This list covers the week of March 19 - March 26. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.
1) Racial profiling complaint to be filed against Montreal police over $48 ticket incident
Aaron Derfel, Montreal Gazette
It was supposed to be a fun night out for ice cream, but ended with six police cruisers surrounding a young black man who was holding an ice cream cone in his hand.
Read the full article.
2) Free tuition and universal child care now NDP policy
Sean Kavanagh, CBC News
The provincial New Democrats want to make tuition free and reinstate funding at two Winnipeg schools.
Read the full article.
3) When is a rapist no longer a rapist? On the cost-free repentance of Tom Stranger
Jennifer Izaakson, Ceasefire
Two days ago, Tom Stranger was no-platformed at the South Bank Centre in London. If rapists like Stranger truly seek forgiveness, they must accept to give up power and control over the narrative. There is no redemption without loss.
Read the full article.
4) Why do so many male journalists think female stars are flirting with them?
Hadley Freeman, The Guardian
A magazine’s profile with Selena Gomez is the latest to have an icky fixation on its subject’s looks. Perhaps it’s time for men to be banned from interviewing women.
Read the full article.
5) Feminism That Doesn’t Challenge Male Entitlement Isn’t Feminism
Caitlin Roper, The Huffington Post
Once upon a time, feminism was a social movement. It was a movement by and for women. It had actual objectives - like liberating women from male oppression. It meant something.
Nowadays, with the popularity of third wave liberal feminism, feminism* can be whatever you want it to be. Anybody can be a feminist, including men, and any act can be a ‘feminist’ statement- even if it upholds institutions and structures that oppress and harm women as a whole - it’s all good as long as a woman ‘chooses’ it.
Read the full article.
6) A cop fires. A teen dies. Yet six police body cameras somehow miss what happens.
Craig Timberg, The Washington Post
The killing of Mary Hawkes, a troubled 19-year-old woman suspected of stealing a truck, should have been a case study in the value of police body cameras. The action was fast-moving, the decisions split-second. And all of the surviving witnesses — including the shooter — were police officers wearing small video cameras on their uniforms.
Read the full article.
7) David Miller doesn't believe Scarborough subway extension will ever be built
CBC News
The cost of a long-debated one-stop subway extension in Scarborough is currently pegged at $3.35 billion, with the issue set to go to city council next week. Former mayor David Miller spoke with Matt Galloway on CBC Radio's Metro Morning about what he thinks of the plan.
Read the full article.
8) As Colin Kaepernick brings #LoveArmyForSomalia, NFL executives show what hate looks like
Chuck Modiano, Daily News
“Amazing news,” a proud Colin Kaepernick announced in a video on Saturday. “Turkish Airlines granted us an airplane to fly to Somalia, a 60 ton cargo plane, so we can fly there with food with water for these people. Now we’ve started a GoFundMe page to allow anyone to help us donate food, donate water.”
Read the full article.
9) Trudeau’s Oil Views Spur African Famine
Yves Engler, Dissident Voices
Today the lives of over 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk due to a drought at least partly caused by climate change. A study by Britain’s Met Office concluded that human-induced climate disturbances sparked a famine in Somalia in 2011 in which over 50,000 died. For its part, the Climate Vulnerability Monitor estimated in 2012 that climate change was responsible for some 400,000 deaths per year, a number expected to hit one million by 2030.
Read the full article.
10) Federal budget vows $100-million for strategy on gender-based violence, citing Globe Unfounded investigation
Michelle Zilio, The Globe and Mail
The Liberal government is planning to invest more than $100-million over five years to create a national strategy to prevent gender-based violence, citing a Globe and Mail investigation into how police handle sex-assault allegations across the country.
Read the full article.
11) Under pressure UK universities cancel Richard Falk event
Middle East Monitor
Two British universities have cancelled events planned for the launch of former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Richard Falk’s new book.
Read the full article.
12) Poster campaign calls attention to impacts of sexual violence at U of T
Mubashir Baweja, The Varsity
On Thursday, posters containing quotes from students, staff, and faculty about the university’s response to their experiences of sexual violence were put up in conspicuous locations across campus.
Read the full article.
13) If you really care about climate change, you should boycott the ridiculous Earth Hour stunt
Adam McGibbon, The Independent
I am an environmentalist. For my whole adult life I have protested, campaigned, helped to elect climate-savvy politicians and worked hard on what I see as the cause of my life: putting a stop to the dangerous change to our climate that is killing millions.
And yet I hate one of the world’s most prominent environmental events with the intense heat of a burning climate – the annual WWF event “Earth Hour”, which this year will take place on 25 March. The charity expects millions of people around the world to symbolically switch off their lights for an hour.
Earth Hour is terrible, and not just because the symbolism of darkness is very poorly thought out. The worst thing about Earth Hour is that it tricks people into thinking they’ve done something useful by turning off the lights for 60 minutes, and lets the real villains in the climate change story off the hook.
Read the full article.
