Radio: Bringing sustainability and justice together in a small community

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Scott

Jason Mogus is a long-time climate campaigner and a co-founder of Salt Spring Solutions, a local group on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia that is seeking to address their community’s housing crisis in sustainable ways, in the face of opposition that is framed in environmental terms. Scott Neigh interviews him about what the housing crisis looks like on the island, about the importance of an environmentalism that takes questions of justice seriously, and about the relevance of Salt Spring Solutions’ work to the larger environmental and climate movements of which he is also a part.

Jason Mogus has been engaged with environmentalism since he was a high school student in the 1980s. Out of university, he founded what was then referred to as a “new media agency,” doing online promotional and support work, often for grassroots groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In its early years, the agency did things like make Greenpeace’s first website and create one of the websites used in the famous protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. In more recent years, much of his work has focused on catalyzing the kind of movement-building that can happen from bringing NGOs and grassroots groups together. For five years, he was a member of the co-ordinating group for the main campaign in Canada against the Alberta tar sands. Today, he works for an organization called the Sunrise Project, which organizes internationally to oppose fossil fuel infrastructure and fossil fuel funders.

Today’s episode is not, however, about Mogus’ day job. He lives in unceded Coast Salish territory on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. Located close to Victoria, the island has 11,000 year-round residents, a spectacular natural environment, and a reputation for being a progressive place. But it has also changed a lot in recent decades. While it once had space for working people, artists, and people committed to living in a range of countercultural ways, it has increasingly become, in Mogus’ words, “an enclave for the wealthy.”

He said, “Twenty years ago, you didn’t need an investment account to live on Salt Spring. There were all kinds of alternative people that lived outside the neoliberal order that could either make their own house off the grid, outside of the system of bylaws, or they could scrape together a downpayment and afford a house off of a very eclectic lifestyle that wasn’t, you know, driven by capitalism.”

The current situation is, he said, “a crisis of nurses and teachers and farmworkers who couldn’t live here, and who were leaving the island. Or who were spending 60 to 70% of their income on mouldy housing that was inappropriate and unsafe.” He continued, “This island needs a working and middle class … they’re a huge part of the community fabric, as well as the history, as well as it’s their moral right to live here, like anyone’s is. And they were being forced to leave, because we couldn’t actually build any housing.”

This gentrifying shift is a product of both the same housing crisis that exists in many regions of the country – wealthy people leaving urban areas and forcing prices up in smaller communities, financialization of the housing market, the rise of short-term rentals, etc. – as well as other dynamics that are specific to Salt Spring.

The island is not a municipality but is part of a local administrative entity called the Islands Trust, which was instituted in the 1970s as part of efforts to preserve farm lands. The trust has limited powers and very little technical capacity or capacity for long-term planning, so while it has enabled a certain sort of conservation, it also has very limited ability to engage with community needs or to advance creative projects to meet those needs.

Mogus said, “I am the last person on Earth you’d ever expect to be talking about regulations as any kind of burden. I’m an environmentalist. I’ve been a climate campaigner for 15 years. I mostly fight our governments who have crappy environmental laws, that don’t enforce them.” But even so, he pointed to the island’s environmental regulations and the pervasive environmentalism among residents, and said, “Like a lot of other desirable places to live, sometimes those environmental concerns and laws can be weaponized by people who don’t want to see multifamily homes in their neighbourhood, don’t want to see changes. You know, it’s always the same thing: ‘We don’t want to see changes to the character of our neighborhood. There’s a certain, you know, type of person that lives here. Not everyone can can live here, or should live here.'”

Mogus sees a division that seems at least partly generational and partly based on class. Those people who are most able to exert power in local affairs are environmentalists who are older, whiter, and richer, and who advocate for a conservation-centric agenda that is detached from concerns about justice. At least until recently, the segment of the population that is also committed to the environment but in a way that brings in those questions of justice has been much less able to exert influence. In practice, this means that single-family homes for the wealthy get approved, while projects to meet community needs that do not fit that model face a much rougher ride – so, for instance, it can take more than 20 years to get a very modest nonprofit, multi-residential housing project built. He said, “The island has gentrified so quickly. We’re approving all of these large-scale homes. And yet we’re not approving any multifamily homes, or very few.”

So a few years ago, Mogus and other residents got together to found Salt Spring Solutions, a group working to build a constituency in favour of a less exclusionary vision of sustainability. A lot of their efforts have started from digital petitions about specific issues and projects. These petitions themselves exert some pressure on decision-makers, but they have also been a tool to allow the group to begin drawing people together to involve them in other kinds of events and to help them advance their vision for the community through participation in various official processes.

They have had some success. They have, for example, helped a few nonprofit housing projects that had been facing obstacles to reach completion, which has added around 100 new housing units to the community. They have also made progress towards improving cycling infrastructure and in work to preserve an important chunk of a local watershed that would combine conservation with making it a community amenity.

