#Saskatchewan teachers strike

[harmonyhealinghub]

Teachers on Strike in Saskatchewan: Advocating for Quality Education

Shaina Tranquilino

January 21, 2024

Teachers play a vital role in shaping the future of our society, nurturing young minds, and imparting knowledge. However, when educational systems fail to meet their needs and demands, teachers are left with no choice but to take a stand. Recently, educators across Saskatchewan have decided to go on strike, aiming to improve the quality of education for both students and teachers alike. In this blog post, we will delve into the reasons behind this strike and how it may impact education in Saskatchewan.

1. The Struggle for Fair Compensation: One of the primary concerns that led teachers in Saskatchewan to take this decisive step is fair compensation. Over the years, educators have witnessed stagnant wages and inadequate funding from the government, resulting in salary discrepancies and financial difficulties. This situation has not only demoralized teachers but also hindered attracting new talent into the profession.

2. Class Size and Support Staff Ratios: Another significant issue faced by teachers is large class sizes and understaffed schools. With limited resources and increasing student enrollment, educators find it challenging to provide individual attention and support to each student. Adequate staff ratios are crucial for creating an optimal learning environment where students' needs can be effectively met.

3. Insufficient Resources: The lack of necessary teaching materials, textbooks, technology tools, and other essential resources significantly impacts both teaching quality and student performance. Teachers recognize that without proper resources at their disposal, it becomes increasingly difficult to deliver engaging lessons or cater to diverse learning styles adequately.

4. Increased Workload: Teaching goes beyond classroom hours; it involves lesson planning, grading assignments, attending professional development sessions, parent-teacher meetings—the list goes on. The mounting workload often leaves teachers overwhelmed and compromises their ability to provide personalized instruction or engage in self-improvement initiatives.

Implications of the Teacher Strike:

While teacher strikes inevitably disrupt regular school routines, they also serve as a powerful means of drawing attention to critical issues and fostering discussion about necessary improvements. By standing up for their rights and advocating for quality education, teachers hope to create long-term benefits that go beyond their own immediate concerns.

1. Government Response: The strike has forced the government to address these pressing issues and engage in negotiations with the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF). The outcome of these discussions will determine whether teachers' demands are met or if further action needs to be taken.

2. Student Impact: Undoubtedly, students are at the heart of this struggle. While strikes may disrupt academic schedules temporarily, it is essential to remember that teachers are fighting for better educational opportunities for their students. A fair resolution would ultimately benefit both educators and learners alike.

3. Public Awareness: Teacher strikes generate public awareness regarding the challenges faced by educators on a daily basis. This increased understanding can lead to greater support from parents, communities, and policymakers who recognize the crucial role teachers play in society.

Teachers in Saskatchewan have embarked on a strike to highlight persistent issues within the education system, including fair compensation, class sizes, resource shortages, and excessive workloads. By taking this stand, they demand an equitable environment where quality education can flourish. As we navigate through this period of disruption, it is crucial for all stakeholders involved to prioritize meaningful dialogue and find solutions that pave the way for a brighter future for both teachers and students in Saskatchewan.

[cavenewstimes]

Saskatchewan teachers to strike on provincial budget day

A one-day provincewide strike will take place on Wednesday at the Saskatchewan legislature as part of ongoing teacher job action. The Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation said this falls in line with the announcement of the provincial budget and is meant to send a message to the Sask. Party government. “Government’s unwillingness to work with teachers in finding any path forward has forced this…

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: His Name Is Alive

While Warren Defever’s name is perhaps less recognizable than that of his band His Name Is Alive, he’s also been connected with a seemingly endless array of other projects: Princess Dragon-Mom, Elvis Hitler, ESP Beetles, Control Panel, and far more. This doesn’t get into his recording and production credits for the likes of Michael Hurley, Iggy and the Stooges, and Mdou Moctar. Forever associated with Michigan’s weirdo-underground music scene, Defever has recently been issuing a series of long-buried recordings as His Name Is Alive. In February, the Disciples label released Hope Is a Candle, the third and final volume in the "Home Recordings" trilogy exploring Defever's teenage tape experimentation as well as A Silver Thread (Home Recordings 1979 - 1990), a four-volume collection of many of Defever’s solo home recordings prior to His Name Is Alive releasing their debut album Livonia on 4AD in 1990. In his review of A Silver Thread, Tim Clarke writes “For a collection of home recordings, what’s most striking about this music is how fully realized and carefully executed it sounds, comparable at times to contemporary artists such as Grouper, Benoît Pioulard and Tim Hecker. This is not the 1980s that I remember.”

