Articles

How do we build a transformative mass movement against pandemic-era injustice?

When right-wing media takes aim at Dr. Norman Bethune, it’s part of a resurgent red scare in Canada. Amid rising Canada-China tensions, Bethune shows us a model of working-class solidarity with Chinese people.

“I fear the moment when the listener decides that I am incorrect, uninformed, or too self-interested to be speaking truthfully.” A photo essay about the fear of being silenced.

I’ve never seen myself. I still don’t, only a peripheral glimpse: of potential, of hope, of becoming, of future.

suffering isn’t bravery those two things are different let someone / say it. to absorb an injustice because you need to to survive’s / not courage don’t let them say that.

Deeper than oceans, channels twice removed / from their native basins. This blood is thicker / than the St. Lawrence, quicker / than the Demerara, sicker / than the Ganges.

This year, I read Maria Campbell’s foundational memoir in a book club of Métis women. Nearly 50 years since it was published, “Halfbreed” still holds important teachings for those of us on the journey of understanding what it means to be Métis.

What does it mean for Indigenous people to be good guests on each other’s land?

Amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Chinese governments, a troubling campist discourse has been growing in the Canadian left. Socialists should side with neither the American nor the Chinese state – instead, we need to build internationalism from below.

A note from Briarpatch’s editor, clarifying four factual inaccuracies that existed in the baby book, and how they came to be published. 

The largest freshwater delta in North America is under threat from a charity whose goal is seemingly to generate more ducks, no matter the cost to local Indigenous residents and wildlife.

Portraits of the Indigenous people and settlers of O:se Kenhionhata:tie, the camp that reclaimed land in Victoria Park and Waterloo Park for six months of 2020.

Without the war, we would still be the boat’s people, Má. We try to find land, where the joyful people are, but we only surround ourselves with water. 

At its best, Briarpatch stitches together the fragments of a progressive community across so-called Canada, quilting a powerful movement for collective liberation.

Canadian Premier League soccer players are being paid poverty wages by billionaire team owners. Now, a new union is helping players fight for dignity and respect.

Grada Kilomba writes about the thin line that Black women walk between the stereotypes of sub-human and super-human.

In a new report, people inside women’s prisons explain how incarceration has impacted their reproductive health – from limiting health care access, to verbal and physical abuse, to destroying family connections.

Four Indigo stores have unionized in less than five months. It’s a lesson in how workers can play the pandemic to their advantage – leveraging social media and relying on community support to fight for lasting changes in their workplace.

Canadian governments are putting corporate profits ahead of the health and well-being of our communities. We are a network of community groups, labour groups, and individuals in Ontario, standing together to demand that our elected officials explicitly adopt the humane goal of eliminating community spread of COVID-19 – centring the needs of those most impacted by the pandemic, and by the ongoing violence of the Canadian state.

Indigenous land defenders are receiving the harshest treatment for protesting the troubled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. How far will the courts go to repress those opposed to a project that seems doomed to fail?