talkingradical.ca

Talking Radical Radio: Towards a New Model of Worker Organizing

Scott — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:13:16 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, organizer Mostafa Henaway talks about his years of work with the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal.

Though it is not yet as intense as in the United States, and there have been important victories as well, in the last few decades the membership and strength of trade unions in Canada has been gradually declining. As well, the ways in which work and employment are organized have shifted drastically towards things like greater precarity for more and more workers, and an increasing role for forms of work mediated by things like placement agencies and programs for temporary foreign workers. One of the ways that organizers have been responding to these changes is through increasing use of organizational forms outside of mainstream unions, including workers centres. Heneway talks about what the IWC does, the strengths and challenges of the worker centre model, and the importance of centering the experiences of precarious workers and workers who are immigrants to Canada.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_jun10-14_iwc_montreal.mp3)

To learn more about Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Center, 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.

Talking Radical Radio: Stalwart Against War

Scott — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:08:27 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, co-chairs Trudi Gunia and Michael Murphy reflect on the Saskatoon Peace Coalition’s eleven years of work against war, militarism, and oppression as they manifest at the local, national, and international levels.

The pull of politics focused on opposing war and empire is not as strong for many activists in Canada today as it was a decade ago, when Afghanistan was already occupied, Iraq was newly invaded, and the so-called Global War on Terror in full swing. Yet the militarization of Canadian society is on the rise, more and more tax dollars are going to fund the military rather than meet human need, and vicious impacts of war and empire remain just as unsolved today as then in places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Palestine, not to mention the ongoing colonial occupation of indigenous lands on Turtle Island. Gunia and Murphy talk about what they and a group of people they refer to as “stalwarts” are doing to engage new activists and to work for peace and justice across a range of scales, places, and issues.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_june3to7_saskatoon_peace_coalition.mp3)

To learn more about the Saskatoon Peace Coalition, click here.

Talking Radical Radio: Experiments in Solidarity

Scott — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:32:49 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, organizer Brian Crouse talks about his work with a new multi-issue, membership-based, democratic, radical organization based in Nova Scotia. The group’s name is Solidarity Halifax.

The goal of the group is to bring together committed organizers from a range of movements and provide a sort of multi-issue, non-sectarian organizational home — a place for respectful dialogue and debate and collaboration and imagining — under an overarching framework of political pluralism and anti-capitalism. Despite being only a year and a half old, Solidarity Halifax has already waged some effective and invigorating campaigns. And their success so far in bringing together a politically diverse crew of activists in a way that both respects political differences while providing opportunities for collaborative action is an example that quite a number of people I have spoken to across the country are watching and trying to learn from. Crouse talks about their campaigns, their organization-building, and the key lessons they’ve learned.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_may27to31_solidarity_halifax.mp3)

To learn more about Solidarity Halifax, click here. To read a recent Rabble piece on the group by David Bush and Kaley Kennedy, 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.

New Ways to Listen

Scott — Mon, 27 May 2013 17:24:18 +0000

While the most broadly accessible way to listen to Talking Radical Radio continues to be as a podcast via the show’s page at Rabble.ca (or by subscribing to the feed using iTunes or another service), there are a growing number of cities where you can listen over the airwaves.

To get the latest info on where Talking Radical Radio is being broadcast, keep checking back at this page. But as of this posting, you can listen on

Wednesdays at 8am on 96.7 FM CKLU in Sudbury, Ontario;
Wednesdays at 4pm on CJAM 99.1 FM in Windsor, Ontario; and,
Fridays at 1:30pm on 93.3 FM CFMU in Hamilton, Ontario.

As well, from June 5th to August 28th, 2013, listeners in Winnipeg, Manitoba will be able to hear select episodes (broadcast in a different order than on Rabble or the other stations) as part of a summer fill-in for the first half of Black Mask Radio each week at 4pm on 95.9 FM CKUW.

If you think Talking Radical Radio might be a good fit for a station in your town, please email me at scottneigh(at)talkingradical.ca and we’ll see what we can figure out!

Talking Radical Radio: Watching the cops in Winnipeg

Scott — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:49:14 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Raical Radio, organizer Teddy Zegeye-Gebrehiwot talks about Winnipeg Cop Watch and their work against the more oppressive aspects of policing as it currently exists.

Copwatch is an international network of local organizations focused on detering police violence through observing the interactions between police and community members. Though many people who move through the world with middle-class and white privilege have trouble even imagining the police as anything but a source of safety and help, many other people and many other communities have quite different experiences. For many people who are racialized, visibly poor, gender non-conforming, sex workers, or otherwise marginalized, police brutality and misconduct are common experiences. Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, an organizer with the Winnipeg chapter of Cop watch, talks about the work that they do to deter police violence, support survivors of various forms of police misconduct, and raise critical consciousness about the systemic role of police in our society — a society built on colonization, exclusion, oppression, and exploitation.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_may_22_2013_winnipeg_cop_watch.mp3)

To learn more about the work of Winnipeg Copwatch, click here.

Talking Radical Radio: Mad Pride Toronto

Scott — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:42:26 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Elizabeth Carvahlo, Jeremiah Bach, Peter, and Alisa talk about their work as organizers of the Mad Pride festival in Toronto.