Defever gives us his “What Else Is New” list, a set of personal snapshots, memories of a life spent in music, warning the reader that “the descriptions don’t always have an obvious correlation to the video, but welcome to my nightmare brain.”

In The Line of Fire

I started performing when I was five. My grandfather was a self-taught musician from Saskatchewan in Western Canada and he showed me and my brothers how to play banjo, guitar and fiddle. One of my earliest memories is having a full size 127 lb. accordion placed onto my lap and my grandmother voicing her disappointment when I refused to play. I did learn slide guitar from her later though. I have many, often terrible, memories of performing at square dances with his band and we would play old timey country music, folk songs, polkas and waltzes. There were also gigs at the trailer park, old folks homes and a convent. Although my grandfather believed that popular music died with Hank Williams in 1953, he still found room in his heart for Lawrence Welk and Slim Whitman.

Meet Me By The Water

By age ten I had a tape recorder and was using it to capture the sounds of nearby lakes, thunderstorms, and my older brothers LP collection played at the wrong speeds. I recently found the cassette, Echo Lake (1983) which features waves crashing onto the beach on the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair but it was recorded right after I got an echo pedal so it’s got a heavy dose of dreamy delay. Tape loops of the next door neighbor raking leaves and shoveling the driveway would be repurposed a few years later as rhythm tracks on the first His Name Is Alive LP, Livonia (4AD, 1990). Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s had totally insane radio and one of the highlights was Met-Ezzthetics, a late night show on WDET hosted by Faruq Z. Bey who also played saxophone in Griot Galaxy. Shortly before his death he played with His Name is Alive and we had a chance to formalize our student-teacher relationship.

Search For Higher Energies

In high school I was studying Bach Chorale harmonization and counterpoint during the day but recording and touring with the band Elvis Hitler at night. The other guys in band were older but at 16 I was a familiar sight at shitty Detroit punk clubs and Hamtramck dive bars, the nerdy teenager reading a book or doing homework sitting at the bar waiting ’til midnight or 1am for our slot to play our hellbilly hits, “It’s A Long Way From Berlin To Memphis,” and “Hot Rod To Hell.” I was still trying to make sense of the post 1953 music scene and when I met the guy with a giant afro and shiny super hero outfit complete with shiny cape I had no idea he was Rob Tyner of the MC5. We released three records before I was twenty one and played shows and toured with Devo, the Dwarves, the Dead Milkmen, Reverend Horton Heat, the Beat Farmers, Helios Creed, Babes In Toyland, the Cro-Mags, Corrosion of Conformity, the Frogs, the Gories, Pussy Galore, the Unsane and way more I can’t remember I was just a kid. It was some kind of education.

You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here

When I signed with 4AD I thought I was a composer and they let me write my own bio, so I called His Name Is Alive the work of a “fucked up, irresponsible teenage composer.” I had only been writing music for three years. When I heard “Tom Violence” by Sonic Youth I thought for the first time in my life, “I think I could do that.” In 1988 I made a mixtape with Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, Leadbelly and some of Big Star’s third album and I tried to arrange it like it was an album, then I made my own album in that same shape, it was called I Had Sex With God and I sent it to 4AD. Our first album contained three of the first five pieces of music I had ever written. Within a few years I was playing festivals for contemporary classical composers and new age artists who were thirty or forty years older than me. His Name Is Alive played the Musicas Visuales Festival in Mexico with Harold Budd, Paul Horn and Jorge Reyes. The mayor of the city presented me with a guitar but then dramatically walked out of the theater during our performance realizing he had made a terrible mistake. I remember the surreal moment when from across the room Harold Budd walked in and greeted me as “Mr. Defever.” He had a cold and was sniffling during his set, the audience thought he was crying. I recorded his show and when I got back home to Livonia I added my own guitar to some of his songs and then edited the tapes, looping my favorite parts and editing out the parts I didn’t like, also adding additional layers of reverb and echo. More recently I did a concert in a five hundred year old temple in Japan where the unamplified meditation music never rose above a whisper and the monk had to turn off the furnace because the heat molecules were too loud. The show was recorded and released under the name Mountain Ocean Sun and features Ian Masters and Hitoko Sakai.

Energy Dealer

Both my parents were born in Canada, my mother in Saskatchewan, my father in Ontario. I have dual citizenship as my father was American and my mother had Canadian citizenship. I spent summers, holidays and weekends in a tiny cottage on Lake St. Clair that did not have a telephone and had curtains instead of doors separating the two rooms. Myrt Fortin who lived next door would receive phone calls for my mom, walk over to our place and yell into the window, “Hey wake up your ma, your dad’s on the phone.” My mom took a lot of naps, so she was always asleep when something important was happening. I remember always getting cut on broken glass while swimming in the lake or getting stabbed by one of the neighbors and having to go wake up my mom to take me to the hospital.

Lord I Don’t Believe You Exist

When I was ten my parents sat me down and told me it was time that I got a summer job. There were only two businesses in town, a gas station and a hardware store so I walked up to the hardware store and asked the owner for a job and immediately fell to the ground crying. Completely fell apart. He asked me why I wanted to work in hardware. I didn’t know what to say, I was only ten but I knew not to tell the owner that his store was stupid and I didn’t think he could handle the truth. It turned out he also owned the gas station so that didn’t really work out. Later that summer, I began working for the Pickseed Corporation as corn de-tasseling season was just beginning. All the moms would drop off their kids in the church parking lot in Tecumseh, just outside of Windsor, around 4:30am where an unmarked windowless cargo van was waiting that had cinderblocks and 2'x4' boards instead of benches so they could squeeze in the maximum amount of children. There were three job requirements to work in a cornfield, the child (it was only children, no adults) needed to show up with a baseball hat, a thermos with water and a large black plastic garbage bag. I think this was before sunglasses were invented. Upon arriving at the cornfield, we were separated into pickers and checkers, younger kids each taking a row of corn (a row could extend a mile or more) and a slightly older kid would organize and manage several of the younger kids. In the morning we were instructed to poke two arm holes and a head hole into our garbage bags and put it on like a raincoat because the corn was covered in dew and kids wearing wet clothes would walk slower than dry kids. So almost every day there was a point, usually around 11am when the dew would dry and we would be roasted alive from the summer sun coming down on our ridiculous shiny black plastic outfits. We worked from sun up until sun down. I received three dollars and thirty five cents an hour. For all you city folks, corn is planted in alternating rows of types of corn so that when the top part of the plant is removed, or “de-tasseled,” it can seed or cross-pollinate easily. It’s a terrible job with a high turnover rate and every day I would hear the sound of kids in nearby rows that had given up hope, sat down in the middle of the field and crying for hours. The following year, at age 11, I was promoted from picker to checker, and was put in charge of a group of about ten sixteen year old’s.

Sleep It Off

Mostly I like to record – His Name is Alive has over a hundred releases and I’ve done another fifty records under various names, Control Panel, Warren Michael Defever, ESP BEETLES, ESP SUMMER, Forest People, Infinity People, Jeepers Creepers, Layla al-Akhyaliyya, Mirror Dream, Princess Dragon-Mom, the Dirt Eaters, the Fishcats, the Whales, plus way more I can’t remember probably because the names were so dumb. I’ve recorded about four hundred records for other bands at my house or other studios. I’ve worked on records with Danny Kroha, Ida, Fred Thomas, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wild Belle, Michael Hurley, and when I was a teenager I helped record the first Gories album which was especially unique as I was the junior assistant engineer who helped move their equipment into the dirt floor garage next to the studio where it was decided the acoustics would be way worse. Also, I helped collage about a hundred Destroy All Monsters tapes from the 70s for a couple of their releases which led to remastering a bunch of tapes from the John Sinclair White Panther Party archives. I’ve done remixes for Thurston Moore and Yoko Ono and when Iggy and The Stooges started touring again I got a phone call from Ron Asheton seeing if I would help them record demos for their reunion album with Mike Watt on bass. They wrote the songs together while they were recording in Niagara’s basement sort of simultaneously. Iggy didn’t have a notebook with all his lyric ideas, instead he just sang about whatever happened that day – one song was about the airline losing his luggage, one about ATM machines and another was about reading in a newspaper that Ray Davies of the Kinks had been shot in New Orleans. In the end they weren’t terribly excited by my suggested song titles including “No Shirt” (you know because it’s like “No Fun” plus you know Iggy never wears a shirt) and they didn’t seem to love the mixes that I did that sounded kind of like those crappy Raw Power bootlegs.

