Title search results
Showing 121 - 140 of 76068 items
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
By Silvia Federici. 2018
Drawing on rich historical research, Silvia Federici maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the…
birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the “new enclosures” at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation. Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this collection centers on women and reproductive work as crucial to both our economic survival and the construction of a world free from the hierarchies and divisions capital has planted in the body of the world proletariat. Federici is clear that the commons should not be understood as happy islands in a sea of exploitative relations but rather autonomous spaces from which to challenge the existing capitalist organization of life and labour.A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice
By Black, Toban; D'Arcy, Stephen; Weis, Tony; Kahn Russell, Joshua; Klein, Naomi; McKibben, Bill. 2014
Tar sands “development” comes with an enormous environmental and human cost. But tar sands opponents—fighting a powerful international industry—are likened…
to terrorists; government environmental scientists are muzzled; and public hearings are concealed and rushed. Yet, despite the formidable political and economic power behind the tar sands, many opponents are actively building international networks of resistance, challenging pipeline plans while resisting threats to Indigenous sovereignty and democratic participation. Featuring contributions from Winona LaDuke, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Harsha Walia, Jeremy Brecher, Crystal Lameman, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Yves Engler, Cherri Foytlin, Macdonald Stainsby, Yudith Nieto, Greg Albo, Brian Tokar, Jesse Cardinal, Rex Weyler, Jess Worth, and many more. The editors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to frontline grassroots environmental justice groups and campaigns.Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal
By David Austin. 2023
In the 1960s, Montreal was a hotbed of radical politics that attracted Black and Caribbean figures such as C.L.R. James,…
Walter Rodney, Mariam Makeba, Stokely Carmichael, Rocky Jones, and Édouard Glissant. It was also a place where the ideas of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Malcolm X circulated alongside those of Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. During this period of global upheaval and heightened Canadian and Quebec nationalism, Montreal became a central site of Black and Caribbean radical politics. Situating Canada within the Black radical tradition and its Caribbean radical counterpart, Fear of a Black Nation paints a history of Montreal and the Black activists who lived in, sojourned in, or visited the city and agitated for change. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s conception of slavery’s afterlife and what David Austin describes as biosexuality – a deeply embedded fear of Black self-organization and interracial solidarity – Fear of a Black Nation argues that the policing and surveillance of Black lives today is tied to the racial, including sexual, codes and practices and the discipline and punishment associated with slavery. As meditation on Black radical politics and state security surveillance and repression, Fear of a Black Nation combines theoretical and philosophical inquiry with literary, oral, and archival sources to reflect on Black political organizing. In reflecting on Black self-organization and historic events such as the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Affair, the book ultimately poses the question: what can past freedom struggles teach us about the struggle for freedom today? Featuring two new interviews with the author and a new preface, this expanded second edition enriches the political and theoretical conversation on Black organising and movement building in Canada and internationally. As the Black Lives Matter and abolition movements today popularize calls to disarm and defund the police and to abolish prisons, Fear of a Black Nation provides an invaluable reflection on the policing of Black activism and a compelling political analysis of social movements and freedom struggles that is more relevant now than ever.An Action A Day: Keeps Global Capitalism Away
By Mike Hudema. 2004
“An Action A Day Keeps Global Capitalism Away,” according to Mike Hudema, describing his action guide for the 21st century.…
This lively, challenging, and decidedly fun book is designed for activists and concerned citizens who want to change the world. Hudema introduces readers to a variety of issues, including social action, organizing, theatrical action, civil disobedience, and using the media.The book contains fifty-two tried and tested actions, one for every week. Each action includes a rationale–what you need to pull it off, and examples of where it could be used. From Radical Cheerleading, to Fishing in the Sewers, and Gas Mask Car Shopping, there’s something for everybody.Capitalism: How Law Shelters Shareholders And Coddles Capitalism
By Harry Glasbeek. 2018
A mugger to a stranger, “Give me your wallet or I will beat you to pulp!” It is a crime.…
An employer says to a worker: “Adding lung-saving ventilation will reduce my profit. Give me back some of your wages and I will let you keep your lungs!” This is not a crime. Our assumptions about the world condition us to see these situations as legally different from one another. But what if we, the critics of corporate capitalism, instead insisted on taking the spirit of law, rather than its letter, seriously? It would then be possible to describe many of the daily practices of capitalists and their corporations as criminal in nature, even if not always criminal by the letter and formality of law. In Capitalism: A Crime Story, Harry Glasbeek makes the case that if the rules and doctrines of liberal law were applied as they should be according to law’s own pronouncements and methodology, corporate capitalism would be much harder to defend.No-Nonsense Guide to Global Finance (No-Nonsense Guides #8)
By Peter Stalker. 2009
Meltdown, crisis, downturn, and the dreaded R-word: recession. These words have migrated from business sections to headline news. From barter…
