Editorials
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EditorialYou Gotta Have Faith
Resolving the Unholy Alliance Between the Left and Religion
On February 4, 2017, a national day of action was called across Canada. Entitled Against Islamophobia and White Supremacy, the action was originally called after the election of Donald Trump to address growing racism and Islamophobia in Canada. However, days before the rally, Alexandre Bissonnette walked into La Grande Mosquée of Québec City, shot and killed six men, and injured 19 others. The February 4th day of action organized in Toronto soon became a rally and memorial to emphasize how the rise of racism and Islamophobia was a matter of life and death for many people, especially Muslims. The memorial saw close to 1,000 attendees with speakers from the Toronto contingents of Black Lives Matter, No One Is Illegal, Jews for a Just Peace, and a number of religious leaders. For some of us in attendance, a strange moment occurred. A speaker took the stage and asked for all people of Muslim faith to come forward in order to perform a funeral rite. As the Muslim attendees gathered to the front, another instruction was given: “Please, could all sisters be at the back and all brothers to the front?”
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Editorial
Building Everyday Anti-Fascism
Ibrahima Barry. Azzeddine Soufiane. Khaled Belkacemi. Mamadou Tanou Barry. Abdelkrim Hassane. Boubaker Thabti. On January 29, 2017, these six men were murdered while praying at Québec City’s Islamic Cultural Centre, and five others were seriously injured. While the horror of that night became hea…
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Editorial
Who Cares?
The Politics of Care in Radical Organizing
In many of today’s social movements, a common framework is taken up with regard to “self care.” In many ways, it seems as though self care is commonly understood as taking some form of “time-out” from the stresses of daily life within capitalism and organizing, especially from spaces that…
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Editorial
What Are We Waiting For? Rethinking Internationalism and Localism
The one-year anniversary of Ali Mustafa’s death passed on March 15, 2015. The one-year mark allowed many in the community and around the world to reflect on his art, his words, and his insistence to be in spaces of open conflict. As a new art exhibit opened in Toronto showcasing never before seen…
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Editorial
Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of your Fist: In Memory of Ali Mustafa
I know you are still standing in Tahrir, where I saw you last. Tahrir was your address. - Rachel Gee On Sunday, March 29, 2014, Syrian regime forces dropped a barrel bomb in Hadariyeh, a rebel-held civilian area of Aleppo in Northern Syria. As rescue crews, firefighters, and journalists rushed to th…
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Editorial
Notes on Spontaneity and Organization
On March 18, 1848 silent processions marched through Berlin – a city of 450,000 that was over 85 percent working class – collecting their dead and gathering crowds. For the first time in days, the city was quiet as the sun set. There were no gunshots, no barricades, no army, no police; just the…
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Editorial
The Courtroom and the Street
Notes on Activist Encounters With the Law
Stepping out of a Toronto courthouse last April, Montreal-based activist Jaggi Singh addressed the media about his decision to plead guilty to “counselling to commit mischief” during Toronto’s anti-G20 protests in June 2010. Nearly a year after being arrested and eventually charged with public…
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Editorial
The Right Desires
Their Base and Ours
The moment in which we find ourselves is marked by promise and peril. Throughout the Middle East, popular uprisings are dramatically accelerating history and undermining a half-century’s worth of geopolitical certainties. Meanwhile, in Canada, the US, and Europe, right-wing politicians and movemen…
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Editorial
Behind the Mask: Violence and Representational Politics
Particular moments can, like a lightning flash, illuminate the terrain upon which we struggle. The recent anti-G20 convergence in Toronto was one such moment. Under the glare of the world’s media, three social forces – the capitalist state, the social democratic left, and the small but a…
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Editorial
With Eyes Wide Open
Notes on Crisis and Resistance Today
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. For the last two years, the financial crisis and global recession have presented the left in North America with the best opportunity in recent memory to move beyond the defensive postures of “resistance.” Rocked by the most severe financial crisis since the…
