we movie to canada: wmtc annual movie awards, 2015-16 edition

I'm posting my annual movie awards later and later every year. I'm also watching fewer movies, because I'm watching more TV shows. When I come home on Friday or Saturday, exhausted and needing total downtime, sometimes even a movie is too much mental effort; binge-watching a series is somehow easier. So I end up with a ton of movies on the List, unwatched, year after year.

But no matter. Here's what I did watch, and what I thought.

First, the annual recap.
- Canadian musicians and comedians (2006-07 and 2007-08)
- my beverage of choice (2008-09)
- famous people who died during the past year (2009-10)
- where I'd like to be (2010-11)
- vegetables (2011-12) (I was out of ideas!)
- Big Life Events in a year full of Big Life Changes (2012-13)
- cheese (I'm getting desperate!) (2013-14)
- and last year (2014-15) types of travels.

This year I've recycling a theme from a few years back. It was a bad year for the deaths of famous people, and it's only going to get worse, as a generation of musicians, actors, and thinkers that people in my age-range have worshipped have begun to leave us.

War resister, peace activist, athlete, orator, leader. Warrior for peace and justice. Proud Muslim. Few have sacrificed as much for peace as he did. Muhammad Ali was The Greatest, and so were these movies.

The Wire, Season 4
-- The absolute best viewing this past year wasn't a movie at all. Season Four of The Wire has more positive characters, more emotional investment, and a more profound impact than anything we've seen yet. The Wire is likely the best series ever aired, and this is its best season (so far). Exceptional.

Call Me Lucky
-- A hilarious, heartbreaking, inspiring movie about a man you've probably never heard of, featuring a lot of famous people who owe so much to him. My full review is here. I want everyone to see this movie.

Spotlight
-- A riveting drama and a fascinating history. A story that should never be forgotten, beautifully told. The DVD has interviews with the real Spotlight team.

Pride
-- Solidarity that made me weep with joy. A vision of the possible. Inspiration of the highest order.

Merchants of Doubt
-- An important, terrifying look into public manipulation, from Big Tobacco to climate change deniers. The must-see documentary of my movie season.

The Duke of Burgundy
-- This darkly erotic love story is kind of the anti- Blue Is the Warmest Colour: crackling with sexual tension, and not a bit of skin exposed. A tender love story about love that is not tender.

Brilliant, multi-talented, unique, influential, and gorgeous. There was only one David Bowie, and he influenced our culture in myriad ways. He did put out some clunkers and some mainstream fluff in his day. Like Bowie, these films are not perfect, but they are excellent.

Blue Ruin
-- A low-budget revenge thriller, as bloody as it is suspenseful. Riveting.

Far from the Madding Crowd
-- A lush, luminous adaptation of a great novel. I was skeptical, then found myself completely caught up in the characters and their tragic or triumphant lives.

The Search for General Tso
-- This documentary uses Ameican Chinese food as an avenue to explore identity, authenticity, and otherness. So well done.

Boardwalk Empire, Seasons 1-3
-- This high-quality historical fiction about boss politics in the Prohibition era ticks every box: gorgeous period setting, social significance, political intrigue, class war, and complex relationships. The first few seasons were stellar. After that, the great storylines faded away, and the plots became too repetitive. But these first three seasons, wow. Violence warnings, bigtime.

The Good Wife, Seasons 6 and 7
-- Rarely does a show stay great for seven full seasons. Writing, acting, storylines, politics -- all brilliant. I loved the ending, and am sad that it's over. Very nearly a Muhammad Ali.

Angel
-- I was skeptical about this Buffy spinoff, but ended up liking it more than Buffy -- the characters are more varied, the interplay and overlap of good and evil is even more complex. It's also funnier. Great stuff, with huge thanks to my Facebook friends who recommended it.

Series Noire
-- This French-language series from Quebec begins as a clever self-referential comedy, then deepens to a wry, bittersweet comedy-drama. Like BoJack Horseman, How I Met Your Mother, and -- my favourite TV comedy of all time -- The Larry Sanders Show, thos comedy improved when it tapped into pain. Really worth watching.

The shocking deaths of David Bowie and Prince overshadowed the passing of many other musical artists. Allen Toussaint, Merle Haggard, and Maurice White all created original, important music. Each man took established genres and threw in elements of culture, diverse influences, and their unique visions to create something new, different, and beautiful. Their music was solid, good, and sometimes wonderful. So are these movies.

Tangerine
-- Part buddy road trip, part bedroom farce, funny, sad, and outrageous. Plus a trans actor plays a trans person. Plus it was shot on an iPhone. Not a perfect movie, but a really good one.

The Overnighters
-- A stark documentary that reveals a sad slice of the dead American dream. Bleak, compassionate, thought-provoking, surprising.

BoJack Horseman, Season 2
-- As often happens, this comedy improved when it found the pain beneath the laughs. The second BoJack season was often very sad, and also very good.

Detectorists
-- A gentle, good-natured comedy about some misfits, their subculture, and their attempts at connection. Lovely, and left me wanting more.

Ex Machina
-- Plot twists, suspense, and an absolute shocker of an ending. For an exploration of human-technology love, see Her. For a thriller that happens to feature some androids, see this.

Force Majeure
-- How do we behave in a crisis? What would you do if...? The answer to that question sets off a chain of events that remakes a family's life. A bit long and occasionally tedious, but thought-provoking and worth seeing.

God's Pocket
-- A strange comedy-drama romp, and a reminder of Philip Seymour Hoffman's quietly perfect talents.

Holes
-- I finally saw the film adaptation of one of my favourite junior novels. It almost does justice to the book, which is very high praise.

How We Got to Now
-- Steven Johnson's PBS series does a good job of making a science-history lecture visually entertaining. I've only seen two episodes, but plan on watching all six.

Iris
-- The Big Man of Documentaries meets the flamboyant Grand Dame of Fashion, when 87-year-old presents 93-year-old Iris Apfel. A film about free spirits and life as creation. Really fun.

Keith Richards: Under the Influence
-- The latest revision of Keith's biography. Diehard fans won't learn anything new, but it's Keith, so it's fun.

Life Itself
-- This tribute to Roger Ebert, the film critic and cultural icon, was... good. I wanted it to be better, but if you were a fan of Ebert's, you'll enjoy it.

Magic in the Moonlight
-- Solid Woody Allen. Won't change your life, but if you like Woody's comedies, this is one of them.

Master of None
-- Aziz Ansari tries to break out of the comic-turned-sitcom mold, and sometimes succeeds. Funny and interesting enough to watch another season.

Pariah
-- An African-American girl from a working-class, religious family, comes to terms with her sexuality and claims her identity. Even though the story has been told many times, when it's told well, it's touching and inspiring. A young filmmaker's very impressive debut.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)
-- A nice take on the Sherlock Holmes franchise. I found myself skipping through the action scenes to find the movie underneath, but it's fun and well done. Also a reminder that I just don't like action movies.

The Clouds of Sils Maria
-- In a film about actors and theatre, what's real and what's theatre shifts and bends and flips. This film is purposely disorienting and confusing, and strangely compelling.

The Dark Matter of Love
-- A cheery Midwestern family adopts older orphans from Russia, and learns that love and good intentions do not conquer all. This documentary follows their struggles, their perservanace, and their work with family therapists to try to get it right. Well done.

The End of the Tour
-- If you're not a writer or a fan of David Foster Wallace, I don't think this film adaptation of David Lipsky's Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself would be of much interest. But if you do fall into either of those categories, it's interesting and though-provoking. Jason Segal's portrayal of DFW is relevatory.

The Great Train Robbery
-- A funny, suspenseful, well written crime caper, told in a two-part series, first from the robbers' point of view, then from the police's. The first part is much more interesting than the second, but in general it's enjoyable. Lovely 1960s period piece, too.

The Imitation Game
-- This is not the first film about Alan Turing, the Enigma machine, and the homophobic persecution of Turing, but it's a very solid new take. Plus Benedict Cumberbatch. If you ever have the opportunity to watch Derek Jacobi as Turing, it's a very different portrayal, and also very good.