Political organizing by people who have experienced the mental health system has been a reality in Canada since at least the early 1970s. Initiated in the 1990s as “Psychiatric Survivor Pride Toronto,” Mad Pride is an arts, culture, and heritage festival that is one of the current manifestations of such organizing. It is a chance for people who have experienced the mental health system and their allies to connect around shared struggles, to build the capacity of the mad community, and to both create and celebrate mad culture. It will be happening this year in Toronto from July 8 to July 14, and similar events will be happening in many other cities as well. The four organizers talk about the event, the mad movement, and mad culture.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_may_15_mad_pride_toronto.mp3)

To learn more about Mad Pride Toronto, click here.

Talking Radical Radio — Building warships in Halifax, and the campaign against it

Scott — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:08:45 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Tamara Lorincz of Halifax talks about the campaign she has been spearheading in opposition to the $25 billion contract awarded to a shipyard in her city to build warships for the Canadian navy.

In 2008, the federal Conservatives announced a new defense strategy for the country that involves massive, long-term new expenditures, a tighter integration with the United States, and a shift towards a more aggressive, interventionist posture. In 2010, they followed up with an announcement of the largest procurement program in the nation’s history, to build ships — primarily combat vessels the Canadain navy. The single largest purchase package within that program — a staggering $25 billion for warships — was awarded in 2011 to Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax. Tamara Lorincz, a long-time environmental, peace, and feminist activist, decided she needed to speak out in favour of using that money instead to create green jobs and to foster social justice.

Lorincz found surprisingly few allies even among progressives in Halifax, particularly at first, and even today no political party — including the NDP — has spoken out critically on the massive investment of resources into weapons of war rather than meeting pressing social and enviornmental needs. However, through Lorincz’s determined, vocal efforts, including weekly protests outside of the shipyards where the vessels are being built, she has helped to create some space for dissent and has high hopes that an increasing number of people will speak up to oppose the warships and to oppose the growing militarization of Canadian society. She reflects on her campaign, on militarism in Canada, and on what she hopes can happen to counter it.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_may_8_lorincz_halifax_warships.mp3)

To find out more about Lorincz’s campaign, click here.

Talking Radical Radio — How can we organize like Quebec students? Part 2

Scott — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:05:31 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, you can hear Part 2 of my interview with Rushdia Mehreen talking about her involvement as a student organizer in the lead-up to and during last year’s massive student strike in Quebec. (To listen to Part 1, go here.)

Though the strike was one of the most visible and successful struggles so far in North America against the global austerity agenda, many people in the rest of Canada and in the United States are skeptical about whether that kind of mobilization can happen in places where such an approach is not already firmly established. The example of the students at Concordia University in Montreal may provide the best place to take lessons about how to do that. This is because unlike the francophone universities in the province, Concordia, an anglophone school, had no tradition of the directly democratic general assembly-type organizing that is the basis for the powerful strikes that have historically been rooted in Quebec’s francophone schools. Yet in the lead-up to the 2012 strike, a group of students at Concordia took steps that lead, within the space of only a year, to a substantial transformation of the political environment on campus and the implementation of general assembly democracy among a significant proportion of the student body.

In both this episode and the previous one, Mehreen talks about how they did that. Last week’s show focused on the political context in which they were organizing, on exactly what the general assembly model entails, and on the progression of actions and events through which it was implemented at Concordia. In today’s show, Mehreen reflects in more depth on certain key questions and talks about the possibilities and barriers for implementing this approach elsewhere in North America.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_may_1_2013_mehreen_concordia_student_strike_part_2.mp3)

For more material in English on student organizing in Montreal, check out the website of Free Education Montreal. Those interested in implementing assembly-based student organizing in new settings might also be interested in this how-to document (in PDF form) on the subject by Mehreen and Matthew Brett.

Talking Radical Radio — How can we mobilize like Quebec students?

Scott — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:23:15 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Rushdia Mehreen talks about her involvement as a student organizer in the lead-up to and during last year’s massive student strike in Quebec.

In both this episode and the next one, Mehreen talks about how they did that. This episode focuses on the political context in which they were organizing, on exactly what the general assembly model entails, and on the progression of actions and events through which it was implemented at Concordia. On next week’s show, Mehreen reflects in more depth on certain key questions and talks about the possibilities and barriers for implementing this approach elsewhere in North America.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_april_24_2013_mehreen_concordia_student_strike_part_1.mp3)

Talking Radical Radio: Decoloizing Music — The R3 Collective

Scott — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:57:35 +0000

On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, musicians Rosina Kazi and Amai Kuda talk about their involvement in the R3 Collective, a group of performers based in Toronto whose work covers a broad range of styles and approaches but who are united by their commitment to decolonization and to social justice.

Kazi is half of the electronic music duo LAL and Kuda is a singer-songwriter. The R3 Collective brings them together with eleven other artists, musicians, and performers to provide mutual support and a new kind of environment for creating art and addressing issues. Their website describes them as devoted to “recovering indigenous roots and resisting colonial oppression through music, dance, visual art and theatre for and by marginalized peoples, with a particular focus on Queer Indigenous and Queer communities of colour.” The collective recently completed their first tour, which combined performances, workshops, and grassroots community-building. Kazi and Kuda talk about the tour, the group, and their vision of the inherent unity of artistic creation and struggles for justice.

Download audio file (trr_rpn_apr17_2013_r3_kazi_kuda.mp3)