Beyond the work of mobilizing community in favour of particular projects, the group has also run into the island’s severe lack in terms of governmental capacity when it comes to planning and other technical areas. This has meant that moving projects forward has often required group members to volunteer their time and skills to make it happen.

On a more systemic level, though, things have been tough. After an extensive community process, itself a response to Salt Spring Solutions’ advocacy, the Islands Trust proposed a change in planning regulations that would allow for the construction of accessory dwelling units on lots of a certain size. This was not a change that Salt Spring Solutions was particularly enthusiastic about. According to Mogus, numbers from the BC provincial government suggest that such regulations generally result in new units on around 10% of lots that meet the criteria. Their sense of the island’s community was that it would have a fairly minimal impact overall on the housing crisis, so they regarded it as a small and not-ideal change, and only a first step.

Even so, it has been met with intense community opposition. Mogus said, “I’ve never quite seen such a backlash from the – I can’t describe it as anything else but the environmental community, of which I’m part of, but I’m certainly not aligned with them here.”

This has left Salt Spring Solutions very aware of the obstacles that more substantive and transformative changes might face. But it has also made them doubly determined to continue standing up against the housing crisis and the gentrification of their community, and working to find ways to advance their vision of a Salt Spring Island that is both sustainable and just.

“The bigger picture for us,” Mogus said, “is to make sure that the community hears from multiple sides, because right now there’s a real concentration of political power in one demographic that tends to successfully block a lot of change.”

He related the division on Salt Spring Island to changes happening in environmentalism more broadly. “There’s a beautiful thing happening to the environment and climate movement, that not everybody always experiences as beautiful. But it’s an awareness of the interconnections of these issues of race, and class, and housing, and inequality. … We have to really connect these dots between race, class, gender, and ultimately, capitalism if we’re going to actually transform society. And yet, here we are on Salt Spring, fighting for the most basic [things], like, housing as a human right of really good people that want to stay here. And we’re being defeated by a hardcore environmentalism.”

Mogus continued, “There needs to be constituencies that are fighting back against this endless neoliberal development surge in cities and communities, [and] for, you know, sustainable, affordable housing that’s ecologically friendly but that actually is realistic for people that aren’t millionaires to be able to buy. And so, I think there should be a group like [Salt Spring Solutions] in every town, that’s focused on getting to yes. What does this community want? What are the real issues at play? What are the real barriers to us getting what we want? How can we organize ourselves to get what we want?”

“Neoliberalism has largely failed to do anything other than make the people at the top wealthy, and a class that serves their needs pretty stable and wealthy. But look at the environmental catastrophe we’re living in. And we haven’t dealt with Reconciliation at all, we haven’t dealt with criminalization of racialized people, and inequality is worse than it’s ever been. … So communities need to work together to get what we want. But I also don’t think that we should be content to have the scraps. We pay all these taxes that are being spent by governments that are mostly being captured by industry…. We need those resources. We’ve got a series of crisis that we’re going to be dealing with for the rest of our lives and our kids’ lives. So I hope a group like ours is a piece of the puzzle. There’s many others that are working collectively on this.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: kris krüg / Flickr

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Feminism in the arts

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Scott

Shawna Dempsey is an artist and the co-executive director of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA). Scott Neigh interviews her about feminism in the arts, and about MAWA’s decades of work.

Dempsey is primarily a performance and video artist. She got her start as a university student in the 1980s, and was heavily influenced by the work of feminist performance artists of the previous decade and their use of the female body to talk about the realities that women face. She first became widely known for a performance art piece (and later film) called We’re Talking Vulva. She said, “A friend of mine was getting bladder infections, she didn’t understand why. And I realized in talking to her, she didn’t have an understanding of her basic genital anatomy. And that’s not surprising because of all the shame that’s associated with that part of a woman’s body. So I made a giant vulva suit, and I stepped into it. And I created a sort of vulva infomercial.”

Over the years since, she and long-time collaborator Lorri Millan have produced films, installations, performances, a book, public art pieces, the Lesbian National Parks and Services, and lots of other work, much of which they describe as “humourous, feminist and provocative.” Dempsey said it is all “rooted in our experience as women, as lesbians, as feminists, and also citizens in this world that have a lot to talk about.”

In recent years, much of Dempsey’s energy has gone into her leadership role at MAWA, a feminist artist-run centre in Winnipeg. MAWA was founded by two working-class women in 1984. The two had repeatedly run into barriers trying to get tenure at the University of Manitoba School of Art, and they founded MAWA as a response to the many gendered barriers faced by women in the arts. In that era, according to Dempsey, women had less access to the limited number of well-paying jobs in the field, received fewer grants, were shown less often in galleries at all levels, experienced a substantial wage gap related to sale of their art as well as other income streams, and were generally given less attention in critical and popular discourse about art.