14) Ending racial discrimination means overhauling our employment laws
Avvy Go & Chris Buckley, The Toronto Star
Modernizing the laws are not just an issue of fairness, it is a fundamental issue of racial justice and equity for Ontarians. Besides, our economy prospers when more workers have access to decent jobs and make decent income.
Read the full article.
15) CUPE 3903 Condemns Racist Graffiti and Bomb Threats
CUPE 3903 Communications Director
Over the past three weeks, there have been several incidents at Glendon College where racist threats have been written on the walls, targeting Jewish and Black students. On at least two occasions, York Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat. Such threats follow from the recent and alarming increase in far-right attacks on Muslim, Jewish, and other marginalized communities. As the union representing graduate student workers, contract faculty, and part-time librarians at York University, including Glendon College, CUPE 3903 stands against all forms of racism and hate and condemns these incidents. We wish to express our solidarity with students, staff, and faculty at the Glendon campus, and especially with the Jewish and Black members of our community that have been the targets of these threats.
Read the full article.
16) NDP leadership candidate Charlie Angus to spearhead campaign with priority on First Nation issues
Anishinabek, News
Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus is making First Nation issues a priority in his campaign to be elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP).
“My concern is that the government is still not responding in a proactive manner when emergencies happen in communities, whether it is a suicide crisis or whether it is a housing crisis or whether it is the needless number of fires,” says Angus, who registered as a leadership candidate on Feb. 20 and officially launched his leadership bid on Feb. 26. “We need to start changing how Ottawa relates with First Nation communities. And that is what I want to make a major issue in my leadership campaign.”
Read the full article.
17) Scientists Sound the Alarm: CO2 Levels Race Past Point of No Return
Cassie Kelly, EcoWatch
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that carbon dioxide levels in 2016 broke records for the second year in a row with an increase of 3 parts per million (ppm).
Read the full article.
18) Release of Arctic Methane "May Be Apocalyptic," Study Warns
Dahr Jamail, Truthout
A scientific study published in the prestigious journal Palaeoworld in December issued a dire -- and possibly prophetic -- warning, though it garnered little attention in the media.
Read the full article.
19) Pornography is more than just sexual fantasy. It’s cultural violence.
Julia Long, The Washington Post
In March 2016, the U.K. government published its second National Strategy to End Volence Against Women and Girls. This is an extremely important lever for U.K. campaigners against pornography and its harms, as it recognizes that young people in particular have unprecedented access to online content and that some of that content may of course be harmful. A current government inquiry into sexual harassment in schools and a new cross-party campaign to tackle misogynist abuse online have all highlighted the ways in which pornography contributes to and legitimizes negative attitudes with very real impacts on the lives of women and girls.
Read the full article.
20) Toronto police cleared in death of man Tasered eight times in bathtub
Wendy Gillis, The Toronto Star
Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared Toronto police in the death of a man who died after he was Tasered eight times by police in his bathtub.
Read the full article.
21) Police officer who punched handcuffed teen violated Canadian charter, judge rules
Andrew Foote, CBC News
An Ottawa police officer violated several sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms during a 2015 arrest in which he punched a handcuffed teenager in the face, a judge ruled this week.
Read the full article.
22) Toronto school board suspending U.S. travel over border issues
Paola Loriggio, The Globe and Mail
Canada’s largest school board says it will stop booking trips to the United States indefinitely in light of the uncertainty surrounding restrictions at the border.
The Toronto District School Board, which serves about 245,000 public school students, says it made the “difficult decision” because it believes students “should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border.”
Read the full article.
23) Anti-Islam Protesters Rip Qur'an At Ontario School Board Meeting
The Huffington Post Canada
Anti-Islam protesters ripped a Qur'an and walked over its torn pages during an Ontario school board meeting Wednesday evening, as they demanded that Muslim students be banned from praying at school.
Read the full article.
24) Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter Groups Join Forces
Associated Press
A cluster of Black Lives Matter groups and the organization leading the push for a $15-an-hour wage are joining forces to combine the struggle for racial justice with the fight for economic equality, just as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to do in the last year of his life.
Read the full article.
25) How Lenin’s love of literature shaped the Russian Revolution
Tariq Ali, The Guardian
Literature shaped the political culture of the Russia in which Vladimir Ilyich Lenin grew up. Explicitly political texts were difficult to publish under the tsarist regime. The rasher essayists were holed up in asylums until they “recovered”: in other words, until they publicly recanted their views. Novels and poetry, meanwhile, were treated more leniently – though not in every instance.
Read the full article.
26) Earth's worst-ever mass extinction of life holds 'apocalyptic' warning about climate change, say scientists
Ian Johnston, The Independent
Researchers studying the largest-ever mass extinction in Earth’s history claim to have found evidence that it was caused by runaway global warming – and that the “apocalyptic” events of 250 million years ago could happen again.
Read the full article.
See also: The NDP Leadership Race, the Dutch GreenLeft, Gavin McInnes & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List March 12-19
See also: Chrystia Freeland, IWD, the British Empire & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List March 5 - 12
