Briarpatch Articles

Nearly two years after the summer of 2020, donations and public support for Black police abolitionists on the Prairies have dried up. Meanwhile, police budgets keep growing.

If you’re like me, your path out of this prison will follow the path of grief: denial, anger, negotiation, depression. But only acceptance and behavioural modification open the Big Locked Door. The staff say you are here to get better, but you are here to mourn your illusion of sanity.

nowhere is a prison / is a psych ward / is a suicide / is a death / from ‘natural causes’ is a mass grave

Three years after leaving my family’s home and leaving the double life I was living as a closeted queer Muslim teen, I moved back. With this series, I explore how my relationship with religion, family, and my own queer identity has grown and has manifested in the atmosphere of our home.

If we could reimagine our world in order to put trans women’s well-being at its centre, maybe we could make the system more equitable and safe for all parents and children. 

In Carlyn Zwarenstein’s new book, “On Opium,” she forces us to reconsider everything we’ve ever thought about pain and opioids. Her call to action is unmistakable: policies that criminalize and dehumanize drug users will continue to drive the opioid crisis.

After revelations of rampant sexual violence and abuse in Regina’s non-profits, where can survivors turn for justice?

Police-free schools means kicking cops out, keeping them out, and much more.

In 2018 the Kaska Dena created their own hunting permit system, to protect their land and the animals that share it. In doing so, they amplified a complex dispute between the Kaska and settler governments about who has authority over the land.

In British Columbia, a little-known arm of the RCMP is dedicated to enforcing injunctions for resource extraction companies. Interviews with land defenders, a C-IRG commander, and an anonymous source reveal details about their history, training, and practices.

The fight to protect old-growth forests – one of the last few places where it’s possible to witness land before capitalism.

The theme of property – and the vision of a world no longer organized by its logic – is one that is threaded through most of the stories in this issue.

We must use as many tools as possible to fight against oppression, including – or maybe especially – rest.

Anti-gossip policies, like other ostensibly good policies, are wielded by management to keep workers from building solidarity and transforming their workplaces.

As the logic of capitalism infiltrates our social movements, we must choose between being paid for our activism and building a strong culture of social struggle.

Millions of Canada’s plastic Remembrance Day poppies have been made by prisoners and people labelled with intellectual/developmental disabilities, who are paid pennies on the hour. It’s part of a long history of prisons and institutions using poverty to control disabled and criminalized workers.

Pour mobiliser les travailleuses et travailleurs migrant∙e∙s en région rurale, il faut d’abord les trouver. La seconde étape est de réussir à desserrer l’emprise de surveillance et de peur qu’exerce leurs patrons.

The first step in organizing rural migrant workers is finding them. The second step is breaking through their bosses’ iron grip of surveillance and fear.

Union members and staff say that sexism, anti-Black racism, and other oppressive attitudes are deeply entrenched in many unions. Drawing on a history of women, trans, and racialized workers fighting for their place in the labour movement, trade unionists share ideas to transform unions today.

Canada’s sole sex worker’s union wants to organize the industry coast to coast. But with members spread out in different cities, and working for online services like OnlyFans, how much support can a union provide?