Originally founded as a committee within a gallery, eventually MAWA became an independent organization. As well, Dempsey said, “As feminists, we know that the feminist discourse has changed, and the language around gender has changed, and the expression of gender has changed. So with that societal change, MAWA has changed as well, to understand that it’s not only cis women who are oppressed by patriarchy.” Today, all of their programming welcomes nonbinary, trans, and Two-Spirit participants. In addition, over half of what they offer is open to cisgender men as well.

MAWA took up mentorship as its primary tool for challenging the barriers in the arts resulting from gender oppression. Dempsey said, “We’ve seen it be really transformative in individual artists’ lives, but also in the community, creating an ethic of sharing.” She added that “by skill sharing, we can make our world fairer, more equitable, and raise each other up.” The organization’s core program matches senior and emerging artists, and over the course of one year, they meet both one-on-one and as part of a larger group, giving the mentees the opportunity to gain all kinds of knowledge and skills relevant to being a working artist.

Along with their full-year program, they also provide mentorship in a number of other ways – a rural arts mentorship program, various short-term mentorships, and also a new tailored approach to mentorship developed during the restrictive conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. As well, they offer a range of other programming, including exhibitions, lectures about history and criticism, critical discussion nights, artist talks, and both hands-on art-making workshops and workshops in professional practices. They are involved in creating educational tools for use in arts classrooms. Their space in downtown Winnipeg serves as a gallery, as a meeting space for their own programming, and as a community space. And they also have their own feminist art resource library.

Beyond their various mentorship programs, MAWA’s feminist commitments show up in numerous ways in their programming. For instance, after a reading group held at MAWA realized how few feminist art history texts they could find that were either Canadian or recent, let alone both, the centre embarked on a project that resulted in a textbook about contemporary feminist art that is now used in universities across the country. Or in 2018, they worked with curator Lee-Ann Martin on a project that brought 50 Indigenous women’s images to both billboards across the country and to education resources for use in elementary and secondary classrooms.

According to Dempsey, some things have changed in the art world since the 1980s. Granting, for instance, largely happens equitably along gender lines these days, as do exhibitions in many contexts at local levels. But many other barriers persist, often with more severe impacts at more senior levels. For instance, women and other gender-oppressed artists are less often exhibited, especially in solo shows, in more prestigious and higher-paying contexts, like regional galleries and the National Gallery of Canada. And things like sale price for art and overall income, access to tenure track positions, and critical attention remain imbalanced. Dempsey said, “The feminist project continues.”

She said, “The systems of history and repetition and hegemony are very entrenched.” However, she added, “I don’t like to say ‘immovable,’ because I think collectively we are moving them.”

In addition to the work of organizations like MAWA and other kinds of collective interventions in the world, Dempsey also believes that art itself has an important role to play. “I’ve always believed that art can change the world. I continue to believe it. The power of image, the power of metaphor – it has just rocked me. Like, it has changed me body and soul, a powerful piece of artwork. I think art can communicate more directly, more forcefully, more profoundly complex ideas, troubling ideas. Art is a medium that has always been policed by fascist systems. Revolutions have been led by artists and artists’ images. And artists and art images have often been censored during times of repression, because they are so powerful. And I think we can use that power to create the kind of world we want to live in.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of MAWA.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Older adults and the fight for climate action

Posted on September 20, 2022 by Scott

Betty Plewes is a co-founder and steering committee member of Climate Legacy, a group of retired people working together to engage and mobilize other older adults in climate action. Emma Bider is the organization’s communications coordinator. Scott Neigh interviews them about the roles that seniors are playing in addressing the climate crisis.

In the last five years, both the mainstream media and substantial elements of the climate movement itself have often centred the role of youth in narratives of the struggle for climate action. There are lots of good reasons for this, not the least of which is the incredible activism and organizing being led by youth around the world. But it is also important to pay attention to the growing engagement in these issues at the other end of the age spectrum, among people variously characterized as “seniors” or “older adults”.

Plewes is retired, after spending most of her life working for Canadian non-profit organizations focused on international co-operation and development. Her work included lots of policy analysis and policy advocacy, as well as organizing on-the-ground campaigns. Though international development work and environmental concerns often significantly overlap, Plewes herself had not really been directly involved in climate issues. But in 2018, she read that year’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC), the United Nations body responsible for assessing and synthesizing humanity’s knowledge of the climate crisis, and she knew she needed to act.

Her first step was to start talking about the issue with other people that she knew, many of whom were also retired or late-career workers from the international co-operation and development sector. Pretty soon, there was a group of them interested in taking action together, specifically to mobilize other older adults around climate issues.

To begin figuring out what exactly that could mean, they organized a series of focus groups with seniors. Encouragingly, they found that lots of older adults are concerned about the issue. On the one hand, according to Bider, “I think there are a lot more seniors doing activism or doing organizing than we realize.” At the same time, many were not sure quite how to get involved, and it was here that they began to identify a role for themselves.

