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January 10, 2009

Images from the Toronto demonstration against Israeli assult on Gaza

Posted by Elaisha Stokes at 11:55 PM ET | Comments (0)

It was brief, but I managed to snap a few photos on my way to meet a friend today.

PROTESTERS HIT THE STREETS OF TORONTO

CANADIANS DEMAND ANSWERS

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH

RIDING BAREBACK

In general it was a peaceful, family affair, well attended by children and toddlers alike. How lucky we are to live in a country where we can bring our children to public demonstrations without the fear of physical retribution. Far more tempered than other demonstrations I have recently attended.

More entries on: Activism

May 15, 2008

From the magazine: Shopdrop and roll

Posted by mason at 01:04 PM ET | Comments (0)

By Kalli Anderson

On a Saturday night, in a supermarket in Montreal, Natalie Reis picks up an 89-cent can of peas and carrots. She pulls one of her original drawings--a grey-and-red sketch of birds in flight--out of her purse and wraps it around the can. She secures the drawing with a single piece of transparent tape, places the can back on the shelf, steps back, snaps a photo with her digital camera and walks away.

Reis is part of a growing network of artists using stores as impromptu venues for their work. Shopdropping, shoplifting’s iconoclastic cousin, can be as overtly political as placing T-shirts of Karl Marx in a Wal-Mart or as self-serving as slipping your band's CD into the rack at Starbucks. For Reis, it's about creating a visual surprise in an otherwise familiar commercial space. "In the supermarket we are often on cruise control," she says. "I want to disrupt the routine, give people an image that isn't selling anything--a mental break from the brands and the advertising."

Reis doesn't mind if shoppers want to take her art home with them. "But I don't want them to try to buy it," she says. "I hope they steal it off the shelves."

Click here for more from the current issue, the charity issue.

or

Click here for more from our Arts & Ideas section.

More entries on: Activism | From the magazine | Visual art

April 14, 2008

Paul Watson: Hero or terrorist?

Posted by mason at 11:40 PM ET | Comments (1)

Those of you who are up on the news will know that Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been in a little hot water lately, first for suggesting that thousands of seal deaths are more tragic than the deaths of four seal hunters who died in a recent marine accident, and this weekend because crew members from one of his ships were arrested for aggressive behaviour toward seal hunters off the coast of Newfoundland.

With glee, the commercial media has pilloried the animal-rights crusader, and federal politicians have tripped over themselves to condemn his tactics. There is, of course, another perspective, and it's interesting to see Watson's work lauded when the target is Japanese whaling vessels, yet ridiculed when Canadian seal hunters are in his sights.

In a This profile from the summer of 2007, Dayna Boyer talks to Watson and delves a little deeper into his motivations than has been the case lately. By no means does he come across as virtuous, but the article is free of overblown reactions to Watson's tactics.

PHOTO COURTESY SEA SHEPHERD

More entries on: Activism | Planet Earth

February 19, 2008

Moving environmentalism forward

Posted by mason at 11:05 AM ET | Comments (0)

Two things that have come through my life recently have me thinking about problems and solutions. The first is an incredibly well-presented online video and website called The Story of Stuff. In it, activist Annie Leonard describes her years-long investigation of the lifetime of consumer goods: where they come from, how they get in our homes and what happens when we trash them. The video is about 20 minutes long and worth a look. Its design is simple and elegant and features clever animations and plain, urgent language.

But something about it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's 19 minutes and 30 seconds about the problem at hand and roughly 30 seconds about hope for change. It appears to be aimed at the average consumer, but its educational tone comes across as a bit pedantic. It encourages viewers to stay on the site and click around for information and stories about positive change, and that's probably where the real use of the site comes in, but I expect only a small percentage of viewers take the time to stick with it -- especially if they approach the topic as skeptics.

Contrast this with a talk I went to last night by Chris Turner, journalist and author of the book The Geography of Hope: A Guided Tour of the World We Need. Through a photo slideshow and Q&A session, Turner outlined some of the amazing strides being made in sustainable living in places like Germany, Denmark, New Mexico and Thailand. Concrete examples of new ways to live, with an emphasis on renewable energy, reducing consumption and recycling. He mentioned a new wave of environmentalism, moving beyond doom-and-gloom predictions and concentrating on what is possible with the technology and willpower we already possess.

In my mind, this is the best way to reach the constituencies of people who remain doubtful about the urgency of climate change or the problems with the free market system. Enough warnings. Those who will listen to the warnings have already heard, and those who will not need a new kind of motivation for change. By getting the word out -- and Turner mentioned an activist he knows who consults for Wal-Mart, and the importance of spreading our messages through the mainstream, commercial media -- we are best positioned to inspire change in others.

IMAGE: STILL FROM THE STORY OF STUFF
More entries on: Activism | Generally Interesting | Human rights | Planet Earth

August 21, 2007

SPP Protest: Union Leader diffuses suspected provocateur

Posted by Ariel Troster at 10:04 AM ET | Comments (15)

Some of you might have heard that yesterday in Montebello, the president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union helped diffuse a situation where a rock-throwing protester attempted to breech the "green zone," by pushing through a line of riot cops.

Dave Coles from CEP did in fact break-up a potential incident, but we're pretty convinced that the "protestor" was actually a cop ... Although we can't confirm this for sure, we happened to have Paul Manly (a filmmaker) with us ... he caught the whole thing and put it up on YouTube this morning. You'll notice at the end of the scuffle that the cops just let him through, and the arrest appears to be staged ... the other black-clad protesters in the crowd were convinced he was a cop. We suspect that he was a provocateur working for one of the security forces who was instructed to shake things up to justify the police response.

Dave Coles and Joel Harden from the CLC were AMAZING in diffusing the situation, saving families and grannies from getting tear-gassed:

More entries on: Activism

June 19, 2007

The right to choose where to direct our political energies

Posted by shawnsyms at 09:10 AM ET | Comments (3)

What do you get if you cross the CBC with Facebook? A colossal waste of energy.

Keen to tap into the youthful energy of online social networking, the CBC set up an experiment—The Great Canadian Wish List. (Note: A Facebook account is required in order to view links on the Facebook website. If you haven't yet succumbed to the online world's newest addiction, you can read more about the Wish List here.)

The idea borrowed from the online consumerist killer app, the Amazon Wish List, but with a twist: make a wish for Canada's future. As an incentive, the CBC offered to publicize the most popular wishes on a Canada Day broadcast. In a nod to the seeming organic nature of online community, the broadcaster pointed out that the outcome of the wish contest was solely user-driven and unmediated by the CBC.

Based on that standard, the CBC has judged the contest a huge success. But activists on the left are giving it a failing grade. Why? Because the number-one wish to date is "abolish abortion in Canada." Close on the heels of that troublesome desire? "Restore the Traditional Definition of Marriage" and "For a spiritual revival in our nation."

Hmm. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and the courts ruled the same for abortion rights back in 1988. Similarly, Canada is increasingly secular and decreasingly religious. Many people may hold wishes to the contrary, but they are not in the Canadian majority, despite what the Facebook wishlist may suggest. A counter-wish, that abortion remain legal, has been established on Facebook and it's quickly gaining ground on the anti-choice wish.

Charges have been laid that the contest has been hijacked by right-wing special-interest groups. But if anything, the debacle just indicates the extent to which politics has become organized online just as it has in the real world. All the time, I receive links from friends to polls on news-media sites and other websites, asking that I add in my vote to help tip the balance one way or another. The notion that activity simply emerges organically and more democratically on the web is naive.

No matter what your specific beliefs, the emergence of the online world has been an enormous boon to organizing to change the world. It is easier to become informed, easier to make donations, easier to try and influence events and actions around the world.

It's also easier to participate in political discussions—but just as easy to misdirect your energies. On some levels, adding your voice to the "Me too" chorus of people who are offended by the anti-choice wish is about as useful and debating with those who seek to squash abortion rights. Not very.

A wish contest on Facebook is not really representative of Canadian values. Our time would be better spent not only thinking about more useful ways to harness tools like Facebook more productively for social change—it would be more valuably spent actually doing things in the real world to promote better and more consistent access to abortion and other health services for women across the country who need it.

More entries on: Activism

March 24, 2007

Thoughts while stuck in traffic

Posted by aaron at 03:27 PM ET | Comments (3)

I've been spending some time in Seattle lately visiting an ailing grandfather which means I've been stuck, bumper to bumper, on the I-5 for literally hours a day. I'm talking about the commute between my grandfather's house in north Seattle, the hospital and downtown, three places quite close to each other. Just the sheer number of cars that role through Seattle each day, all day, is quite astounding. Rush hour is especially brutal.

The on-ramps have stop lights to space the cars getting on, this can mean waits of up to twenty minutes when busy. Once you're on, it's six/eight/ten lanes of bumper to bumper in both directions. When you finally get off, whether in north Seattle or downtown, you're stuck in even more congestion.

This brings me to the Gateway Project; the BC government's plan to "improve" regional transportation, specifically the plan to twin the Port Mann bridge and widen Highway 1 into East Van (aka my back yard). I think it's a horrible idea. Vancouver currently has minor (by North American standards) rush hours, which some think can be solved simply by adding more highway.

