CONTENTS
CALLS TO ACTION
Tax Mansions to Fund our City
It’s time the richest 0.5% in Toronto pay a little more so we can fund our city. That’s why we are supporting Mayor Chow’s plan to bring in a mansion tax for houses worth over $3 million. This will pay for affordable housing, transit, libraries, and school meals for kids.Council votes soon. Sign to let your councillor know you support taxing the ultra-rich.
progresstoronto.ca
EVENTS
Community Care on Campus
When: January 29th, 11:30amWhere: 288 Church St, Room 707/709, Toronto Metropolitan University
Featuring disability justice scholar and care collective organizer, Dr. Loree Erickson, and collective care artist–researcher and TMU ComCult alum, L. Morris, this conversation and workshop will take up how we care for one another in university.
This session will animate Loree’s long-standing and revolutionary work with care collectives and L’s practices of collective care, mutual aid, and harm reduction. We will open with a conversation between Loree and L on collective care, mutual aid, and abolition. We will then have small group discussions and maker circles where participants will reflect on their own care practices and networks, consider tensions between state-supported care and community-led care, and imagine concrete ways to build and sustain care on campus. We will engage these topics through conversation and collage.
eventbrite.ca
Climate Disinformation is getting smarter
When: Thursday Jan 29th, 3pmClimate mis/disinformation is no longer confined to social media or fringe corners of the internet. From coordinated marketing campaigns to AI-assisted messaging designed to sound local, reasonable, and grassroots, it’s showing up across Canada and in its city halls. The result? Delayed climate action and growing distrust in democratic institutions. Join panelists to examine how climate mis/disinformation is spreading, why local politicians are increasingly vulnerable, and what can be done to respond, online or off. Hosted by Canada’s National Observer.
zoom.us
Higher Education Organizing Meeting
When: January 29th, 6:30pmWhere: College Street United Church, 502 Bathurst St
Building on our first successful meeting in November, we’re forging ahead with our sectoral-wide organizing strategy in the higher education sector. Our second organizing meeting, which will be held on January 15th, is focused on creating a Solidarity Pact for higher education workers. Sean Smith – a former activist and organizer with the Toronto Airport Workers Council – will be joining us to discuss what a solidarity pact is, how Toronto Airport Workers used it as an organizing tool, and how we can develop something similar to build our collective power across the education sector.
The purpose of January’s meeting is threefold: (1) understanding what a Solidarity Pact is and how it can help us develop unity across the sector; (2) begin constructing our own Solidarity Pact; and (3) strategize ways we can use our Solidarity Pact as an organizing tool across the higher education sector.
tally.so
Lea Ypi: Indignity, A Life Reimagined
When: January 29th, 7pmWhere: Toronto Public Library, Bram and Bluma Appel Salon
Political theorist and author Lea Ypi discusses her new book Indignity and discusses how political systems shape individual lives.
TPL and Toronto Metropolitan University present acclaimed political theorist and author Lea Ypi in conversation with Sanjay Ruparelia at the Toronto Reference Library’s Appel Salon.
As Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics and author of the international bestseller Free, Lea Ypi brings a unique perspective to understanding democracy’s fragility – one forged through her childhood in communist Albania – and her scholarly work on freedom, citizenship, and political transformation.
eventbrite.ca
World’s Largest Nuclear Station in Port Hope
When: Thursday January 29th, 7pmOntario Power Generation (OPG) is seeking permission to build the world’s largest nuclear station in Port Hope, Ontario – the same community that is undergoing the largest environmental remediation project in Canada’s history due to radioactive contamination from past nuclear projects. This nuclear megaproject will cost at least $230 billion and will lead to a dramatic rise in Ontario’s electricity rates and/or taxes. New nuclear reactors are the highest cost option to meet our electricity needs: up to 10 times higher than energy efficiency, and 2 to 8 times higher than new wind and solar energy. What are the alternatives to this project? And how can we engage?
zoom.us
Immigrants are Welcome Here
When: Saturday Jan 31st, 1pmWhere: Dentonia Park Clubhouse, 80 Thyra Ave
A growing climate of hate is being fuelled by policies attacking immigrants. Anti-immigrant rhetoric, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism have emboldened far-right groups in our neighbourhood to spread their hate. Please join this community discussion about the reality of life for newcomers, how we can overcome myths that seek to blame immigrants, and how we can build unity and diversity while opposing division and hatred.
djctoronto.com
Hands Off Venezuela – Hands Off Cuba!
When: Saturday Jan 31st, 3pmWhere: 24 Cecil St.
US intervention in the Caribbean threatens energy supplies, shipping lanes, trade routes and the livelihoods of millions across Latin America and the Caribbean. But it is also a deliberate assault on Cuba. During the first Trump administration, Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba were sanctioned to worsen shortages. Today, by attacking trade between Cuba and its closest regional partner, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pursuing their long-held objective: to isolate, economically strangle, and politically destabilise both Cuba and Venezuela.
Stand with Venezuela and Cuba against imperialist intervention and to defend peace, sovereignty, and the right of nations to determine their own futures.
forumoncuba.com | Facebook
FilmSocial: The Day Iceland Stood Still
When: January 31st, 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm)Where: Friends House, 60 Lowther Ave
The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is very pleased to present a special screening of “The Day Iceland Stood Still.”