Cost Of Living

Two summers ago I recorded an incredible concert by Mdou Moctar live at Third Man Records in Detroit. They’re wild hypnotic Hendrix style jammers who live in the desert. The band didn’t speak much english but I think I was able to communicate to them how excited I was about their amazing fingerpicking and hot guitar solos after the show by screaming and replaying the best solos over and over again and then screaming the word fuzz and pointing at their fingers. It’s insane and having seen them a few times since then with a different drummer and the addition of a bass player, I’m convinced it’s their best album. It’s wild but it’s still not Tchin-tabaraden wedding wild.

Licked By Lions

Jonathan Richman walks into Ethan and Gretchen's studio and asks if I can remove all the rugs, take the acoustic treatments off the walls and strike the baffles which normally separate the instruments, drums and amps, so the room will have the most echo possible, he has also invited about ten friends including Johnny Bee Badanjek the drummer from Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Mary Cobra from the Detroit Cobras to dance, sing and play percussion in the studio while he records. He has two vocal microphones set up at either end of the room and has brought his own microphones for the drums along with his own desired placement for them. He notices a tamboura near the control room and asks if I know how to play it or if I know how to tune it. Within seconds he’s tuned it and proceeds to sing Indian classical music accompanying himself on tamboura drone for about thirty five minutes. It’s beautiful and very surprising. He asks me if I recorded it, I lie and say no. Later he asks me not to play it for anyone. We record for hours. Some songs are quite long – ten and fifteen minutes, some are medleys of oldies or soft rock hits from the seventies segueing into new songs of his. It’s a confusing session as it’s not clear when songs are starting and ending and he often plays guitar and sings nowhere near a microphone. The distance between him and the microphone seems to have some meaning, there’s some formula to when he chooses to walk away in the middle of a verse but I am unable to determine the secret code. At the end of the session three or four songs are deemed usable, edited and mixed, although, sadly, an attempt at a completely insane and unexpected fuzz guitar solo is left unreleased. (The Harold Budd piece is at the opposite end of this spectrum.)

Calling All Believers

Shortly after Tecuciztecatl was released, I received an email from Dr. James Beacham at CERN inviting us to perform at a series of concerts that would combine experimental music with experimental science at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. He didn’t contact our booking agent, which would be how we generally receive offers for gigs, instead he sent an email to me, which would be how we generally receive crazy messages from our completely insane fans (murderous, delusional, poetic, threatening messages usually). I assumed the invitation was fake or a prank and replied that we would prefer to wait until they had successfully opened a pathway to interspatial dimensions and we’d play on the other side or that if that was unlikely to happen at a convenient time then perhaps we could set up our equipment right on the edge of a mini-black hole and perform as the Earth is being destroyed so we could release the concert film “Live At The End Of The World.” After a few messages back and forth, it was clear that he was legit and I apologized for being such a jerk. Soon I discovered poetry within the language of particle physics as well as a certain beauty in the idea that these scientists have devoted their lives to dreaming, searching and discovering basic principles that connect all things in existence. The song “Calling All Believers” refers to this devotion. “Energy Acceleration” compares the scientists to monastic life in medieval times and mystics trying to find and define the line between this world and the next and at the same time invoking the incredible amounts of energy needed to create the collisions experiments. The Patterns of Light LP was released in 2016 on London London Records and is about interpreting visions of light, trying to find universal truth with whatever tools available, it’s about the search for how everything works, why it works and how it got that way but also about being inspired on a basic level by the way a thing looks and how all your senses take in a thing. A thousand years ago Hildegard Von Bingen was writing about this same thing in letters, songs, medical texts, and had even developed her own language to use in her mystical writings, similar to Magma drummer Christian Vander using his own language for their concept albums or French black metalists Brenoritvrezorkre and Moëvöt.

