QuAIA at Pride 2012

Toronto — 1 July 2012.

Marching with Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) at the annual Pride Parade in Toronto, 1 July 2012. Chants heard along the parade route:

Whose Pride? Our Pride! Queers Against apartheid!
Our only course of action? Boycott Divestment Sanctions!
Tourists never see the wall! Stay away until it falls!
The occupation will not be pinkwashed! Brand Israel Sucks!
We're sexy. We're Hot. Israeli apartheid's not.

Working Class Fightback: Lessons of the Last Great Depression

Toronto, January 25, 2009 – A 10 Minute Production

The financial crisis has certainly brought on a deepening worldwide slump, with growing mass unemployment and impoverishment. There is also a crisis of working class institutions, in particular the union movement. How can the working class build unity within its ranks and rebuild our capacity to fight back? One thing we can do, is to learn from the experiences of working people during the 1930s, who organized a series of mass fightbacks and built new institutions, such as industrial unions.

Bryan Palmer, Labour Historian and Author
Canada Research Chair in Canadian Studies at Trent University.

Battling Harper: The Left and the Canadian Election

Toronto, October 11, 2008 – A 10 Minute Production

As the Canadian federal election moves into its final days, the Canadian electorate is again demonstrating its historical volatility in voting. Yet, this is again occurring within the context of a very stable political system with extremely cramped ideological parameters. These parameters are noteworthy mainly for how successfully the political right has moved the centre of Canada's politics and policy regime to the right and made neoliberalism an all-embracing political framework for all the poltical parties in ideology and certainly in practice.

Bryan Evans and Greg Albo here discuss some of the ways that the election, in the midst of financial crisis, has opened up space for critiques of neoliberalism, how the election has unfolded, and the openings for the Left after the election.

Bullet #139: Harper's Bunker: The State, Neoliberalism and the Election

Poetry and Socialist Politics:

Toronto, September 2008 – A 10 Minute Production

Poet and painter Joe Rosenblatt was a tremendously important icon of the Canadian cultural left in the 60s and 70s. Rosenblatt's poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals in North America. In his latest book, The Lunatic Muse (Exile Editions), Rosenblatt links poetry to the personalities of Milton Acorn and Gwendolyn MacEwen, among others. He pays a passionate tribute to his mentor Milton Acorn in a signature poem “The Natural History of Elephants.”

In “Poetry and Socialist Politics,” 10 Minute Production’s latest video, Rosenblatt discusses his past experiences as an industrial worker, relationship to socialist ideas, Al Purdy and Milton Acorn, the Allan Gardens free speech movement, Canadian cultural nationalism, and the politics of poets and poetry in times of social crisis (recorded June 12, 2008).

Neoliberalism and the State:

Toronto, July 26, 2008 – A 10 Minute Production

John Shields and Bryan Evans, professors of politics and public administration at Ryerson University, discuss neoliberalism and the State in Canada and the USA.