On both today’s episode of Talking Radical Radio and next week’s, I will be speaking with Miles Howe. Howe is an editor and a journalist with the Halifax local of The Media Co-op, a co-operatively organized grassroots media network with locals and working groups in cities across the country. Over the last year, Howe has provided truly excellent coverage of the struggle against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and against colonization in New Brunswick, which has been lead by people from the Elsipogtog First Nation and quite broadly supported in the area.
In this week’s episode, Howe talks about some of the historical background, about the lead-up and events that initiated the current phase of struggle in New Brunswick, and about some of the key moments of conflict and crisis that he observed and participated in, as community members and allies attempted to prevent a surveying company from engaging in seismic testing as a prelude to fracking. Though our conversation about the role of grassroots journalism in relation to social movements or communities-in-struggle will be the focus of next week’s show, his account this week is in stark contrast to the way that the struggle at Elsipogtog has been portrayed in the mainstream and it at least suggests certain things about the role and relevance of grassroots journalism and grassroots media more generally.
To learn more about Howe’s work, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada through in-depth interviews that concentrate not on current events or the crisis of the moment, but on giving people involved in a broad range of social change work a chance to take a longer view as they talk about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. To learn more about the show in general, click here.
You can also learn more about ways to listen or go to the show’s page on Rabble.ca. To learn more about suggesting grassroots groups and organizations for future shows, click here. For details on the show’s theme music, click here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
