CONTENTS
CALLS TO ACTION
Fightback Against Healthcare Privatization
The Ontario Health Coalition and Local Health Coalitions across Ontario are building the biggest fight-back we have ever mounted against the Ford government’s unprecedented health care privatization plans. Our goal is to protect and improve our vital public health care services and stop health care privatization.Lawn signs, window signs & car decals are available for pickup. The design and dimensions for all three, and information for how to pick them up locally, can be found here.
EVENTS
37th annual Mayworks Festival
When: May 1st – 28thAs we organize this year’s festival, we are moved and inspired by the networks of care celebrated through the work of the artists in our festival program. They celebrate how working people extend care to each other through generations, how this care is forged in resistance, and how it is shaped and remembered through story.
We’re excited to return to in-person programming while continuing to offer digital art and online events.
mayworks.ca
Repeal Bill 124
When: May 5th, 11amWhere: Hospital for Sich Children
PC budget: nursing retention bonus just a fraction of PSW wage enhancement, which remains temporary, nothing for other HCWs and Bill 124 remains in place. The staffing crisis in health isn’t due to Covid but to deliberate understaffing worsened by demoralization. It can’t go on.
twitter.com
Feminists vs. the War Machine
When: May 5th, 6:30pmJoin Lux and Haymarket for a discussion about feminist internationalism in the face of war.
Speakers: Rozina Ali, Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Sophie Pinkham.
eventbrite.com
The Fight To Win Housing For All
When: May 5th, 7pmThe crisis of housing and homelessness is worsening in Toronto and across Canada. Government policy has led us to this point. Please join us with longtime activists and authors A.J. Withers and Gaetan Heroux. Learn about the history that has brought us here as well as the struggles to fight back. Engage in ways to help fight for decent, affordable housing for all and an end to homelessness.
Speakers:
– A.J. Withers is a longtime anti-poverty activist and author of three books. Their most recent is Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing.
– Gaetan Heroux has organized with Toronto’s homeless people for 30+ years. He is the author of Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History.
mailchi.mp
Marcus Garvey and the UNIA Hall
When: May 5th, 7pmJoin the Kensington Market Historical Society for an online illustrated talk by Dr. Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor at X University.
Email info@kmhs.ca for the Zoom link | mailchi.mp
Poetry Night: Namir, Allen, Marques, La Mackerel
When: May 5th, 7pmMulticultural Poetry Nights celebrate poets who, among other things, identify as newcomers, refugees, or immigrants. Every Thursday in May (5, 12, 19, 16), there will be a poetry event featuring three poetry readings and an interview.
Despite the fact that poetry inhabits many geographical locations and speaks in different accents and languages, Literature continues to be the most exclusive of arts and the most resistant against outsiders. An immigrant’s linguistic, cultural, and political accents mark them as alien, and hence, undesirable company or colleague among fellow writers and poets.
Facebook event | happening.musearts.ca
Policing, protest and the resurgence of the far right
When: May 5th, 7pmTo better understand this moment in Canadian history, we turn to allies and leaders in anti-racist research and organizing. This webinar will explore issues of policing, protest, and the resurgence of the far right. Hosted by Council of Canadians.
zoom.us
Evening of Labour Arts Poetry
When: May 6th, 7pmWhere: Steelworkers’ Hall, 25 Cecil St
Join us at “The Living Voice,” an evening of live poetry and performance!
Maysam Khreibeh, Funmilola (LolaBunz) Lawson, and Danny Torres will perform their most recent work, inspired by collaborative art-making with local labour organizations: Labour4Palestine, Jane Finch Action Against Poverty, and Toronto & York Region Labour Council.
eventbrite.ca
Stop the War
When: May 7th, 1pmWhere: Spadina and Bloor
Stop the war in Ukraine! Russian Troops Out! No to NATO Expansion!
Bring your anti-colonial, anti-racist signs and banners such as: Land Back, Free Palestine, Defund the Police and NO NATO.
