Articles
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Article
Shalom-Salaam?
Campus Israel advocacy and the politics of “dialogue”
The full PDF version of this article is freely available by clicking here. In the early months of 2006, Israel advocacy groups at the University of Toronto had a problem on their hands. The previous year, the Arab Students’ Collective had organized a series of educational events under the banner o…
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The Three Way Fight Debate
For over a generation, the decline of anti-colonial liberation struggles inspired by socialism has coincided with the rise of new forms of anti-imperialist mobilization in Western Asia. Beginning in 1979 with the Iranian revolution, and continuing in the present with national liberation struggles le…
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Into a Black Hole
Tar Sands and Oil Production in Western Canada
When I moved from British Columbia to Alberta recently, I discovered that the political realities of one province are largely unknown to those living in the other. In BC, oil is seen as a scheme hatched by mad cowboys that has little effect on the mountainous peace of the West coast. Similarly, when…
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Confronting Apartheid
The BDS Movement in Canada
Since Palestinian civil society groups launched a call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS)1 against Israel in July 2005, growing networks of grassroots activists in Canada have mobilized behind the campaign. The recent surge in Palestine solidarity work comes at a time when official Canadia…
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Declaring the Exception
Direct Action, Six Nations, and the Struggle in Brantford
In September of 2008 three distinct political moments highlighted the perils and possibilities of the ongoing struggle of the Six Nations (Haudenosaunee) people in southern Ontario. On the morning of Labour Day, Brantford police moved in to make three arrests at a building site where Six Nations pro…
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“Bring on the bulldozers and let’s plant trees”
The Story of Labour Zionism
In Philadelphia on May 18, 2008, the Jewish Federation hosted its annual Israel Day Parade. Thousands of youth and adults carried banners and sang songs to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. A small contingent of anti-Zionist Jews dressed in black confronted the p…
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They’re Clear Cutting Our Way of Life
Algonquins Defend the Forest
One of the most dangerous First Nations in Canada is a small community of around 250 Algonquins living in rural Québec. The threat they pose is so grave that the Canadian government has repeatedly intervened in their customary governance laws to put minority community factions in power. The Mitchik…
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Knowing the Terrain
BDS in the Wake of the Gaza Onslaught
In a cartoon by Brazillian artist Carlos Latuff an Israeli Apache helicopter fires a rocket directly at a Palestinian child. Wearing a kaffaiyah and holding a teddy bear, the child stands alone, the word “Gaza” narrowing at his bare feet. A concrete wall with watchtowers marks the horizon, and t…
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Going For Broke
OCAP and the Economic Crisis
For nearly two decades, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has been working to mobilize resistance in some of Toronto’s poorest communities. These years have been marked by a concerted drive by capitalist governments at every level to cut social programs and to transfer wealth from the p…
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The Green Scare is Everywhere
The Importance of Cross-Movement Solidarity
The burgeoning “War on Terror” is facilitating the re-emergence of “terrorism” as a legal and discursive framework for classifying and suppressing political radicalism. Despite the jingoism, xenophobia, and racism of the “War on Terror,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation has consistent…
