CONTENTS

1. CALLS TO ACTION
2. EVENTS
3. ARTICLES
4. EMPLOYMENT

#NoNewFighterJets Week of Action

Across Canada, protests are being held to reject Canada’s plans to buy 88 new bomber jets. Join a local action near you!

12pm, Friday November 26 — Rally at Member of Parliament Julie Dabrusin (Toronto-Danforth)
Location: 1028 Queen St. E. (just west of Pape Ave.)

Host: Mary-Ellen Francoeur, Pax Christi Toronto, Christian Peacemaker Teams, and friends. Email: sistermef@gmail.com

nofighterjets.ca

People, Pandemics & Priorities: Reflections From the Front Lines

When: November 25th, 3pm

Speaker Dr. Abdu Sharkawy is an Internal Medicine & Infectious Diseases Specialist at the University Health Network and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. After the talk, there will be a Q&A period.

eventbrite.ca

19th Annual Regent Park Film Festival

When: November 25th – December 2nd

Make sure to tune in from November 25th to December 2nd to catch some of the amazing programming at the Regent Park Film Festival, all of which is FREE! There’s a lot to look forward to, including homegrown and international features and shorts, industry panels and workshops, and more! In addition to online content, RPFF will also be hosting a family-friendly outdoor screening event on November 27. Check out all the details and full festival lineup.

Writing Social Transformation

When: November 25th, 6pm

Every generation is confronted with the challenge of social transformation – the attempt to challenge oppression and exploitation in multiple forms. Today these include colonialism, climate change, capitalism, and imperialism. This roundtable brings together authors whose research has examined both the issues which animate the need for social transformation, as well as the dynamics of movements for social transformation.

Roundtable participants:
– Josie Auger – author of My People’s Blood: Indigenous Sexual Health Recovery (2014)
– Davina Bhandar – co-editor, Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting Colonial Trajectories (2020)
– Peter Hudis – author of Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism (2012) and Frantz Fanon, Philosopher of the Barricade (2015)
– Paul Kellogg – author of Truth Behind Bars: Reflections on the Fate of the Russian Revolution (2021)
– John Riddell – editor of The Communist International in Lenin’s Time (multiple volumes) and co-author of Clara Zetkin, Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win (2017)

eventbrite.com

Book launch: Fight to Win

When: November 25th, 7pm

Drawing on years of experience as an OCAP organizer and activist, AJ Withers has written a book that offers some well chosen examples and serious analysis of how the organization has gone about fighting to win.

With A.J. Withers, Desmond Cole, John Clarke, Jennifer Jewell, Azeezah Kanji.

Streamed on YouTube.

Hope in Resistance: Stories of Climate Justice

When: Thursday November 25th, 10pm

SFU Public Square and Vancity are proud to present Hope in Resistance, featuring Melina Laboucan-Massimo, co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action; Anjali Appadurai, climate justice lead at Sierra Club BC; and Naisha Khan, co-founder of Banking on a Better Future, in a conversation moderated by Nahlah Ayed (host of Ideas on CBC Radio One).

eventbrite.ca

Planning, Democracy, Socialism: Learning from Kerala

When: November 26th, 12:30pm

The 20th and early 21st centuries have witnessed numerous projects that link planning praxis to strategies of structural change. For the last two generations, the state of Kerala, India, has been an important reference point in this history of experiments in popular and democratic planning. Focused on a discussion of the just-revised People’s Planning: Kerala, Democracy and Development by T.M. Thomas Isaac and Richard W. Franke (New Delhi, 2021), this forum will debate lessons from the Kerala case with all its promises, limitations, and contradictions. Needless to add, this discussion takes place in the context of the current pandemic, which too has clarified the urgency of multi-scalar democratic planning–not only to address the immediacy of socio-ecological crisis, but also, to lay the building blocks for a new society.

Facebook event | zoom.us

Let’s lift as we climb: The Waters are rising

When: Saturday November 27th, 1 – 3 pm ET

Part of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace AGM

Confirmed speakers:

– Dorene Bernard is a Mi’kmaq Grassroots Grandmother, Water Protector, Water Walker, and Survivor of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School.

– Kasha Slavner is a GenZ filmmaker, featuring her new trailer for her upcoming documentary looking at the intersection of peace and climate titled “1.5 Degrees of Peace,” and she will discuss her trip to Glasgow for COP 26.

– Bianca Mugyenyi is director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI), and she will discuss Canadian foreign policy and the #NoNewFighterJets campaign.

– Tamara Lorincz is a former VOW Board Member currently doing her PhD in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs and she will report back on COP 26.

vowpeace.org | zoom.us

Resistance And Solidarity Until Liberation

When: Saturday November 27th, 2pm
Where: Israeli Consulate, 2 Bloor Street East

The Zionist state of Israel operates with complete impunity, from its embedded legal framework to the massive military and diplomatic support it receives from Western governments, particularly, the US and Canada.

