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During the 1980s, many young people from Canada and around the world traveled to Nicaragua. Young and idealistic, they wanted to help the people of that country rebuild after the revolution which saw the election of the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were a people's party which came to power after 40 years of military dictatorship under the repressive Somoza family. Lois Ross is an Ottawa-based journalist and communicator who has had a longtime interest in Nicaragua. She was one of the young Canadians who went down to Nicaragua to support agrarian reform and the progressive Sandanista government. She lived in Nicaragua for two years in 1985 and 1986. Lois is a columnist on issues of agriculture and food security for rabble. She's done two installments of a three-column series for rabble where she draws from that experience in Nicaragua all those years ago, drawing parallels with what's happening there today. She talks to rabble podcast exec producer Victoria Fenner about her series of columns and why she wanted to write them more than 30 years later. Read Lois's columns: Are the real Sandinistas in Nicaragua standing up? Nicaragua's agrarian reform and revolution 40 years on Help make rabble sustainable. Please consider supporting our work with a monthly donation. Support rabble.ca today for as little as $1 per month!

Over the past month, Phillip Dwight Morgan has been writing a special series for rabble.ca called Toronto Votes 2018. Phillip Dwight Morgan is a Toronto-based journalist and writer and was rabble.ca's first Jack Layton Journalism for Change Fellow. This fall we asked him to do a series of stories about the election. You can read his series here. To wrap it up, rabble.ca podcast executive producer Victoria Fenner talked to him at the new Centre for Social Innovative building at 192 Spadina in Toronto. They talked about the surprises in the campaign, the effect of the intervention by Doug Ford to shrink the size of council, the rise of racist alt-right and the two Torontos — the glitzy city trying to say "we're world class" and the Toronto of those who live on the margins just trying to survive. Image: Phillip Dwight Morgan. Photo by Victoria Fenner Help make rabble sustainable. Please consider supporting our work with a monthly donation. Support rabble.ca today for as little as $1 per month!

It seems pretty obvious to most of us. The same countries that are 'up in arms' about refugees are also the ones which are working the hardest to discourage refugees from coming to their country. Even though they're the ones creating the crisis (US of A, we're looking at you). Today's rabble radio features an interview with Cesar Jaramillo, Executive Director of Project Ploughshares, based in Waterloo. It was done by David Kattenburg of The Green Blues Show, a production of The Green Planet Monitor, a social justice/environmental/science website and radio program based in Winnipeg. Cesar Jaramillo's work has focused on such program areas as nuclear disarmament, outer space security and conventional weapons control. As an international civil society representative, he has addressed, among others, the UN General Assembly First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), and the UN Conference on Disarmament, and the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). He's an occasional columnist on matters of disarmament and international security, and graduated from the University of Waterloo with an MA in global governance and has bachelor's degrees in honours political science and in journalism. Prior to joining Project Ploughshares, Cesar held a fellowship at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). Image: Pixabay – Alexas_Fotos – Child Refugee photo. Help make rabble sustainable. Please consider supporting our work with a monthly donation. Support rabble.ca today for as little as $1 per month!

When rabble.ca podcast producer Victoria Fenner was driving out in the farmlands outside Barrie, Ontario where she lives, she noticed a billboard that wasn't the usual ad to buy real estate, furniture or other consumer commodities. On the side of the road, next to a stand of forest, the billboard said 'Free Political Prisoners in Honduras. Free Elmvale's Edwin Espinal'. She'd heard of Edwin Espinal because Ben Powless wrote an article for rabble just this past May 29 called The fight to get Karen Spring into Honduran Prison. Karen Spring is Edwin Espinal's partner who grew up in the town of Elmvale, not far from Barrie. Her parents still live in that small rural town. Ben Powless went down to Honduras in the spring with a delegation to try to get into the prison to see Edwin. And especially, to help get Karen in to see him. Janet Spring is one of the leaders of the campaign to secure his release. She's Edwin's mother-in-law and has been tirelessly working to advocate for the release of Edwin. It's been four months since that delegation went down to Honduras and Edwin is still not free. The campaign to release Edwin is being waged internationally, nationally and even at the local level in their own rural community. In this podcast, Janet talks about that day last spring outside the Honduran jail, the support from their small town, and what's happened with the campaign since their journey to Honduras in the spring. You can find out more about the local campaign by going to Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor. You can also find out about issues surrounding political prisoners and the climate of repression by going to the website of the Honduras Solidarity Network. Karen Spring, Edwin's partner, is the Honduras coordinator of that organization. Image: Billboard to Free Edwin Espinal – Elmvale, Ontario. Photo: Janet Spring Help make rabble sustainable. Please consider supporting our work with a monthly donation. Support rabble.ca today for as little as $1 per month!

