Interviews
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Interview
Spectrum: Autists and Activism
An Interview with Joe Biel
Joe Biel (JoeBiel.net) founded Microcosm Publishing in 1996. His neighbours were unionized, working-class Democrats who helped establish his early interest in leftist politics. However, it was not until his teens when he discovered punk rock, and later with the founding of Microcosm Publishing, that…
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Interview
Relationships of Resistance
An Interview with Yavar Hameed
Yavar Hameed is an Ottawa-based lawyer specializing in immigration detention, citizenship, and security certificates. He is well-known for addressing systemic racism and Islamophobia in many legal cases with people such as Mohamed Harkat (who was under a security certificate) and Abousfian Abdelrazi…
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Interview
From Recognition to Decolonization
An Interview with Glen Coulthard
Glen Coulthard is a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and an associate professor of political science and Indigenous studies at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver. Coulthard’s recent book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014) is an incisive critique of Canadian settler colonialism that centres Indigenous peoples’ resistance to the state and capital.
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Interview
Building Community, Building Resistance: Black Lives Matter-Toronto
An interview with Sandy Hudson
In the past year, Black Lives Matter-Toronto (BLM-TO) has emerged at the forefront of organizing against anti-Black racism in the Toronto Area, adding a new chapter to the history of Black resistance in this city. Started initially by organizing vigils for Black people killed by police in the US and…
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Interview
Unpacking Inclusion and Building Queer(er) Alliances: An interview with OmiSoore H. Dryden & Suzanne Lenon
Since its first articulation in 2007, Jasbir Puar’s concept of “homonationalism” has been widely used by queer theorists and activists to understand, resist, and build alternatives to the cooptation of queer existence by neoliberalism. Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and…
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Interview
Grassroots Theory: 10 Years of Upping the Anti: An interview with Sharmeen Khan
Issue One of Upping the Anti (UTA) came out in the spring of 2005. For more than 10 years, the journal has carried on through many shifts in the movement landscape as well as internal organizational changes. What can we learn from the first decade of UTA? To delve into this question, long-time advis…
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Interview
Collective Action Behind Bars
A history of jail solidarity and its importance for today's social change movements
UTA NOTE: With the Republican and Democratic Conventions just weeks away, Upping the Anti is pleased to pre-release Kris Hermes article on jail solidarity. Feel free to download this article as a pamphlet to distribute here You can also download a screen-friendly version here. About the author: Kris…
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Interview
Can’t Even Slow This Down - Ten Years of Feminist Print with Shameless Magazine
Interviews with Nicole Cohen, Melinda Mattos, and Sheila Sampath
Canada has a longstanding history of feminist print publications, many with longevity that rivals their mainstream/corporate counterparts. Toronto-based Broadside ran from 1979-1989, and the Vancouver Status of Women-funded Kinesis published 10 issues a year from 1974-2001. These magazines and sever…
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Interview
Indigenous Sovereignty Fuels Pipeline Resistance
An Interview with Freda Huson and Toghestiy of the Unist’ot’en Camp
When Canada’s fossil fuel industry launched an aggressive plan to turn the country into a major energy exporter and triple tar sands production by 2030, few of its supporters could have foreseen the Indigenous-led resistance that has now delayed or blocked almost every proposed mega-pipeline. Gras…
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Interview
Dispatches from the O-platz Eviction
The following interviews were conducted on April 18 and 19, 2014, ten days after the eviction of the squatted refugee encampment at Oranienplatz (O-platz) in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The camp was set up in 2012 by a group of asylum seekers, mostly travelling from Lampedusa, Italy. O-platz w…