CONTENTS

1. CALLS TO ACTION
2. EVENTS
3. ARTICLES

5-Year Fare Policy Questionnaire

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and York Region Transit (YRT) are working together to develop a fare policy for the next five years. We need a new fare policy to reflect recent changes such as growing populations, shifting travel, commuting patterns, and financial landscapes. This update will allow us to continue to provide safe, convenient, and reliable transit service for customers today while meeting the needs of future riders. This is important because the policy will help us make decisions on matters like how to set fares, what concessions are needed, and what loyalty programs to create.

surveymonkey.ca

End Hassan Diab’s nightmare

Whereas:
– Canadian citizen Hassan Diab was extradited to France in 2014, in a case widely acknowledged as a miscarriage of justice;
– Hassan’s extradition was based on a discredited handwriting analysis (“Bisotti report”), described by the extradition judge as “very problematic” and “suspect”;
– There is significant evidence which exculpates Hassan, including exculpatory fingerprint and palmprint evidence;
– Hassan was held in France, without charge, mostly in solitary confinement, from 2014 to 2018;
– French investigating judges found “consistent evidence” supporting Hassan’s innocence, concluded that he could not have been in France at the time of the 1980 bombing, and ordered his release;
– The French prosecutor appealed the Order of Dismissal against Hassan, and a new handwriting analysis was ordered;
– The new analysis agreed with defense handwriting experts that the Bisotti report used an improper methodology and is unreliable;
– Despite all evidence, in January 2021, a French Court of Appeal overturned Hassan’s release and ordered a trial;
– Aggressive lobbying in France has fostered political pressure for further prosecution and scapegoating of Hassan; and
– On 20 June 2018, PM Trudeau declared that “we have to recognise that what happened to [Hassan] never should have happened… and make sure that it never happens again.”

We, the undersigned, citizens or residents of Canada, call upon the Prime Minister to give immediate assurances to Hassan Diab that Canada will not accept nor accede to a second request for his extradition, and will urge France to put an immediate end to this continuing miscarriage of justice.

petitions.ourcommons.ca

Mayworks 21

When: May

Mayworks actively engages in a social dialogue that reimagines and represents economic and environmental justice. From the organizing efforts of factory workers at Amazon to the hidden connections between the extractive industries and our cultural institutions, artists and organizers share their insights and reaffirm the possibilities of collective action. The works of this year’s festival emerge in the middle of a global pandemic that has further exposed the violence of racialized capitalism.

We invite you to check out our website or download the program to start planning ahead for any of our events that catch your eye or your interest. Please keep in mind that some of our online encounters require registration.

mayworks.ca (May 17-24) | mayworks.ca (May 25-31)

Students Say No to Normalizing Crisis Learning

When: Thursday May 20th, 7pm

Join the livestream broadcast on Thursday, May 20th, beginning at 7 pm on the YCFPE’s YouTube channel. The event will feature students from the YCDSB and the YRDSB as they speak about their experiences with the hybrid model and online learning, including panel discussion, slam poetry, and a musical performance!

labourcouncil.ca

Labour Solidarity and Palestinian Resistance

When: May 22nd, 1pm

Join Labour4Palestine–Canada for a webinar and urgent discussion with Palestinian labour leaders and activists on the ground in Jerusalem and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

73 years on, the Palestinian Nakba continues while the people’s resistance only grows stronger. Key Israeli and international human rights organizations have declared Israel an apartheid state, a fact that Palestinians have known and lived through since 1948.

Speakers:
– Budour Hassan: Writer and legal researcher for the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights
– Riham Abu Aita: Active member of the Palestinian Journalists Union
– Jamal Juma: Executive Committee Member of the Palestine New Federation of Trade Unions and Secretariat Member of the Boycott National Committee (BNC)

With introductory remarks from Moe Alqasem: President CUPE 1281.

zoom.us

Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories

When: Sunday May 23rd, 2pm

Author Victor Wallis will present on the Histories and Theories of Socialist Practice in the Palgrave Marx Engels Marxisms series.

