Articles

In Guatemala, traditional Indigenous governments are battling municipalities and transnational corporations for control of their land

In February, in the midst of solidarity protests against the RCMP’s invasion of Wet’suwet’en territory, I created a Google Doc: “How to explain what’s happening to the Wet’suwet’en people in Chinese.” The long history of grassroots translation work shows that it is one of our strongest tools to build solidarity against white supremacy.

Briarpatch began 49 years ago as a four-page newsletter produced by and for low-income earners, welfare recipients, and the unemployed. Today, as so many of my friends lose their jobs or have their shifts halved during the COVID-19 pandemic, I can see clearly the thread that connects Briarpatch to its origins half a century ago.

In this open letter, 33 recipients of TD’s Scholarship for Community Leadership ask that TD withdraw its support for the pipeline, which violates Wet’suwet’en sovereignty

A collection of comics by Gord Hill, a Kwakwaka’wakw artist, writer, and anti-capitalist, published in print issues of Briarpatch from 2018-2020

A full transcript of Briarpatch’s webinar with David McNally, Isaac Murdoch, Nandita Sharma, John Clarke, and David Camfield on the global COVID-19 and economic crises.

Across the country, governments are giving police heightened powers during the pandemic. But as I’ve seen in my home of Kitchener-Waterloo, when police embed themselves in poor and racialized communities, they may simply decide not to leave.

Briarpatch hosted a discussion between David McNally, Isaac Murdoch, Nandita Sharma, John Clarke, and David Camfield on the global COVID-19 and economic crises. Here are the key take-aways.

“If you don’t put the maximum pressure on Israel to lift the siege right now, Gaza will become a graveyard.” Khalil Abu Yahia, a 24 year-old English teacher in Gaza City, reflects on life under the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We don’t have the capacity or equipment to keep us safe from this virus. It will spread very easily, and we will start to see the numbers here that we’ve been seeing in Italy and Spain.” Asmaa Tayeh, living in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in the north of the Gaza strip, reflects on life under the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) concluded that Canada had committed genocide against Indigenous peoples. Algonquin Anishinaabe scholar Lynn Gehl summarizes her key learnings from the report’s legal analysis of genocide.

Since a team of workers took over the STTIC’s executive board a year ago, they’ve been making the union more democratic and militant, following the model of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Activists are calling the current moment of Indigenous land defense a “paradigm shift.” But does it signal a death knell for Canada’s oil and gas industry?

I know that Black and brown bodies hampered in water, drowning Black and brown bodies, absent Black and brown bodies are required for and useful to whiteness. I see this Jim Crowed reality every time I enter a pool and my fast and skilled Black body is punished for contravening white aquatic segregation.

In Toronto’s easternmost suburb, a photographer seeks out beauty in immigrant communities that are literally pushed to the edges of the city.

“If Canada wants to live up to its lie of a reputation / then there at least needs to be justice involvement. / The way of Indigenous life / has become learning to live with injustice.” Best of Regina winner of our ninth annual Writing in the Margins contest.

“if word of such devices spreads, / and more than word, / it may not be just capital that overcomes / the hardened borders of the future capital’s / intent that most of us won’t see.” Poetry runner-up of the Writing in the Margins contest.

Exploring the anti-colonial, egalitarian roots of Sikhi, and tracking the extraordinary political power of the Sikh community in Canada today

“you bear their names like heavy robes. say it. / bind your waist in white ribbon. history’s seams / are tearing. you learned violence as the sweetest love / but you learned from the wrong people.“ Poetry winner of the Writing in the Margins contest.

As another recession looms, the left must be ready when it hits – with anti-capitalist theory that can tell people why we’ve had 12 economic crises in the last century alone, why the rich just get richer each time, and why it’s working class people who always lose.