Featured this Month
April 2011, No. 71
Letter from the Editors
In this month’s Mayday Magazine, we return in more detail to some of the issues that came up around our November issue. Whether or not you think development in downtown Hamilton is gentrification, it is important that we not become bogged down by the definition(s) of a word. Some of the specific trends and symptoms of this development are harming people and reducing the health of our communities. We cannot afford to ignore this, regardless of our thoughts on the G-word.
FreeSkool Seeks New Organizers
Hamilton FreeSkool is a community education project dedicated to collaborative, egalitarian ways of learning. FreeSkool has been running in this city for over two years now, and has offered dozens of fun and exciting classes for anyone to join.
Japan's Unfolding Nuclear Disaster: If the brakes don't work, who's driving the reactor?
A 9.0 magnitude earthquake all by itself is an awesomely devastating thing, among the worst disasters in history. Combined with the enormous tsunami that battered cities along over 1000 miles of coastline, death toll estimates are over 18,000 and climbing.
Canada's Dirty Laundry Out in the Open
Canada’s dirty laundry is becoming increasingly difficult to hide. “Tar sands” is becoming part of daily talk rather than the cleaner-sounding “oil sands”. Small grassroots campaigns are forcing huge companies to fund advertising campaigns on greenwashing and the repression due to extractive industries like mining and gas.
The Police, the Media, and Accountability
Are police above the law? Should police be above the law? These are not questions usually asked in the mainstream press. But in the last year we have seen them appear far more often in public debate. With the rise of social media, abuses of authority are far now easier to record, publish and share than ever before. In the wake of this explosion of discussion, it is also becoming far harder than ever before to ignore them.
More Nuclear in Ontario? No Thanks
Humanity must backtrack on nuclear power, earth’s radioactive time bomb. Unfortunately, Japan suffered an earthquake and tsunami. Sadly, since that time, the Fukushima nuclear plant has dominated headlines.
Book Review: My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A parenting guide for the rest of us
My Mother Wears Combat Boots takes up the topic of radical parenting. The book is not just for parents, but also people considering parenthood and those who do not intend to have children, offering non-parents insight as supportive allies to children and parents. Mills discusses many pragmatic aspects of parenting a free child, including pregnancy, birthing, discipline, schooling, gender coding, touring with children, and organizing childcare for Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) protests.
Where can we go now? : Community space occupied by filing cabinets
Do you know about all of the amazing things that happen in the Jamesville Community Centre every day? The JVCC is one of the healthiest spaces that exists in the Jamesville neighbourhood today. But its continued existence has recently been threatened by a shocking and illogical move by the Catholic school board to replace active community space with filing cabinets.
Job Scams Plague Job Hunters
Late last spring, like many students, Richard MacGregor was looking for a summer job when he came across what seemed like a good opportunity. A Hamilton company called Global Air Care was advertising for a water technician job, offering over eighteen dollars per hour with training provided and no experienced required. The job, advertised on the government-run Jobbank.ca website, certainly looked like a good deal compared to the usual minimum wage jobs available to a young worker.
Questioning the ACTION Team
The ACTION teams are a big part of the increased police presence here in the last year. However, there has been little in the way of critical examination of the role that ACTION is really playing in our communities. What are they doing? Who is benefiting?
Exploring the Spencer Creek: Beverly Swamp
The remaining wild spaces along the Spencer Creek show the marks of a patchwork history of land management and restoration practices that affect the health of everyone in the watershed today. To gain a better understanding, we begin in the headwaters at...
Online Feature: Towards Equal Responsibility
This article is adapted from a performance piece delivered in this years Revolution Wear Fashion Show. RevWear is an annual celebration of radical fashion and culture. This year's show took place on March 12th and 13th at the Pearl Company.
Are we not all supposed to be equally respected? Are we not all supposed to be equally responsible?
We primarily hear about men committing rape, and we primarily hear about women getting together to prevent and stop rape. But where are the men getting together to s
Collective Direct Action
Steel City Solidarity is a group committed to direct action in order to mobilize precarious workers against bad bosses. Currently, its focus is on helping workers win back stolen wages. The overarching goal of this group is to build a movement where workers are united in gaining more control over their work.
Community Encouraged to Take Lead in Airborne Pollution Study
With the support and participation of high schools, community groups, and residents across the city, Environment Hamilton’s Good Neighbour Campaign (GNC) has introduced a new pollution study focused on monitoring two forms of tree lichen.
