Tags – Activism
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Canadian mining on trial
Murder, impunity and Pacific Rim in El Salvador
As a court battle ensues between the Salvadoran government and Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, the disappearances and murders of anti-mining activists are a tangible manifestation of the lack of respect for individual and collective rights in the face of highly lucrative development projects.
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The next generation of land defenders
5 young people step up against nuclear waste
Meet the youth at the heart of a movement to raise awareness about a proposed nuclear waste dump near their communities. These five young people participated in an 820-kilometre walk from Pinehouse to Regina, Saskatchewan to oppose the storage and transportation of nuclear waste in the province.
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Community organizing
Book review
Those of us who are active in our communities, whether dealing with issues like homelessness or fundraising for a high school basketball team, have much to learn from the thoughts and insights of Joan Kuyek, whose experiences as a community organizer span some 30 years.
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From the jaws of defeat
Four thoughts on social change strategy
Whether we are planning a short-term campaign or the theoretical work of long-term, widespread and systemic social change, the process of strategy development is the same. To begin developing a winning strategy, we must first ask ourselves: what does victory look like?
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Letter from the editor
Decolonizing our food system
Necessary for survival and intricately intertwined with our emotions, spirituality and culture, food holds major power. As such, the systems that govern its cultivation, distribution and consumption are fertile battlefields for controversy, domination, generosity and resistance.
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Fair trade and empire
An anti-capitalist critique of the fair trade movement
Fair trade marketing and advocacy rely on the idea that fair trade increases connectedness between Global South producers and Global North consumers. But while fair trade does reduce the number of intermediaries in the supply chain as compared to the free trade system, it also serves to reinforce racist and colonial distinctions between the poor Global South farmer and the benevolent Global North consumer. While it may channel slightly more income into agricultural communities, it ultimately fails to address the colonial capitalist structures that produce the impoverishment of farmers on an ongoing basis.
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Propagating the food movement
A uniquely decentralized and mighty movement
Rhizomes are horizontal, underground plant stems with the ability to create complex root systems. They can expand relentlessly underground, often lying dormant for years, and re-emerge as healthy plants in different locations when the internal and external conditions are right. Each new plant created is connected to the parent but exists as its own independent, flourishing entity. The rhizome can serve as a metaphor for the Canadian food movement – a decentralized network of diverse, self-organizing, interconnected initiatives with no identifiable beginning or end.
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20 food initiatives to get excited about
Community kitchens, food costing, markets and more!
A recent study on the Canadian food movement found it to be uniquely decentralized and self-propagating in comparison to other social movements. Through phone and e-mail conversations with foodies across the country, Briarpatch learned about dozens of inter-connected but independent food-related initiatives that together are crafting a network of more sustainable, democratic and inclusive food systems that challenge our current corporate, industrial model. What follows is a small sampling of the most exciting initiatives we came across.
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Feeding the revolution
Organic grocer Rick Morrell on commerce as activism
After years of working for cash-strapped environmental organizations, Rick Morrell founded an organic grocery store in 1996 with the goal of directing profits into the environmental movement. Fifteen years later, Morrell is still struggling to find those profits, but the store has become a mainstay in Regina’s activist community.
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Peak oil for preteens
Book review
Claudia Dávila’s debut graphic novel, Luz Sees the Light, sets Luz and her friends on a path to transform their fossil-fueled world.