Earth is no longer a safe operating space, according to today's guest on rabble radio. Look at the dramatic and devastating events of this year – hundreds of fires across the world, monster sized hurricanes, earth parching heat waves and drought. All but the most stubborn of climate change deniers can see this. Unfortunately, some of those climate change deniers are politicians who are making decisions which affect our very survival. It's grim. Will Steffen has a long history in international global change research, serving from 1998 to 2004 as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), based in Stockholm, Sweden, and before that as Executive Officer of IGBP's Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems project. He was the Inaugural Director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, from 2008-2012. He is currently a Climate Councillor with the Climate Institute, and from 2011 to 2013 was a Climate Commissioner on the Australian Government's Climate Commission; Chair of the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee, Co-Director of the Canberra Urban and Regional Futures (CURF) initiative and Member of the ACT Climate Change Council. He is co-author of a paper called Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. On today's podcast he talks about that paper, written with Johan Rockström looks at the earth as a geophysical system. It presents the theory that the earth is no longer a sustainable space – we're in a transient phase. The earth is shifting and we don't have a map to see what trajectory it might take. But, Will Steffen says, it's like a domino effect. Once temperatures reach a certain level, those dominoes will start to fall to the point where nothing can be done. We're not at that tipping point yet, but the science indicates that it's coming. This interview is from the August 17, 2018 episode of The Green Blues Show, hosted and produced by David Kattenburg who is an occasional contributor to rabble radio. Listen to the Green Blues Show on CKUW Radio in Winnipeg or online by going to greenplanetmonitor.net. Thanks to for permission to reuse this interview. Image: Wikipedia – Forest Fire in Yosemite Help make rabble sustainable. Please consider supporting our work with a monthly donation. Support rabble.ca today for as little as $1 per month!

If you look at maps of electoral riding across the country and which politicians represent them, it's pretty evident that most of the progressive politicians are elected from large urban centres. Not exclusively, but mostly. rabble podcast executive producer Victoria Fenner lives in one of those conservative places that has a track record of electing politicians who don't seem to understand a lot of basic issues like poverty, human rights, and issues of inclusion, among others. Barrie isn't a lot different from many other smaller communities across Canada. Except that Barrie is a bit more special in that regards, having been the only place east of Manitoba to have ever elected a Reform party candidate to Ottawa. That was back in 1993 when another guy named Harper (Ed Harper – no relation to Stephen) was elected for one term. Victoria moved to Barrie three years ago after living most of my life in big cities. She decided to do this interview because, she says. "It was pretty easy in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Hamilton to seek out and be with people who pretty much shared my values. It's frustrating in many ways to live here, but frustration hasn't worked very well for me. I'm not planning to move, so I've been actively exploring what I can do to have an effect on my community?" So she's making an effort to connect with the progressive people who do live here, rather than lament that there are not as many of them as she would like. Keenan Alywin one of those people. Keenan was born in Barrie, went away to school and came back. He's one of the most visible workers for human rights and a just and fair society in Barrie. He's young, has a lot of energy, lots of skills and abilities and good ideas. He also ran locally in the last provincial election for the Green Party. He didn't win but is trying again, running for City Council in Barrie in the October municipal elections. Victoria and Keenan got together down at the Barrie waterfront to share some thoughts about the small city where they live, and also what people in other places like theirs can do to be the change they want to see. Image: Keenan Aylwin. Photo by Victoria Fenner Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

