Saima Desai

The funny, strange, and dogged ways that Briarpatch’s readers have helped this magazine reach its 50th anniversary

This issue tells the story of Briarpatch’s survival, and explores how to build better media in Canada.

As the term “just transition” gains traction with policymakers and fossil fuel companies trying to paint themselves green, the articles in this issue remind us that a just transition means justice for workers, migrants, and Indigenous Peoples.

In some ways, winning a $15/hour minimum wage by 2024 is a truly hopeful sign for Saskatchewan politics – and shows that even the most right-wing governments will bow to movement demands. In other ways, it’s deeply inadequate. 

Mainstream feminism’s wildest dreams involve women being represented at the top of their fields. It’s a depressingly bland and narrow dream. This issue of Briarpatch thinks bigger, asking: how can we ensure all women are safe, healthy, cared for, and free?

How do we avoid a world in which human creativity and knowledge becomes just another occasion for commerce?

The theme of property – and the vision of a world no longer organized by its logic – is one that is threaded through most of the stories in this issue.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 11th annual Writing In The Margins contest.

Where can we speak honestly about the weaknesses of the labour movement, offering constructive criticism and debating paths forward, without making the movement vulnerable to bad-faith attacks by neoliberal columnists and far-right ghouls? 

The Land Back issue’s National Magazine Award is a testament to the activists behind the Land Back movement, who have worked tirelessly to force the Canadian state and Canadian media to reckon with the literal and figurative foundations of this country.

Defeat happens all the time in leftist campaigns, but very few leftists (including leftist media) have developed honest, helpful ways of talking about it.

We’re looking for stories about the practical solutions Saskatchewan people are building in response to social and environmental issues. Pitches are due May 9, 2021.

At its best, Briarpatch stitches together the fragments of a progressive community across so-called Canada, quilting a powerful movement for collective liberation.

Indigenous people, immigrants, and settlers in Regina’s Decolonizing Relations group discuss land, labour, and solidarity.

As COVID fanned the flames of Toronto’s preexisting housing crisis, the Keep Your Rent posters on every block were a reminder that, all around me, there were people fighting for the soul of the city I grew up in. 

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 10th annual Writing In The Margins contest: Larissa Lai, Pat Kane, and Sonnet L’Abbé.

Amazon has made a name for itself in pioneering new strategies for worker exploitation. The best way to fight back is to build worker power from below.

An interview with Haisla/Heiltsuk author Eden Robinson about her relationship to land, the importance of independent journalism in covering Indigenous movements, and why she donates monthly to Briarpatch.

When we say “Land Back” we want the system that is land to be alive so that it can perpetuate itself, and perpetuate us as an extension of itself. That’s what we want back: our place in keeping land alive and spiritually connected. 

The controversial reopening plan for Saskatchewan public schools has seen educators, students, and parents hit the streets in protests. Four of them shared their concerns about the Sask Party’s plans with Sask Dispatch.