I talk to Toronto doctor and activist Ritika Goel about the first few weeks of the pandemic here in Toronto, some of the emergency measures anti-poverty activists have called for, and the ways the pandemic should force some thinking about the importance of solidarity.
Author: Justin Podur
Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction.
Depressed? Anxious? It’s a social problem.
In today’s video I review the insights in Johann Hari’s book Lost Connections, as well as gems from leftist psychologists like Bruce Levine, Paul Moloney, and Gabor Mate. If you’re quarantined and feeling low, here’s a leftist take on why.
The Anti-Empire Project Episode 39: Might, the novel, by Brian Dominick
Brian Dominick is the author of Present as Prologue: A GenZero Novella, which describes the first phase of a youth-led, high-tech revolution in America. We talk about youth liberation, education, capitalism, and the liberatory possibilities and limitations of technological change. Interesting discussion about the idea of youth as a class.
The Anti-Empire Project Episode 38: The East is a Podcast
I talk to Sina Rahmani, host of The East is A Podcast, about everything from genre conventions to Orientalism and Edward Said to podcasting culture and trying to reach an audience as a podcaster.
Readings for leftist parents
A little video talking about some of the readings on parenting I found most helpful, and most compatible with leftist values (equality, freedom…)
The Brief Episode 3: Blockade standoff
Police move in on the Mohawks at Tyendinaga, setting off a further wave of blockades, disruptions and direct action from coast to coast. Anna Zalik joins us to discuss the oil and gas industry, and Gord Hill talks indigenous resistance.
The Anti-Empire Project Episode 37: Postcoloniality and the Racist Legacy of the British Empire
A wide-ranging and admittedly bookish discussion with William Patterson historian Navyug Gill and frequent guest and sometimes host of the show, Dan Freeman-Maloy. We talk about postcolonial studies, history, and the British Empire, and the ways that its racism lives on.
The Brief Episode 2: Blockades expand
After the RCMP raided and dismantled the Wet’suwet’en roadblocks, rail, port and transportation blockades have spread across Canada in solidarity.
And they are growing.
The Brief on Wet’suwet’en
Our new podcast. This episode: on the Wet’suwet’en evicting Coastal GasLink in Canada, and the RCMP raid on behalf of the pipeline company.
Includes an interview with Jeffrey Monaghan, co-author of Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security State (Fernwood 2018), and a passage from Nick Estes’s book Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.
Anti-Empire Project Episode 36: Siegebreakers at York University
On November 19, 2019, York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies hosted a panel called “The Art and Politics in Imagining a Free Gaza: A Discussion of Justin Podur’s new novel, Siegebreakers.” It featured poet, theatre worker, and Associate Professor Honor Ford-Smith; writer and Professor Catriona Sandilands; and Lebanese-Palestinian activist and Executive Director of Canadian Friends of Sabeel, Yara Shoufani. The event began with me reading Chapter 1 of Siegebreakers, and interventions by the panelists followed.
So, if you still haven’t read Siegebreakers, you can let me read the first chapter to you!