Older adults, they realized, could bring some important assets to the climate movement. Often, if they were retired, they could bring time. Some could bring money, not necessarily in the form of substantial wealth but at least for middle-class seniors in the form of pensions and modest retirement savings, that could be a starting point for campaigning for fossil fuel divestment. Seniors also have a political voice that politicians are more likely to listen to, because they are known to vote at higher rates than younger people. And, finally, they have whatever skills they have developed over their lifetime.

Under the name Climate Legacy, the group then applied for and received a small grant to do work related to climate communications targeted specifically at older adults. They hired Bider – a now-30 year-old communications professional who is doing a PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa in anthropology – to do that work. During that process, they developed connections with around 30 existing groups of older adults already engaged in climate action across Canada. After much consultation and discussion, they decided that the best focus for Climate Legacy would be to act as a sort of hub for a loose network of these existing groups.

As well, they specifically focus on work related to financial questions and the climate crisis. Plewes said, “Money has been of a lot of interest to our group. Our analysis is that how it is invested is a huge element of the climate climate crisis. … We’ve been trying to encourage people to divest from fossil fuels. But it’s not just a question of divestment. It’s also a question of reorienting that money to climate solutions.” She continued, “Also, most seniors have some kind of pension funds, and the pension funds are very big actors in terms of fossil fuel investments. And as a group, you can bring pressure to bear on your pension plan managers – again, moving away from fossil fuel investments and towards more renewables.”

In general, Climate Legacy does a lot to circulate and amplify material related to the work of their network partners through social media, their website, a monthly newsletter, and other mechanisms. They have also produced their own resources related to, again, financial questions and climate, as well as material related to practices for engaging with seniors about climate issues. They have hosted lots of webinars, and have developed seniors-focused climate communications material for elections. And they have collaborated with other groups to support organizations and individual seniors in contributing to government consultations around climate.

Bider said that “there is very, very little research” on how best to communicate about the climate crisis specifically to seniors, or about why variously situated older adults do or do not become active on the issue. Through the published literature that does exist and through their own work, they have identified a number of important factors. For one thing, Bider said, “Be concise and specific to people’s localities” because often older adults, particularly those who have lived in the same place for much of their lives, have “a lot of care for place. So it’s important to talk about how that place is being impacted by climate change and what the risks are.”

She also recommended that “finding common ground” as a starting point for conversations about climate “can build trust,” though she concedes that as the issue has become increasingly polarized, that is “maybe getting harder to achieve.” Taking communication efforts at least partially offline can be important, because while lots of seniors make use of social media and other online platforms, there are still many that do not. As well, she said, “We’ve been in a pandemic where we don’t talk to a lot of strangers … so developing scripts” or at least talking points can make such conversations easier.

And, crucially, Bider pointed to the increasingly common insight that “facts don’t change minds, friendship does” as important for working with any demographic, not just older adults. She emphasized that facts are certainly very important, particularly when it comes to an issue that has been subject to as much disinformation as this one, and she laughingly shared that not all network partners of Climate Legacy were appreciative of this quote when she included it in a resource from the group. But, she said, the role of relationships in changing minds is central. And “building relationships, though it may take longer than listing off a series of facts about how much time we have left and how much more we need to do … enables longer term actions as well, as you develop that friendship and develop it for the long term.”

At the moment, Climate Legacy is in the process of taking stock of their initial period of work and deciding on future priorities. As it becomes safer to do so, they want to engage more with seniors in in-person events, and are developing pilot projects to explore approaches for connecting specifically with older adults who are concerned with the climate crisis but not yet involved in any way. And they are keen to find opportunities for intergenerational dialogue with youth who are active on these issues.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Photo by Scott Neigh.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: British Columbia’s general strike that almost was

Posted on September 13, 2022 by Scott

David Spaner is a long-time writer based in Vancouver and the author of Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983 (Ronsdale Press, 2021). Scott Neigh interviews him about the book and about the uprising against a right-wing government in British Columbia that it documents.

Despite happening well within living memory, being one of the largest grassroots uprisings in Canadian history, and coming within a hairsbreadth of turning into a general strike, the struggle at the centre of today’s episode has received little attention in historical and cultural work, and is little remembered. So David Spaner decided to write about a book about it. Solidarity is heavily based on interviews with participants in the uprising and is told largely through people’s experiences, while also drawing plenty of connections with broader histories. He describes the book as “literary nonfiction” in its approach.

One part of Spaner’s inspiration for writing this book was that he lived the events that it discusses. Back in 1983, he had been part of movements himself and was already a writer, having cut his teeth in the underground press. He had just gotten his first mainstream position at a daily newspaper in Vancouver, where he covered these events first-hand.

In those years, BC’s electoral politics were split between the hard-right Social Credit Party and an NDP still quite a bit to the left of today’s iteration of the party. After winning an election they had been expected to lose, the SoCreds – in the spirit of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – introduced 27 pieces of legislation in one day, attacking pretty much every service, right, and sector of the population you would expect a right-wing government to attack.

