CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 8th MAY 2011
EVENTS
DYING FOR A HOME: FIGHTING FOR OUR SOCIAL PROGRAMS
Thursday, May 19
7 pm
Toronto Reference Library, Atrium
Yonge Street, north of Bloor
Join Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe for a street-level perspective on the need for social housing and why we need social programs now more than ever. Crowe has been a street nurse in downtown Toronto for more than seventeen years and co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. Music provided by the Common Thread Community Choir. Hosted by Councillor Adam Vaughan.
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STOP SIGNS: CARS AND CAPITALISM ON THE ROAD TO ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DECAY
Thursday, May 12
7pm
Bahen Centre, Room 1200
40 St. George St., Toronto
In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile: A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are written to praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them.
Drawing on their new book Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay, authors Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler will describe how the automobile’s ascendance is inextricably linked to capitalism and involved corporate malfeasance, political intrigue, backroom payoffs, media manipulation, racism, academic corruption, third world coups, secret armies, environmental destruction and war.
To locate this discussion in the Toronto context, local activist Jordy Cummings will describe the work of the campaign for Free and Accessible public transit, which is being spearheaded by the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly.
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COUNCILLOR JOSH MATLOW’S TOWN HALL DEBATE ON GARBAGE PRIVATIZATION
Tuesday, May 10th 2011
7:00 – 9:00 pm
North Toronto Collegiate Institute, 17 Broadway Ave – SCHOOL AUDITORIUM
Councillor Josh Matlow will be holding a Town Hall debate on the garbage privatization issue which will be coming to City Council in mid-May, to ensure residents have an opportunity to become informed on both sides of this important issue. It will be moderated by TVO’s Steve Paikin and will feature Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Chair of Toronto Public Works Committee and Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
For additional information, please contact Josh Matlow’s office at (416) 392-7906 or email councillor_matlow@toronto.ca
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STOP WAGE THEFT! CAMPAIGN LAUNCH
Friday May 13, 2011
7:00pm * FREE!
Beit Zatoun – 612 Markham Street
(Bathurst St. and Bloor St.)
Celebrate our shared resistance with performances by:
* Ruben ‘Beny’ Esguerra and New Tradition Drum and Dance live Afro-Colombian percussion
* Spoken word by Lishai
Hear from Workers’ Action Centre leaders on our fight to stop employers from stealing our wages.
Watch undercover footage of employers breaking the law, and see how workers are resisting through Bad Boss actions around the city.
Find Out how you can get involved!
Workers’ Action Centre is releasing a series of videos on wage theft. Watch the latest video at http://www.workersactioncentre.org
For more information: call Sonia at (416) 531-0778, ext. 221.
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(UN)LAWFUL ACCESS: CYBER-SURVEILLANCE, SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
May 12, 2011
5:00pm- :00pm
Campbell Conference Facility
Munk School of Global Affairs, U of T
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ON
Join moderator Dr. Ron Deibert for an insightful and lively discussion into some of the most pressing social issues surrounding our rights and freedoms as cyber-surveillance becomes an ubiquitous part of our lives, on-line and off.
Digitally mediated surveillance is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect of everyday life. As we work, play and negotiate public spaces, on-line and off, we produce a growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by private and public actors survey and record our movements in public space, as well as in the workplace. Corporate interests track our behaviour as we navigate both social and transactional cyberspaces, data mining our digital doubles and packaging users as commodities for sale to the highest bidder. Governments continue to collect personal information on-line with unclear guidelines for retention and use, while law enforcement increasingly use internet technology to monitor not only criminals but activists and political dissidents as well, with worrisome implications for democracy.
Read more: http://www.digitallymediatedsurveillance.ca
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NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GTWA: IN THE SPRING OF 2011 WILL STRUGGLE BLOOM?
Saturday May 14, 2011
Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street, Toronto.
East side of Spadina south of College
As we exit the elections and the capitalist class continues to consolidate itself the attacks against working people will come quicker and stronger. The need for an organized resistance is greater than ever.
The Greater Toronto Workers’s Assembly (GTWA) was formed to contribute to this resistance at a time when we saw the tip of the iceberg of the “austerity” program. Looking back less than two years later our success at doing this has been both limited and mixed despite some of our successes. We need to examine the current context, our project and the challenges we face. Do we have the capacity, will and discipline to take on these challenges? Can we overcome the divisions, pressures and practices that divide us? Will we be able to help the struggle bloom?
All members and supporters are welcome. Members and supporters are encouraged to bring guests as observers.
Read more: http://www.workersassembly.ca/node/150
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NEWS & VIEWS
ANTI-AUSTERITY STRUGGLES AND THE CANADIAN ELECTION
From The Bullet
The precise political outcome of the May 2nd election may well have the NDP make an unprecedented electoral breakthrough in Canada and Quebec. This would be a major step in its long desire to displace the Liberals as the other dominant national party, partly to become something more like the Democratic Party in the U.S. and partly to become the alternate centrist political option like the British Labour Party and the German SPD. This is already what the NDP is in Western Canada and Nova Scotia. This needs to be placed in the context of an international political conjuncture where ruling class forces have, paradoxically, gained strength and momentum over the crisis to date; and set against the enduring institutional characteristics of the Canadian political and electoral systems that, if anything, the political parties and campaigns have reinforced.
Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/496.php
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ONTARIO FARM WORKERS ‘SHOCKED’ AS UNION BAN UPHELD
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/04/29/supreme-court.html
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MURRAY DOBBIN’S BLOG – A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY. NOW WHAT?
There is no point dwelling on the obvious other than to simply reiterate it. The election of a Conservative majority government will usher in wrenching change in Canada and we will have to witness the worse that Stephen Harper has to offer. It remains to be seen whether or not Harper actually wants to stay around for another election to win it (and therefore not go too far in a first term), and solidify the dominance of his party as the new “natural governing party.” Or whether, as his personality disorder would suggest, he will in a spirit of vengeance against the country he detests, dismantle as much of the post-war social contract he can in four years of virtually absolute power.
Read more: http://murraydobbin.ca/2011/05/03/a-conservativ-majority-now-what/
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BUY THIS BOOK!
From LBO News, Doug Henwood
Excellent collection of interviews … Perfect for teaching, or just reading. Order your copies here.
Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (PM Press, 2011)
Interviewees: Ellen Meiksins Wood, David Harvey, Doug Henwood, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Greg Albo, David McNally, John Bellamy Foster, Jason W Moore, Ursula Huws, Gillian Hart, Vivek Chibber, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, John Sanbonmatsu, Andrej Grubacic, and Noam Chomsky.
Through a series of incisive conversations with some of the most eminent thinkers and political economists on the Left—including David Harvey, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Mike Davis, Leo Panitch, Tariq Ali, and Noam Chomsky—Capital and Its Discontents illuminates the dynamic contradictions undergirding capitalism and the potential for its dethroning.
The book challenges conventional wisdom on the Left about the nature of globalization, neoliberalism and imperialism, as well as the agrarian question in the Global South. It probes deeply into the roots of the global economic meltdown, the role of debt and privatization in dampening social revolt, and considers capitalism’s dynamic ability to find ever new sources of accumulation—whether through imperial or ecological plunder or the commodification of previously unpaid female labor.
Read more: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=267
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VIDEO – ONLY KNOWN RECORDING OF MOTHER JONES
You have to see the only known audio and video recording of Mother Jones. On what is believed to be her 100th birthday in 1930, the legendary union organizer is still full of fire for worker justice.
Watch the video: http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/03/only-known-videoaudio-of-mother-jones/
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ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):
Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin
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 this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca
For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca
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‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski 