Topics – Politics
The way we organize and allocate power — in government, institutions, movements and communities — is at the root of all injustice. From foreign policy to crime and punishment, politics are central to the exercise of authority and oppression, but also to resistance, freedom and self-determination. Here you’ll find stories on imperialism, colonization, sovereignty, migration, electoral politics, law, and the political questions being asked by movements confronting these issues.
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The olive grove
A graphic narrative
The annual olive harvest is a key economic, social, and cultural event for Palestinians. The olive oil produced makes up 14% of agricultural income in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and helps support 80,000 families.
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Outsourcing sovereignty
An interview with Justin Podur on Haiti’s new dictatorship
Haiti is an avant-garde microcosm of the privatization, deregulation, and loosening of state structures and protections that is happening everywhere.
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Responsibility to protect?
Humanitarian imperialism
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a new name for the old concept of humanitarian intervention, or humanitarian imperialism.
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Reduced, refused, reignited
The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
In 2006, the Conservative government cut the funding of Status of Women Canada (SWC) by 38 per cent, to the tune of $5 million, in a move to enhance “fiscal responsibility.”
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“Dreams are the worst right now”
Book review
After a decade of captivity, Omar Khadr, the first child ever convicted of a war crime, became the last Western citizen to be repatriated out of Guantanamo Bay.
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From abortion rights to reproductive justice
Beyond decriminalization
It’s been nearly 25 years since the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in Canada, but the dust has yet to settle on Parliament Hill.
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Heartbreaking vanishing acts
Book review
Leslie’s primary interest is in people, and the things that haunt us or turn them into ghosts: love, desire, the search for identity.
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Disconsolatus
An interview with Amita Bhatia
Amita Bhatia, of Vahana Films, is an independent filmmaker. Briarpatch contributor Fathima Cader caught up with Bhatia to talk about Disconsolatus, a full-length science-fiction psychodrama that she wrote and directed.
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A crisis in migrant health
Migrants are bearing the brunt of health-care cuts
In an era of cutbacks – particularly under austerity reforms like reducing migrant wages to 15 per cent below median regional incomes – a long-simmering migrant health crisis is exploding.
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Women take on the trades
Newfoundland leads the way in transforming gendered workplaces
Newfoundland is trying to encourage women to enter the professional trades. It can be a daunting challenge for a field in which women account for only 6.4 per cent of the workforce.
