Letters to the Editors
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Letter
Prison Abolition and "Sex Crimes"
Dear UTA, For those of us who believe in prison abolition, how to deal with people labelled “sex offenders” is a difficult question. Although we recognize the failure of prisons to keep us, our families, and our communities safe, we have not yet implemented widespread programs and initiatives th…
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Letter
It's More Than a Class Thing When We Deal with Class Struggle
Dear UTA, There are a number of points raised in “Revolutionary Ambition in an Age of Austerity: An Interview with Neil Smith” that I agree with. I will briefly engage with some issues around the class struggle before speaking to the manner in which race is missing or, at best, implicitly presen…
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Letter
Copwatching Everywhere
Dear UTA, In “Their Eyes Were Watching Cops,” Joaquin Cienfuegos talks about his experiences of political organizing, specifically with Copwatch LA. As a member of Winnipeg Copwatch, I found his insights to be incredibly valuable. Winnipeg’s Copwatch group has been active since 2006. Throughou…
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Letter
The Law's Fundamentally Violent Character
Dear UTA, As a radical lawyer and legal scholar with over a decade of experience in activist legal defense (and – full disclosure – as a former Upping the Anti Advisory Board member), I eagerly awaited your last editorial. However, despite its historical breadth, “The Courtroom and the Street:...
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Letter
Solidarity & Internationalism
Dear UTA, It was with utmost appreciation that I read Shourideh Molavi and Niloofar Golkar’s analysis of the 2009 revolutionary movement in Iran. The radical Left’s unfortunate confusion with resect to Iran did not, of course, begin with the recent movement. One can hardly find a greater betraya…
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Letter
We Are the Ones
Dear UTA, When I saw Victoria Law’s article, “Protection Without Police: North American Community Responses to Violence in the 1970s and Today” in UTA 12 (conveniently on the back of the toilet of a sweet friend’s bathroom) I jumped for joy, or something like it. I’m a feminist nerd, so I…
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Letter
No Raw Energy
Dear UTA, It’s certainly the case that, in North America, the Right has been more successful than the Left in mobilizing and expanding its constituency in the wake of the current economic crisis. And clearly there’s a dimension of affective investment that’s crucial to understanding it’s app…
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The Way Out of the Desert
Dear UTA, In “The Right Desires: Their Base and Ours,” you laid out with stark clarity the situation we face with Right-wing populist movements in Canada, the US, and Europe. Progressive forces must engage in counter-recruitment; we must recognize the real anger and fear that motivates Right-win…
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Letter
Religion and Disaffection
Dear UTA, Your Editorial regarding the political magnetism of the right is a welcome conversation piece for a Left too often unable to grasp that political subjectivity is messy, contingent, and unpredictable, and evades the tidy categories of the secular. “The criticism of religion is the beginni…
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Letter
Building Character
Dear UTA, Recently, I sat in a comfortably soft chair in the large, open sanctuary of the Japanese Gospel Church of Toronto my grandparents’ church. They’d been attending this church for decades, ever since they’d come to Canada. I was there because it was the last service they would attend be…