The level of popular discontent has shown a dramatic increase in recent years, but has yet to crystallize into a cohesive anti-capitalist political force. Socialist Practice aims to contribute to a popular movement for socialism. It does so by 1) revisiting, under present conditions, longstanding questions of Marxist theory and revolutionary history, and 2) illustrating the range of issues, activities, and forms of expression that can both inform and be informed by a Marxist approach.

Facebook event

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy

When: Thursday May 27th, 7pm EDT

Please join us for the Canadian launch of Ray Acheson’s new book Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. Ray is the Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and has written this important book on new nuclear disarmament.

The story in this book offers a look inside the antinuclear movement and its recent successful campaign to ban the bomb. From scrappy organizing to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and achieving a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons, Ray Acheson narrates the journey of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and developments in feminist disarmament activism.

vowpeace.org | Facebook event

SR 2021: Digital Taylorism with Cole/Radice/Umney

The Political Economy of Datafication and Work: A New Digital Taylorism? with Matthew Cole, Hugo Radice and Charles Umney. This panel looks at the technologies that underpin our world of work, and how capital shapes them to meet its needs, oriented firmly toward the subsumption of wage labour. We cannot repurpose them toward our socialist goal to build a world based upon equality and justice for all without directly contesting the existing social order. This requires both a broad vision of a sustainable, egalitarian and democratic society, and concrete proposals that connect to existing struggles and also prefigure radical change.

Source: LeftStreamed

Medical Apartheid: From Israel/Palestine to Canada

By Judith Deutsch

Independent Jewish Voice Canada (IJV) has applauded Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem for declaring Israel an apartheid state in its treatment of Palestinians. However, neither organization included medical apartheid in its charges. Though their statements were reported worldwide, the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) refuses to publish any information critical of Israel.

Source: The Bullet No. 2372

Greenwashing with Bolsonaro

By Edel Moraes and Jorg Nowak

The history of alliances between big capital and fascism has many different chapters and they continue to be written, but there has rarely been an uglier or more despicable example than the current cooperation between the transnational companies Heineken and Carrefour with the Jair Bolsonaro administration in Brazil.

Source: The Bullet No. 2373

In Solidarity With the Palestinian Struggle

By Socialist Project Steering Committee

After a long period of Israel intensification of its military occupation and isolation of the ‘Palestinian Territories’ of the West Bank and Gaza direct conflict and confrontation has again erupted. Rocks and rockets being flung by Palestinian defenders of their rights being met by Israeli military drones and air strikes hitting Gaza. Casualties and physical destruction on each side being proportional to the weapons deployed – meaning a massively disproportionate number of Palestinians dead and injured and physical destruction of buildings and infrastructure in the occupied territories.

Source: The Bullet No. 2374

Green Economy, Green Capitalism?

By Nick Grover

Even now, with a ten-year timeframe left for action, it’s rare for the climate crisis to be treated as the emergency it is. So, credit where due to Tom Rand. In his The Case for Climate Capitalism: Economic Solutions for a Planet in Crisis (Toronto: ECW Press, 2020), Rand calls for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables; he blames the political and business elite for the mess and says they will have to pay the price as markets turn against oil and assets are stranded; he even advocates for expansion of public transit. Where the book gets less refreshing is Rand’s tone toward the people who have been saying these things all along: his secondary enemy, leftists fusing demands for climate action with calls for economic justice.

Source: The Bullet No. 2375

When Women Become Allies to Save Watersheds and Wildlife

By Barbara Williams

The word “Minnesota” derives from one of two Dakota words, either Mni Sóta meaning clear blue water or Mnissota meaning cloudy water. Just one letter can change the entire meaning. Just one oil spill could ruin the entire ecosystem. I traveled to northern Minnesota with Jane Fonda and Tessa Wick in March to stand with the Ojibwe who are fighting a massive assault on their ancestral territory. Line 3 is a pipeline that was built in the 1960s and currently has 900 structural problems according to Enbridge, the Canadian company that owns it. Under the guise of replacing it, Enbridge is in fact abandoning the old one and aggressively laying the infrastructure to expand it into a larger pipeline with greater capacity.

Source: The Bullet No. 2376