rabble radio

We're hearing a lot in the news that there is still no resolution of the trade impasse between Canada and the United States. But as is often the case, we're not often hearing the voices of labour on the issue. Today's rabble radio interview is with a representative from a trade union which is being directly affected by tariffs on steel and aluminum by the United States which were announced on May 31st. To recap, Canada is set to impose tariffs on American steel and aluminum, plus a wide variety of products. Symbolically, our own tariffs against American imports will come into effect on Canada Day. In a show of solidarity which is unusual in Canadian politics, there is widespread agreement among all political parties, the general public and labour that a show of strength is the way to go. Marc Belanger is the host and producer of RadioLabour, a podcast and radio show. He talks to Ken Neumann, National Director for Canada for the United Steelworkers union – the USW. Thanks to RadioLabour for sending this interview to us. You can hear more RadioLabour programs at radiolabour.net Image: Wikimedia – Steel Factory Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Fighting climate change is a numbers game, in units of degrees Celsius and millions and billions of tonnes. As the atmospheric concentration of earth-warming CO2 rises above 400 parts per million — almost twice what it was 200 years ago – the nations of the world struggle to roll back their emissions by the gigatonne. Canada has vowed to cut emissions by 30 percent, relative to its emissions in 2005. Most climate change scientists say that target falls far far short of what is needed. Still, Canada's emissions rise relentlessly, notably in oil-rich Alberta, where bitumen-rich tar sands generate billions and billions of dollars for huge corporations, and for the province. To placate Alberta, the Canadian government has declared that expanding fossil fuel production is perfectly consistent with Canada's larger goal of reducing emissions from burning that fuel. Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, says the government approach won't work. In a repeat of an interview from The Green Blues Show, originally broadcast on CKUW Radio in Winnipeg and online on The Green Planet Monitor, David Kattenburg talks to Keith Stewart about what's wrong with the picture the government has painted. Thanks to The Green Blues show for permission to podcast his interview. You can subscribe to the whole show through your favourite mobile podcast app. Just put Green Blues Show in the search box. Or, you can listen from the show website. Image: Tar Sands exploratory mission/Flickr Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Today, May 17, a Canadian delegation of people from labour, community and media will be going to Venezuela to observe the May 20 national federal elections and to meet with local community and labour leaders. The mainstream media coverage of events in Venezuela has been historically misleading. Many believe that's because Venezuela has a socialist government that the big global power players object to, especially the United States. If past history is any indication, the elections will be misrepresented to the rest of the world this time too if we only rely on coverage from the big mainstream media. rabble.ca is proud to have been invited to be part of the delegation to Venezuela so we can provide an alternative perspective to the coverage that a lot of the media will be distributing. Humberto DaSilva is a member of CUPE and is also a frequent video contributor to rabble (known to rabble readers, listeners and viewers as "Not Rex"). He's bringing his camera and will be doing video features for us, recording what people are doing and saying about the elections and life in Venezuela. Victoria Fenner, rabble's executive producer of podcasts, had a conversation with Humberto a couple of days ago. He told her that he wanted to go because it's an important global issue about democracy and freedom, and also because he has a personal connection to Venezuela that he wants to explore. The delegation will be gone until May 25, though Humberto will only be there until May 22. We'll be posting a daily stream of articles on rabble from people in the delegation including video reports. WATCH: Raul Burbano of Common Frontiers on Venezuela presidential elections on rabbletv Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Regular rabble readers and listeners know that the Canadian Boat to Gaza and the international Freedom Flotilla is something we think it's important to cover each year. We've done some outstanding coverage over the past 8 years that the Flotilla has sailed. In 2011, the Canadian boat the Tahrir was seized by the Israeli military and we are proud that we were able to do interviews with participants who were part of the delegation as the story was unfolding. There hasn't been a Canadian boat every year, and there won't be one in the fleet this year. But there will still be Canadians participating. The Freedom Flotilla boat, the Al Awda (The Return) left the Norwegian port of Bergen on Monday April 30, with hundreds of well-wishers on the dock to bid her farewell. This marks the beginning of her 75 day voyage to Gaza, to challenge and break the illegal Israeli blockade. More ships will be joining it along the way. Fundraising to support the mission is important. The members of the organization The supporters of Canadian Boat to Gaza, are committed to paying part of those costs, as well as part of the costs of acquiring of this hard-working former fishing boat. The Canadian Boat to Gaza share of the international Freedom Flotilla budget this year is $30,000. rabble will be hosting a kick off online event tomorrow night to launch this year's Canadian campaign. Join rabble on Tuesday, May 15 at 7 Eastern Daylight Savings Time for a special livestream, with special guests former NDP member of Parliament (and now Member of the Order of Canada) Libby Davies and retired U.S. Colonel Ann Wright. Victoria Fenner talked to David Heap, one of the long time Canadian Boat to Gaza organizers about the event and what's happening with this year's Freedom Flotilla. Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism. Image: rabble.ca – The Tahrir – from 2011 Canadian Boat to Gaza