British Columbia in those years was also a vibrant hub for social movements and had been for decades, from radical left political organizations and left-wing unions in the first half of the 20th century, to the upsurge in New Left movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Though things had faded somewhat by 1983, there was a still a sizeable and active labour movement and lots of participants in and veterans of other movements, who were very much opposed to what the SoCreds were doing and who knew how to organize. And there were significant broader publics who had perhaps never been active themselves but who had been shaped by those movements and knew which side they were on.

The initial shock and anger at the legislative onslaught became conversations and meetings, and soon escalated to demonstrations, marches, and even occupations. (A particularly celebrated occupation took place in Kamloops, when the workers at a mental health facility took it over, barred management, and ran it for themselves.) The resistance cohered into two distinct but often co-operating coalitions. Operation Solidarity brought together the unions, both those in the BC Federation of Labour and others. And the Solidarity Coalition brought together pretty much all of the other popular movements in the province. A powerful presence within the latter was Women Against the Budget, a coalition of women’s groups.

It was one of those moments that took on a spirit and a momentum that happens only once or twice in a generation. People were working tirelessly and extending the reach of movements to different communities, different workplaces, different segments of the population. And people were responding, in unprecedented numbers – with their presence at protests, with their enthusiasm, and with their energy.

In the inevitable discussions about how to move forward, how to continue escalating, how to win, there was vocal support in both branches of the Solidarity movement for the idea of a general strike. And in contrast with our current era, where it feels like calls for a general strike never get past being a hashtag and a hazy dream, pretty soon it was well on its way to happening. The plan was for the unions to go out in a staggered way, and by the climax of the struggle in October, the province’s teachers, the main provincial public sector union, and a number of other unions were out.

That is, alas, where it ended – suddenly, in an act widely characterized as a betrayal, and with consequences that echoed through BC movement politics for decades after. A subset of union leaders did not want a general strike, and at least some seemed actively hostile to the basic goals of elements of the Solidarity Coalition like the women’s movement and the gay movement. They made a separate deal with the province that carved out a few modest gains for unions, and nothing for anybody else.

While this moment of devastating defeat is one obvious source of lessons for latter-day activists, Spaner also encouraged readers not to let that overshadow the reality of the powerful, participatory, and highly democratic movement that the people of BC were able to create. He said, “I think that the overall legacy of Solidarity is much greater than its anti-climactic ending. I think it basically showed how people from various backgrounds, various political ideas, can join together and form a powerful coalition. And I think a lot of the message of that is that if you’re going to make fundamental social change, you have to do it not just with people that are exactly like you. It takes a coalition like this. And despite its failings, and its inner conflicts … there was the idea that all these people [that] had been organizing in their own silos, like maybe around environmental issues, or around the feminist movement or whatever, were suddenly organizing with each other around the same thing, which was stopping SoCred devastation. And so the idea that they could do that, I think, is really the the legacy of the Solidarity Movement.” Even if it did not ultimately succeed, it was a glimpse of the power that popular movements can have.

He originally started writing the book as a way to preserve the memory of some important but little-known history – in particular, he said, it was “a really important thing to document when there’s still people around to talk about it.” However, he said, “While I was writing it, the last few years, a whole other motivation came along, which was at least as important. And what that was, there was a rise of far-right governments around the world.” He came to see the Solidarity uprising of four decades ago as very relevant to today, as “a lesson on how to mobilize virtually an entire community against a far-right government. And, you know, there were some divisions and some problems at the end. But for much of those four months, it was incredibly effective. And it was able to mobilize people in a way that no one had seen before here, or has seen since.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Photo by Scott Neigh.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Low-wage workers organizing in Newfoundland

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Scott

Mark Nichols is an organizer with the Workers’ Action Network of Newfoundland and Labrador, which brings together workers in low-wage, precarious jobs to support each other and to fight collectively for decent work for all. Scott Neigh interviews him about what low-wage work looks like in Newfoundland and about the network.

In the mid and late 2010s, lots of Canadian jurisdictions saw campaigns waged under some variant of the slogan “Fight for $15,” all of which aimed to raise their respective minimum wages, and some of which had broader reforms in their sights as well. The results of these campaigns were uneven across the country, and often the increases that they won were smaller and slower than low-wage workers wanted and needed. But, nonetheless, many made important gains. More recently, workers and their supporters in many places have been shifting to a more general focus, and it is in the context of this broad movement of workers’ centres, solidarity networks, and other organizations that exist beyond (but often in relation with) the formal labour movement that the Workers’ Action Network NL situates itself.

Nichols’ journey to being an organizer has been a long one. He joined the Canadian military right out of high school and had a 20-year career. Over that time, he started learning a lot about social injustice, and when he left the military he studied to become an Anglican priest. In the decade and a half that he served in parishes, work in support of social and environmental justice became more and more a part of his ministry – to the point that when he left his last parish, he decided to find a way to devote himself more fully to being, as he put it, “in the trenches” of such struggles. That took a few different forms, including a nine-month stint working for the minimum wage campaign in Newfoundland, but by late 2021 he was hired to be one of two initial organizers of the Workers’ Action Network NL.

