Socialist Project
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 12TH DECEMBER 2009
NEWS & VIEWS
CSEW LAUNCHES ANTI-POVERTY NEWSLETTER
The Centre for the Study of Education and Work has just launched a newsletter, “Learning Changes”, which will highlight the work of its Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning Project.
To read more, click here: http://www.csew.ca/APCOLnewsletter2009v1n1.pdf
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25 IN 5 NETWORK FOR POVERTY REDUCTION – BULLETIN
Dec 11, 2009: Stand Up Against the Backlash from the Auditor General’s Report
In this week’s eBulletin:
-Quote of the Week
-Ontario Auditor General’s Report Underlines Need for Social Assistance Reform
-Backgrounder: Just the Facts
-What Can You Do? TAKE ACTION
To read more, click here: http://bit.ly/5NmQu2
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VIDEO: ROOTS OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
A Presentation of the Critical Social Research Collaborative
Ottawa, October 29, 2009 – Facilitator: Carlo Fanelli
This workshop explores alternative interpretations of the current economic crisis. The presentations are from organized labour, community activists and academics. The focus of this workshop is critical engagement, discussion and debate. Questions addressed include: How have various perspectives analyzed and understood the roots of the current economic crisis? Is there something fundamentally unsound about the current political-economic structure? Is the current crisis to be located within a set of recently established policies, or better understood over the long-term historical development of capitalism? How have the policy prescriptions and ideological rationales shifted over the years? And, more ambitiously, where do we go from here?
View: http://www.socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed/
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WE AREN’T BUILDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Posted December 9, 2009
>From No Excuse: The Poverty Project Blog:
The Ontario Auditor General’s latest report has received a lot of media attention. With the report nearly three hundred pages long, it is not surprising that the media has to pick and choose what it will focus on. In this case, they seem to have come down on that old chestnut, welfare fraud. More on that to follow. But first I’ll say that they missed this bigger story — affordable housing programs don’t really build affordable housing.
For more details visit: http://bit.ly/6w7YQp
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THE NEW SOCIALIST REGISTER WEBSITE IS NOW FULLY UP AND RUNNING!
Featuring SR 2010 on Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, alongside our amazing archive of all 700+ essays we’ve published since 1964!
We’re sure you will want to check it out at http://socialistregister.com
This is first year the Register is being published simultaneously online and in print and it is the first time that all the essays ever published in the Register are available in one electronic archive. We are sure you agree this is a big deal, and given how much the world needs the Socialist Register that you will want to do all you can to make it successful. We would very much hope that you will personally subscribe now (from the home page go to the Subscriptions tab and click on the Merlin order link at the bottom – at £25 it’s value for money, to use that term).
We would also appreciate your help to make effective a major subscriptions campaign we are undertaking. At the very least, if you are working at an institution with a library, could you immediately contact the appropriate people at your library and ask them to take out an institutional subscription to the Register? Many of these librarians will be getting a version of the attached flyer, but we know that librarians are only likely to act on this when requests are made from users.
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VIDEO: OCAP METRO HALL OCCUPATION
Toronto, December 8, 2009
More Than 150 Angry Social Assistance Recipients Storm and Occupy Municipal Welfare Offices
Members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and more than 150 people struggling to survive on Ontario Works and ODSP occupied the 12th floor of Toronto’s Metro Hall. The group refused to leave until they receive the Special Diet Benefit that they are entitled to. The City is responsible for administering social assistance in Toronto, and people are currently being denied their right to the Special Diet Benefit. More people than ever are being forced to live on welfare in Ontario. They face two major problems. First of all, the income they receive does not let them pay their rent and feed their families properly. Secondly, welfare offices do all they can to deny even the small benefits people are supposed to get. When they apply for Special Diet, Community Start Up and other benefits, they are denied their rights. This must stop.
View: http://www.socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed/
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CANADIAN CENTRE FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES (CCPA) UNVEILS NEW WEBSITE
Dear Friends and Members,
We’re excited to announce the launch of the CCPA’s new website. Built on an entirely new platform with open-source software, the site is loaded with new features to make the Centre’s research easier to access and follow.
– find what you’re looking for with an advanced search engine;
– watch and listen to videos, slideshows and podcasts in our new multimedia section;
– share our content to social networking sites or email pages to your contacts;
– purchase CCPA books, gift memberships, and join or donate to the Centre with an improved shopping cart system.
Click here for a full tour of the site: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/welcome-new-site
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SOCIAL PLANNING TORONTO CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: RESEARCH ON HEALTHCARE FOR THE UNDOCUMENTED AND UNINSURED
Individuals/organizations are invited to submit abstracts for oral presentations or poster presentations by Friday December 18, 2009 for a conference aiming to gather local academic and community researchers with interest in health services for uninsured and undocumented clients.
For more info, click here: http://bit.ly/667OnB
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HOUSING AGAIN BULLETIN
Sponsored by Raising the Roof as a partner in Housing Again.
A monthly electronic bulletin highlighting what people are doing to put housing back on the public agenda across Canada and around the world, sponsored by Raising the Roof as part of the Housing Again partnership.
To read more, click here: http://bit.ly/6rbsyg
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THE NEW UNIONISM NETWORK – ORGANIZING FOR WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY
New Unionism is about unions setting agendas, rather than just reacting to them. This network unites supporters of four key principles: organizing, workplace democracy, internationalism and creativity.