It was Jane Jacobs' book Dark Age Ahead that introduced me (I'm young) to the idea of "induced demand" that more freeways mean more cars, hence more congestion especially around major off ramps. My place in East Vancouver already gets plenty of commuter traffic to begin with and would become unbearable.

But don't worry about me, Jacobs' main argument against highways is that urban neighbourhoods, the economic and creative heart of the city, are often destroyed or significantly altered by megaprojects like these. Imagine the harm it could do to the cultural life of Commercial Drive and Strathcona to have thousands more cars per-day inching through the Downtown Eastside. More traffic would then necessitate extending the freeway even further into the city. The last time we allowed something like this to happen, Vancouver's only black neighbourhood was destroyed to create the Georgia Viaduct. I like to think that in this "post car, post racist" age, there are better ways to organize a city.

A vocal movement of people opposed to the project already exists, check out gatewaysucks.org for more info. Similarly, the David Suzuki Foundation's briefing document (highly recommended reading) suggests that highway construction is only a (very) temporary solution to traffic congestion and ends up doing far more harm than good.

The answer to the traffic problem, according to almost everyone who studies the issue, is light rail and more busses. The B-Line experiment--articulated express busses to the university and the airport--has been such an overwhelming success in terms of ridership and affordability, why not replicate it everywhere else?

More entries on: Activism | Vancouver

March 15, 2007

What does it mean to be a leftist?

Posted by mason at 01:51 AM ET | Comments (23)

To paraphrase a certain right-wing rag: disagree or agree?

More entries on: Activism

February 27, 2007

RRSPs that make a difference

Posted by mason at 02:36 PM ET | Comments (2)

I don't know much about this stuff -- is tomorrow the last day to get RRSPs and apply the tax breaks to your 2006 return or something? I tend to tune out the RRSP hard sell that goes on this time of year, simply because I don't trust banks.

That said, it appears Citizens Bank is now offering an investment I can get fully behind. They call it the Shared World Term Deposit, and it pools your RRSP-eligible money into a fund that is loaned to low-income earners in developing countries. The Globe and Mail wrote about it recently (subscription required), as did a micro-finance blog called micro capital, and I bought one when I discovered I had a bond that matured recently.

Those of you who know about these things: Is this a reasonable investment, given that I care as much about what is done with the money I invest as I do about the return?

More entries on: Activism

February 26, 2007

Sak vid pa kanpe

Posted by mason at 01:27 AM ET | Comments (9)

So last night, the Arcade Fire played Saturday Night Live for the first time, performing two songs from their upcoming Neon Bible album. In the above clip the band plays their first song, "Intervention," after which frontman Win Butler smashes his acoustic guitar. Speculation as to why has been met online with a predictable array of theories, but my favourite connects with the phrase written in tape on the guitar: Sak vid pa kanpe, which is apparently a Haitian expression meaning, "An empty sack cannot stand up." In other words, starving people can't do anything.

As the theory goes, the guitar smash was a political reaction to the situation in Haiti, where Canada has a role in providing stability or undermining democracy, depending on your perspective. If that was Butler's intention, let me help him out by noting the website for Canada Out of Haiti, where you can get involved or make a donation to the cause.

More entries on: Activism | Ear candy | Human rights

January 17, 2007

Scotiabank takin' on the US Treasury

Posted by john_d at 09:53 AM ET | Comments (3)

CBC.ca is reporting that Scotiabank will not be following the lead of the apparently powerless Royal Bank in denying US dollar bank accounts to dual citizens of Canada and a bunch of nations the US does not like. Canadian citizens who also hold passports for Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan and Cuba may not save US dollars at the Royal Bank, because of its compliance with a US Treasury directive to deny access to US currency to them there folks.

Scotiabank will probably have to dig into the record-profit pool all Canadian banks enjoy to pay some American fines as a result of their principled stand, but they have apparently decided that is a small price to pay for continuing to do business in a way consistent with another American directive, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1975, which states that when you apply for credit, a creditor may not discourage you from applying because of your sex, marital status, age, race, national origin, or because you receive public assistance income.

More entries on: Activism

January 09, 2007

If Sarah Harmer tells me to not like gravel, should I not like it?

Posted by john_d at 03:15 PM ET | Comments (2)

Judging by my own and my friends' reaction to every new album, I am Sarah Harmer's core audience demographic. I pay to download her music. I buy her CDs as gifts for friends. I have attempted to fit one of her rare live TO performances into my very busy life. I quote her lyrics in my writing. Way back when, I used to go see the Saddletramps, and even put together an arts benefit with them at Lee's Palace. That's right, the Saddletramps. Deal with that, youth of today. Finally, day after day, I bother my work associate with Escarpment Blues, a Harmer song, because I love it and can't stop listening to it on my iTunes. I'm listening to it right now.