We've heard a lot about the crisis in local news as small community papers have closed down and local tv newscasts removed and replaced with big city casts. Most radio stations haven't had local news content for a long time, and there is some doubt that online news will fill the gap. As a result, small communities in particular are being abandoned and are becoming news deserts. A new $50 million local news fund has been announced by the Federal Government but it's taking a long time to roll out. It's far less than the $350 million that newspaper publishers were pushing for, and the $50 million only amounts to $10 per year over five years. The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) is an organization that has been lobbying the federal government to establish non-profit community media centres. CACTUS' position is that community media should be given some of the money to develop capacity for communities to tell their own stories. Cathy Edwards is the Executive Director of CACTUS. Victoria Fenner spoke to her a couple of weeks ago at her home in Gatineau. Disclosure: Victoria Fenner is a member of CACTUS. Image: Broadcast Tower in Cambridge Bay Nunavut. Victoria Fenner, 2003. Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Anti-sexual abuse and women's empowerment campaigns like #MeToo and #TimesUp have upended the conversation surrounding sexual violence and women's issues worldwide. But in parts of West Africa, strong cultural and religious taboos have prevented some women from speaking out in support of these movements. In Ghana, research that dates back to 2009 shows sexual abuse in schools accounts for more than half of all cases in the country. It also shows that teachers are among the highest perpetrators of sexual violence, particularly among young girls. The country's education ministry is currently investigating a number of sexual abuse scandals in schools where head teachers are being investigated for serial abuse, harassment and sexual extortion. A group called the Coalition Against Sexual Abuse (CASA) is calling for immediate action on the part of Ghanaian authorities to end this crisis of sexual abuse. In March 2018, CASA launched a year-long campaign called Stop Sex Abuse in Schools. The focus of the campaign is on raising awareness and advocating for policy on sexual abuse and harassment in schools. The campaign has three stages. The first is raising awareness of the issue on all media platforms with the #TimesUpGH trend. The second stage is bringing together stakeholders including the teachers' union, civil society and NGOs to discuss the coalition's target lens of teachers perpetrating sexual violence. Finally, the last stage is enforcing and building upon existing policy in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service to end rampant sexual abuse in the country. Esther Armah is a member of the coalition. Armah is also the director of EAA Media Productions, a columnist with the Business and Financial Times, a media and communications lecturer with Webster University and the host of a global radio show and podcast called The Spin. She spoke to Maxine Betteridge-Moes, a volunteer with Farm Radio International, a Canadian NGO that partners with radio broadcasters across sub-Saharan Africa to fight poverty and food insecurity through radio programs. This interview is a part of a podcast episode on sexual violence in Ghana, produced by Maxine Betteridge-Moes for the Young Journalists' Global Podcast Challenge, organized by Farm Radio International for the WUSC and CECI International Forum. The full episode will be available soon, and we hope to have it available for rabble podcast listeners. Image: Ray Styles Studios. Used with permission. Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Do I stay or do I go? After the election of Trump in 2016, there were a lot of memes and stories going around social media about why Americans should become Canadians. Some of that was real, and some of it was the Canadian tendency to pat ourselves on the back when we compare ourselves to the US. Regardless, many of us have friends who asked the same thing, so we know there were some Americans who live in Canada who breathed a sigh of relief that they were up here. But, attachment and sentiment for one's country is not a straightforward thing. Whether to stay or go is a question that some progressive Americans have asked themselves since November 8, 2016, and they continue to ask it. "Are you going to stay or go back home?" is a question rabble podcast exec producer Victoria Fenner asked Sophia Reuss even before the election happened. Victoria met Sophia at the World Social Forum when it was held Montreal in August of that year, just a few months before the election. An American who grew up in Washington, DC, Sophia had just finished up as a rabble intern after graduating from McGill. She was volunteering to help produce 'Ears on the Earth', a daily rabble podcast from the Forum. You can hear one of Sophia's stories here. At the time of the World Social Forum, not many people were seriously considering the possibility that Trump could win. And then, the unthinkable happened. Sophia could have stayed in Canada, but ultimately, she decided that she needed to be back home. She moved back to the US last year. She currently lives in Brooklyn, and works at the Prisoner Reentry Institute, an organization at the City University of New York. She also is continuing her work with rabble as an assistant editor. Today on rabble radio, Sophia shares her thoughts about why she decided to go back home. Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Long before any of us were podcasting, Frieda Werden was doing audio programs for an about women from a feminist perspective. She is cofounder of WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service, which started production back in 1986. Coordinating an international network on a low budget was a huge job back then. Low budget organizations couldn't afford satellite transmission time, which was the only way to get files from reporter to the production studios quickly. WINGS contributors came from different parts of the world, so tapes traveled by a lot of planes to get to WINGS studios to be packaged into a radio program. Distributed primarily through community radio, the program has been produced weekly for 27 years. That's a lot of words. And it isn't just the technology that's changed. "A show only about women .. that's just too radical". That's what Frieda was told many times in the early days. But that did not deter Frieda. She has been involved in the women's movement even before her forays into broadcasting, and has seen a lot of ideas that were radical in 1986 become commonly accepted in the years that followed. She's seen a lot of change in the women's movement over more than five decades. She's even credited as being one of the Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 in a book by that title written by Barbara J. Love. Frieda is formerly from Texas, and worked in various places in the U.S. until 2002 when she moved up to Canada. Victoria Fenner, rabble.ca's executive producer of podcasts took a trip out to the west coast in May and was able to record a conversation with Frieda in her home on Denman Island, British Columbia. Image: Frieda Werden on Denman Island BC, 2018. Photo by Victoria Fenner Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.