Tiger Eyes
-- Amazingly, this is the first Judy Blume novel to get a film adaptation. Directed by Lawrence Blume, the author's son, it's a simple and direct coming-of-age story. A tad melodramatic, but that's teenage life. Nicely done.

Rectify, Seasons 1 and 2
-- This series started out strong, but lost its way. Interesting, though, and worth seeing. We might try again at some point.

Love & Mercy
-- This biopic about Brian Wilson transcends the "troubled genius" mold. A good music film about struggle and redemption. The DVD extras include Brian and Melinda Wilson themselves.

Badults, Season 1
-- If you're old enough to remember The Young Ones, this is an updated version of the slacker-dudes-on-their-own motif, featuring members of a comedy troupe called Pappy's. The first season is funny. Please stop there.

Burnistoun
-- Could it be we've discovered a replacement for Kids in the Hall? I doubt this Scottish sketch comedy show will sustain itself as long as KITH, but Season 1 was hilarious.

Mike Tyson Mysteries
-- Are you watching this? It's funny, bizarre, occasionally hilarious, and episodes are only 10 minutes long. If you're a fan of Robert Smigel, you'll want to check this out.

Columbo
-- I started re-watching this detective show from my youth half as a joke, then discovered it was brilliant. More specifically, Peter Falk was brilliant. Lieutenant Columbo must be one of the greatest television characters of all time. The show was an absolute pleasure.

Glenn Frey probably made some halfway decent music at some point. His career probably wasn't a total waste, but if I never heard another Eagles song again, that would be fine with me. These movies and shows don't completely suck, but they are generally failures.

Garfunkle & Oates
-- The female Flight of the Conchords is mildly amusing, but it only plays one note, and gets old fast.

I Believe in Unicorns
-- I wanted to like this teenage story of dangerous love, escape, and redemption. But I just couldn't buy any of it. Natalie Dyer's performance is excellent. Other than that, ugh.

The Thread
-- Online communities and their impact on mainstream news and public perception is a fascinating topic. I'd love to see a movie like this, but better. Halfway between Glenn Frey and Haggard-Toussaint-White.

Last Weekend
-- Family melodrama about incredibly privileged people and their relative self-awareness or lack thereof. The always brilliant Patricia Clarkson saves this from the scrap heap.

Stephen Fry Live: More Fool Me
-- Stephen Fry is a treasure. This live show is occasionally good, but mostly meh.

Fruitvale Station
-- A fictional dramatization of the last day of Oscar Grant, who was killed by police in the Bay Area. This is one of those movies that I'm glad exists, but isn't very good.

God Bless the Child
-- The camera follows a group of siblings left alone by their depressed mother, with minimal plot and seemingly no script. It was such an interesting concept, and I wanted to love it. But it was so boring!

Levon Helm: Ain't in It for My Health
-- I love The Band and I loved Levon Helm, so I found something to enjoy in this movie. Levon deserved a great film and this is not it.

Manglehorn
-- Al Pacino is a misanthrope, then presto-change-oh, he's redeemed. What a disappointment!

No No: A Dockumentary
-- Do you want to see this baseball film? No. No.

Paper Towns
-- If this makes you read more John Green, it has served some purpose. Otherwise, a must to avoid.

Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation
-- This movie has some nice views of La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, so it wasn't a total waste.

Schitt's Creek
-- This started out full of promise, but faded first. It should have been much funnier.

Set Fire to the Stars
-- The best part of this film about Dylan Thomas is the title. There are a couple of good moments that save it from the bottom of the barrel.

Welcome to Me
-- Kristen Wiig is good, but quirky just to be quirky is just silly.

Seymour: An Introduction
-- This movie about an inspiring teacher might be interesting to someone who already knew and cared about him. But when it comes to introducing Seymour Bernstein and getting me to care about him, it completely failed.

Paul
-- I'm starting to wonder if Simon Pegg will ever appear in a good movie again. This road-trip romp has a laugh or two, but wow, some serious dreck.

Birdman
-- Apparently we're the only people who didn't like this movie. Please don't explain it to me. I understood it. I did not enjoy it.

W1A
-- This spoof starts out with great promise, then reveals it contains only one note, played over and over and over.

Antonin Scalia was a disgusting excuse for a human being and a dangerous US Supreme Court Justice. He should never be missed and these movies should not be watched.

Skating to New York
-- If you must see all things Canadian, don't say I didn't warn you.

The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
-- An angry, bitter man finds out he is about to die, and runs around trying to love everyone. Yikes.

The Slap
-- I don't need to like every character in order to like a movie, but when every single character is hideously unlikeable, I must run away.

Computer Chess
-- What the hell? This was several critics' pick for best indie film of the year. I found it unwatchable.

Interstellar
-- Lurching from one plot hole to the next, awash in melodrama and rickety devices, this movie is a complete mess. Once again I am reminded not to be fooled by hype.

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
-- This film might be an insider joke that I'm not in on. I'm not really sure, as I only got through 20 minutes.

Badults, Season 2
-- Stop after Season 1.


Also:

Binge Watching:
Angel (loved)
Murdoch Mysteries S9 (still enjoying in spite of myself)
Columbo S1-12 (a classic)

Comedy Before Bed
M*A*S*H
How I Met Your Mother (currently on S8 of 9)

happy birthday to me

Apparently I have been alive on this planet for 55 years. That seems completely impossible. Yet there it is.

As always on my birthday, I feel incredibly fortunate to be alive and living such a good life. Thanks for still reading my (now occasional) blather.

pupdate: happiness is a cancer-free dog

Tala's stitches were removed last week, and we got the full biopsy results: clean margins all around. The surgeon says she does not expect to ever see us again. A week later, I'm still feeling waves of joy and relief. Allan takes the good news in stride, by not letting himself fully contemplate the bad news to begin with.

Watching Tala's crazy-thick fur grow in is interesting! A soft undercoat has already grown in. We're told the thick guard hairs take a long time. 

Diego's progress continues to amaze me on a daily basis. We still bring Rollover on all walks, but in most situations, he is calm, or if he's agitated, he immediately turns to his person for a treat. Quick, quick, treat me before I explode! And we do.

The only scenario where he still consistently reacts is when we encounter other dogs in the small space of the elevator area on the main floor. Even then, he lets me lead him away, and as soon as the other dog is out of sight, Diego stops barking and relaxes. This is a long way from constant meltdowns at any distance, which would then throw him off for the entire walk. 

In conclusion, dogs are amazing.

the greatest, forever. rest in power muhammad ali.

Revolutionary thought of the day, from a revolutionary American.

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion.

But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.

Muhammad Ali, 1967

Two thoughts from my Facebook feed.

I was saddened to hear that War Resister Muhammad Ali has died.

His courageous refusal to fight in Viet Nam inspired and encouraged me in doing likewise. Nor was it simply a matter of his religious commitment. When he said "No Vietnamese ever called me "nigger"", he exposed the war for what it was, and African American life for what it was.

As a War Resister, Muhammad Ali was The Greatest.

Lee Zaslofsky, War Resisters Support Campaign

RIP peoples champ. And writer friends, could we please remember to mention Ali was a proud Muslim? Bold, yes. Brave, yes. Handsome, yes. But also a deeply spiritual person. That can't be forgotten today or ever. ‪#‎stopislamophobia‬

Joel H., Ottawa

Not all white people are racist?

There are many white people who mean right and in their hearts wanna do right. If 10,000 snakes were coming down that aisle now, and I had a door that I could shut, and in that 10,000, 1,000 meant right, 1,000 rattlesnakes didn’t want to bite me, I knew they were good... Should I let all these rattlesnakes come down, hoping that that thousand get together and form a shield? Or should I just close the door and stay safe?

Muhammad Ali, 1971

‘I Just Wanted to Be Free’: The Radical Reverberations of Muhammad Ali, Dave Zirin, The Nation

Muhammad Ali Risked It All When He Opposed The Vietnam War, Justin Block, HuffPo

Muhammad Ali: Worshipped. Misunderstood. Exploited., Ishamel Reed, New York Times Op-Ed

Official New York Times obituary, written by Robert Lipsyte, a steadfastly progressive voice in the overwhelmingly ultra-conservative field of sportswriting

If you haven't seen any of these movies, do yourself a favour. None is perfect, all are flawed, but all worth seeing.

