May 2004

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

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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.

Across Canada, farm workers are facing hotter summers and extreme weather, while being denied basic labour protections like a minimum wage. The farm workers organizing within the National Farmers Union want to change agriculture’s unsustainable conditions.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 12th annual Writing In The Margins contest: Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Jessica Johns, and Randy Lundy.

Sheltered workshops for disabled people allow employers to evade labour standards and pay workers below minimum wage, all under the guise of never-ending “training programs.”

As the term “just transition” gains traction with policymakers and fossil fuel companies trying to paint themselves green, the articles in this issue remind us that a just transition means justice for workers, migrants, and Indigenous Peoples.

Five kids, from ages 6 to 13, review “We Move Together”, a children’s book about disabled people navigating their neighbourhoods and making friends along the way.

A short story about a mysterious ailment

Three people living with long COVID discuss government responses to the pandemic, what doctors need to know, and how people can support long haulers.

An interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha about “crip doulaing,” the future of the disability justice movement, and understanding access and care as joyful.

To understand what life is like along the “continuum of confinement,” three people living in prisons and long-term care homes share the food they have eaten and eat every day.

For more than a century, eugenicists have tried to eliminate disabled people through sexual sterilization. Today, disabled people’s sex lives are still surveilled, suppressed, and punished in institutions.

Four case studies of projects that are meeting disabled people’s needs through community care.

Both professional and popular psychology are focused on “curing” individuals of distress. But without looking at a person’s social and political context, the pursuit of a cure can do more harm than good.

An interview with Ameil Joseph about the history and present of Canada’s discriminatory treatment of disabled migrants

In 2017, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The city she once navigated with ease became dangerous and confusing, and I learned that it was worsening her symptoms. As a daughter and an urban planner, I wondered: what would a city built for disabled people’s safety and ease look like?

There’s a big overlap between communities of disabled people and illicit drug users. A safe supply of drugs should be considered a fundamental part of disability justice.

Terry Fox is the most famous disabled person in Canadian history, a figure who “united the country” during his cross-country marathon. Now, Fox’s iconography is being used to support the Freedom Convoy’s anti-vaccine, anti-mask agenda. What kind of unity does Fox really represent?

Across the world, people are disabled in vast numbers by war, occupation, and imperial violence. How can disability justice confront the U.S. and Canadian war machines?

Members of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario’s Youth Action Council discuss the present and future of the disability justice movement.

When we say we want disability justice, we don’t just mean wheelchair-accessible buildings and sign-language interpretation. We mean an end to the systems and structures that disable and debilitate us and a future where there is enough care, community, and support for everyone to thrive. 

在过去的一年里，新市的低收入亚裔女性一直在与镇议会进行激烈的斗争。议会一直努力关闭她们的按摩业务，声称这些工人既是不光彩的罪犯，又是性交易人口贩卖的受害者。

Mobility is not just how we get from A to B; it is about social justice and health, housing and democracy, and the climate crisis.

Designing and building cohesive, disciplined, and transformative mass movements isn’t easy. This reading list is an offering to anyone committed to that effort.

In B.C., 2021 was one of the most extreme weather years on record. Each new crisis pulled the curtain back on an ugly truth about the province’s climate adaptation strategies: they leave disabled residents behind.

Demand for gender-affirming health care is surging across the country. Already facing the brunt of a primary health care crisis, small provinces and territories struggle to meet the need.

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?