CONTENTS

1. CALLS TO ACTION
2. EVENTS
3. ARTICLES
4. EMPLOYMENT

Google, don’t punish workers for standing with Palestinians!

Thousands of workers at Google and Amazon have called on their employers to end their harmful contracts with the Israeli government, including the billion-dollar Project Nimbus. It’s simple: Workers at Google and Amazon don’t want their labor to power apartheid.

But when Google worker Ariel Koren started publicly speaking out against these contracts and in support of Palestinian rights, Google retaliated by attempting to force her from her position.

jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Election Flyering

When: May 6, May 7, May 14.

Join parents and education workers distributing flyers in different neighbourhoods. Share with voters what public education needs from the next provincial government, so our kids get the schools they deserve!

Please fill out this form to sign up and volunteer.

#Rally4ODSP

When: April 28th, 11am
Where: Queen’s Park

We’ve partnered w/ @ODCoalition and @djnontario to hold our 2nd #Rally4ODSP @ Queen’s Park on Apr 28th, to draw attention and demand an increase to woefully inadequate SA rates which have REMAINED FROZEN since 2018!

twitter.com

Day of Mourning

When: April 28th, 12noon
Where: Larry Sefton Park (just behind City Hall). 500 Bay St.

Join the Labour Council for the in-person Day of Mourning ceremony on April 28, honouring workers who have been killed or injured at work or suffered from occupational disease.

labourcouncil.ca

When: April 28th, 1pm
Where: 400 University Ave

The Injured Workers Action for Justice will deliver an open letter from injured workers and survivors of workplace deaths to Labour Minister Monte McNaughton, demanding justice and calling on him to ensure protection for all workers.

Facebook event

Overseas Filipinos for Leni and Kiko

When: April 29th, 9am

This is an online global event to be attended by Filipinos overseas, returned migrants and their families calling for change in the Philippines.

You can join via FB livestream and via zoom: Meeting ID: 860 6031 4378; Passcode: 429778

Facebook event

Haitian Voices of Resistance Today

When: April 30th, 2pm

A Webinar Featuring Dr. Maryse Narcisse, Coordinator of Fanmi Lavalas and Joel Edouard “Pacha” Vorbe. Both are Members of the Executive Committee of Fanmi Lavalas.

Learn about the courageous and deepening struggle by the Haitian people to remove the US-backed dictatorship of Ariel Henry and to end the US/ UN occupation of Haiti.

zoom.us

International Workers’ Day Political and Cultural Event

When: April 30th, 3:30pm

Third year online – keeping all safe and allowing for world-wide access. The United May Day Committee keeps alive the tradition of International Workers’ Day by organizing a political and cultural event to complement the annual march on the streets of Toronto. We bring together labour, political, and international speakers with a rich array of talented performers from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

Facebook event | YouTube

37th annual Mayworks Festival

When: May 1st – 28th

As we organize this year’s festival, we are moved and inspired by the networks of care celebrated through the work of the artists in our festival program. They celebrate how working people extend care to each other through generations, how this care is forged in resistance, and how it is shaped and remembered through story.

We’re excited to return to in-person programming while continuing to offer digital art and online events.

mayworks.ca

Rally for Decent Work

When: May 1st, 12pm
Where: Grange Park (south of Dundas Street West and Beverly Street, behind Ontario College of Art and Design University)

We all deserve better. We deserve to have decent wages, adequate hours and safe working conditions. We deserve affordable housing, proper health care and education, all the services we rely on. Every single one of us deserves enough income to live on, whether we are working or in-between jobs; whether we are injured or disabled; whether we are retired or just starting out; whether we are sick or on parental leave. It’s our future, our fight — let’s make it happen.

justice4workers.org

May Day Rally

When: May 1st, 12pm
Where: Nathan Phillips Square

On May 1 International Workers Day, rally at noon at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square and march on Queen’s Park! Check the map for feeder marches starting at various locations/times.

Facebook event | Ontario map of events

Film screening: A Time to Rise

When: Tuesday May 3rd, 6pm
Where: TIFF Lightbox

The Asian Canadian Labour Alliance (ACLA) and Justice for Migrant Workers (J4MW) are helping to organize people to attend the Hot Docs May 3rd screening of Anand Padwaran’s ‘A Time to Rise’. The film highlights the organizing efforts of the Canadian Farmworkers Union in the 1980’s. As it is Asian Heritage Month, we want people to come together and watch this film that explores an important historical event in our labour movement’s history. It is also a topic for our contemporary period to examine lessons learnt to what is ongoing today in fields across Canada. Below you will find the link to the Hot Docs program and the date of this feature presentation. We are sponsoring community members to attend if you are interested in attending please email Anna Liu aliu@aclaontario.ca.

hotdocs.ca

Radical Housewives

When: May 3rd, 7pm; May 5th, 7pm; May 8th 2pm

What happens when women have had enough with rising prices? At many points in history, they rose up angrily and demanded justice. Toronto had an example of that kind of action that has been almost forgotten.

