Briarpatch Announcements

Briarpatch Magazine is seeking submissions from artists and illustrators of all kinds, including a regular comic to be published in every issue.

If you are a comic illustrator interested in contributing original artwork rooted in a radical analysis of social, environmental and political issues, please send three samples of your work along with a brief description of the concept of your comic series to editor<at>briarpatchmagazine<dot>com.

Briarpatch is offering a modest honorarium of $50 for each halfpage comic, to be published bimonthly. Honorariums ranging from $20 to $200 are also available for submissions of cover art, interior illustrations and photography.

About Briarpatch:

Briarpatch is a nationally-distributed contemporary issues magazine with a chip on its shoulder and a fire in its belly. Fiercely independent and frequently irreverent, Briarpatch tackles today’s most pressing problems from a radical, grassroots perspective. Founded in 1973, Briarpatch conspires to provoke, inspire and empower its readers in their efforts to build a better world.

“The process of changing ourselves and the way we relate to each other is just as important as policy change.”
-Judy Rebick

“Spiritual change, psychological change, and ethical action go hand in hand, forming together an interconnected path of awakening.”
-Michael Stone

How do our inner revolutions fuel revolutionary action, and vice versa?
What motivates us to fight for positive change?
What role does our inter-connectedness with other people and our environment play in the struggle for social and environmental justice?
Does activism need more soul? Does spirituality need more action? What do the two have to teach each other? Read the rest of this entry »

Queries due July 2, 2010

How can we reorganize our work - the means by which we sustain ourselves - to be more fulfilling, empowering and socially beneficial? What would a workplace that reflected our deepest values actually look like?

Briarpatch’s annual labour issue, “Reorganizing the Workplace,” will explore alternative models for structuring workplaces. This theme is timely indeed, as Briarpatch itself is presently undergoing a shift to participatory economics and balanced job complexes in an effort to organize our workplace in a way that reflects our values of solidarity, self-management, cooperation and equality.

Especially at a time of economic uncertainty and ecological catastrophe, how are people within and beyond the labour movement responding in creative ways that change not just the balance of power in the workplace, but the nature of work itself?

If you’ve got something to contribute to this discussion, then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that shed light on issues related to workplace organization and activism. We are particularly interested in contributions informed by an anti-capitalist and anti-oppression analysis of labour and the workplace.

We also invite unions and other organizations who could use this issue of Briarpatch as an organizing/educational tool to get in touch to discuss opportunities for shared distribution, bulk issue orders and possible in-kind exchanges.

Possible topics include (but are no means limited to):

• Case studies or profiles of alternative models for workplace organization, either locally or internationally;
• Creative responses to the recession, both within and outside the organized labour movement;
• Experiments in extricating ourselves from the capitalist economy through skill-sharing, mutual aid, bartering, local currencies, etc.;
• The non-profit industrial complex: the role of non-profits and service provision in social movements and the politics of working in these sectors;
• Organizing among migrant and undocumented workers, exclusion of migrant workers from Canadian labour laws and barriers to unionization;
• The crisis of child care in Canada;
• Challenges facing the labour movement, efforts to reinvigorate traditional approaches to labour organizing;
• The role of the labour movement in fostering international solidarity;
• Reviews of relevant books that tackle these or other related issues.

Queries are due July 2. If your query is accepted, first drafts are due August 6. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. If you haven’t written for Briarpatch before, please provide a brief writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REGINA – In response to unprecedented instability in the media industry, Briarpatch Magazine has launched its “Deeper Roots” campaign in an effort to revolutionize the indy mag’s funding model.

The campaign adapts a funding model from community supported agriculture, with supporters making a regular monthly donation in exchange for regular delivery of the magazine. One month in, the campaign has seen a strong early response: Briarpatch is 30% of the way to meeting its fundraising goal for the year.

In an April 12 open letter, editor Dave Oswald Mitchell informed readers that the publication was anticipating a funding shortfall of $30,000 in 2010/11 unless something was done – the result, in part, of being denied Canada Magazine Fund funding for two years and with uncertainty about future funding under the recently announced Canada Periodical Fund. If successful, the Deeper Roots campaign will more than make up this shortfall.

Mitchell’s letter asks supporters to sign on for a “media funding revolution” that draws more on reader support than on external sources like advertising or grants:

Like Cuba before the Special Period, Briarpatch has become overly reliant on unsustainable infusions of imported energy (not Soviet oil in our case, but, rather, government grants). Cuba addressed its crisis by embracing grassroots, organic, urban agriculture. . . .

Our plan is ambitious but achievable. And we want it to serve as a model of the grassroots media of the future: organically funded, intellectually nutritious, aesthetically delicious and all-’round good for a growing body politic.

The 37-year old magazine has set a goal of signing up 150 new sustainers by March 2011, each donating $10 or more per month. One month into the campaign, 45 new sustainers have already signed on.

“We’re encouraged by the response so far,” says publisher Shayna Stock. “The magazine has faced funding crises in the past, and has always emerged stronger and more independent. Thanks to our strong base of support, I’m confident this time won’t be any different.”

