Safer sex work

    The case for decriminalization

    by Robyn Maynard • May 6, 2011

    “In my view the law plays a sufficient contributory role in preventing a prostitute from taking steps that could reduce the risk of such violence.” With these concluding remarks by Justice Susan Himel, the laws that kept sex work illegal in Ontario were struck down in November 2010. The ruling, however, has been stayed, pending an appeal by the federal government that’s scheduled to begin in June, 2011.

  • Criminal (in)justice

    An interview with Gillian Balfour

    by Robyn Maynard • Mar 1, 2011

    Gillian Balfour is the author of two important books addressing racism and incarceration in Canada, including Criminalizing Women: Gender and (In)Justice in Neoliberal Times, which she co-edited with Dr. Elizabeth Comack. She is an associate professor in sociology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, specializing in areas of violence against women and the incarceration of Indigenous women in Canada.

  • Dignity and solidarity

    Community support work and movement building

    by Robyn Maynard • Nov 1, 2010

    The G20 summit held in Toronto this June closed with a commitment to “fiscal consolidation” from the world’s economic leaders. Among the strongest proponents of slashing public spending was Canada’s Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty. For many of those protesting the G20 on the streets of Toronto, the subtext of Flaherty’s austerity agenda was well understood: a continuation of the attack on access to housing, health care, education and welfare, among other social necessities.

  • Sex work, migration and anti-trafficking

    Interviews with Nandita Sharma and Jessica Yee

    by Robyn Maynard • Jul 1, 2010

    Nandita Sharma is an activist, scholar, and the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006), and “Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid” (NWSA #17, 2005). Jessica Yee is the director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.