In 1937 hundreds of housewives came together to protest the high cost of food in the city. For the next decade the Toronto Housewives Consumer Association defied gender stereotypes of passive women and mobilized thousands of housewives to keep the prices of domestic goods under control.

The Toronto Workers’ Theatre Group has revived the story of these determined women in the hopes that their passion and commitment can inspire new struggles for social justice for working people in the 21st century.

mailchi.mp

Building the Solidarity Dividend

When: May 4th, 8pm

A renowned expert on the American economy, Heather McGhee is one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers exploring inequality today. Both her viral TED talk and her instant New York Times bestseller The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together reveal the devastating true cost of racism – not just for people of colour, but for everyone. Deeply stirring, intelligent, and compassionate, McGhee’s vision offers an actionable roadmap during one of the most critical – and most troubled – periods in history.

ofl.ca

The Fight To Win Housing For All

When: May 5th, 7pm

The crisis of housing and homelessness is worsening in Toronto and across Canada. Government policy has led us to this point. Please join us with longtime activists and authors A.J. Withers and Gaetan Heroux. Learn about the history that has brought us here as well as the struggles to fight back. Engage in ways to help fight for decent, affordable housing for all and an end to homelessness.

Speakers:
– A.J. Withers is a longtime anti-poverty activist and author of three books. Their most recent is Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing.
– Gaetan Heroux has organized with Toronto’s homeless people for 30+ years. He is the author of Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History.

mailchi.mp

Ford Government Stumbles into Healthcare Staffing Crisis

By Doug Allan

Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021. Compounded that represents an 82% increase in two years. Correspondingly, the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to $23.70) from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021. The increase in job vacancies is particularly marked in healthcare industries. In hospitals, there has been a continuous increase in the number of job vacancies and in the job vacancy rate since 2015, with a sharp spike in the last two years.

Source: The Bullet No. 2601

Federal Budget 2022

By Marjorie Griffin Cohen

A consistent theme in the media, when writing about healthcare in Canada, is to use disparaging adjectives, such as ‘dilapidated,’ ‘ramshackled,’ ‘exhausted.’ They are not exaggerations. The main thing we know is that healthcare here underperforms, and does not meet current needs, a fact distressingly visible during the disasters of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Liberal government Federal Budget 2022 does too little to begin the path toward reversing the deterioration of the healthcare sector, despite the one-time $2-billion (from 2021-22 expenditures) to deal with surgical backlogs and an increase in transfer payments to provinces for healthcare. In certain crucial areas it does nothing.

Source: The Bullet No. 2602

Anti-Abortionists Played the Long Game, And They Are Winning

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across the United States. After Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a draconian bill, SB 8, into law last year, empowering bounty hunters to sue abortion providers, those seeking care fled to the neighboring states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. But Republican (GOP) leaders were ready for them.

Source: The Bullet No. 2603

Right-Wing Populism in Pakistan

By Ayyaz Mallick

Imran Khan is a fetish. He is a fetish in the precise sense that Karl Marx talked about in his explication of the “fetishism of commodities.” The commodity, as Marx reminds us, is a strange thing: a creation of labour and sensuous human activity but one which rules over the same as a demi-god unmoored from its social and historical basis. Indeed, in the society of exchange and profit, the commodity takes on what Marx calls a “supra-sensual” and “supra-societal objectivity” – whereby, even while being an object itself, the commodity takes on the characteristics of a subject.

Source: The Bullet No. 2604

Decent Work for All is the Prescription for a Healthy Pandemic Recovery

By Doreen Nicoll

As Ontario enters the sixth wave of COVID, almost all public health restrictions have been lifted. It’s well established that precarious employment has been a key driver of the pandemic. Workers in low-wage, precarious jobs still don’t have access to permanent protections. The failure of the Doug Ford government to improve working conditions has widened existing health inequities disproportionately impacting racialized, women and migrant workers.

Source: The Bullet No. 2605

Broken Pencil Associate Publisher

Broken Pencil is an independently published magazine, website, and cultural organization dedicated to promoting and celebrating zine culture and the independent printed arts. We are currently hiring an Associate Publisher/Special Events and Subscription Coordinator. This is an ongoing, 2.5 days a week, part-time, paid position based out of our downtown Toronto office. Competitive salary starting at $25,000. Candidates must be able to work out of our downtown office when public health circumstances permit.

Deadline to apply: May 5, 2022

If you have any questions, please email BP Publisher Hal Niedzviecki at hal@brokenpencil.com

google.com

Work for TTCRiders

Are you passionate about social and economic justice? Do you want hands-on experience and training in grassroots community organizing?

Apply to join our summer team! TTCriders is hiring for several youth (ages 30 and under) positions, thanks to Canada Summer Jobs funding. TTCriders is a membership-based organization of transit users in Toronto, Ontario.

Position #1: Community Planner/Organizer
Position #2: Social Media Community Manager
35 hours/week, $16/hour starting May 2

Email your resume and cover letter in one PDF document to info@ttcriders.ca as soon as possible, and no later than May 1st, 2022 at 7pm.

ttcriders.ca