Category Archives: Activism
Top 16 Talon-Approved Initiatives on Campus
By Anne Kessler, updated from “The Top 10 Talon-Approved Initiatives on Campus” by Urooba Jamal Do you find yourself rapidly muttering expletives under your breath every time you engage in any type of mainstream media? Have the phrases “in solidarity with,” “hegemonic,” and “social construct” come to replace filler words like “um” and “like” in […]
Frontlines Beat Pipelines 2: Supporting The Unist’ot’en Through Creative Resistance
The first week of school brings more than just the familiar and notorious whirlwind of welcome back events, parties, and Imagine Day-related hysteria. It also conjures up the long legacy of on-campus colonial violence and misogyny that sometimes rears its head in traditions like Frosh. The Sauder School’s “Pocahontas chants” of 2013 readily come to […]
Beginning to Win: Amsterdam, Red Squares and the Student Struggle
“Yeah, fuck the neoliberal narrative!” These are the words that introduced us to Dutch student activist Judith Baten, one of the main organizers of the student movement, the Nieuwe Universiteit, at the University of Amsterdam. Regardless of the fact that she had been averaging 2 hours of sleep for the last week, Baten was full […]
Remembering the Purple Thistle
I’m chatting with Aliza Bosa in the Purple Thistle Centre. The 2,500-square foot arts and activism space in East Vancouver feels remarkably spacious with only the two of us here, but signs of the centre’s visitors and their creative endeavors linger all around us—things like screen printing tools, paints, books, computers, a bike-repair station, and […]
Social Justice Synonyms #21: “Prostitute”
On Sunday March 29th #facesofprostitution went viral. The hashtag was a response from queer Australian sex worker Tilly Lawless to an article posted on the website Exodus Cry entitled “The Reality of Pretty Woman.” The article argued that Pretty Woman, the 1990 movie in which Julia Roberts plays a sex worker, romanticizes the realities of […]
Homelessness is Not a Choice
I am deeply indebted to the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations on whose unceded lands I think, teach, learn, and write. With my heartfelt gratitude. It is springtime again and the Five Days for the Homeless Campaign has recently concluded at UBC. The campaign’s website states that student participants had to […]
Pièce de Résistance – Art as Revolution
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings At an open mic evening called Spoken Works III: Centring Black Voices, some of those stories were released. Held on March 4th at Heartwood Community Café, non-black organizer Jane Shi explained that the […]
UBC SPHR Press Release: UBC’s AMS Officially Opposes Campus Boycott and Divest Campaign
Vancouver, BC – On March 4, 2015, the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) student union, the AMS, voted to officially oppose the boycott and divestment campaign put forth by on-campus student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). The campaign seeks to implement the BDS movement at the student union level at the university that […]
How BDS Won at Concordia University
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement is not about hate, although that hasn’t stopped UBC Hillel from spending more than $4000 on posters and incessant Facebook ads. BDS is about the human rights of Palestinians, and about stopping the companies which participate in the oppression of Palestinians – those which provide “security” services, armaments, […]
A Guide to BDS for the Rest of Us
There’s a lot of buzz around campus about BDS, but if you’re like me, you’ve tuned it out a bit. You know it’s got something to do with Israel and Palestine, and lots of people are really worked up about it, so that’s a hornet’s nest you don’t really want to disturb without being a […]