Organized by Codepink, Stop the war coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, No to NATO Network | peaceinukraine.org | worldbeyondwar.org
Rally for Better Transit
When: May 7th, 2pmWhere: Albert Campbell Square, Scarborough
A rally for better transit in Scarborough! With the Scarborough RT closing in 2023, we need elected officials to invest in immediate solutions to improve public transit and better bus service.
ttcriders.ca
After the Convoy: Confronting the Far Right
When: May 7th, 2pmIn the second part of the series, “After the Convoy: Confronting the Far Right in Canada,” organizers from four cities will discuss anti-fascist tactics, strategies, and lessons on how they confronted the recent convoy and how they continue to resist the far right. Join us on Saturday, May 7th, (even if you didn’t attend the first event!) to explore how we can bolster the left to build a mass movement against fascism and the capitalist structures that support it.
eventbrite.ca
Mothers’ Day for Peace
When: Saturday May 7th, 3pmWhere: Christie and Bloor intersection
Join us at the park, bring your own message for peace – not war. Or from home, make a sign, take a photo, send to info@vowpeace.org for sharing. No Nukes! Make peace not war. Let’s put our message out. Hosted by VOW (Voice of Women for Peace) and Pax Christi.
vowpeace.org
Mayworks x Toronto Palestine Film Festival
When: May 7th, 7pm (doors open at 6:30)Where: Innis Town Hall Theatre, 2 Sussex Ave
Dreams of popular revolution, erased by civil war. A young girl martyred at a factory strike in Beirut in 1972 – her identity shrouded in mystery. A Feeling Greater than Love is a meditation on revolution, cinema and their possibilities, past and present.
eventbrite.ca
Decent work organizing meeting
When: May 10th, 7pmThere is growing momentum for a $20 minimum wage; 10 paid sick days plus an additional 2 weeks during pandemics; the reinstatement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit; equal pay; and real protections for frontline workers, including gig workers, temp agency workers, part-time workers and casual workers.
justice4workers.org
Work and Labour Seminar Series: Gig Economy
When: May 11th, 12pmPanellists will review and evaluate the ongoing organizing efforts in Ontario to gain employment rights, how the Ford government is threatening those rights and what we can do to support the Gig Workers Bill of Rights.
carleton.ca
ARTICLES
The Call to Stop the War Has Never Been More Necessary
By Lindsey GermanA British government whose own record of warmongering does not bear much scrutiny made two central points when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began two months ago. One was to say that the invasion had nothing to do with NATO expansion or the foreign policy espoused by the US and UK governments. The other was to argue that, while it would support arms and finance to Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia, there was no question of direct intervention in the war. This was a view echoed by NATO and its member states.
Source: The Bullet No. 2607
An Infernal Dance: The 2022 French Presidential Election
By Stefan KipferFive years ago, between the first and the second round of the French presidential election, the slogan “Macron 2017 = Le Pen 2022” was easy to spot on walls and placards in Paris. To the extent that the slogan implied a prediction, it did not come to fruition. Again (just) qualified for the run-off election, Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National (RN) lost to Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) in the second round of the 2022 elections, too, albeit by a much-diminished margin: 41.5% to 58.5% (instead of 34% to 66%) of the votes cast. Le Pen has thus established the RN as a possible future governing party of France.
Source: The Bullet No. 2608
May Day: Workers’ Struggles, International Solidarity, Political Aspirations
For more than 100 years, May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe. Why is it largely ignored in North America? The answer lies in part in American labour’s long repression of its own radical past, out of which international May Day was actually born a century ago. It is more important than ever, in the face of relentless capitalist austerity and emerging authoritarian forces on the right, that the North American labour movement reconnect with this history and forge linkages with the international labour movement in the remaking of a socialism for our times.Source: Socialist Interventions Pamphlet No. 15.
How Young Workers Are Unionizing Starbucks
By Sonali KolhatkarAt only 19 years old, Joe Thompson is one of the youngest lead organizers with Starbucks Workers United (SWU), the umbrella organization at the forefront of one of the most exciting labor successes of the last few years. Thompson, who started working at the coffee chain at age 16, told me in a recent interview, “Starbucks likes to claim it’s super-progressive, and a lot of workers there are, but we’re the ones actually holding Starbucks accountable to that standard.”
Source: The Bullet No. 2609
Palestine, International Law, and Territorial Annexation
By Khaled MouammarIsrael has been illegally occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967. Israel later illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights of Syria in 1981. The occupation of these territories and the annexation of some of them have long been defined by the United Nations Security Council and International Court of Justice as flagrant violations of international law and the United Nations Charter.
Source: The Bullet No. 2610