Respect for Healing Lands: Frozen islands, forgotten hills
BY KNOWING THE LAND IS RESISTANCE
Cootes Paradise is often described as the most valuable wild space in the Hamilton area, while nearby disturbed sites are widely dismissed as valueless. But what other forces have acted on Cootes and the surrounding area, and how does the land’s past relate to ideas of value?
Overnight, snow has covered the land. Since there are so many fun things to do in the winter that are harder to do other times, we set off towards the frozen marshes of Cootes Paradise.
Stop the Mid-Pen Highway
The Aerotropolis has attracted widespread opposition in this city, and for good reason. But there is another related project in the works that is literally thousands of times the size of the short-sighted Aerotropolis: the Mid-Peninsula Highway, or the Mid-Pen.
The Mid-Pen is a proposed massive highway linking the Niagara Region to the Greater Toronto Area through the south of Hamilton. It was originally proposed by the Mike Harris government in 2002 and it recently surfaced again.
What's the Deal with Aerotropolis?
Up on the mountain, surrounded by fields and trees, is The Hamilton International Airport. Humble beginnings this airport had, way back in 1940. At the time, the airport was primarily used for military operations, such as flight training and air navigation.
Lessons from North Africa
Political protest is not a new occurrence in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and the other states of the Arab League. Neither are the issues raised new to these most recent protests. Rising food costs, political corruption, unemployment, human rights violations, lack of sovereignty, and submission to foreign influence have all been the focus of past demonstrations in the region.
The True Story Behind the Rwandan and Congolese Genocides (Part III)
The 1959 social revolution in Rwanda saw the deposition of the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and the freeing of the majority Hutu population from serfdom. Following this, the Rwandan military became a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis.
The Movie Palace Ends Its Run
A couple of weeks ago a lot of people in Hamilton lost a friend. Call me sentimental, but I don’t know what else to call The Movie Palace. It was a theatre, but it was not just a theatre any more than a family farm is just a piece of land. In the interest of showing what we’ve lost I’d like to talk a little bit about what The Movie Palace meant to me.
A Letter from the Editors
It is hard to not feel the contagious spirit of revolution, especially when we witness the recent struggles of oppressed people that began in Tunisia and Egypt and have since spread throughout the region.
As we see this spirit spread through North Africa and the Middle East it is hard not to wonder what this could mean for us living in Canada.
Wikileaks, the Open Web, and the New Landlords of the Internet
For over two years now I’ve been kept an interest in a once-obscure online project to give whistle-blowers a venue to leak classified information to journalists and the whole World Wide Web alike.
Currently “Wikileaks” is a name with ubiquitous recognition, and a subject that nearly everyone has an opinion on (even if that opinion is “I wish people would stop talking about it”). Its affairs have also become an excellent opportunity for public discussion about the politics, evolution, and ownership of the Internet.
A letter from the editors
While we sought out content for February’s issue, we decided to theme the issue around food. In the past, Mayday has featured many articles on food and food security. After all, food is not optional. It is a fundamental part of being alive and something we think about every day. We have four stories in this issue that broadly address the theme of food – some stories we sought out, and others came to us.
Our Jobs Make Us Sick!
The website ontariojobs.com assures one searching for work that you can “find thousands of great jobs and employment information”. Hamilton specific sites such as employmenthamilton.com offer to “provide skills training and financial support to help workers find jobs in high-demand occupations”.
And our government’s politicians try to appease us by telling us about the decreasing unemployment rates they have brought about. What they aren’t telling us is what kinds of work are “in high demand”.
Seeds of Resistance
There was once a time when the nuts of the American Chestnut tree fed the eastern half of this continent.
Each winter, millions of humans and other animals relied on them for survival. As time went on and settlers arrived here, even as they destroyed the forests, they planted the Chestnut in their fields. One such place was the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, now known as St. Joesph’s Centre for Mountain Health Services (CMHS). The gardens, food trees, and forested patches on the hospital grounds provided patients there with activity
The True Story Behind The Rwandan And Congolese Genocides (Part II)
In last month’s issue we reviewed new evidence indicating the official Western narrative regarding the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is not just a lie, but one of the most successful propaganda coups of all time.
To briefly recapitulate. On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper, Le Monde, revealed a leaked UN document (authored by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay) detailing the “most serious human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and of Rwanda over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003)”. The document places responsibility for the vast majorit