When We Were Kings (1996)

The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013)

I Am Ali (2014)

things i heard at the library: an occasional series: #21

Visibly anxious and upset customer: Can you please help me? Something is wrong with this computer!

I go over to take a look. The public computer is still starting up, and Internet Explorer (sadly, the default browser) is slowly opening.

Me (pointing to the Chrome icon on the taskbar): Let's try this browser instead. You'll find it's better than Internet Explorer.

Visibly anxious customer: No! I can't! I have to use the internet!

Me: I understand. This is also the internet. It's a different browser - a different tool for accessing the internet. Most people find it works better.

I help her open Chrome, and show her where to start, and return to the information desk. A few minutes later...

VAC: I can't use this computer! It's broken! I can't use this computer!

Me: All right, you're free to use any available computer. Why don't you log in to this one?

I stick around while she gets started, then return to the information desk. Fortunately, she is only steps away.

VAC: Can you help me?! Something is wrong! This isn't working! Can you help me?!

Me: What are you trying to do?

VAC: I always go to Sears.ca and I see my paystub. It's not working!

Me: Right now you're at Sears.ca, which is a public website, where people can buy products from Sears. The site where you see your paystub must have more to it. Perhaps Sears.ca slash... something?

VAC: No! No! Sears.ca! I go to Sears.ca and see my paystub! I do it all the time! It is Sears.ca!

Me: Here we are at Sears.ca. It's a website for shopping at Sears. There must be more to the address than that.

VAC: No! Look! Here it is on this paper! Look! My-dot-Sears-dot-CA.

Me: So what you need is my.Sears.ca. Let's do that.

We do. The site she is expecting loads.

Me: Do you know how to log in here?

VAC: Yes, of course I do! I do it all the time! Go away! Go away!

Me: Uh... ok. I'm at the desk if you need me.

rest in power, daniel berrigan and michael ratner

The world lost two great fighters for peace and justice this past week.

Daniel Berrigan was a lifelong peace activist, a man who was ready and willing to put his body and soul on the line. He was a writer, a thinker, a pacifist, an idealist, a pragmatist, and a priest.

Berrigan was also a leader, someone who, early on, helped make visible the connections between racism, poverty, war, and capitalism. He became a leading figure in the peace movement during the Vietnam War. Naturally, he was on the FBI's "most wanted" list and served time in prison.

Later in his life, Berrigan founded the Plowshares Movement, which used daring acts of civil disobedience to draw a spotlight on the US's nuclear arsenal.

Here are two pieces from The New Yorker celebrating Berrigan.

James Carroll remembers his "dangerous friend".

Eric Schlosser remembers how "a handful of a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America’s nuclear-weapons sites": Break-In at Y-12.

Following in the giant footsteps of Dorothy Day, Berrigan's life and work demonstrates that religion can be a positive force for social change.

Michael Ratner's life and work also defies stereotype: he was a lawyer who spent his entire career defending the scorned, the falsely accused, the scapegoated. He was a trailblazer who pioneered the use of the law to champion human rights. Long ago, when I contemplated going to law school, I dreamt of Michael Ratner as my role model.

Democracy Now! devoted an entire program to the celebration of Ratner's life and work.

The trailblazing human rights attorney Michael Ratner has died at the age of 72. For over four decades, Michael Ratner defended, investigated and spoke up for victims of human rights abuses across the world. He served as the longtime head of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Attorney David Cole told The New York Times, "Under his leadership, the center grew from a small but scrappy civil rights organization into one of the leading human rights organizations in the world. He sued some of the most powerful people in the world on behalf of some of the least powerful."

In 2002, the center brought the first case against the George W. Bush administration for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the center in a landmark 2008 decision when it struck down the law that stripped Guantánamo prisoners of their habeas corpus rights. Ratner began working on Guantánamo in the 1990s, when he fought the first Bush administration’s use of the military base to house Haitian refugees.

I can't begin to do justice to either of these men, but I didn't want their deaths to go unnoticed on this blog. Their passing saddens me and their lives inspire me.

hooray for tala

Tala is doing great! Of course she was exhausted and a bit wobbly when she came home, but now she's well rested and back to herself. And she looks a whole lot better without a disgusting, oozing tumour sticking out of her side! More importantly, there's a 75% chance the cancer won't come back.

Look how thick her fur is! The doc said this will take a long time to grow back.

She doesn't need the Cone of Silence* this time, but the surgeon recommended she wear a t-shirt to keep protect the incision site. Tala accepts it with grace.

*  I much prefer the vintage TV reference to the what most people seem to call it, the Cone of Shame. The surgery clinic calls it an E-collar, which makes me think both of some sort of digital device, and of E. coli.

in which i ride an emotional roller coaster and get off at the top

Short version: Tala has had surgery and has a very good chance of remaining cancer-free. Whoo-hoo!

It's been a crazy couple of days. Monday afternoon we hear the biopsy results. Tuesday morning we have X-rays done. Our vet recommends a top surgeon who is in the area. She has a cancellation, that very afternoon!

I cancel plans at work, and we rush over. The surgeon is amazing, explaining everything clearly and in great detail. Tala has already been fasted for the X-rays, so even though the surgeon still has another emergency to take care of, she's going to work on Tala that day anyway.

The staff at this clinic couldn't be nicer, calling us with updates, assuring us we can call at any time, even sending us photos of Tala in recovery!

I work Tuesday nights, and by 7:00 Allan has called to say the surgery is over and Tala is recuperating nicely. The doctor said it turned out to be not as extensive as she had thought, based on the external tumour. Statistically, there's a 75% chance it will not return. In this doctor's personal experience, of 21 surgeries on this type of tumour, there has been only one recurrence. Gotta like the odds.

I feel incredibly fortunate. I have a huge credit card bill to pay off - I had that before this happened! - but I feel very fortunate to be able to say that, too.

Here's our little girl in the recovery room.

i'm not ready for another broken heart, or, nothing says mortality like your sick dog

Tala has cancer.

As it happened with Cody, we found a lump. First I was sure it was a cyst, then I was hoping it was a cyst, now I'm just hoping it's not an iceberg. 

There's a big ugly tumoury thing sticking out, but this type of sarcoma is known to have internal tentacles. We're having x-rays done today to see if the cancer has spread to any organs, then - we hope - surgery as soon as possible.

Cody's cancer turned out to be highly operable and likely not metastasized, and we were thrilled to celebrate one more Cody Day. But it did turn out to be her final year. Tala Day is in late January. Will she be with us in January 2017? 

The answer to that, of course, is we don't know. 

And the answer to that is we never know. We don't know about Tala and we never know about any of us.

I feel that we never know every day. I'm not trying to be maudlin or melodramatic; it's just a fact. I feel my own mortality, and that of everyone I love, every single day. I have the impression - based only on observation - that this is not universal. But perhaps it's universal but most people don't admit it, or do a better job of blocking it out.

It's not like I walk around thinking, "I'm going to die". I'm not a character from a Woody Allen film. I just have a strong sense, deep down, that all we have is right now. That right now is our happiness, our love, our passions, our pain, our opportunity to give our lives meaning. And any time other than right now is an illusion.

(This has some unfortunate reprecussions in my life, like real difficulty saying no to myself, and resulting credit card debt. And the constant nagging fear that I should be spending our so-called retirement savings. I look at the stupid savings plan and think, will we live long enough to use this money? I'd like to know, please, because if not, I'm making travel plans.)

In almost 30 years of sharing our lives with dogs, we've said goodbye to four beloved animals so far. At this point, I see every dog as a heartbreak waiting to happen. It's worth it - for me there's no doubt - but as I get older, as the years start whipping by faster and faster, their time with us seems so very fleeting. If you adopt, as we always have, that time is shorter still, both because they're not puppies when you take them, and because a rescued dog's life span is usually shorter. 

And going through that whole journey, from "I think we're ready to adopt another dog" to that final goodbye, you come face to face with right now is all we have.

10 ways you can increase member engagement in your union

#7: Hold a logo contest!

Trying to increase member engagement in your union? Here are some ideas that work.

1. Always make time for your members' concerns.

This is number one through infinity. If you don't make time for your members’ concerns - if your members don't know that you're fighting for them - everything else you do is a waste of time.