Historically, Newfoundland’s minimum wage has usually been among the lowest in Canada, though minimum wage campaigns have made some slow progress, and it is scheduled to finally reach $15/hour in a little over a year. Low-wage workers in Newfoundland are concentrated in the food service, hospitality, and retail sectors, and they face much the same struggles as in the rest of the country – everything from getting paid too little to live on, to unpredictable and often last-minute scheduling, to arbitrary and unfair treatment from employers, to many different forms of wage theft. According to Nichols, basic labour protections in the province are inadequate in many ways, and far too often employers run roughshod over those protections that do nominally exist and rarely face consequences.

According to Nichols, Newfoundland tends to oscillate between Liberal and Conservative provincial governments, and “we’ve always basically had a neoliberal pro-business government, whichever party has been in power.” He pointed to Premier Danny Williams, who served between 2007 and 2010, as something of an “exception”, but he said that other than that, “I’ve never seen a government take serious action to improve the lot of workers in this province. Businesses are cared for first, and we just do some performative stuff for the benefit of workers after.” He added, “My feeling, my personal view here, is that we haven’t had governments who’ve really cared about the plight of low-wage workers in this province.”

When the labour/community coalition Common Front NL decided to found the Workers’ Action Network, they also had in mind the fact that employers have plenty of organizations allowing them to intervene in the political life of Newfoundland, and around 40% of workers in the province have a union, but the most vulnerable workers have to this point had little collective voice.

After Nichols and digital organizer Sara Moriarity were hired in November 2021, the first step was to do research. That included developing a very detailed understanding of relevant law and regulation in the province, in part to produce the new network’s website and other resources, as well as learning about what workers’ centres and solidarity networks do in other jurisdictions.

The network launched in February 2022. Its key priorities so far have been outreach and education work. The outreach has included lots of online and social media efforts, and an ongoing online survey to learn about the experiences and needs of low-wage workers in Newfoundland. As the pandemic has gradually eased somewhat, they have been participating more and more in offline community events, and have plans to be present on many postsecondary campuses in September and to make visits around the province in the near future. The core of their education work is “know your rights” workshops, which have largely been held online so far but, again, will be increasingly happening offline in the future.

Nichols emphasized that the network is not a union. “Some of the workers that we would be reaching out to and trying to organize, they may indicate that they would like to actually unionize their workplace. We don’t do that. But we would put them in touch with those who can help them with that. We’re really here about organizing workers outside of that collective bargaining context.”

However, the network has some capacity to support individual workers who are pursuing complaints via official processes. As well, in the spirit of modelling solidarity, they regularly take part in picket lines of unionized workers that are striking. And in terms of campaign work, they are supporting an initiative from the St. John’s Status of Women Council demanding proactive provincial pay equity legislation, as well as a local version of a campaign being led by the Ontario-based Decent Work and Health Network for paid sick days for low-wage workers.

The exact details of how the network will grow and evolve are still uncertain, in part because they are very committed to making sure that it is worker-driven. Nichols said, “Outreach and educating workers … take up a lot of our time right now. But over time, as we organize, as we build that critical mass of workers, there will be a fleshing out of our work.” It is a key priority for them to eventually have the network governed by a board consisting entirely of workers. Nichols said they are hoping to be part of efforts to acquire space that they can share with allied organizations, which will greatly facilitate their ability to host in-person events and bring workers together to build the network.

Nichols has been particularly keen to learn from organizations like the Workers Action Centre in Toronto about how to orient the network as a movement organization. He said, “It’s very easy to slip into being a service organization or an advocacy organization. And it’s not that we don’t provide a service, or that we don’t advocate on behalf of workers. It’s just that we’re very, very focused on making sure that this is a worker-driven organization.”

They have not yet formulated specific demands for improving labour standards in the province, but Nichols expects that will happen, probably in the not-too-distant future. In the longer term, he dreams of things like developing the capacity to take direct action against wage theft – he is particularly inspired by the work of the Naujawan Support Network in Ontario’s Peel Region – as well as a major public education campaign and a broader movement demanding labour law reform.

Nichols said, “To every worker in Newfoundland and Labrador who’s in low-wage or unstable jobs, and you’re looking at how difficult your situation is, how you’re treated at work – the one thing that we want you to know is it doesn’t have to be this way. Oftentimes, your rights are being violated. And there’s courses of redress that you can take, and we can help you with that. But also, there’s rights you should have, but you don’t have. And if we come together and build this community of low-wage workers across the province, we will have a loud collective voice to push government to make those changes to labour standards legislation. It doesn’t have to be this way, the way it is right now. We can change it. But it’s only in solidarity with one another that will will be able to change it.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: By Tania Heath and used with permission of the Workers’ Action Network NL.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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Radio: Practical climate action in Atlantic Canada

Posted on August 30, 2022 by Scott

Emma Norton is a climate activist based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in Mi’qmaki. She is the operations director at the ReCover Initiative and the Atlantic director with the Climate Emergency Unit. Scott Neigh interviews her about her work on climate issues, and about the crucial interconnection between practical measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grassroots political work aimed at policy change.

