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COVID-19 and the threat of “community policing”
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.
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“It’s a crisis of legitimacy for the capitalist system itself”
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.
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Khalil Abu Yahia: Dispatch from Palestine on COVID-19
“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.
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Asmaa Tayeh: Dispatch from Palestine on COVID-19
“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.
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Seven key learnings from the MMIWG legal analysis on genocide
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.
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IWW members are transforming Montreal’s community sector
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.
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Teck is dead. What’s next?
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?
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Oshawa could be the engine of a Green New Deal in Canada
Workers want to nationalize the General Motors plant and build electric vehicles for Canada Post
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Unpacking the Coastal GasLink injunction and its omissions
How one Canadian judge justified violent theft of Wet’suwet’en land
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Indigenous youth are rising up in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en
They’ve been occupying the B.C. legislature for over 100 hours in support of the Wet’suwet’en Nation – and the youth movement has been spreading rapidly across Turtle Island.
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Police protect corporations, not people
From Wet’suwet’en to the Co-op refinery picket line, cops are acting as a central impediment to a liveable climate future
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When a disease is racialized
The coronavirus outbreak has sparked a rise in anti-Chinese racism. What are the historical roots of this response, and how might we confront it in Canada?
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What’s wrong with “Milking prison labour”?
Some clarifications about Briarpatch’s recent article about the reopening of the Kingston prison farms, and the work of Evolve Our Prison Farms.
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Free transit is just the beginning
It’s no coincidence that struggles over public transit are erupting across the Americas. Free transit is about an end to austerity, a refusal of police power, and a demand for decommodified and universal public services.
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There’s no such thing as a politically neutral public space
The #TakeBackTPL struggle to evict transphobia from our public library wasn’t about “free speech” – it was about reclaiming the commons
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Fighting antisemitism today
Why did IfNotNow Toronto have to defend their antisemitism training against other Jews? The answer lies in the left and the right’s competing definitions of antisemitism.
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The Indigenous nation exposing the lie of Canada’s “world class” oil spill response
A 2016 diesel spill exposed holes in Canada’s touted “world class” oil spill response regime. At a sentencing hearing today, Canada gave the company a slap on the wrist; but the Heiltsuk nation is fighting for real justice.
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The Canadian state seems like an immovable object. But Indigenous women are an unstoppable force.
It’s been barely two weeks since the federal government released the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. And yet, amid an admission of genocide, the colonial project continues apace; its existence met with celebration for another year.
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The #UniteAgainstRacism campaign – what it is and why we launched it
Across the globe, right-wing politics are gaining ground by demonizing migrants and Others. These politics become particularly pronounced in election years. With the federal election approaching, we knew Canada was not immune.
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Are any of Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas relevant for us today?
One hundred years after the murder of the Polish-German revolutionary socialist, are any of her ideas still useful for leftists?