I made a pledge to myself and to our members: I will never say, "I don't have time for you," or "Your concern is not a priority for us." I often cannot fix the member's problem. But I can empathize. I can affirm and validate. I can let them know they're not alone, that someone is fighting for them.

2. Identify allies.

Find one or two members who will conspire with you, and work with them. They may be of totally different backgrounds and have completely different perspectives than you. That's good! Come together over your shared concerns. Sit down for a coffee or a pint, talk about steps you can take to improve the situation. Make a list, then each of you find one or two more people to bring in, and make a few things on that list a reality.

3. Offer specific tasks to volunteers.

When specific, self-contained tasks come up, put a call out for volunteers. "Can someone go to the Library Board meeting next week?" "I'm looking for a member to update the job postings spreadsheet." "Can someone look after this location's union board?" This extends your reach - you and your small band of allies aren't doing all the work - and it engages more members, gives more members ownership.

4. Find ways to make your union more accessible and more inclusive.

Our meetings used to be held on the same night of the week, such as the second Monday of the month. But our members work shifts, and in many different locations. Now we rotate the nights of the week and the location of meetings. Even if meeting attendance doesn't increase, our members feel more welcome, more included.

For you, making your union more accessible may mean something else. Think about it. Is there something built into your structure and practices that may be keeping people away? Do you use a lot of union jargon? Do you shoot down every new idea as impractical, or already tried? Are you, however inadvertently, giving the impression of a closed clique? These are good questions to ask ourselves on a regular basis.

5. Find ways other than meetings to get together.

Hold a labour film night. A potluck. A summer barbecue in a local park. It doesn't have to be often - twice a year is probably enough. Give members the opportunity to connect with each other in a non-work and non-union-meeting environment.

6. Keep your members informed.

Be generous with information sharing. Tell your members as much as you can. How will they know what their union does for them if no one tells them? Why would they care about a union they never hear from? Show your members you are fighting for them.

7.  Hold a logo contest!

Do you have a good logo? If not, consider holding a contest. We put out a request for designs, and members voted online. One result was the awesome logo pictured above. The other results were creativity in support of our union, member involvement, and increased feelings of pride.

8. Think small.

What little things can you do that will involve more members? CUPE's colour is pink. On the day our bargaining team returned to the table, we held our first Wear Pink day. Each Wear Pink Day, we challenge members to get more people involved at their location. I got a bunch of CUPE gel bracelets, and we give them away to members to wear in the workplace. With your allies, brainstorm ideas that may work in your own workplace.

9. Get in touch with history.

Every so often, answer the questions "What has your union done for you?" "How has belonging to a union benefited your working conditions?", and "How do unions benefit society as a whole?" Sprinkle labour history in meetings, in your emails, and on social media. You know that pride you feel in being part of the labour movement? Share it.

10. Rethink your union bulletin boards.

Are the union boards in your workplaces up-to-date? Or have they been stagnant so long that members don't see them anymore? Bulletin boards can do more than announce meetings and minutes. Try a "Clause of the Month". Labour-themed cartoons. Jokes. Find members - not officers, not stewards - who will tend the board like a garden.

11. What else??

Your ideas here.

what i'm reading: the deserters, a hidden history of world war 2

No one knows exactly how many US soldiers deserted from the Vietnam War, nor how many young men resisted conscription by going either to jail or to another country. The most conservative account puts the number at about 50,000, the highest at about double that. The majority of those went to Canada, where - after a people's movement organized to support them - they were allowed to live and eventually become citizens. Because of this, resistance to the war in Southeast Asia is part of American and Canadian history, no matter who tells the story.

Resistance to other US wars, however, is mentioned less frequently, if at all. There was massive resistance to conscription to (what was then known as) the Great War or the War in Europe. Ireland and Quebec went into full-scale rebellion, and thousands in both Britain and the US spent time in jail after they refused to fight. I'm somewhat familiar with this history through my ongoing exploration of World War I from a progressive and peace-activism perspective. I certainly didn't learn about it in school.

Still, it's relatively easy to talk about resistance to World War I, at least for Americans. It's the war that no one understands, the war where the name of every battle is a shorthand for massive slaughter, the war of mustard gas and horses vs. machine guns. It's the war that ushered in the modern world. We can understand why people didn't want to die in the mud in Belgium or France.

Resistance to World War II, however, is entirely different. This is the supposedly good war, the war to crush the Nazis, the war to punish the people who attacked Pearl Harbor. This is the war that supposedly every able-bodied boy and man wanted to fight.

Well, not quite. As Charles Glass shows in The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II, no matter what the political motivations of war, the reality on the ground is largely the same. Troops face appalling conditions and constant deprivation. They are forced to remain in combat past the point of mental and physical endurance. Their stress is ignored, ridiculed, and punished. And thousands - tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands - refuse to continue.

The book, unfortunately, is not a very good read. It's incredibly well researched, but literary nonfiction needs more than research. No lively narrative pulls the reader through the stories. Glass offers a tremendous amount of detail without synthesis or explanation. At times I felt as if I were reading a pile of facts, rather than a story.

The book's saving grace, and what makes it worth reading, is the introduction. In 10 pages, the author gives us an overview of war resistance and society's responses to it. He blends the political, social, physical and psychological views into a miniature masterpiece.

Readers with a special interest in World War II and hidden histories in general may enjoy The Deserters. For me it was a tough slog. But in my continuing education about war resistance, Charles Glass' introduction has a place on the bookshelf.

awful library books and why we remove them from our shelves

A while back, I blogged about weeding, every library's not-so-dirty little not-so-secret. Daniel Gross, writing in The New Yorker, looks at weeding, too - from a library-users' revolt in Berkeley, California to the hilarious Awful Library Books blog: Weeding the Worst Library Books. It's a sweet story about a necessary evil that is really a very positive - although painful - practice.

What I want to know is how did the Berkeley public know about the weeding? Why was it even announced? I can guarantee the Mississauga public doesn't know about ours.

In any case, it's a really nice piece: Weeding the Worst Library Books by Daniel Gross.

what i'm reading: every exquisite thing by matthew quick

I recently had the pleasure of reading an advance reading copy of Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick. Quick - a/k/a Q - is the author of The Silver Linings Playbook, which I have not read, but now will.

Every Exquisite Thing combines a few stock elements of youth fiction into something heartfelt, authentic, and compelling. I caught a little bit of Eleanor & Park and a little bit of The Fault in Our Stars poking through, but none of that stopped me from enjoying the book.

Nanette O'Hare is a high-achieving student athlete whose future is all laid out for her to follow. An iconoclastic teacher gives Nanette a copy of a cult novel - echoes of The Catcher in the Rye are obvious - and suddenly she views her privileged life in a new way. The teacher goes even farther, setting up Nanette with another young person to whom he's given the same book, this one a misfit poet with some dangerous tendencies.

Nanette needs to rebel, and she's fallen in love with a rebel. But what form that rebellion will take, and how far it will go, is something they both need to find.

Nanette sets out both to lose herself and find herself in some surprising ways. A few parts of Nanette's journey won't translate well into a review (plus I'm avoiding spoilers) but they work beautifully in context. The best part of Every Exquisite Thing is the bold character of Nanette herself, full of self-doubt and self-discovery, figuring out how to use the strength she knows is inside her.

james connolly, sid ryan, and marxism 2016

This is The Proclamation.

The Proclamation was read by Padraig (Patrick) Pearse outside the General Post Office in Dublin on April 24, 1916. This marked the beginning of the Easter Rising.

Rather less dramatically, a copy of the Proclamation has hung on my office wall since our trip to Ireland in 2001. It has lived large and present in my revolutionary heart since the early days of my fascination with Irish history.

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing the entire Proclamation read out loud by Toronto labour activist Mike Seaward. It was nothing short of thrilling to hear these stirring words ring out - words to live by. For the men who wrote them, they were words to die by.