Briarpatch publishes six times a year and reaches subscribers in every province and territory. Recent issues of the magazine have tackled topics like global feminism, Canadian foreign policy, the justice system and education. Briarpatch was just nominated for two National Magazine Awards – best single issue and best photojournalism/photo essay.

“We hope this new funding model will be adopted and adapted by the next generation of grassroots media,” Mitchell says. “The world needs independent media, including Briarpatch, to thrive and continue to act as a watchdog and an advocate for issues of public concern.”

To learn more about Briarpatch and the Deeper Roots campaign, please click here.

For further information or comment, please contact Editor Dave Oswald Mitchell or Publisher Shayna Stock
at (306) 525-2949.

Queries due May 10, 2010

It’s difficult to imagine a more universally relevant issue than health. And with the health of our planet taking a serious turn for the worse, our bodies have become microcosms for the sick environment, the ill health of the body politic played out on the body. We’re coating our lungs and those of the earth in tar, polluting our rivers and our bloodstreams with industrial chemicals, dousing our lawns in pesticides and our skin in toxic “beauty” products. We can’t talk about the health of the environment or the human body without implicating the ailing political and social systems that reinforce and promote sickness.

Seeking a more holistic understanding of health in our current socio-political context, Briarpatch invites submissions to its September/October 2010 issue on “The Politics of Health.” Read the rest of this entry »

An open letter to readers of Briarpatch Magazine.

Dear friend:

I write you at a time of both great crisis and great opportunity for Briarpatch Magazine.

Over the past year, Briarpatch has continued to break new ground in our provocative explorations of food politics, crime and punishment, education, global feminism and more.

And we’ve got lots more up our sleeves, with issues in the works on migration & borders, the politics of health and the soul of activism.

But while the content of the magazine has never been stronger, Briarpatch has not been immune to the consequences of the economic crisis. Facing rising costs and falling revenues, we’ve struggled recently with serious funding stability problems — a crisis/opportunity that has led us to rethink our entire funding model and propose something bold and dynamic in its place: the Deeper Roots campaign.
Read the rest of this entry »

Queries due March 5, 2010

This call for submissions takes as its departure point John Berger’s description of the global system of apartheid that defines our present circumstances:

“The present period of history is one of the Wall. When the Berlin one fell, the prepared plans to build walls everywhere were unrolled. Concrete, bureaucratic, surveillance, security, racist walls. Everywhere the wall separates the desperate poor from those who hope against hope to stay relatively rich. The walls cross every sphere, from crop cultivation to health care. They exist too in the richest metropolises of the world. The wall is the front line of what, long ago, was called the Class War. [ . . . ]

“The choice of meaning in the world today is here between the two sides of the wall. The wall is also inside each one of us. Whatever our circumstances, we can choose within ourselves which side of the wall we are attuned to. It is not a wall between good and evil. Both exist on both sides. The choice is between self-respect and self-chaos.”

(John Berger, “A Master of Pitilessness?,” Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, 88)

Declaring war on walls of all kinds, Briarpatch invites submissions to its July/August 2010 issue on “Fences, walls & borders: Migration and the politics of movement.” We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers and frontline activists, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that address some aspect of the issue of migration. We are particularly interested in contributions informed by an anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist analysis of global and local power relations.

We also invite organizations who could use this issue of Briarpatch as an organizing/educational tool to get in touch to discuss opportunities for shared distribution, bulk issue orders and possible in-kind exchanges.

Possible article topics could include (but are no means limited to):

• assessing the recent changes to Canada’s immigration system;
• migrant worker programs  in Canada or elsewhere;
• “No One Is Illegal” and struggles for migrant rights;
• freedom of information, net neutrality and the struggle for control of the Internet;
• gated communities;
• the rise of private security firms;
• the Israeli Apartheid Wall and the Palestinian struggle;
• privatization of public land, wealth, and knowledge;
• the struggles of environmental refugees, economic refugees, and/or other non-status peoples;
• the gentrification of urban spaces;
• the walls within: accounts of personal transformation and political emancipation;
• policing poverty;
• “free speech zones” and the geography of protest;
• urban counterinsurgency and the future of warfare.

We also welcome pitches for short profiles (approx. 600 words) of individuals, groups, initiatives, organizations and trends that are on the cutting edge of struggles and efforts to break down walls of all kinds.

Please note that the deadline for queries is March 5, 2010. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. If you haven’t written for Briarpatch before, please provide a brief writing sample.

Please write for a general audience, employing standard journalistic conventions. Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.

`
Other upcoming Briarpatch issues:

September/October 2010: Health
Query deadline: May 3, 2010

November/December 2010: Global solidarity & the labour movement
Query deadline: July 5, 2010

January/February 2011: The soul of activism: Personal transformation & social change
Query deadline: September 6, 2010

March/April 2011: Gender
Query deadline: Approx. November 1, 2010 (TBA)

May/June 2011: Indigenous activism & the Fourth World War
Query deadline: Approx. January 5, 2011 (TBA)

Reposted from Next Year Country.

