Briarpatch Articles

A grassroots collective is putting forward a different vision of a Métis future – one based on reciprocity, good governance, and anti-colonialism.

In southern Ontario, Doug Ford plans to convert farmland and natural areas into suburban housing. But a coalition of farmers, environmentalists, and Indigenous activists are fighting back, and asking: “Do we need sprawl at all?”

Honeybees pollinate millions of acres of monocultured crops and produce vast amounts of honey for sale. They have become workers in the landscapes of capitalist agriculture. But they’re dying at a terrifying pace, plagued by mites, pesticides, and poor nutrition.

In some ways, winning a $15/hour minimum wage by 2024 is a truly hopeful sign for Saskatchewan politics – and shows that even the most right-wing governments will bow to movement demands. In other ways, it’s deeply inadequate. 

In Newmarket, Asian massage workers have been engaged in a battle with the town council, which is intent on shutting down their businesses by claiming that the workers are both disreputable criminals and sex trafficking victims.

the revolution will need savvy / party planners, capable / of seeing / how the carnival’s already here.

These books and films represent an unflinching critique of colonialism from a perspective where the personal and the political cannot be separated.

Envisioning a liberated Palestine means imagining liberated Palestinian women. What is a Palestinian feminist future, and how do we get there?

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Pacific Gateway and Hilton Metrotown hotels laid off their workers – then refused to hire them back. Hotel workers are fighting for their jobs, and for the future of the hotel industry after the pandemic.

From drug users in Vancouver to opium poppy growers in Mexico, activists across borders say safe and legal drugs will save lives.

The Winnipeg police union says officers are constantly under attack by everything from “gang members” to video games to bedbugs. It’s a strategy to persuade the public that the only solution is more police and more money.

More strategies for challenging patriarchal white supremacy in labour

Lessons for the climate justice movement from the University of Toronto fossil fuel divestment campaign.

Mainstream feminism’s wildest dreams involve women being represented at the top of their fields. It’s a depressingly bland and narrow dream. This issue of Briarpatch thinks bigger, asking: how can we ensure all women are safe, healthy, cared for, and free?

An interview with Chantelle Spicer and Tashia Kootenayoo on rooting our movements in consent.

Canada’s predatory lending crisis is no accident.

The archives of Canada’s security state are being strangled by secrecy, censorship, and years of delays.

An interview with Chris Dixon on doing research with social movements.

How do we avoid a world in which human creativity and knowledge becomes just another occasion for commerce?

Future worlds and survival in a changing present gripped by the Anthropocene are on everyone’s minds, and now is the time to dream and lean into what’s coming.