The reading of the Proclamation kicked off the 2016 Marxism conference special event, commemorating 100 years since the Easter Rising, almost to the day. This was followed by Canadian labour leader and activist Sid Ryan, spinning out Irish history in sparkling prose and stunning detail, without a scrap of paper in front of him. Sid was followed by Carolyn Egan, a leader in the Canadian women's and labour movements, and my comrade in both the International Socialists and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Carolyn highlighted some of the more radical and revolutionary ideals of the ongoing battle for Irish independence, and connected those back to our current times.

The Easter Rising was many things. It was the first crack in the British Empire. It was the culmination of 600 years of oppression under British rule, and 600 years of armed insurrection against it. It was the wild utopian yearnings of poorly trained rebels, a death sentence for the men who signed it. It is a touchstone for every Irish nationalist, to this day.

The Easter Rising might have been an obscure moment in history, as so many rebellions are. The British government itself ensured the Rising's significance with one giant blunder: the execution of the leaders. With those murders, public opinion turned from irritation or indifference to wild anger and support.

At Marxism 2016, Sid Ryan and Carolyn Egan held a Marxist lens to this largely nationalist rebellion. It isn't difficult to do so, embodied by James Connolly, the great Irish thinker and socialist revolutionary.

James Connolly was an extraordinary leader. His counterpart in American history might be Frederick Douglass. Both rose from extreme poverty (in Douglass' case, slavery), had no formal education, and became extraordinary thinkers and orators. Both were radical, egalitarian, open-minded, and committed to justice. Both supported women's rights. Both understood that the struggle was bigger than their people, not Black against White or Irish against British, but the people against the ruling class. Both men rejected any solution that was in reality only a change of masters.

I won't try to recreate the talk here; I'm hoping it will be posted on the IS's YouTube channel. Unfortunately for me, this was the only talk I was able to attend at Marxism 2016. I also participated on a panel called "Union Organizing in a Time of Precarity," with two labour-activist friends.

There's a lot about James Connolly online, but this piece by Ella Whelan is powerful and poignant, and in my view the most accurate: James Connolly: We Only Want the Earth: What We Can Learn from the Easter Rising, by Ella Whelan. I noticed this beautiful emblem from the IWW bears that line from one of Connolly's poems. I love that my hero of Irish history organized with the revolutionary group that lives in my heart.



The Proclamation:

POBLACHT NA H ÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN Mac DIARMADA    THOMAS MacDONAGH
P. H. PEARSE     EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY     JOSEPH PLUNKETT

rtod: we only want the earth

On the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, these Revolutionary Thoughts of the Day are brought to you by the great Irish socialist, James Connolly.

The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. (1910)

This speech, from 1897, is recreated in the excellent Ken Loach film "The Wind that Shakes the Barley":

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that freedom whose cause you had betrayed. Nationalism without Socialism – without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin – is only national recreancy.

This recalls what I recently posted: yoko ono was right.

The worker is the slave of the capitalist society. The female worker is the slave of that slave. (1915)

And from Connolly's poem "Song of Freedom," 1907.

“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry,
Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.
“You ask too much and people fly
From you aghast in wonder.”
’Tis passing strange, for I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the Earth.

u.s. iraq war resisters: the struggle continues

Still war resisters. Still in Canada. Still fighting to stay.

So far, the change in government hasn't helped the Iraq War resisters who remain here, nor the ones who were forced out of Canada who would like to return. The Trudeau government could do this so easily. And yet.

The CBC Radio show "DNTO" recently did an excellent segment about the US Iraq War resisters and the fight - still going on - to let them stay in Canada.

When American soldier Joshua Key fled to Canada in 2005, he never imagined that ten years later he would still be fighting a war — against the U.S. army, against post-traumatic stress disorder, and against the Canadian government.

Key is one of an estimated 15 Iraq war veterans who are fighting to remain in Canada.

The resisters left home to avoid being sent back to a war they didn't believe in. Today, they fear they'll be sent to prison if they're deported.

On this week's DNTO, you'll meet modern war resisters. Each of their stories is unique, but they all have one thing in common: they wish to stay in Canada. Should they be allowed to?

Some segments:

Meet the war resisters desperate to stay in Canada.

Who's helping the war resisters?

The Brockway family: fighting PTSD and searching for home.

A photo essay about Josh Key.

The show is really worth hearing, and you know how I feel about radio. You can listen to the full episode here.

april 28: national day of mourning

Across Canada, April 28 is the National Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on their jobs.

The image of the canary reminds us that, not so very long ago, a tiny yellow bird was the only safety device mine workers had against some of the terrible dangers of their workplace.

Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees are often the canaries in the coal mine for the public, putting themselves on the front line of public safety every day. Just yesterday, members of CUPE Local 1989 in the quiet Port Credit library faced a trauma and a public emergency. None of them was physically hurt, but the incident reminds us that public-service workers often stand between the public and danger.

Each year, approximately 1,000 Canadian workers are killed on the job. One thousand! Hundreds of thousands are injured; untold numbers suffer from work-related illnesses, which may eventually claim their lives. We can do better. We must demand better.

April 28 is a day to reflect on these numbers and the real people they represent. For unionists and labour activists, it's a day to re-dedicate ourselves to our continued efforts to make workplaces safer, and to help workers whose jobs put their health at risk.

We remember these CUPE sisters and brothers who were killed on the job in 2015:
Dellis Partridge, CUPE 4946, Alberta
John Macleod, CUPE 1867, Nova Scotia
Alain Bissonnette, CUPE 503, Ontario
Harl Hawley, CUPE 30, Alberta
Nilo Sanchez, CUPE 59, Saskatchewan
Venancio Perez, CUPE 1483, Ontario
Stephen Penny, CUPE 30, Alberta
William Miller, CUPE 4705, Ontario
Mark Urbanowicz, CUPE 1000, Ontario (2014)

39% is not a majority: fair voting now

Will you sign a declaration to make Canada more democratic?

Declaration of Voters' Rights

And some myth-busting about proportional representation:

A ranked ballot is not a voting system.

How will anything get done?

Is proportional representation constitutional?

Read and share!

(un)happy equal pay day

Today is Equal Pay Day in Ontario. Why? It's the day that, if you're a woman, your earnings have finally caught up with what men were paid the previous year. Women doing the same or equivalent work still earn, on average, 30% less than their male counterparts.

The higher up the food chain a woman works, the greater the gap in pay.

Ontario’s highest paid women earn an average of 37% less than the highest paid men, translating into a whopping $64,000 less in annual average earnings.  “Over the course of a working lifetime, these pay gaps can grow into a mountain of lost earnings,” says Cornish. “For instance, a middle-income woman could find herself earning, on average, $315,000 less than men over a 35-year period. The highest paid 10 per cent of women could earn an average of $2.24 million less than highest paid 10 per cent of men over a 35-year period.

The Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives has collected the data and done the rigorous study. No further study is needed. What we need is action.

a petition to exonerate ethel rosenberg

Of all the outrageously unjust moments in United States history - and dog knows there are many to choose from - the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg holds a special place in my political underpinnings. It was an event I learned about early on, one that came up in many different contexts throughout my childhood. That was partly because the Rosenbergs were Jewish, and their case was rife with anti-Semitism. It was partly because of my parents' thorough and utter disgust for McCarthyism. And it was partly because my parents had very clear, first-hand memories of the case, the execution occurring in the early years of their marriage. They remembered the media frenzy, the protests attempting to save their lives, and finally, the Rosenbergs' deaths.

My mother always mentioned thousands of people packing into New York City's Union Square on the night of the execution, pleading with the government to commute or stay the sentence. My mother and I both read The Book of Daniel, E. L. Doctorow's fictional imaginings of the Rosenberg orphans, and my mother bought (and gave to others as gifts) We Are Your Sons, written by the Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol.

In recent years, declassified information showed that Julius Rosenberg had spied for the Soviet Union. He did not, however, pass secrets about the atom bomb, the crime of which he was accused and convicted. And no similar evidence came to light about Ethel Rosenberg. Despite these details, the US media was only too happy to declare the case closed.

When I saw the subject line in my inbox Sign the petition: Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg, I was very interested. But I was also wary. If we want Ethel Rosenberg to be exonerated, does that mean we are condoning Julius' conviction? If we say, "Ethel was not a spy and her execution was wrongful," do we imply that the execution of Julius Rosenberg was justified? Or that some executions may be justified?