Forty years ago a manifesto entitled “For an Independent Socialist Canada” was published by a group of left NDP activists. This movement, strong in Saskatchewan, came to be called the Waffle.

Rebuilding the Left aims to have participants reflect upon the experience of the Saskatchewan Waffle and discuss what the left needs to do to rebuild a movement here to challenge the growing attack from the right.

To register for the conference, contact Joe Roberts at sjroberts@sasktel.net or phone 352-9282.

The Conference is free. Lunch provided but donations will be requested to defray costs.

Bookmark this page as more information on the agenda is developed.

Facebook page.

Draft Agenda for Rebuilding the Left

Saturday, January, 30

Conference Begins 10:00 a.m.
Chair - Hugh Wagner, former Waffle member

Morning:

Brief Presentations on the Waffle Experience
Speakers  - Lorne Brown, former Waffle member and historian
- Don Mitchell, Waffle candidate
in the 1970 provincial NDP leadership election
Brief Presenattions on left activism today
Speakers   - Cara Banks, feminist and trade unionist
-  David Mitchell, Briarpatch editor and activist

Questions and Discussion will follow the presentations

Afternoon:

Facilitator - Adriane Paavo
What can the left do?

Adjourn 3:00 p.m.

Recommended Pre-conference readings:

Statement on Rebuilding the Left: Reflections from the Waffle

Forty years ago a manifesto entitled “For an Independent Socialist Canada” was published by a group of students, young faculty and social activists in Ontario. It was soon endorsed by many who sought the same goals across Canada, including Saskatchewan. Strangely, perhaps, 1969 was not a time of economic crisis in the capitalist world that might explain such a manifesto. But it did come at the end of a decade in which the crisis of democracy had become glaringly apparent.

Recently there have been invitations issued for gatherings in Winnipeg and Toronto to celebrate the memory of the Waffle Manifesto. The Waffle experience in Saskatchewan arose differently and had different effects from other places. Many who participated in that movement and were influenced by the experience remain politically and socially active today.

Now Canada and the world are in the grip of a severe economic and social crisis of capitalist development. To those who experienced the mobilization forty years ago it must seem strange that there has been no similar uprising of protest and demand for change comparable to what the manifesto in its innocence proclaimed. For as alarming as the present crisis is, it is far worse that no voice of challenge has arisen from a left demanding a new social system.

So some obvious questions seem to present themselves: for those who experienced the Waffle here is there anything useful to be said about the present state of affairs? Would it serve any purpose in stimulating initiative to gather and discuss the present crisis?

Of course, many issues unexamined during the Waffle era have now become evident and contribute even larger threats than the cyclical economic crisis. The most awesome is environmental breakdown. But the development of industrial agriculture which began to be evident forty years ago is now a scourge globally as well as in our own neighborhood. The long record of injustice to the aboriginal population, generally overlooked by the left in the past, is today inescapable. These and other changes significantly affect the landscape now faced by us who felt confident of change in those past decades.

Yet it is also true that those who are no longer with us have been replaced by others who, as if fellow travelers, aspire to a society – a world – no longer in thrall to capital accumulation, war and class rule. Of necessity this message is addressed initially to those who experienced the Waffle call, but those who emerged subsequently with similar views are invited to respond to this initiative.

1969 Waffle Manifesto: For an Independent and Socialist Canada
Link here.

1973 Saskatchewan Waffle brochure
Link here.

Socialist Project: What Should We Do To Help Build a New Left?
Link here.

“Canada remains in a very special place in the world. . . . We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.”

– Stephen Harper, September 25, 2009

“”Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.”

– George Monbiot, November 30, 2009

Queries due January 11, 2010

Pursuing the most environmentally destructive megaproject in human history. Turning a blind eye to the torture of Afghan detainees. Sabotaging climate talks. Deporting refugee claimants to certain death. Pulling critical aid from Africa. Supporting a coup in Honduras. Displacing Indigenous peoples at home and abroad. Providing unconditional support for Israeli apartheid. . . . It’s been four years since our last foreign policy issue, and the time has never been more ripe for a long, hard look at Canada’s role in the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again, when malls become clogged with garish holiday décor and frenzied shoppers. This year, why not get all your shopping done without ever setting foot in a mall . . . and help instigate a media revolution while you’re at it? Here’s how the Briarpatch Holiday Offer works:

• Give one gift subscription, and we’ll send your loved one a year’s worth of the ‘patch for only $28.95.
• Better yet, give two gifts and we’ll throw in a third gift FREE.
• Can’t give enough ‘patch? Give 10 gift subscriptions for the absurdly low price of $125.00.

The stories that Briarpatch covers aren’t readily available in the mainstream media, which makes it the perfect gift for thoughtful people who want relevant, independent and trustworthy information about the most important social and environmental issues of the day.

Taking advantage of this offer now will save you time and money on holiday gifts later. In December we’ll send your gift recipients each a card to notify them of your thoughtful gift, and start them off on their year’s subscription.

Order your gifts online or call 1.866.431.5777.