To read our latest blog entries, click here: http://newunionism.wordpress.com/
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR GREEN JOBS IN CANADA HIGHLIGHTED IN GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH REPORT
The world is facing climate and economic crises, people are experiencing serious impacts and without urgent action the world is in peril. Mere weeks away from the important climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders are already warning that urgent action may not come soon. This must change.
The Council of Canadians and the Canadian Labour Congress have produced Green Decent and Public, a report focused on opportunities for the public sector to play a prominent role in generating good jobs. Green Decent and Public focuses on opportunities for improving energy efficiency and rapidly expanding electricity production from renewable resources. Public and community ownership of renewable power is offered as an alternative that has distinct advantages to further market liberalization in the electricity sector. These advantages include retaining economic revenues, maximizing social benefits, prioritizing conservation and ensuring energy security.
To read more, click here: http://bit.ly/4FIs8A
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RADICALS AT WORK NETWORK
Radicals at Work is a network of young activists and radicals involved in workers’ movements. We have come together to connect our radical ideas to our jobs and to work together to build a stronger labor movement.
We come from many jobs and communities – we are young rank and file workers, office workers, union and non-profit staff, activists working with workers centers, students, and teachers. We have a shared commitment to grassroots democracy and a workers movement that takes on racism, sexism, homophobia and isn’t afraid to go head-to-head with the boss.
Our website is meant to inform, spark discussion and be a place for conversations and education on some of the issues facing workers’ movements today.
To read more, click here: http://radicalsatwork.org/
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CALEDON INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL POLICY – DEVELOPING A DEPRIVATION INDEX: THE RESEARCH PROCESS
by Richard Matern, Michael Mendelson and Michael Oliphant, December 2009
This paper tells the story of the development of the Ontario Deprivation Index by the Daily Bread Food Bank and the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. A ‘deprivation index’ is a list of items which are widely seen as necessary for a household to have a standard of living above the poverty level so that most households not in poverty are likely to have these items, but households in poverty are likely to find some of them unaffordable and so not have all those items. The index should therefore contain those items that distinguish the poor from the non-poor in the prevailing social and economic conditions.
To read more, click here: http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/PDF/836ENG.pdf
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MURRAY DOBBIN’S BLOG – POVERTY: THE ULTIMATE LITMUS TEST OF DEMOCRACY
If we were to judge democracy using the language of business we would ask how it does on the “deliverables.” In other words, does it deliver on its promises of equality? In a capitalist society it is virtually impossible to deliver anything like complete equality but the role of government in the period following the Second World War was to provide a measure of equality in a system whose foundation was inequality. It has always struck me that the term we use to describe our political economic system – liberal democracy – is an oxymoron. Or more accurately a system that tries to integrate two mortally hostile notions: property rights and democracy. These are two principles that cannot be reconciled – eternal conflict is literally guaranteed.
To read more, click here: http://bit.ly/4mRZCs
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BOOK REVIEW – UNPREDICTABLE FUTURES: STORIES FROM WORKER-RUN FACTORIES IN ARGENTINA
Written by Benjamin Dangl
Reviewed: Sin Patron: Stories From Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories, edited by Lavaca, 320 pages, Haymarket Books, 2007.
Following the social upheaval in Argentina in 2001-2002 a book was published in Spanish that a lot of activists and independent journalists in the country began trying to get their hands on. It wasn’t in all of the bookstores, but news about it traveled like wildfire. Now the legendary book, Sin Patron: Stories From Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories, is translated and available to the English-speaking world.
To read more, click here: http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1770/1/
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JAMES LAXER’S BLOG – BEYOND THE BUBBLE: IMAGINING A NEW CANADIAN ECONOMY
(Here is a brief summary of my new book, published earlier this month by Between The Lines Publishing, Toronto.)
Beyond the Bubble: Imagining A New Canadian Economy, makes the case that the economic crash of 2008 marked the end of one world age and the beginning of another. What has ended is the neo-liberal age of globalization and the American-centred global economy. What lends weight to this thesis is both the nature of the system of finance whose collapse is at the centre of the global crisis and the crushing problems that face the United States, making the re-assertion of an American-centred global economy exceedingly improbable.
To read more, click here: http://bit.ly/4xbapx
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MUSEUM WORKERS AT WAR: PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR SQUEEZE
by Priscillia Lefebvre
The casualization of labour has placed many workers in a position of precariousness forcing them into a state of perpetual insecurity characteristic of the ‘new economy’ neoliberal nightmare. In an effort to reduce production costs and maximize profitability, many employers have adopted a neoliberal approach to employment, which is achieved through the temporary and discretional use of labour, major layoffs, the retrenchment of wages, workplace intensification and the denial of benefits. The result of which has brought real wages to a near stand-still over the past twenty-years, as well as a growing chasm between worker productivity and the compensation that follows.
The battle for wage parity and job security rages on in Ottawa between the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC), which operates both the Canadian Museum of Civilization and Museum of War, and the 92% of fed up workers who voted in favour of a strike. The current strike by 420 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) members is the longest running labour strike in PSAC history. The workers have been on strike for more than 60 days after initial attempts to bargain for a fair collective agreement came to a halt on September 18th of this year.
To read more, click here: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/278.php
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OUR MANDATE:
The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.
Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education.
For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca
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Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Note: the Socialist Project web site is excellent: http://www.socialistproject.ca/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski 