Policing in the core and access to community space are two recurring themes from the gentrification debate; three articles this month address them. In “Where Can We Go Now?” Evelyn Fletcher examines how well-used community space in the Jamesville Community Centre was converted into storage space for the Catholic School Board’s filing cabinets. Community space in the downtown, especially free, accessible space, is already scarce; and we cannot simply allow it to be lost without taking note.
Continuing the theme of access to community space, “Questioning the ACTION Team” looks at how new policing tactics in the downtown have changed who is included or excluded from that space. So far, most media coverage of the ACTION team has been shallowly congratulatory and has ignored important issues – such as contrasting ACTION’s stated aims with the actual effects of their deployment.
In “Police, the Media, and Accountability”, Undustrial explores how police have been portrayed by the media in the Golden Horseshoe during the last year. These reflections lead to some interesting conclusions about the changing role of media in enforcing police accountability.
In other Mayday news, for the last several months, we have been developing a plan to expand to sixteen pages from the current twelve, and to introduce honorariums for writers and editors. The first step in this plan was developing content guidelines, and the four words we arrived at -- Critical, Current, Visionary, and Progressive – have become guiding principles for this project.
Our next goal is to launch a drive for Sustainers. Sustainers are people who pledge a small donation ($5-10) per month to keep Mayday Magazine going. We hope over the coming months to shift from being dependent primarily on ads to cover our costs to being supported by a community of readers who become sustainers.
We recently partnered with The Dominion, a grassroots monthly paper known for its excellent investigative journalism on stories from across Canada. We are now able to offer our readers the chance to sustain Mayday and subscribe to the Dominion with a single payment.
Check out our website, maydaymagazine.ca for more details of our Sustainer campaign. And visit The Dominion’s site at dominionpaper.ca for some of the best current affairs writing available in the country today.
Sunil Angrish, Peter Hopperton, and Seth Veenstra
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