I care about the Rosenbergs. I care about government-led persecution and witchhunts. But I also care about the death penalty: I am against it, for any reason, ever. (Don't Godwin me. Any reason ever.) I've known about the Rosenbergs my entire life. I wanted to sign this petition, but I wasn't sure I should.

I wasn't alone. This was forwarded to me by an activist friend who received the petition before I did.

Many people who’ve signed the petition to exonerate my grandmother, Ethel Rosenberg, have asked why the campaign doesn’t include my grandfather, Julius. My father Robert Meeropol answers that question in a blog, here.

My dad’s outlook on life and his drive to create something positive from the terrible tragedy of his early years continues to be inspiring, both for those who are new to his story and for those of us who know his journey well.

As you can imagine, my father’s life was profoundly affected by his parents’ execution. He was three years old when they were arrested, and six years old when they were killed. He visited his parents in prison and still remembers what that felt like. He also remembers the executions, and the trauma of being bounced from home to home, and in and out of an orphanage. Relatives were too scared to take in him and my uncle. They were even thrown out of school in New Jersey where sympathetic friends of the family had tried to give them shelter.

Luckily my father and uncle were eventually adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol. This loving couple, who were teachers and artists, provided a nurturing home and shielded them from the public. And thousands of people who had tried to save my grandparents donated funds to pay for my father and uncle’s education, therapy, art and drama programs, and other services to help them grow up healthy and happy.

Decades later, my father started the Rosenberg Fund for Children to assist kids in this country who are experiencing similar nightmares to what he endured. This organization I now lead aids the children of today’s targeted activists. Their parents are being attacked because they’re struggling to combat racism, wage peace, preserve civil liberties, safeguard the environment, organize on behalf of workers, prisoners, and LGBTQI people, and more. . . .

Incidentally, the children of US war resister Kimberly Rivera received some assistance from The Rosenberg Fund for Children. I'm proud that some part of my life intersects with some part of the Rosenbergs'.

I signed the petition with a clear conscience and I hope you will, too.

If you are interested in both a progressive and factual reading of the executions, I recommend this long piece by Robert Wilbur, writing in Truthout: The True Crime of the Rosenberg Execution.

Federal District Judge Irving R. Kaufman was a pious man. He visited his synagogue to commune with whatever god he believed in before making up his mind to condemn Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to die in the electric chair, making orphans of their two young boys. That, however, was not the full reach of his piety. Under pressure from the Justice Department to end the Rosenberg case quickly, after two years of delays in the courts, Kaufman set their death for a Friday. This created an unanticipated complication, as Sam Roberts recounts in his grisly description of the execution in "The Brother": New York State traditionally carried out its executions at 11:00 PM. But this would mean the Rosenbergs would burn several hours into the Sabbath - the Jewish holy day. What to do? Kaufman sought the advice of a rabbi to ascertain the exact time when the Sabbath began, then ordered the executions moved up to a more comfortable hour.

The judge must have gotten satisfactory advice, for there were no complaints from organized Jewry in America. Julius died from the traditional three jolts of electricity; Ethel required an additional two jolts, perhaps the only shred of evidence that she was really the tougher member of the spying duo.

And, while the evidence remains much disputed, the preponderance suggests that spies they were. Eventually, even the Rosenberg's journalistic cheerleaders, Walter and Miriam Schneir, acknowledged that Julius Rosenberg was ringmaster of a busy espionage collective that was passing electronic and aeronautical intelligence to the Soviets during the Second World War. Julius himself - unlike the nerd depicted in photographs - was a brazen cowboy who scored a daring espionage coup by stealing the proximity fuse from its plant of manufacture piece by piece: this device uses an electromagnetic wave guide to identify a nearby aircraft, vastly increasing the efficacy of anti-aircraft batteries.

Schneir acknowledged that Julius was a spy - but not an atomic spy. And, so, the case has dragged on to this very day, and two important questions remain unanswered:

- Were the Rosenbergs framed to break up their spy ring in a distinctly conclusive manner (and, relatedly, what was Ethel's role in the ring)?

- If the death penalty is ever appropriate, was it called for in this case?

. . . .

But when everything seems to be tied up in a neat package, Schneir has a quote from Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor and one-time death penalty battler turned post-9/11 advocate of torture, citing a conversation with Rosenberg prosecutor and mob lawyer Roy Cohn:

"Roy Cohn ... proudly told me shortly before his death [in 1986] that the government had 'manufactured 'evidence against the Rosenbergs, because they knew Julius was the head of a spy ring. They had learned this from bugging a foreign embassy, but they could not disclose any information learned from the bug, so they made up some evidence in order to prove what they already knew. In the process, they also made up the case against Ethel Rosenberg." ["America on Trial" (NY: Warner Books,2004.p/323)]

In right-wing quarters, especially those where "kike" and "yid" are words of currency, the Rosenberg case is still considered the crime of the century, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. . . .

So, while the Rosenbergs probably did break a law that was passed amid the hysteria of an earlier world war by passing non-atomic intelligence on to the Russians, the statesmen committed a monumental blunder in underestimating the Soviet Union's imperialistic intentions. The Rosenberg's crime was probably to break the 1917 Espionage Act; by far the greater crime was to kill husband and wife on June 19, 58 years ago. The execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is the true crime of the century - an abomination that casts an ineradicable black mark on the American criminal justice system and on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose own crime was a failure to grant mercy.

This story on the World Socialist website sees the Rosenbergs' persecution clearly, through a present-day lens.

June 19 [2013] marks the 50th anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union.

Many of the Rosenbergs’ contemporaries, for whom their persecution and state murder was the most searing episode in one of the darkest chapters in US history, have passed from the scene. Yet still today, for millions of people around the world, the name of the young couple evokes the Cold War, the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the United States and all of the crimes associated with Washington’s global crusade against communism. The execution of the father and mother of two young children, residents of New York City’s Lower East Side — he 35 years old and she 37 at the time of their deaths — is testimony to the savagery of which the American ruling establishment is capable when it perceives its vital interests to be at stake.

Despite the passing of five decades, the issues surrounding the Rosenberg case are in many ways posed more sharply today than at any time since the execution itself. Once again, a US administration is seeking to terrorize the entire population as a means of suppressing dissent and exercising control on behalf of a wealthy elite. Under the guise of a global “war on terrorism,” it has rammed through the USA Patriot Act — modeled in part on the anti-communist McCarran Internal Security Act of 50 years ago — assuming vast unconstitutional powers to arrest without charges, detain without trial and conduct unrestricted police surveillance.

Today, as then, the government’s fear-mongering and attacks on democratic rights are aimed at suppressing widespread opposition to American military aggression abroad.

You can sign a petition to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg here.

when real life meets the onion: espn wants us to know that rape is traumatic... for the rapist

Ah, the things we miss when we don't follow mainstream media. I didn't even know the sports world was celebrating a rapist.

This week, drinking wine in a hotel room in New Jersey, Allan and I were pleased to discover that the Red Sox were on the ESPN Wednesday night game. A nice treat, or it would have been, if the announcing team (which included one of my most disliked announcers ever) had been able to stop talking about basketball long enough to call the game.

The game was often broadcast in a little box, while we were treated to the important news that hundreds of fans had gathered outside the Staples Centre in Los Angeles. (So many things wrong with that sentence!) Gee, if only ESPN had some other stations so it could broadcast a baseball game in its entirety while still reporting on the earth-shattering news from L.A.

The news that interrupted our baseball game? Kobe Bryant's final game. So I'm thinking, Kobe Bryant, Kobe Bryant, don't I know something else about him... When my memory finally kicked in, I asked Allan, "Kobe, isn't he a rapist?"

Indeed he is. Recapping Bryant's storied career, ESPN made no mention of this, not even to note that Bryant has been "the subject of controversy" or some-such euphemism. Yesterday they remedied that omission. From Deadspin: ESPN Asks How Kobe Bryant Being Credibly Accused Of Rape Affected Kobe Bryant.

That's only slightly sarcastic. From Think Progress:

During the program, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne — who has been spending time with Kobe during his final days as a player — said she had a “strange” and “provocative” take on the rape charges against him. She did not disappoint.

Shelburne said that being charge with rape “freed” Kobe to “tap into the darker side of himself.” He was then able to “channel all of that rage and fear on to the basketball court,” according to Shelburne.

The comments fit a troubling pattern of ignoring the alleged victim and focusing on the impact the charges had on Bryant, his endorsements and his on-court performance.

"It was traumatic for him. I think that is the right word," Shelburne concluded.

"Traumatic for all concerned we should say, not just Kobe Bryant. There was a woman on the other side," Storm reminded Shelburne before quickly changing the topic.

And from the Onion, from some years back: College Basketball Star Heroically Overcomes Tragic Rape He Committed.

* * * *

In case you are of the opinion that a rapist is no longer a rapist unless he's convicted in a court of law, please be aware that only the tiniest fraction of sexual assaults are ever prosecuted, and of those, few result in conviction. (For example, see the infographic here.)

In the Kobe Bryant rape case, there was a substantial amount of evidence against the basketball star. The victim/survivor declined to testify, and if you've learned anything from the Jian Ghomeshi case, you can imagine why. The victim did bring a separate, civil suit against Bryant, which (of course) was settled out of court. Bryant's public statement included this:

Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.

And in case you think that media should only focus on Bryant's basketball career, and not mention his rape career, I'd ask you to read or listen to any of the recent media pieces fawning over Bryant and see if they mention anything that isn't purely basketball. I can guarantee they do.

To make the point more eloquently, I give you Deadspin. I thank them for this article, especially the closing paragraph.

When a sports event becomes so big that it produces a flood of coverage, as Kobe Bryant’s season-long goodbye tour has, it’s easy for pundits and reporters to end up in awkward positions simply by virtue of having had to say so much for so long about one thing.

The conversation is even more likely to go sideways when the story in question involves something serious, like a rape investigation. That’s how we ended up with ESPN anchor Hannah Storm and NBA reporter Ramona Shelburne having a very odd conversation on SportsCenter today.

It’s exceedingly strange to suggest that being accused of rape ultimately “freed” Kobe Bryant to become the Black Mamba—a character in Nike commercials and a vicious, selfish shooter—not just because it implicitly paints Bryant, rather than his accuser, as the main principal or victim here, but also because the Black Mamba is nothing more than a branding initiative, a piece of fiction that really doesn’t have any connection to something as grave as a rape allegation.

The Black Mamba comes up, strangely, in the context of Storm and Shelburne talking about how Bryant being accused of rape affected his career and fictional persona. This makes the question of whether or not Bryant raped a woman serve the same function as his rivalry with Shaq, or the development of his post game, and draws a connection between Bryant having been accused of rape and Bryant having, subsequently, come into his athletic prime. As if to heighten the absurdity of the conversation, Shelburne and Storm seamlessly transition from discussing the rape case to a lighthearted bit about whether Bryant will cry tonight.

The fact that Kobe Bryant was accused of rape should absolutely be brought up when talking about him, but it should not be spoken about in vague terms or swept up in the mythologizing of Bryant as a player. Kobe Bryant was once accused of raping a 19-year-old woman in a Colorado hotel room. The criminal case was dropped after the accuser refused to testify. Bryant eventually settled a civil suit with her. None of this has anything to do with basketball.

another big 4/15 in the #FightFor15

Today, April 15 - 4/15 in North America - the Fight for 15 and Fairness made another leap forward. All over the US and Canada, and in countries all over the world, workers marched, walked out, rallied, chanted, and demonstrated, for themselves, and for all of us. No matter what we earn, our communities will benefit when everyone is paid a living wage.

Looking back on last year's 4/15, the successes have been nothing short of amazing. Alberta, California, and New York State join the cities of Seattle and New York in pledging a $15/hour minimum wage. The two US states are moving way too slowly, but the fact that $15 is on the agenda is very significant.

To me, what is most exciting about this movement is that workers themselves have made this a national and international issue. Low-wage earners have organized themselves, and worked both social and traditional media with great energy and skill. You'd be hard-pressed to find a media outlet, city blog, or talk show that hasn't covered the strikes and demonstrations on a regular basis. When the people lead, the elected officials follow.

In Ontario, the call is 15 and Fairness, demanding paid sick time for all, wages and hours people can actually live on, and employment standards that apply to everyone, not just the dwindling few who still have traditional full-time employment.

My own Fight For 15 continues, as CUPE Local 1989, Mississauga Library Workers Union, fights for a fair wage for our pages, our lowest paid members. The struggles of our pages should be an embarrassment to the City of Mississauga.

what i'm reading: reckless: my life as a pretender by chrissie hynde

I'm a big fan of The Pretenders, but more than that, I'm a Chrissie Hynde fan. To me, she has always been the epitome of the female rock frontman. She's the whole package - guitar player, singer, songwriter, commanding stage presence, pure rock image, and smoldering, tough-girl beauty. I was naturally interested reading her memoirs, even more so when I learned she wrote the book herself, without a professional writer.

Reckless: My Life as a Pretender is aptly titled. Hynde's story is one of rash decisions, massive drinking and drug use, and a sizeable amount of danger. It's also a story of following your heart more than your head (often disregarding your head altogether), about loving music and the rock ethic so intensely, that only that life will do.

Hynde was ready and willing to live a nomadic, stripped-down life, without regard to commercial success, and often without material comfort at all, because comfort and success and everything that goes with it didn't matter. Only music and the rock life - and the true connections that she felt through those - mattered.

So while this review in The New York Times reads Reckless as a cautionary tale, I do not. To me it is simply an honest account without judgment. There's no doubt that Hynde's choices sometimes led to pain and suffering, but there's also no doubt they led her to her most authentic and fulfilled life. She's clearly not advocating a life of drug use and reckless decisions. She's just telling us that's what she did, for better or worse.

The book's subtitle - My Life as a Pretender - is apt, too, as Hynde often saw herself as an impostor, and maybe still does to some extent. Throughout the book, she is self-deprecating about her own talents. It isn't false modesty. It's an honest self-appraisal from someone who has lived "on nerves and feelings" (as someone Hynde and I mutually adore once wrote) and can't quite understand how her crazy life led her, at least sometimes, to success.

In Reckless, Hynde spends a long time recounting her young years, growing up in Akron, Ohio - her constant sense of alienation, her electric discovery of her musical soul, the scary and dangerous and occasionally fun situations she found herself in. Her pilgrimage to Europe - first London, then Paris, then, after a disastrous attempt to live in the US again, settling in to live in London permanently - is also documented in quite a bit of detail.

Two-thirds of the way through the book, The Pretenders still have not formed. The formation of the band, their early writing and recording, and the deaths of two members of the original lineup, all happen very quickly at the end of the book. I was left with a lot of questions.

The writing itself is very uneven, veering from moving and lyrical, and often humourous, to clunky and ridiculous. The book is sometimes extremely raw and revealing, and sometimes hazy and guarded. Some particularly rough times that Hynde survived - the subject of many book reviews - are recounted only cryptically.

Overall, though, it's a fascinating read. If you've ever fantasized about the rock-and-roll life - ever wondered how a misfit girl from the American midwest ends up leading a bunch of British men in an iconic rock band - and especially if, like me, you love Chrissie Hynde - this book is very entertaining.

precariously yours: notes from the 2016 cupe ontario library workers conference

Last week I attended the CUPE Ontario Library Workers Conference, my second year, and my first since being elected to the organizing committee. This year's theme was precarious work, and nothing could be more relevant to library work today.

All three keynote speakers were excellent, with engaging, eye-opening presentations that brought our picture into sharp and disturbing focus.

Count it and name it, so we can change it

Wayne Lewchuk, professor of economics and labour relations at McMaster University, is the go-to guy for research into precarious work. Michelynn Lafleche is the Director of Research, Public Policy and Evaluation at United Way Toronto. (United Way is the primary social-service provider in this region.) They developed PEPSO: Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario. Its purpose: quantify the anecdotes, demonstrate what precarious work is and the affects it has on individuals, families, and communities, and offer practical solutions to this crisis.