to coins, from the origins of banking to todays credit crunch, this highly topical book explores cash, borrowing, and lending, and delves into the dark side of the global financial system. But as we teeter on the brink of a global depression, space develops for new thinking. From doing away with tax havens, putting teeth into regulation, and taxing currency transactions, this book makes suggestions for a fresh start and argues that another (financial) world is possible.Corporatizing Canada: Making Business out of Public Service
By Jamie Brownlee, Chris Hurl, Kevin Walby. 2018
From schools to hospitals, from utilities to food banks, over the past thirty years corporatization has transformed the public sector…
in Canada. Economic elites take control of public institutions and use business metrics to evaluate their performance, transforming public programs into corporate revenue streams. Senior managers use corporate methodology to set priorities in social services and create “market-friendly” public sector cultures. Even social activist organizations increasingly look and act like multinational corporations while non-governmental organizations pursue partnerships with the same corporations they ostensibly oppose. Corporatizing Canada critically examines how corporatization has been implemented in different ways across the Canadian public sector and warns us of the threat that neoliberal corporatization poses to democratic decision-making and the public at large.Conform, Fail, Repeat: How Power Distorts Collective Action
By Christopher Samuel. 2017
Anti-globalization activists have done little to slow capitalism’s global march. Many of the gains made by decades of identity-based movements…
have been limited to privileged subgroups. The lesson of these movements is clear: struggle for change is essential, but the direction of change matters considerably. Like movements of the past, current social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and the growing anti-Trump movement, must navigate a path between reformism and radicalism, pragmatism and idealism, capture and independence. In Conform, Fail, Repeat, Christopher Samuel uses Pierre Bourdieu’s central “thinking tools” to show how power and domination force movements into a no-win choice between conformity and failure. With special attention to North American LGBTQ politics and the G20 protests in Toronto, Conform, Fail, Repeat shows how Bourdieu’s work can give movement observers as well as participants new tools for tracking and avoiding the pitfalls of conformity and failure.Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada
By Shiri Pasternak, Kevin Walby, Abby Stadnyk. 2022
Canadian laws are just, the police uphold the rule of law and treat everyone equally, and without the police, communities…
would descend into chaos and disorder. These entrenched myths, rooted in settler-colonial logic, work to obscure a hard truth: the police do not keep us safe. This edited collection brings together writing from a range of activists and scholars, whose words are rooted in experience and solidarity with those putting their lives on the line to fight for police abolition in Canada. Together, they imagine a different world—one in which police power is eroded and dissolved forever, one in which it is possible to respond to distress and harm with assistance and care.No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, 3rd Edition (No-Nonsense Guides #12)
By Wayne Ellwood. 2010
Fully updated, this new edition of a best-selling No-Nonsense Guide examines the debt trap; the acceleration of neoliberalism and the…
free trade model; competition for energy resources; the links between the war on terror, the arms trade, and privatization; and the emergence of China and India as economic superpowers. Ellwood provides a full analysis of the financial crisis that began in 2007, and explores what happens when deregulation, speculation, and greed are given complete rein. In addition to his cogent analysis, Ellwood offers strategies for redesigning the global economy to better serve the public good.Radical Ambition: The New Left in Toronto
By Peter Graham. 2019
Writing for Maclean’s magazine in 1965, Peter Gzowski saw something different about the new generation of the left. They were…
not the agrarian radicals of old. They did not meet in union halls. Nor were they like the Beatniks that Gzowski had rubbed shoulders with in college. “The radicals of the New Left … differ from their predecessors not only in the degree of their protest but in its kind. They are a new breed.” Members of the New Left placed the ideals of self-determination and community at the core of their politics. As with all leftists, they sought to transcend capitalism. But in contrast to older formations, New Leftists emphasized solidarity with national liberation movements challenging imperialism around the world. They took up organizational forms that anticipated—in their direct, grassroots, community-based democracy—the liberated world of the future. Radical Ambition is the first book to explore the history of this dynamic movement and reveal the substantial social changes it won for the people of Toronto.Being and Swine: The End of Nature (As We Knew It)
By Fahim Amir. 2020
Forget everything you think you know about nature. Fahim Amir’s award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are…
animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political? In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir’s magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fuzzballs into shameless centrefold models for eco-capitalism. As paws, claws, talons, and hooves seize the means of production, Being and Swine spirals higher and higher into a heady thesis that becomes more convincing by the minute. At the heart of Amir’s writing is a deep optimism and bracingly fresh reading of Marxist, post-colonial, and feminist theory, building upon the radical scholarship of Donna J. Haraway and others. Contrarian, whip-smart, and wildly innovative, no other book will laugh at your convictions quite like this one.No-Nonsense Guide to International Development, 2nd Edition (No-Nonsense Guides #17)
By Maggie Black. 2007
“Overseas aid” and “international development” are catch-all terms that cover a multitude of activities and abuses. Building dams in…