So, naturally when I saw Ms. Harmer on the cover of NOW, I stopped and made the purchase (I know, NOW is free, but I feel I leave a bit of my soul behind whenever I pick up Toronto's "alternative" paper -- just a personal opinion).

Harmer's activism is the focus of the NOW piece, specifically her campaign to save the Niagara Escarpment from an aggregate company's expansion. It seems Nelson Aggregate Co. intends to expand their current diggings into the escarpment to help supply the ever increasing market for crushed rock to Toronto's building boom. The inevitable local advocacy group has sprung up to question the environmental impact of the scheme, as they should. Harmer is this group's very public face -- check them out on their own website: Protecting Escarpment Rural Land.

After doing my own reading on the issue, I lean toward Sarah Harmer (surprise, surprise) yet the NOW article continues to nettle me and make me wonder about the whole idea of celebrity advocacy, or at least the need for responsible media coverage of celebrity advocacy. Read by anyone less enamoured with Harmer's talents as singer/songwriter, the piece might come across as pretty flakey NIMBYism tarted up as genuine environmental concern. The article begins with a dreamy Harmer gazing off into the distance, past picturesque Mount Nemo to that soulless Babylon, Toronto, and its inexhaustible hunger for Burlington gravel. Except that she's doing her gazing from her parents' farmhouse, and the quarry in question is almost literally in their backyard. Here's the next bit:

A country block up the road, across lush, green wetlands, great smoky machines dig and chew, turning rock into gravel that's used to build highways and condos and, yes, parking lots.

Mount Nemo is on the ragged spine of the Niagara Escarpment, which stretches 725 kilometres from Niagara Falls to Tobermory, and has a heart shape when seen from above. At the centre of that heart, amid the streams, ponds and woodlands that rare and endangered plants and animals like the Jefferson salamander and butternut tree call home, is a limestone quarry, one of 44 such pits that dot the escarpment like a pox. Ironically, Harmer points out, "quarry" is derived from "cor," the Latin word for heart.

Oh, come on. A pox on glaringly unbalanced reporting propped up with strained poetics.

Nelson Aggregate, judging by local media reports, has not been the best neighbour to the good folks of Burlington, but they make a compelling enviro-argument for expanding the quarry closest to the Toronto market. From their website:

If that same quantity of aggregate had to come from the next closest area of significant aggregate reserves (about 30km further), the additional truck transport to get the same amount of aggregate delivered to where it is needed in the market, would result in:

95,000 tonnes of extra greenhouse gases
34.5 million litres of extra fuel consumption
$162 million in extra transport costs (at today's cost)
72 million extra heavy truck kilometers

All of those impacts would be incurred just to transport the same quantity of aggregate to the same market area from a bit further away.

Who's right; who's wrong? The lilting voice of Sarah Harmer leads me to think that quarries may just be a pox on the landscape, dammit! yet all the NOW article has done is make me wonder if I'm being lulled by pretty music into supporting the opening of a new quarry in someone else's less famous backyard.

More entries on: Activism

November 27, 2006

Black crows inspire Vancouver

Posted by mason at 01:50 PM ET | Comments (0)

If you’ve spent much time in Vancouver, especially East Vancouver, you’ve probably been captivated by the migration of crows from downtown to parts east that occurs around dusk each day. From the window of my old, top-floor apartment on East 10th, it was a comforting ritual to watch.

Now, a group of musicians are ready to launch a project, the Black Crow Project, which draws inspiration from that migration as an image of togetherness and a symbol of pulling together for a common goal. In this case, that goal is raising money for the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing services and assistance for those struggling with substance misuse issues, mainly in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

If you’re in the region and not buried in snow, the Black Crow Project is hosting a performance and silent auction tonight at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Local favourites set to play include the Parlour Steps, Mark Berube and Po’ Girl (pictured), all of whom are among the artists appearing on a compilation CD inspired by those plucky crows. In addition to the music, local visual artists will be auctioning work donated to the project.

All proceeds from the event, the CD and the auction will go to the Portland Hotel Society. Sounds like a great night -- check it out!

More entries on: Activism | Ear candy | Vancouver

October 06, 2006

Greening Apple

Posted by mason at 05:06 PM ET | Comments (5)

It's about time we saw a campaign like this: Greenpeace has launched an effort to organize Apple customers and demand that the company employ non-toxic materials in its hardware.

