Briarpatch Articles

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.

We must use as many tools as possible to fight against oppression, including – or maybe especially – rest.

Anti-gossip policies, like other ostensibly good policies, are wielded by management to keep workers from building solidarity and transforming their workplaces.

As the logic of capitalism infiltrates our social movements, we must choose between being paid for our activism and building a strong culture of social struggle.

Millions of Canada’s plastic Remembrance Day poppies have been made by prisoners and people labelled with intellectual/developmental disabilities, who are paid pennies on the hour. It’s part of a long history of prisons and institutions using poverty to control disabled and criminalized workers.

Pour mobiliser les travailleuses et travailleurs migrant∙e∙s en région rurale, il faut d’abord les trouver. La seconde étape est de réussir à desserrer l’emprise de surveillance et de peur qu’exerce leurs patrons.

The first step in organizing rural migrant workers is finding them. The second step is breaking through their bosses’ iron grip of surveillance and fear.

Union members and staff say that sexism, anti-Black racism, and other oppressive attitudes are deeply entrenched in many unions. Drawing on a history of women, trans, and racialized workers fighting for their place in the labour movement, trade unionists share ideas to transform unions today.

Canada’s sole sex worker’s union wants to organize the industry coast to coast. But with members spread out in different cities, and working for online services like OnlyFans, how much support can a union provide?

It’s time for unions to expel police from their membership, because a strong labour movement can only be built on a foundation of safety for Black and Indigenous members. 

My newsroom unionized. We were shut down two weeks later. Here’s why it was still worth it.

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? 

In unnaturally small prison cells, it’s common for prisoners’ eyesight to degrade due to a lack of stimulation, distance, and depth. It begs the question: which other senses does confinement diminish? To what degree? Do they come back?

How prisoners helped stop the construction of a new prison camp in Kentucky

“Prison reform” is an empty promise from politicians and corrections departments who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

In a world without prisons, we could break the vicious cycle of generational poverty, trauma, and incarceration.

Women have struggled to get what little we have in prison – but the COVID pandemic has stripped even that away.

Correctional officers don’t help “correct” prisoners – most of them simply create an environment that’s toxic for both prisoners and other staff.

Living on remand, it’s important to know how to fight for your rights when the justice system breaks its own rules.

Surviving a COVID outbreak inside a federal prison