Needs No Introduction

Mexico is the first tourist destination of choice for many Canadians. But that reputation as a sunny place to go forget about your troubles is not well deserved. Mexico is also a place where human rights abuses continue. New communications technology has resulted in traditional methods of political repression co-existing with newer high-tech forms of surveillance and policing. But this juxtapositi...

Our federal government still says that the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women isn't high on their radar and they don't seem to be budging on the issue. But it is high on the radar of many many other people and organizations, including the United Nations. Today's episode excerpts an event focusing on the  UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women ,...

Women have been historically underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream media. The arrival of the Internet, and blogging in particular, gave women and girls an unprecedented way of telling their own stories using their own voices directly to their audience. However, online spaces have had a tendency to reproduce the same systems of oppression that exist in the real world. Women who speak ou...

Freelance journalists face incredibly tough conditions in war zones around the world with limited resources and little in the way of safety nets. What they do have is a passion for the story. "People's Journalism: Reporting Under Fire" is a panel discussion that took place in Toronto on March 14. The discussion focuses on the role of freelancing in war zones and commemorates the life of one such f...

For over 30 years, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has been imposing their austerity agenda on countries around the world as a condition for economic assistance. Greece has been in the news most recently, but it's been going on for several decades now. Here in Canada, that same austerity agenda has also wreaked havoc on our country and its citizens. Under the austerity agenda, s...

On April 18 in Toronto, American cognitive linguist and author of Don't Think of an Elephant  George Lakoff  spoke to a crowd in Toronto about how conservative values have come to dominate public discourse. Accomplishing this, he said, has been as much about the construction of metaphors as it has been about policies. Conservatives in the US and Canada have crafted a worldview and adjusted politic...

Classes are ending. College and University students are putting away the books. It's been a difficult year as students, faculty and administration of several university campuses have had to deal with issues related to sexual violence on campus. St. Mary's University and Dalhousie University are this past school year's examples, but we've seen other incidents at other campuses too in the past few y...

Michael Harris and Donald Gutstein are authors of two critically acclaimed political books.  Michael Harris  is the author of  Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover . In  Party of One , investigative journalist Michael Harris closely examines the majority government of a prime minister essentially unchecked by the opposition and empowered by the general election victory of May...

On March 4, the Aboriginal Law and Feminist Law Students Associations at the University of Toronto organized a panel event titled "Violence Against Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirits: What's the State of Law and the Role of Advocacy?" to discuss the socio-historical causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people in Canada and what role, if any, the federal governme...

"In May of 2011, Stephen Harper finally won his majority government. Not long after that, I got an email from an old friend telling me that  rabble.ca , which had been a leading voice among Canada's alternative media for a decade, was planning to hire its first-ever parliamentary reporter. Might I be interested? It seemed like an intriguing idea. Making some effort to chronicle and analyze what Pr...

On Saturday March 14, 2015, people gathered together in communities across Canada for an emergency Day of Action to stop the government's "secret police" law Bill C-51. From Antigonish, Bancroft and Barrie, to Winnipeg, West Kootenays and Yellowknife, Days of Action were organized in over 50 communities across the country. In Toronto, over 2,000 people gathered on a cold drizzly day. They gathered...

"So the reason why I'm talking about Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls today is because Canada is killing our people, and if Canadians don't stand up and stand beside us and stand in partnership with us, more people are going to die." - Dr. Pam Palmater. Dr. Pam Palmater is a Mi'kmaw lawyer from Eel River Bar First Nation and holds the position of Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ry...

Malcolm X was assassinated at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965. Fifty years after his death, the complex figure Malcolm X -- or, as he called himself after 1949, el Hajj Malik el Shabazz -- continues to inspire. On February 21, the Halifax North Memorial Public Library -- a location chosen in part for its role as the location of the 1968 meeting that lead to the creation of the  Blac...

In 2012, the Attawapiskat reserve in Northern Ontario was deemed to be experiencing a housing crisis and put under third-party management. In the months that followed, the Federal Court  reserved the decision , pointing out that the government's imposition of a third-party manager failed to address the systemic issues that had led to the crisis in the first place. While the ruling was deemed a vic...

FRIDAY OCTOBER 3rd, 2014 FROM 8:30AM TO 5:00PM  House of Commons Room 237-C, Center Block  This forum brought together parliamentarians, experts and the public, to continue dialogue on renewable energy and clean technology in Canada, and how it can be harnessed to create green jobs, foster sustainable growth and protect our environment. Hosted by: Peter Julian, Official Opposition, House Leader, A...

When posts in a Facebook group joking about having "hate-sex" and chloroforming women were  made public , the anonymous members of "Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen" were instantly infamous. As calls for a response from Dalhousie grew, however, the university equivocated, mired in a controversy for which it seemed to have no response. As of January 12, the 13 students, though suspended from clinical du...

This year, 2014, has seen the return of the debate on gender equality to the public consciousness. Yet some fear that when popular campaigns proclaim that "feminism is for everybody," the ubiquity of the term undermines its anti-oppressive potential. As the ongoing issues around feminist politics enter into the collective consciousness, have we lost sight of what feminism is for? How does the femi...

Ellen Gabriel was first introduced to the Canadian public in 1990, when she was chosen by the People of the longhouse and her community of Kanehsatà:ke to be their spokesperson during their  resistance  to the proposed expansion of a private nine-hole golf course near the town of Oka, Quebec. During the ensuing standoff between the Mohawk people and the Canadian army, Gabriel not only participated...

Last August,  rabble.ca  took part in a groundbreaking gathering of activists from across the country. The Peoples' Social Forum was four days of talks, discussion groups, arts events, demonstrations... all to call attention to some of the most pressing problems facing our country. And to figure out how to solve them. Even though it took place in the summer, we're still putting together programs b...

Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are hardly any academic books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance. Nahla Abdo's  Captive Revolution  seeks to break the silence on Palestini...

We all know Harper has transformed Canada, but how did it happen? Donald Gutstein has been following Canada's backroom political dealings for decades. In this podcast he discusses his new book: Harperism - How Stephen Harper and his think tank Colleauges have transformed Canada" What is Harperism? We've seen the effects of Harperism across our country. Today's discussion is a definition .. or seve...

Van Jones says he came here to speak to the Good Jobs Summit because "you've got a crazy dude up here, and it's not Rob Ford." He has harsh criticism for our Prime Minister, saying Stephen Harper is more interested in looking good than doing good. Listen to hear the other things he says about Stephen Harper, the global economy and how to shift the power from the corporations and governments to the...

The iconic Maple Leaf Gardens was the stage last weekend for the Good Jobs Summit. The Good Jobs Summit was a national dialogue between workers, students, governments, employers and community organizations, with the goal of finding solutions and new approaches to jobs and the economy. The Summit featured a number of high-profile speakers, workshops and panel discussions, exploring questions of: Ho...

Van Jones is an American environmental advocate, civil rights activist, attorney, CNN commentator and best-selling author. Also an adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009 on Green Jobs, he is in demand as a speaker on his views on the environment, jobs and the economy. He is the keynote speaker this weekend, October 3-5 at  The Good Jobs Summit  in Toronto.   "We think that Van Jones will m...

It was supposed to be a debate between Toronto mayoral candidates John Tory and Olivia Chow. It ended up being an opportunity for Olivia Chow to present her platform without opposition. At approximately 2 p.m., three hours before the debate was set to begin,  the organizers of the debate received a call from the Tory campaign advising the "because of competing campaign priorities in the new phase...