This week, politicians, reporters and pundits say it's a make or break week for the North American Free Trade talks in Washington. They say if there isn't a deal really soon, upcoming elections in the United States and Mexico could complicate things dramatically. Despite all the boosterism for a successfully renegotiated NAFTA that we are usually hearing in the media, there are still people who think it would be a good thing if the NAFTA talks fail. Today's guest on rabble radio is a well known opponent of NAFTA. David Orchard is an author and farmer from Saskatchewan. He's a former member of the Progressive Conservatives, the party which first brought us into free trade with the U.S. in 1988. He actually ran for the PCs twice, but left the party after it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada. He jumped over to the Liberals and ran in the 2008 federal election. He's well known for his opposition to NAFTA, and the free trade deals that have come before it. Orchard is the author of the bestselling book The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism. He was also a co-founder of CCAFT (Citizens Concerned About Free Trade) in 1985, three years before the passage of the historic Canada US Free Trade Deal that started us on this free trade path that we're walking now. Today's interview was done by Michael Welch of Winnipeg's Global Research News Hour. It's excerpted from the program called Free Trade Fantasies originally broadcast on Feb 2 of this year. Thanks to Michael Welch for permission to post this as a rabble radio podcast. You can hear more of his programs here. Image: Flickr – Jim Winstead Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Anyone who has lived in B.C. or follows political trends in Canada knows that our most westerly province is reputed to be one of the most politically polarized provinces in the nation. A lot of that has to do with the province's unions, which are known for being formidable opponents at the bargaining table, and if it comes to that, on the picket lines. But it's not all black and white. There is a lot of nuance that only people who see the dynamics behind the scenes really understand. Rod Mickleburgh has been covering the labour movement in B.C. since the 1970s. He's the author of a new book, On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement. On today's rabble radio, he shares some thoughts with Victoria Fenner about some of the significant events in worker struggles that have helped create the province of B.C. as we know it today. Image: Vancouver Province front page by Rod Mickleburgh Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Homemade movies are something we tend to take for granted in this era of selfie culture. Flashback to the 1950s and super 8 film. And then, in the 80s and 90s, all of the home movies shot on videotape. It was a very different technology and a different way of documenting and archiving than we see nowadays. Those films have mostly been regarded as private, family moments. They weren't shared. Today we're talking to the organizers of a project that is addressing what they see as a gap in our national archives. The national archive project Homemade Visible wants to get that archival footage out of people's closets and into our national archives. They are focusing especially on home movies by Indigenous people and visible minorities. Homemade Visible is a project of the Regent Park Film Festival in Toronto, in partnership with Charles Street Video. rabble radio host Victoria Fenner talked to Ananya Ohri, Artistic Director of Homemade Visible. She is also the Executive Director of the Regent Park Film Festival. The Homemade Visible Project is hosting a symposium this Saturday, April 28 at the Toronto Media Arts Centre at 32 Lisgar Street. Re:collections brings Indigenous artists and artists of colour to share how their work engages, re-frames and re-defines the archive. They're exploring questions like — How do we take the idea of an archive, and its difficult, racist, exclusionary history, and turn it around? For more info you can check out Homemade Visible Symposium Facebook page. Image: Homemade Visible. Used with permission Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