For those of us who consider themselves environmentalists and buy a lot of junk from Apple (myself included), it's time to stop turning a blind eye to the harmful impacts of e-waste on the planet, as well as on workers in developing countries.

If any constituency is suited to a campaign getting to change a company's behaviour, it's Apple users. Greenpeace has set up a few cool features on its Green My Apple site that allow creative types to design t-shirts, make videos or print stickers to slap on Apple products.

Let's do it, folks.

More entries on: Activism | Human rights | Interweb | Planet Earth

September 28, 2006

Revisiting the Rogers Cell Phone Debacle

Posted by john_d at 11:12 AM ET | Comments (3)

I was wondering the other day -- whatever happened to that story about Ted Rogers going to someone's house to apologize for a ridiculous cell-phone bill resulting from stolen service. We had a pretty good discussion about the media ethics aspects of the story on this blog at the time.

It's one of those corporate world stories that briefly touch down into the world of everyday humans -- a customer gets some raw treatment by a big company, the customer complains, nothing happens, the customer complains publicly, the company is embarrassed to have its lax customer service hit the daylight, the CEO agrees to take certain steps to make things right, and...

And, what? Ted Rogers agreed to meet with Susan Drummond and Harry Gefen for tea at their house to extend his personal apology for the over $12,000 cell-phone bill Drummond was expected to pay despite the charges being rung up by thieves operating well outside her normal calling patterns (tracked by Rogers). So, what happened over tea?

Well, a quick search reveals this website: rogersandme.ca. Note the day counter on the splash page. 286 days and counting without that famous visit for tea. Either Ted Rogers is remarkably busy, remarkably unthirsty, or remarkably unhappy with the fact that he agreed to this meeting.

How hard is it to schedule an hour long chat over tea, with which you purchase huge public goodwill for your company?

This is actually a fascinating website, detailing a lot more of the story than has reached the traditional press. Both Drummond and Gefen appear to be very smart, very determined, and very good-humoured folks. Really, 100 percent the wrong sort of customers on whom any company wants to try and pull a fast one. Further, the rogersandme.ca website itself has become the focus of dispute with Rogers, as Drummond notes on this page.

I see a book coming out of all this, and if Ted Rogers wants to have any say in how his character comes across, he'd best develop a taste for the orange pekoe.

More entries on: Activism

September 06, 2006

Sleeping with Strangers

Posted by Krisztina at 02:14 AM ET | Comments (2)

I just returned from a weekend in the States; Seattle WA to be exact. My friend Gisele and I drove down for Bumbershoot, an annual cultural extravaganza held on the old Expo fair grounds. Thousands of people, hundreds of shows, long lines and sun sun sun.

But wait, bragging about my fabulous weekend is not the point of this entry. Bragging about staying for free in a two bedroom apartment in Capital Hill is.

Being the frugal minded adventurous sort, we decided we'd rather blow our money at the high-end outlet mall than pay for a hotel room or even an uncomfortable twin bed in a hostel. So we emailed a few fine folks on the recently resurrected couchsurfing website and scored ourselves a free place to stay.

If you haven't already heard about couchsurfing.com you should check out the website. It's all about making the world a smaller, friendlier, more inviting kinda place. And if the existence of such a site isn't remarkable enough, the site crashed and basically died in June (there were notices that almost all the data was lost and the creator couldn't take it on anymore), only to be resurrected by a group of hard-working volunteers in Montreal in just two weeks.

Usually the point of couchsurfing is to stay with locals, meet them, hang out with them, tip toe around their apartment when they go to bed super early, and find out all the cool things about the city you could never find on your own, but we lucked out and our host was gone to Burning Man all week. He left his apartment key at the bar around the corner from his house and his door key under his mat. We stayed 4 days and 3 nights in his centrally located apartment, went for coffee at the local cafe, watched his 6-foot boa try to get out of her cage, hung out in the hair salon he's put into his second bedroom and never met him.

So thanks Eric, your apartment rocks! Enjoy the six-pack of fat tire we left you.

More entries on: Activism | Interweb

Embargoes vs. boycotts

Posted by mason at 01:24 AM ET | Comments (0)

Something funny I found tonight: it seems while leftists are criticized by the right for pointless boycotts of corporate baddies such as Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Coca-Cola, the cons are engaging in their own consumer activism by organizing "embargoes" such as this one against Wells Fargo bank. Its transgression? Giving mortgages and banking services to illegal immigrants! For shame. If I was an American I'd almost be tempted march down to my local Wells Fargo and open an account, just for that. Meanwhile, embargowellsfargo.com can continue with its hypocritical farce.

More entries on: Activism

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