• A prisoner at Guelph Correctional Centre flexes his bicep. He is prying apart jaws of steer skulls at work for Better Beef Ltd., a private company operating on prison grounds. He is inside the factory and wearing an apron and a hairnet.
    Magazine

    The case for a prisoners’ union

    Organizing prisoner workers is the first step toward abolishing prisons.

  • Magazine

    Journalism with movements in the South

    When journalists insist the world’s problems, no matter how big or small, are caused by U.S. government interference, grassroots struggles against austerity and authoritarianism fall out of view.

  • Four pieces of media against a blue background: a book cover for Indigenous Media Arts in Canada, a movie poster for Writing With Fire, a movie poster for Tell The Truth And Run, and a book cover for the Community Radio Toolkit.
    Magazine

    A reading list on alternative and grassroots media

    Alternative media’s promise is that all people have a right to participate in making media, free of commercial and government control. These are a few of the guiding voices on how to build media for people, not profit.

  • A digital collage showing an underwater ecosystem. Fish swim near fish-shared lures with Google logos for eyes. At the top, a dragnet made of interlocking Meta logos looms over the fish.
    Magazine

    The dangers of Big Tech funding journalism

    Google and Meta are spending millions on programs and awards to help news outlets in crisis. What’s at stake when tech giants are allowed to brand themselves as the saviours of an industry they helped destroy?

  • An illustration of a person with six arms. They have brown skin and black locs. With their many arms, they are frantically sipping an energy drink, typing on a laptop, holding a cell phone to their ear, waving a newspaper, and holding a
    Magazine

    Independent media’s bad labour problem

    From union-busting to systemic racism, when bad labour practices have embedded themselves in the very publications trying to write into existence a more just world, what is to be done?

  • An illustration from the perspective of a person working at a laptop. Looming over their laptop screen is a wide man in a suit and Canadian flag brooch, his hands grabbing the laptop screen. Beside the laptop is a sticky note that says
    Magazine

    Doing anti-imperialist journalism while the world marches to war

    After Russia invaded Ukraine, anything other than support for sending unlimited weapons to Ukraine was painted as pro-Russian propaganda. What does anti-war journalism look like in a climate of social media harassment and state attacks?

  • A digital illustration of a ship (similar to the one on the New Brunswick Flag) sailing on an inky purple sea against a yellow sky. The sail on the ship is a newspaper copy of the NB Media Co-op.
    Magazine

    “Don’t hate the media, be the media”

    How New Brunswick’s Media Co-op is standing up to the Irvings’ corporate power

  • A collage of magazine clippings from New Breed, showing Métis people cooking, meeting, and protesting, along with headlines like
    Magazine

    Métis militancy and Saskatchewan media

    In the ’70s and ’80s, Saskatchewan’s left was chronicled by two formidable magazines: New Breed and Briarpatch. This is the story of how they made grassroots media in Saskatchewan.

  • An illustration of a gaggle of Briarpatch community members: someone wearing a sasquatch costume, people holding cameras, ice skates, a baby, a receipt, and a stack of magazines.
    Magazine

    The people’s magazine

    The funny, strange, and dogged ways that Briarpatch’s readers have helped this magazine reach its 50th anniversary

  • The covers of four archival issues of Briarpatch, against a light blue background
    Magazine

    50 years of editing Briarpatch

    Four editors reflect on decades of editing Briarpatch: what they learned, the stories that challenged them, what’s changed, and what’s stayed the same.

  • A photo of copies of Briarpatch from 2009 strewn across a wooden table. The cover of the topmost issue shows a police in riot gear looming behind a woman, with the words
    Magazine

    File rejected

    In 2009, Briarpatch’s $33,000 application to the Canada Magazine Fund was rejected, without explanation, by Stephen Harper’s Minister of Canadian Heritage. It would take an access to information request to reveal that, behind the scenes, the fund’s staff were also being stonewalled by the minister’s office. 

  • A copy of Briarpatch laying on a pink background. On the cover, it shows a cartoon-like illustration of a house with an orange roof, and a a big pink tree. In front of it is a cluster of people, representing different members of the Briarpatch community: someone wearing a sasquatch costume, people holding cameras, ice skates, a baby, a receipt, and a stack of magazines. On the cover it reads
    Magazine

    Happy 50th birthday, Briarpatch

    This issue tells the story of Briarpatch’s survival, and explores how to build better media in Canada.

  • Online-only

    Women Winning Office: The limits of electoral strategy

    In her new book “Women Winning Office,” Peggy Nash argues that it’s critical for women to hold positions of power. But as Misha Falk writes, representation doesn’t equate to a more just society.

  • A photo taken from bird's-eye view. In the center, copies of an alt-weekly newspaper called The Grind are fanned out. The cover of The Grind shows a person standing in a subway station and the words
    Magazine

    The case for large-scale workers’ media in Canada

    Unions, union members, and people with access to wealth need to think big about shifting the media landscape in Canada.

  • The covers or posters of four pieces of media, against a dark blue background: the book
    Magazine

    A reading list on labour’s role in a just transition

    A transition to a sustainable economy is a monumental task that will require transformative change. Whether this transition is just, democratic, and reflective of the scale of the crises we face is still to be determined.

  • A photograph of gravestones on the grounds of Huronia. The gavestones are long, thin gray stones with only a number at the top. They are set into a concrete pad close together, nestled next to each other on the ground.
    Magazine

    Class inaction

    Survivors are speaking up about the abuse they endured in Canada’s government-run institutions for disabled people. Class-action lawsuits promise them justice – but can they deliver?

  • A digital illustration of a tree planter in a coal mine surrounded by green hills. The sky is blue and cloudy. The tree planter is standing to the left of the image, wearing blue pants, a red and orange shirt, and a yellow hat. They have a beige bag with plants inside slung over their shoulder. They're looking at the coal mine and three of their colleagues at work planting trees in the distance.
    Magazine

    Planting trees in a coal mine

    Reclaiming mines is touted as an essential part of a just transition. But in Teck’s B.C. coal mines, two tree planters were left asking: were they part of reclamation, or greenwashing?

  • A photo of people marching on a road in Brampton. Two people in the front are carrying a large banner that says
    Magazine

    “With our own hands”

    Workers and international students in Brampton are fighting back against wage theft, naming and shaming employers to recover over $250,000 in stolen wages. 12 workers share the lessons they’ve learned in the fight.

  • A black and white digital comic with three panels. In the first is four women workers in a factory assembly line. They are all wearing collared shirts, aprons, and bandanas. In the second panel is two workers unloading goods from a ship. The ship is behind them, and they are in the foreground pushing dollies with large rectangular crates on them. The third panel is a close-up of a construction worker suspended in the air. He is wearing a hard hat and a collared shirt. He is holding a rope and grimacing. In the background are half a dozen large buildings.
    Magazine

    Indigenous labour struggles

    From leading one of British Columbia’s earliest strikes to fighting against low wages and racist bosses, some pivotal moments in Indigenous labour history.

  • A black-and-white digital line drawing of five men in wheelchairs, each of them with someone behind them pushing their wheelchair. Behind them are indistinct figures holding a banner that reads
    Magazine

    How Quebec workers won – and kept – anti-scab laws

    If anti-scab legislation is to be extended across Canada, the NDP’s best efforts and the Liberals’ reluctant co-operation might not be enough. The history of the Quebec labour movement can show us how to fight for anti-scab legislation.