Its decades-long colonization of Palestine, home demolitions and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, ongoing building of settlements, the imprisonment of over 4500 Palestinians in its jails with 520+ under illegal administrative detention orders, its endless attacks and blockade on Gaza, and recently, the designation of 6 civil society organizations as terrorist groups; all are steps in a process to not only silence Palestinians but to control, dominate and eliminate the Palestinian presence on their own land in a process explicitly designed to making the occupation and colonization of Palestine permanent.

Facebook event

Schooling During the Pandemic

When: November 29th, 6pm

Jane Finch Education Town Hall – this is a chance to share your experiences and help shape the future of schooling in our community.

Twitter.com

Organizing in Northern Ontario

When: Nov 29th, 5pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting at zoom.us. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

How are labour and community uniting together to fight for clean drinking water, internet, housing, and decent work?

Organizers: Aminah Sheikh, Jordyn Perreault-Laird, and Heather Erlen.

No One Left Behind

When: Wednesday December 1st, 1pm

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep inequities that exist in Canada, with already vulnerable and marginalized communities experiencing greater impacts in their health, social and economic outcomes. As we begin to look at a pandemic recovery, what does it mean for low-income communities? How do we ensure that no one, and no child, is left behind? Campaign 2000: End Child and Family Poverty will be releasing its 30th edition of a series of national and sub-national report cards on the state of child poverty, which include a suite of evidence-based solutions to put on the path to ending poverty in Canada and realizing a just and equitable pandemic recovery. The report cards’ release will take place on or around the November 24th anniversary of 1989 all-party federal resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000.

eventbrite.ca

A Path to a Livable Future?

By Don Fitz

As climate change leads humanity’s march to Armageddon, data surfacing during late 2021 suggests that the march could be much briefer than previously thought. “Nature is starting to emit greenhouse gases in competition with cars, planes, trains, and factories,” asserts Robert Hunziker. The Amazon has switched from soaking up CO2 to emitting it. Likewise, the Arctic has flipped from being a carbon sink to becoming an emission source. Permafrost is giving off the three main greenhouse gases (GHGs): CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide. So much Siberian permafrost is melting that buildings are collapsing as methane bombs explode, resulting in craters 100 feet (30 meters) deep.

Source: The Bullet No. 2507

Quebec: Class Struggles over Occupational Health and Safety

By David Mandel

Bill 59 (now Law 27) on occupational health and safety was adopted, as amended, at the end of September by the National Assembly, against the unanimous opposition of the unions, organizations for the defence of unorganized workers, and all the opposition parties. Even if the struggle will undoubtedly continue, this marks a major defeat for Quebec’s working class. The government advertised Bill 59 as a law to “modernize” the existing Law on Workplace Health and Safety, first adopted some forty years ago, though never fully applied. In fact, Law 27 seriously weakens the rights to compensation that the former law granted workers.

Source: The Bullet No. 2508

Why Our Climate Isn’t Jumping for Joy After COP26

By Vijay Prashad and Zoe Alexandra

Two major gains took place at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Glasgow, Scotland, which concluded on November 13: the first was that there would be another COP in 2022 in Egypt, and the second was that the world leaders expressed their aspiration to keep global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius alive. These were, however, the only gains made at the end of COP26 to address the pressing issue of climate change. After more than two weeks of intense discussions – and many evenings of corporate-funded cocktail parties – the most powerful countries in the world left the convention center pleased not to have altered the status quo.

Source: The Bullet No. 2509

COP26: Dangerous Omissions, Amplifying Feedbacks, Human Fatalities

By Judith Deutsch

November 2021 saw the 26th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP26). This year the meeting was held in Glasgow. The COP is the global governing body made up of all the countries signatory to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. Thirty-three years ago, in 1988, climate scientist James Hansen and other climate scientists testified to both a US Congressional Committee and a Senate Panel. They presented conclusive evidence of anthropogenic (human caused) climate change and warned that “planning must begin now for a sharp reduction in the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide.” In his later research based on Earth’s paleoclimate record, Hansen determined that the tipping point marking the shift to an ice-free planet was when the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases reached approximately 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 or of CO2 equivalents (the other major heat-trapping gases are methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor).

Source: The Bullet No. 2510

In Defense of Palestinian Civil Society

A conversation with Ubai Aboudi, director of the Bisan Center in Ramallah, and Sahar Francis of Addameer, two of the six Palestinian civil society organizations labeled “terrorist” by the Israeli government. On Friday October 22nd, Israel’s Ministry of Defense, in a troubling decision, designated six prominent Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist organizations.” This move has sent shockwaves across Palestinian civil society and raised alarms throughout the international community. The decision was made based on so-called “secret evidence” that is essentially impossible to verify. Opposition to the extremely alarming decision has been remarkable, including among Israeli civil society and academics.

Source: LeftStreamed

Our Times is hiring

Our Times magazine is seeking a business manager to focus on advertising, circulation, and financial operations. Preference will be given to Indigenous, Black and/or, racialized candidates.

We are seeking a motivated self-starter ready to take on the role of Business Manager. We’re able to offer a one-year, part-time contract position of 20 hours a week at $28 per hour. The position will remain open until it is filled.

Applications close December 10, 2021. For full details, visit ourtimes.ca.