India, planting treesin Burkina Faso, and rescuing street children in Brazil are images of development with which we can all identify. But what few people realize is that the terms “aid” and “development” often mask confusion, contradiction, and even downright deceit. The updated version of 2002s best-selling No-Nonsense Guide to International Development explains what “development” actually is and explores its political and economic roots in history. It shows what can happen in the name of development and argues for a more organic, social approach with those it seeks to serve as equal partners in the process.Shameless: The Fight for Adoption Disclosure and the Search for My Son
By Marilyn Churley. 2015
In the late 1960s, at the age of eighteen and living far from home amidst the thriving counterculture of Ottawa,…
Marilyn Churley got pregnant. Like thousands of other women of the time she kept the event a secret. Faced with few options, she gave the baby up for adoption. Over twenty years later, as the Ontario NDP government’s minister responsible for all birth, death, and adoption records, including those of her own child, Churley found herself in a surprising and powerful position – fully engaged in the long and difficult battle to reform adoption disclosure laws and find her son. Both a personal and political story, Shameless is a powerful memoir about a mother’s struggle with loss, love, secrets, and lies – and an adoption system shrouded in shame.Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist
By Dustin Galer. 2023
Beryl Potter was a reserved working-class mother of three living a decent life, or so it seemed, when a harmless…
slip and fall marked the unravelling of everything that she had known about herself and the world around her. Over the course of six years, she endured unimaginable pain. As doctors raced to save her life, her limbs and eyesight were taken from her one by one. In the span of a few years, she lost nearly half her body, her financial security, her home, her husband, and any semblance of a recognizable future. A survivor of more than one hundred surgeries, a dangerous opioid addiction, and multiple suicide attempts, Beryl Potter devoted herself to bettering the lives of other people with disabilities and made a tremendous contribution to disability awareness from the 1970s to 1990s. In this unparalleled biography, Dustin Galer demonstrates how Beryl Potter seemed to crack the code of the social system that oppressed her. By wading into the weeds of her complicated life before and after her accident, Galer leaves readers with a complex portrait of a woman who defied and challenged gender and disability norms of her time, paving the way for disability justice.The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map
By Ursula Franklin. 2006
Feminist, educator, Quaker, and physicist, Ursula Franklin has long been considered one of Canada’s foremost advocates and practitioners of pacifism.…
The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map is a comprehensive collection of her work, and demonstrates subtle, yet critical, linkages across a range of subjects: the pursuit of peace and social justice, theology, feminism, environmental protection, education, government, and citizen activism. This thoughtful collection, drawn from more than four decades of research and teaching, brings readers into an intimate discussion with Franklin, and makes a passionate case for how to build a society centered around peace.Organize!: Building from the Local for Global Justice
By Aziz Choudry Jill Hanley. 2012
How do we organize for progressive social change in an era of unprecedented economic, social, and ecological crises? How do…
political activists build power and critical analysis into their daily work for change? Grounded in struggles in Canada, the USA, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as transnational activist networks, Organize! links local organizing with global struggles for social justice. From organizing immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism for Palestine to support for Indigenous Peoples, activists, academics, and artists reflect on the tensions and gains inherent in a diverse range of organizing contexts and practices. Organize! encourages us to use history to shed light on contemporary injustices and how they can be overcome.NoNonsense ISIS and Syria: The new global war on terror (No-Nonsense Guides #1)
By Phyllis Bennis. 2017
From its sudden emergence as a military force to be reckoned with in Syria and Iraq in June 2014 through…
its YouTube executions of hostages to its atrocious attacks in Paris in November 2015, the movement variously known as ISIS, Islamic State, and Daesh has captured the world’s horrified attention. Where did it come from and how on earth should we respond? This NoNonsense book places ISIS in the broader context of the US-led ‘war on terror’ from the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq to Obama’s drone attacks. Bennis makes a strong case for responses that build peace and justice rather than feeding the cycle of violence and terror.Whose Streets?: The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest
By Tom Malleson and David Wachsmuth. 2011
In June 2010 activists opposing the G20 meeting held in Toronto were greeted with brutal and arbitrary state violence. Whose…
Streets? is a combination of testimonials from the front lines and analyses of the broader context, an account that both reflects critically on what occurred in Toronto and looks ahead to further building our capacity for resistance. Featuring reflections from activists who helped organize the mobilizations, demonstrators and passersby who were arbitrarily arrested and detained, and scholars committed to the theory and practice of confronting neoliberal capitalism, the collection balances critical perspective with on-the-street intensity. It offers vital insight for activists on how local organizing and global activism can come together.Public transportation is in crisis. Through an assessment of the history of automobility in North America, the “three revolutions” in…
automotive transportation, as well as the current work of committed people advocating for a different way forward, James Wilt imagines what public transit should look like in order to be green and equitable. Wilt considers environment and climate change, economic and racial inequality, urban density, accessibility and safety, work and labour unions, privacy and control of personal data, as well as the importance of public and democratic decision-making. Based on interviews with more than forty experts, including community activists, academics, transit planners, authors, and journalists, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? explores our ability to exert power over how cities are built and for whom.