Today in anticipation of Earth Day and Earth Week, we're celebrating and paying attention to the world we hear. Acoustic ecology is the study of human beings in their relationship to their environment through sound. Multidisciplinary artists Brady Marks, Mark Timmings have created The Wetland Project to celebrate Earth Week 2018, a program of events exploring the soundscape of a Saturna Island, British Columbia marsh. The goal of the project is to connect people to the circadian rhythm of the wetland. There are a few different components to this project — an audiovisual installation at the VIVO gallery in Vancouver, a musical performance comprised of sounds transcribed from field recordings of the marsh along with a work performed by chamber choir. And Slow Radio Day, where four radio stations and an internet stream will play the sounds of the wetlands all day on Earth Day, this Sunday, April 22. The Wetland Project commemorates the 50-year anniversary of the founding of the World Soundscape Project and the idea of "wilderness radio" proposed by WSP associate Bruce Davis in 1975. In Davis's words, it would be "a radio service which 'listens in' rather than broadcasts out." Four decades later the Wetland broadcast realizes his vision. Victoria Fenner, rabble.ca executive producer of podcasts, has been a soundscape artist and acoustic ecology practitioner for many years, primarily inspired in her early days at Vancouver Co-op Radio by Hildegard Westerkamp and the late Howard Broomfield, both World Soundscape Project researchers and artists. So she's especially happy to be doing this program today for rabble radio. She had a conversation with Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, starting their conversation by talking about who Murray Schafer is, and why the World Soundscape Project remains so important to listeners around the world. View the full schedule, including the radio broadcast here. Image: Nancy Angermeyer Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

The voice and words of Judy Rebick are well known to rabble readers and listeners. Judy was one of the co-founders of rabble in 2001 and she continues to be a good friend and mentor to rabble these 17 years later. In her new memoir Heroes in my Head, she recounts many of the political battles that she has waged over the years for women's rights, a just and progressive society, and her involvement in the struggle to change Canada's abortion laws. And her new book shows another dimension in Judy's life. It is truly a stunning example of the phrase "the personal is political." She reveals as aspect to her life that few people have known until now. She talks to Victoria Fenner, executive producer of rabble podcasts. Bio: Judy Rebick is a well-known social justice and feminist activist, writer, journalist, educator, and speaker. She is the author of Transforming Power: From the Personal to the Political, Occupy This!, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution, Imagine Democracy. She is the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada's largest women's group, and was the first CAW Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University. During the 1990s, she was the host of two national TV show on CBC Newsworld and is a frequent commentator on CBC Radio and Television. In the 1980s, she was a well-known spokesperson for the pro-choice movement during the fight to legalize abortion. She lives in Toronto. Founding publisher of rabble.ca, Canada's popular independent online news and discussion site You can read her rabble.ca blog here. Image: Judy Rebick, photo by Kim Elliott. Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.

The 24th anniversary of Rwanda's hundred-day genocide is Friday, April 6. It began when a plane carrying the president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down. From April to July, 1994, almost a million ethnic Tutsis and their Hutu friends were slaughtered by marauding gangs of Hutu extremists. In alternative media, there is a long tradition of using radio for peacebuilding, so many community radio workers were horrified to hear that the airwaves in Rwanda were being used to stoke the furnace of ethnic hatred. Today we're repodcasting a story by David Kattenburg about how radio in Rwanda is working to promote healing after this sad legacy. It's called "Ghosts of Hate Radio," originally podcast on rabble in 2006, and repeated this week on The Green Planet Monitor. And the tradition of radio for peace in Rwanda continues. One of the featured radio stations, Radio Izuba, continues to train whole new generations of journalists who are working to make sure this never happens again. You'll also hear the voices of Willy Rukundo, who was the station manager of state-run Radio Rwanda, and Alan Thompson, who organized and coordinated the Rwanda Initiative, a collaborative project of the National University of Rwanda and Carleton University, in Ottawa. The project ran from 2006 until 2011. It sent more than 75 Carleton journalism students to Rwanda as interns, as well as about 100 professional journalists to teach journalism there. Thanks to The Green Planet Monitor for permission to repodcast. Image: Wikipedia – African FM Radio Like this podcast? rabble is reader/listener supported journalism.