• The Sask Dispatch is looking for solutions journalism stories

    We’re looking for stories about the practical solutions Saskatchewan people are building in response to social and environmental issues. Pitches are due May 9, 2021.

  • Online-only

    International solidarity won’t be “cancelled”

    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.

  • Online-only

    Why a progressive buyer should go for Torstar

    The second-largest chain of newspapers in Canada is about to be bought by a couple Conservative-donor businessmen. It’s time for progressive groups and individuals to make a bid for Torstar.

  • Magazine

    Why the left must defend free speech

    Free speech isn’t a cause the left can afford to leave to liberals or the right. And when “no platform” is called for, we shouldn’t appeal to authorities to do it.  

  • A nervous-looking speaker in a suit stands at a podium, framed by a reporter's notebook. Around him, angry workers hold protest signs.
    Magazine

    Bringing back the beat

    In mainstream media, labour journalism has been replaced by financial reporting and business sections. But journalism students are raising the labour beat from the grave.

  • Magazine

    To avoid climate disaster, we need local media

    The climate crisis is the biggest story of our time, but it’s a story that’s extremely difficult to tell. And as corporate owners shutter local newspapers, we’re losing our best tool in understanding what climate change looks like on the ground, and our best method to empower people to fight back.

  • Magazine

    There’s no journalism on a dead planet

    Corporate media owners are killing local newspapers – which is making it difficult for everyday people to understand the on-the-ground impacts of the climate crisis.

  • Magazine

    Fund the media you want to see in the world

    The right, in general, understands the effectiveness of media manipulation. But does the left understand the importance of funding media? And do we put money into the media we want to see exist?

  • Magazine

    Revolutionary dreamwork

    Today’s left wins when we challenge the right’s cruel and exclusionary imagination with more just, more beautiful world-making projects of our own.

  • Magazine

    Fatal encounters

    Cops may kill fewer people in Canada than in the U.S., but it’s clear that the same racism and lack of accountability underpins police shootings as in the U.S. The only difference is that, in Canada, it’s accompanied by less transparency and a paucity of data.

  • Magazine

    The grunt work of antifascism

    Despite what the mainstream media likes to show, anti-fascism isn’t all fighting and doxxing. And that media narrative is stopping us from building a broader anti-fascist culture.

  • Online-only

    All the ways that Canadian journalists serve the ruling class

    Over the last few years, ostensibly neutral Canadian journalists have eagerly stepped up to bat for fascist presidents, far-right blogs, and spy organizations.

  • Sask Dispatch

    Introducing the Sask Dispatch

    We’re trying out a low-cost, low-risk way to produce and publish more journalism about Saskatchewan.

  • Magazine

    We Interrupt This Program

    A new book explores Indigenous interventions into settler media, combining acceptance with refusal. Greg Macdougall reviews We Interrupt This Program by Miranda Brady and John Kelly.

  • Online-only

    Canada’s right-wing rage machine vs. Nora Loreto

    Tracking the work of a loosely coordinated right-wing network that spurred on an enormous public reaction

  • Magazine

    The Anti-Somali Feedback Loop

    The feedback loop between harmful media representation and legislation has imposed a massive burden on Somalis who arrived in Canada to escape war. For 30 years, it has impacted employment prospects, access to education and housing, and the freedom to swiftly rebuild lives.

  • Magazine

    Toward a New Common Sense

    To build the political left we must help to reshape the assumptions people have about the world.

  • Magazine

    Art and identity

    Montreal-based Iraqi-Canadian artist Sundus Abdul Hadi discusses art and identity in the context of the Iraq War and Arab diaspora.

  • Magazine

    Letter from the editor

    Briarpatch has always been a labour of love, the key to its unlikely success, as past editor Dave Mitchell notes. “It consistently leads with the heart, and so it’s able to produce quality journalism with a tragic fraction of the masthead depth of most publications.”

  • Magazine

    Dear Briarpatch

    The following poem was pieced together from snippets of letters to the editor of Briarpatch’s 40-year history. Each line is a direct, unedited quote from a Briarpatch reader, with the voices of dozens of readers represented in the whole poem.