What if every woman simply took the day off? The Day Iceland Stood Still is a film that answers that question. In Iceland, on October 24, 1975, women walked out and stopped working. 90% of the women of Iceland refused to work, cook, or take care of the children. They brought their country to a standstill and catapulted Iceland to the “best place in the world to be a woman” today.
We’re also honoured to have longtime activist Judy Rebick join us as a very special guest!
tickettailor.com
The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine
When: February 1st and 7th, 6pmJoin the Toronto Chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement for a special 2-part book club on Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine. This interactive book club will take place in-person over two evenings on Sunday, February 1 and Saturday, February 7.
The first session aims to provide relevant context and background for understanding Palestinian revolutionary history and the second session builds upon these learnings as it applies to the Revolt period itself. Both sessions are interactive with breakout group discussions and planned activities.
instagram.com
No Neutrals There
When: February 3rd, 7pmWebinar discussion and Q&A with author Jeff Schuhrke on his new book No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine with guest speaker Hassan Husseini, Labour 4 Palestine National Steering Committee — organized by People’s Voice newspaper, The Canadian Freelance Union, Labour 4 Palestine, and New Labour Press.
Discussion will be hosted and moderated by Aminah Sheikh, Vice President of the Canadian Freelance Union and Peter Saczkowski, PV Forum organizer.
events.humanitix.com
Who Owns Your Image?
When: Wednesday, February 4th, 12:30 EST (18:30 CET)Naomi Klein joins Yanis Varoufakis for a conversation on deepfakes, identity theft, power, credibility and truth in the age of noise — drawing on Naomi’s Doppelgänger. Hosted by Mehran Khalili. Join live and ask your questions.
youtube.com
Labour Organizing Workshop
When: Wednesday February 4th, 2pmWhere: 280N York Lanes, 80 York Blvd
In this two hour interactive session, you will learn: what organizing is, both as a general approach to enacting change, and in the context of the workplace specifically, i.e., labour organizing.
democraticsocialists.ca
Booklaunch: Organizing Amazon
When: February 5th, 7pmWhere: College Street United Church, 502 Bathurst St
Amazon workers in Coventry, England, have won breakthrough wage gains through years of strikes and organizing at the global giant. Now, a new book documents these achievements and the militant grassroots methods the workers and their GMB union employed to build worker power.
Organizing Amazon: Building Worker Power Under Conditions of Fragmentation, Precarity and Regimentation offers a rich case study of the factors contributing to the union’s successes and setbacks. It provides a practical organizing model applicable beyond Amazon, offering strategies to engage the workforce, sustain support, and develop leadership.
tickettailor.com
Introduction to Socialism
When: Sundays, February 15 to April 5Curious about socialism? Interested about if it is really possible and taking a sober look at the problems it will face? Want to discuss how to begin affecting change right now?
In these uncertain and dangerous times, The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is a space to listen, discuss and challenge the contemporary relevancy of socialism.
tickettailor.com
ARTICLES
Why “Bubble Zones” Are a Toxic Threat to Democracy
By Larry HaivenOver the past several years, a new method of bulldozing civil rights in Canada has emerged from the playbooks of die-hard Israel-supporting organizations. It is called “bubble zones.” A bubble zone is a police, judicial, or legislative action forbidding protests within a designated perimeter surrounding certain buildings or locations.
Source: The Bullet No. 3251
Social Strikes: Confronting ICE and Resisting Authoritarianism
As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power – who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn – are no longer abstract. They are immediate and practical. Labour historian and longtime organizer Jeremy Brecher has spent decades grappling with these questions, and in a recent series of reports, culminating in “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny?” he argues that large-scale noncooperation may be one of the few strategies capable of halting an authoritarian slide.Source: The Bullet No. 3252
Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis
By Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alessandra MularoniThis is a lightly-edited extract from Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis by Nick-Dyer Witheford and Alessandra Mularoni, published by Verso Books. The book’s Preface – “A Spectre Haunts the Planet” – is already available at Verso’s blog. So, to offer something different, here we present its last few pages. The term Cybernetic Circulation Complex (CCC) to refer to the US tech sector headed by the so-called Magnificent Seven corporations, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
Source: The Bullet No. 3253
Iran: Regime Change or Leader Change
By Saeed RahnemaIran is once again in turmoil. Street uprisings have shaken the very foundations of the clerical regime, and its apparatus of repression is brutally killing unarmed demonstrators. The current movement shares both similarities and differences with the previous mass movement of 2022, Woman / Life / Freedom. That earlier movement was primarily social and cultural in nature: Iranian women, supported by youth, rose against the compulsory hijab policy. Despite paying a heavy price, they succeeded in pushing the regime back. Today, among predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, Iran has the highest number of unveiled women visible in public spaces.
Source: The Bullet No. 3254
The Promise That Canada Broke
By Migrant Rights NetworkIt’s been a month since Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled the caregiver permanent residency program, at least for 2026. He did it on December 19th – the Friday before Christmas, one day after International Migrants Day. For decades, the caregiver program came with a clear promise: provide essential care for our families, and you will be granted permanent residency. That guarantee convinced thousands of women to uproot their lives to come here.
Source: The Bullet No. 3255