PEPSO has produced two major reports, It's More than Poverty in 2013 and The Precarity Penalty in 2015. As Lafleche writes:

...we (as a society) got here one decision at a time. So the good news is that vulnerability and insecurity are not inevitable: we can escape this growing trend, decision by decision. It will take time, it will take clear ideas on what to do, and it will take a widespread coalition to make the necessary policy and social change, but it is not impossible. Our task, now, is to make this change happen.

What is precarity and how does it affect us?

Wayne Lewchuk must be an absolutely awesome professor, because I've never seen someone turn statistical data into such an engaging presentation.

Precarity is more than poverty. Although precarity can certainly lead to poverty, its effects are felt throughout the middle class, too. To quantify and document precarious work, Dr. Lewchuk and his researchers developed the Precarity Index, a multi-layered tool that was rigorous, far-reaching, and extremely revealing. Here are some highlights from their work.

In this context, precarious work means some combination of:

• involuntary part-time work,
• no paid sick time,
• no benefits (in the Canadian context, this means no coverage for prescription drugs, dental, vision care, and other "extras"),
• uncertain schedules that the worker cannot predict or control,
• fluctuating hours and income.

The research found:

• Precarious work in southern Ontario doubled between 1989 and 2014.
• Almost half of all households in southern Ontario are now affected by precarity.
• Precarious work has become the norm in colleges, universities, and libraries.
• Precarity affects both low-income and middle-income households.
• If one member of a household is in a precarious work situation, the whole household suffers.

Precarious work has many insidious and inter-related effects. Precarious workers...

• are less likely to have access to on-the-job, employer-paid training, which obviously has long-term implications for their ability to advance into less precarious and higher-paid work;
• are often unable to hold a second job, because of uncertain work schedules;
• are often unable to arrange consistent, quality childcare, because of uncertain work schedules;
• are less likely to participate in their communities, for the same reason;
• are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues;
• are more isolated, have fewer social connections;
• are delaying forming relationships and delaying having children.

Children in a family where one income-earner has precarity...

• are less likely to be enrolled in activities outside of school, because their parents cannot afford those opportunities, or don't know if they'll be able to afford them in the near future;
• are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

And, no surprise, rates of precarity are higher when factoring in race, gender, and country of origin. Precarious workers also face higher rates of discrimination: when you have five, eight, ten different employers over the years, there are many more opportunities for discrimination. And of course, precarious workers are very unlikely to stand up for their rights in the workplace, for obvious reasons. (Very convenient for employers!)

You can read and watch fascinating - and depressing, and enraging - case studies from the PEPSO research here.

What can we do about precarity?

After Dr. Lewchuk's important but depressing statistics, Michelynn Lafleche's presentation was a much-needed boost. PEPSO has 28 specific recommendations that, together, would end this crisis of under-employment.

The first is so obvious and so overdue, I can barely believe it hasn't happened yet: reform the Employment Standards Act! The ESA, which governs the rules of the workplace in Ontario, was last reformed in 2000. The conditions of employment have changed drastically since then, and fewer and fewer workers are protected by the ESA.

Modernizing the ESA must go hand-in-hand with reforming Employment Insurance. What good is EI if the only people eligible for it are those with permanent, full-time jobs? Temp workers, contract workers, and all manner of precarious workers are not eligible for EI! This is a disgrace and must be rectified.

Other recommendations were less obvious but equally urgent. Government-paid training embedded into the system. A system for benefits for workers in precarious employment. Improved regulation of temp agencies.

You can read about other proposed solutions here, from the Toronto Workers' Action Centre, and here, from Unifor.

It wasn't always like this! How did this happen?

Kaylie Tiessen, formerly of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, now with Unifor, addressed the same topic from a slightly different - and equally enlightening - angle. It's no wonder I enjoyed her presentation so much. It was about an issue that I'm always going on about, and see very little mention of in the media.

Over the last 30 years, we have seen the erosion of both the labour market and public services. What caused that? Short answers: tax cuts (especially to corporations), trade agreements, corporate greed, and the failure of governments to act on our behalf.

The economy used to be shaped something like a pyramid: low-paying jobs on the foundation, higher-paying employment but fewer positions as you go up each level of the pyramid. At the top are the highest-paid people, but not so many of them.

This is the closest image I could fine online.
Subject to interpretation.

In theory, with education and hard work, one could move up the pyramid, at least from the bottom to the middle, and sometimes from the middle to the top. (How well that theory worked, and what social supports were needed to make it work, such as affordable education, is another story.)

Now the economy is shaped something like an hour-glass. The middle has been squeezed to a choking point. Most of the people who were formerly middle class have been squeezed downward, producing something new in modern times: a huge trend of downward mobility. And more than ever, people employed in (what used to be) entry-level jobs remain in entry-level jobs, no matter what their skills, education, or work ethic.

Increasingly, working people are stuck in a "poverty gap". If you earn minimum wage, how can you afford to buy appropriate clothes for interviews? How can you devote unpaid time to look for work? How can you afford education to improve your skills? Increasingly, our society is offering poverty wages, with no way out.

Where have all the good jobs gone?

Ontario has lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the past 15 years. (This happened much earlier in the US. In this case, Canada being behind the US was a good thing. But it didn't last.) Corporations found it more profitable to move their operations to countries without environmental protections and labour laws, and our governments - instead of protecting our jobs and our communities - made it easy for them to do so, entering into "fair trade" agreements with no democratic oversight. (That's what the "G8" or "G20" is, by the way: elites from around the globe making deals that benefit the few and disadvantage the many.)

Some employment sectors have seen growth. That's good news, right? Let's take a look. One area of growth is in the healthcare field. Does this mean more doctors, more nurses? More service and more good jobs for Ontarians?

The answer is no. The new openings are not for well-paid doctors and nurses. They are, for example, personal support workers. Tiessen described the working conditions of a typical PSW.

She is paid $15/hour.

The night before she sees clients, she must call each client to arrange and confirm appointments. She is not paid for that time.

She must drive from client to client, over a distance of many kilometres throughout her region. She is not paid for that time. She receives no reimbursement for the use of her car or for gas.

She is paid only for the time spent with clients.

And her client list varies from week to week, so she never knows how much she'll earn. Some weeks she has no work at all. That right there is precarious work.

Next time you hear about "jobs being added," ask yourself, What kind of jobs?

Why is this happening?

The erosion of quality services and good jobs goes hand-in-hand with the sharp decrease in the corporate tax rate. When governments are more interested in corporate profits than with human and social needs, the corporate tax rate drops. Public funds are depleted, so services and good jobs begin to disappear.

Supply-side economists claim that corporate tax cuts lead to job creation. Yet it has been proven - time and time and time again - that this does not happen. Corporate savings are "warehoused". The tax savings go into private pockets and are never returned to the economy.

Minimum wages vs. living wage

From June 2014

Living Wage Canada has created a Living Wage Index, showing what a living wage would mean in different communities across Canada. In Toronto, the living wage is $18.52/hour. Peel is still being calculated, but it can't be that much less. The minimum wage in Ontario is $11.25. Many people in Ontario are working and using food banks to survive. That should be unthinkable, but it is rapidly becoming the norm.

Obviously the minimum wage has not kept pace with the cost of living. That didn't begin last year or even in the last decade. The last year that a minimum wage job could lift a person over the poverty line? 1976.

We deserve more. Demand more!

At the end of her talk, Tiessen revealed that until very recently, she was one of the many "millennials" - people now in their 20s and early 30s - living with precarity. Now, at 34 years old, for the first time, she has full-time employment. She noted that when she did her taxes this year, for the first time ever, she had only one T4 slip.

We're lucky that people like Wayne Lewchuk, Michelynn Lafleche, and Kaylie Tiessen are working to change things, not just for themselves but for all of us. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Unifor, CUPE, PEPSO, United Way, Living Wage Canada, and many other organizations are working to change this.

We need a social safety net that catches everyone. And if we want to be a healthy society, we need to provide a safe route out of poverty.

library workers are precarious workers

Local 4948, Toronto Public Library Workers Union, a/k/a the most kickass library workers' union in North America, produced two videos about the state of library work today.

Here's the short, humourous version.

And here's the longer documentary version; it's about 19 minutes long. If you care about libraries, about the lives of working people, and about our communities - or, like me, if you are passionate about all three - I hope you'll watch.

More on this subject coming soon.