Briarpatch articles from September 2006

Briarpatch archives from September 2006

Trick or treaty.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: The back cover "subvertisement" called "Where's your treaty card, pilgrim?" (August 2006) is totally brilliant!! I'd love to see that as a full-page in the major newspapers across Canada! I'm going to photocopy this and...

Regarding the "Old Havana" print in the Briarpatch art draw.(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: I had a wonderful time in Cuba. Having the chance to study and learn at the university has been one of the top adventures of my life; it is too wonderful for words!! I will never forget it. There were several crowning...

Self-organizing against racism.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: I write in response to Shelia Wilmot's "Anti-Racist Organizing Principles" (Briarpatch, August 2006). I'm not one to make glib statements about anything, especially militant hate mongering. Ms. Wilmot's list is...

Honouring Patsy Gallagher: trade unionist, social justice activist, friend.
September 1, 2006... Most Briarpatch readers and many trade unionists will have already heard the tragic news that Patsy Gallagher passed away on June 19, 2006, of complications after surgery for lung cancer. She was only sixty-six. Patsy was an active trade...

No dice: fruitless adventures in service-sector organizing.
September 1, 2006... Ducking behind walls to avoid a suspicious hotel manager's roving eye; flipping burgers and washing dishes in university cafeterias; sharing cigarettes with co-workers and trying to gauge when to drop the U-word; holding impromptu organizing...

Signed, sealed, delivered: the private death of the public postal service.
September 1, 2006... THERE IS A FIGHT BREWING OVER THE late of public postal service in Canada. We can choose sides now, or we can watch our postal service get gutted for the sake of profit, and at the expense of the communities it serves. In one corner, there...

Labour and the ballot box in Saskatchewan: learning, or not, from history's lessons: the NDP is on the cusp of forgetting--not for the first time--how crucial the support of the province's labour movement and the working-class vote are to maintaining its hold on power.
September 1, 2006... THE SASKATCHEWAN NDP IS NEARING THE END of its fifteenth year of continuous power, and faces an election in 2007 or 2008. Premier Lorne Calvert has begun to equivocate in his support for labour, most recently bowing to the right-wing...

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour Summer Camp.
September 1, 2006... For eighteen years now, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour has organized a week-long summer camp at Fort Qu'Appelle for kids of union members aged thirteen to sixteen. Campers are divided into "locals;" they negotiate a collective agreement...

Over my dead body: the "pension crisis" and the fight for retirement security.
September 1, 2006... PENSION: I'm not dead! UNION: He says he's not dead! COMPANY: Yes, he is. PENSION: I'm not! UNION: He isn't. COMPANY: Well, he will be soon; he's very ill. PENSION: I'm getting better! COMPANY: No, you're...

Canadian unions and Israeli apartheid: answering the critics of CUPE Ontario's boycott.
September 1, 2006... GIVEN THE WIDESPREAD AND growing violence across the Middle East in recent weeks, it is easy to forget the controversy that arose recently over Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario's resolution on Israel. But in this time of...

A Troublemaker's Handbook 2: How to Fight Back Where You Work--and Win!
September 1, 2006... A Troublemaker's Handbook 2 How to Fight Back Where You Work--and Win! Edited by Jane Slaughter Labor Notes, 2005 "The struggle for power at the workplace is about more than money and more than working conditions. It is about who...

On the Side of the People: A History of Labour in Saskatchewan.(Book review)
September 1, 2006... On the Side of the People A History of Labour in Saskatchewan By Jim Warren and Kathleen Carlisle Coteau Books, 2005 "The first documented attempt at collective bargaining in the territory that would become Saskatchewan took place in July...

Dancing on Live Embers: Challenging Racism in Organizations.
September 1, 2006... Dancing on Live Embers Challenging Racism in Organizations By Tina Lopes and Barb Thomas Between the Lines, 2006 DESPITE THE ADOPTION OF THE Multiculturalism Act in 1988 and the recent spread of employment equity plans, the effects of...

A message from the American people.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Quotation)
September 1, 2006... "These people at the top, the Bush Administration and their cronies, are completely alienated from anything real that's happening down at the bottom. Communities are getting organized. I see it blossoming all over the United States. And I'm...

Ye are many.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
September 1, 2006... Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many--they are few. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "THE MASK OF ANARCHY"

Dignity, finally.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
September 1, 2006... "Bury me standing. I've been on my knees all my life." MANUSH ROMANOV (QTD. IN ISABEL FONSECA, BURY ME STANDING)

Self-fulfilling prophecies.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
September 1, 2006... "If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one." KURT VONNEGUT, COLUMBUS, OHIO, MARCH 2006

The power of history.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Quotation)
September 1, 2006... "A people of a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and act as a people or a class that has been able to situate in history. This is why--and this is the only reason why--the entire art of the past has now become...

Starting somewhere.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
September 1, 2006... "Orthodox class-struggle revolutionists who doubt it's possible for small groups to transform their lives in any meaningful way can hardly argue that transforming our entire society at once is easier." CRIMETHING ROLLING THUNDER 2, WINTER...

The catch.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
September 1, 2006... "Everyone can be included in the Holy Communion of postmodern absolute capitalism, provided of course that everyone is willing to take up the position assigned to them by a racist, hetero-sexist, classist, ageist system hell-bent on its own...

Memo to Hillier and Harper.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Quotation)
September 1, 2006... "Overwhelmingly, suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland....

Israel, Lebanon, and your own backyard.(Parting Shots)
September 1, 2006... When Israel has reduced its Arab population to three percent of national total, and that Arab three percent has stopped resisting and become "pacified," to use counterinsurgency jargon, then Israel will have reached the place where Canada is...