Norton grew up in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Her introduction to collaborating with others to respond to issues was through a church youth group that worked to meet needs in the community. Her attention first began to turn towards the climate crisis when she saw the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth as a high school student. For a time, she remained more engaged with questions of poverty and inequality, including in the global context, but she soon came to appreciate the tight interconnection between those issues and the existential threat posed by global heating. She got involved in climate action in a substantial way as a university student, and since graduating she has worked for a number of different environmental and climate-focused organizations in Atlantic Canada.

An important theme that has emerged in both her thinking and her activities related to climate is the essential connection between, on the one hand, practical changes in things like infrastructure and technology, and on the other, policy change. Either on its own is not enough – you need both. It is, for instance, much easier to make the case for policy change to decision-makers when the policy is grounded in practical measures that are proven and ready to implement. And without the right kinds of policy shifts, those kinds of emission reduction measures will never be implemented fast enough, at a large enough scale, or in just ways.

One topic that Norton has learned a great deal about in the course of her work is building retrofits – that is, changing the infrastructure in existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency, and to otherwise reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. While basic retrofitting is easy enough, making the kinds of changes to a building necessary to reduce emissions past a certain threshold means doing things that are sufficiently expensive, time consuming, and disruptive that it seriously limits uptake.

Then Norton discovered a Dutch technology called energiesprong. Rather than ripping out significant components of buildings and replacing them, as conventional deep retrofits require, it involves creating custom panels to go around the exterior walls and over the roof, resulting in an all-new exterior that contains the new infrastructure. It is much cheaper, faster, and less disruptive, and drastically reduces emissions. She and two other people co-founded the ReCover Initiative, an organization working to bring this technology to the Canadian context in a non-proprietary, not-for-profit way. She said that over the last two years they have done a lot of the necessary groundwork and “we’re feeling a little bit like we’re on the cusp of it taking off. And, knocking on wood, that’s the case, because we’re running out of time in our carbon budget.”

The Climate Emergency Unit – the other side of Norton’s work – is a project of the David Suzuki Institute. It is led by Seth Klein and based on the insights of his book The Good War, which draws on Canada’s mobilization during the Second World War to imagine what it might look like if governments were to treat the climate crisis with the same seriousness. Norton said, “It’s incredible how, when we really put our minds to it, we can respond as if it’s an emergency. And right now, we continue to hear that we’re in a climate crisis, we’re in a climate emergency, but we’re definitely not acting like it.”

Klein’s work and the Climate Emergency Unit argue that we must spend whatever it takes, mandate action rather than just incentivize it, create new public institutions, and improve governmental communications about the realities of the crisis. Those are taken directly from the example of the Second World War, and they also add two more imperatives relevant to the current crisis – we must leave no-one behind by making sure that the transition is just, and we must respect Indigenous sovereignty and follow the leadership of Indigenous-led solutions. Along with all of the other advantages of such an approach, it would, if adopted, do a lot to allow practical solutions like energiesprong technology to be rolled out at scale.

A lot of Norton’s work for the Climate Emergency Unit has focused on Newfoundland and Labrador, given its role as a major fossil fuel-producing province. This has included a lot of quiet relationship-building that is creating the groundwork for a provincial network or coalition. They hope to hire two staff people based in the province. She said, “We’re going to be doing, hopefully, a bit of a tour of the province or hosting some community sessions to talk about what the just transition looks like. And [we will] ask for a Just Transition Act from the province and a just transition transfer – some money – from the federal government to actually make it happen.”

Norton added that in Newfoundland and Labrador in particular, “the conversation is more about a just transition than it is about climate emergency, because so many people are extremely reliant on oil and gas for their jobs. And we can’t just say, well, you need to move to a new industry, or we’re going to shut down your industry. We need a clear path, or else the future where we take climate action is very scary.”

In Nova Scotia, there seems to be less energy for new grassroots projects, so her focus has been on supporting the work of others and creating more informal opportunities for people active on climate to connect. She said, “Hopefully, once we’ve got a little bit more energy and people aren’t feeling so spread thin and tired out, then it might be time to put together a proposal similar to the one in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

In both provinces, she has also been engaging in regular advocacy with public officials. An important but little-discussed win took place earlier in 2022, after a low-key campaign involving Norton (wearing her Climate Emergency Unit hat) and other climate activists in the city helped ensure that the Halifax Regional Municipality would take the ambitious climate plan it had passed the year before and adequately fund it. The city proposed to do this through a targeted property tax levy, which Norton and other climate activists were initially very ambivalent about – yes, the plan needed to be funded, but they felt that particularly since awareness of the climate plan itself among residents was very low, a targeted levy might give rise to opposition. They decided to engage in a quiet lobbying campaign focused on municipal councillors. They did not take a position on what approach the city should use to generate the necessary revenue, but instead focused on making the larger point that “Halifax needs to spend what it takes for climate.” By the time the budget vote rolled around, this measure passed quietly and with no public acrimony, which is exactly what they had hoped for.

While adequately funding a municipal climate plan may seem like a small thing, it is the kind of concrete step towards meaningful climate action that many cities have been reluctant to take. Norton said, “That was really important because we need wins. It was really important because it pointed to the fact that we need to spend money on climate – like, budget is where the rubber hits the road. And now Halifax has the funds it needs to make some major investments into climate.”

For the moment, her work continues along both strands – working to get practical emission reduction measures ready to implement and building grassroots momentum for the kinds of policy changes necessary to implement them as quickly and widely as we need. She said, “My feeling is I can’t continue to work on ReCover if there aren’t policies in place that actually support it expanding. And we can’t put in place policies that expand retrofits if we don’t have technologies that allow for retrofits to happen at the scale that’s necessary. I think that’s true of a lot of climate solutions.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of the ReCover Initiative.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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REBROADCAST: Grassroots organizing by Métis people in Winnipeg

Posted on August 23, 2022 by Scott

The following is a rebroadcast of an episode of Talking Radical Radio originally broadcast in December 2021.

Breanne Lavallee-Heckert, Chantale Garand, and Kianna Durston are Métis people based in Winnipeg. They are also members of Red River Echoes, a collective of Métis people that is focused on grassroots organizing, land back, and the active reclamation of Métis sovereignty in Winnipeg. Scott Neigh interviews them about their work.

The group got its start in the spring of 2021. The catalyst was David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation – which is the Métis government in Manitoba – placing a full-page ad in the Winnipeg Free Press in support of the Winnipeg Police Service. This was around the one-year anniversary of the Winnipeg police shooting and killing 16 year-old Anishinaabe girl Eisha Hudson. Lavallee-Heckert said many Métis people felt “pure shock and anger” at the ad. The group came together to issue an open letter giving voice to this anger and to broader objections to the very presence of colonial police on Métis lands.

This happened in the context of longer-standing dissatisfactions with the MMF and its current leadership. The MMF is, according to Garand, “replicating colonial governments,” thereby manifesting an approach to governance very different than traditional Métis ways of doing things, and also doing harm to their First Nations relatives and to their relations with them. Lavallee-Heckert added that the MMF is “structurally set up as a corporation, and that’s not democracy. … It takes Métis people out of our government system, out of the way that we we own ourselves and the way that we decide for ourselves.” The level of support the open letter received made it an easy choice to make Red River Echoes into an ongoing group.

The collective’s actions have included, for instance, participating as a contingent in the July 1st walk in Winnipeg in the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at residential school sites. When a First Nations man was violently arrested during the walk, members of Red River Echoes and other people successfully took action to de-arrest him. They subsequently arrived at the Manitoba legislature just as people were toppling statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. Garand described the legislature grounds in that moment as a “euphoric space” to be in. Lavallee-Heckert elaborated, “It was a moment of feeling, like, this is our land and we’re sovereign here and we can pull down statues of colonial figureheads. And that’s our right to do that.” The collective knew immediately that they wanted to support their relatives who had taken that action, and so they started a fund to put towards bail and legal expenses. (The Crown has not yet made a decision about whether to lay charges.)

Next, they set their sights on the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Wolsley. It is named after colonial military official Sir Garnet Wolsley, who led British troops that came to the Red River territory in 1870 to put down the Métis rebellion – a “violent colonial figure who came to came to our lands with the intent to eradicate us,” in Garand’s words. Initially, they blanketed the neighbourhood with posters, calling for it to be renamed. Then they organized a gathering that brought Métis people together in traditional ways to discuss the issue.

An ongoing goal is to obtain what they describe as a “land back bus,” for Métis and First Nations people in Winnipeg to use in reconnecting with their territories beyond the city. Their fundraising for the bus will include sale of a t-shirt celebrating all of the colonial statues toppled across Turtle Island in the last couple of years. Even without having a bus yet, this past summer they organized a trip by Métis people to Batoche, the site of the military defeat of Métis and allied peoples by colonial forces in 1885, and have plans to do so again next year.

Other plans include setting up a Patreon to make it easier for people to financially support the collective’s work. And in the new year, they will be hosting a teach-in on police and prison abolition specifically focused on its relevance to Métis people in the Red River territory.

The collective sees their actions as part of enacting a vision of governance and sovereignty that they say is much more in line with traditional Métis practices. In the spirit of the characterization of the Métis as “the people who own themselves,” it is a sort of decentralized, embodied sovereignty that resolutely rejects colonial ways of doing things and that is grounded in being in good relation with each other, with the land, with their First Nations kin, and with Black and racialized relatives.

Lavallee-Heckert said, “Our ancestors were the last people to lead an armed resistance against the Canadian state. What a powerful legacy for us to live up to.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of Red River Echoes.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

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