The Light Inside You

We get a lot of letters from fans, mostly weirdos though. I think it started when we released Song of Schizophrenia, that sort of connected us to a certain demographic I suspect. Here’s a recent typical message we received. “Growing up in Panama City, Mouth By Mouth and Livonia were like passages to other realms. I drank a ton of cough syrup at the time but those albums helped make life more livable. I was about to go to art school for sculpture and graphic design and the textures I heard on those records had actual shapes to them. Most music I knew at that time was flat or linear. I got them on cassette via mail-order from an ad placed in a bmx magazine. Mouth By Mouth arrived just before going to work at the amusement park and I was able to listen to it twice on the way thanks to the never-ending beach traffic. As luck would have it, I worked on “The Abominable Snowman” ride, basically a tilt-a-whirl inside a dome with lots of fog machine action, blue lights, mirrors, and lots of air conditioning. It took about 10 listens that day before it wasn’t as weird as when I first put it on. Maybe it was my bubblegum flavor/robitussin combo slushie on top of no-doz that pulled it all together, but it was probably a weird ride for a lot of vacationing beach tourists and townies when all they really wanted to hear was “Naughty by Nature” by O.P.P. I had no business running those rides at the age of 17 but I really loved how disorienting that ride could be with all the mirrors, the fog, the cold and for the final 90 seconds the ride would go in reverse. I had a buddy named Kevin that did acid at work and would repeatedly run the mini-train off the tracks and all the riders had to walk back through the woods for about a half mile that summer.”

[erinbowbooks]

TD Book Week, a retrospective

This is part of a report I just submitted to the TD Book Week organizers, wrapping up the tour.  I thought it was enough fun to share.  

I took my daughter, known online as Ninja Princess Scientist, with me on this tour.  She is in sixth grade and we recently made the decision to home school her because she was being bullied at her local school.  She had never seen the Canadian prairies – or anything outside Ontario – and it was fun to see them through her eyes.  She kept things fresh and honest, and she ran the power point projector.  My mom travelled with us too: a real entourage.  

We flew into Regina on Sunday May 7th, and we drove to Moose Jaw, where we met the tour coordinator Arwen R. for dinner and last minute briefings. I must commend the tour coordinator Arwen for her hard work on this tour, which she managed in the face of the Saskatchewan library funding crisis.  Everything she did was perfect – the schools she picked, the hotels, the maps and suggestions she provided.  I enjoyed meeting her at last, and Ninja enjoyed the Moose Jaw dinner where you can get 120 kinds of sauce on your fried chicken.  

On Monday, Moose Jaw was our first event; a reading in the modern and lovely auditorium attached to Moose Jaw’s stunning heritage library.  They are proud of that library:  three separate people told me it had the second-most marble of any building in the province.  I read to about 90 kids from the nearby school.  Moose Jaw surprised me, not only with the sophistication of its space, but with the kids: they were nearly all people of colour: a few First Nations kids but mostly black and brown kids who were (according to their teachers) first-and second-generation new Canadians.  There were ESL kids and hijaabi girls – vibrant and brilliant.  I am from the prairies, from Nebraska and Iowa and South Dakota, and I was expecting something much more like Kearney or Yankton, cities of similar size, but whiter than uncooked grits.  It was a delight to be proven so wrong, and it certainly changed my perceptions of Saskatchewan’s small cities.  

(Pictured: the second-most quantity of marble)

From Moose Jaw we had to floor it to get to Swift Current – noticing the potash mines and the yellow-headed blackbirds and the hey-did-you-know-there-was-a-huge-saltwater-lake-in-Saskatchewan lake – until we literally ran up the walk to the joint All Saints Catholic and Ecole Centennial School Elementary School building. Swift Current too surprised me: a huge and clearly rich new school in a newly built subdivision.  Where I am from towns this size are in decline.  Again it was a delight be wrong.  

Swift Current was my biggest event of the trip.  There were 250 kids in a gym – normally that’s a challenging setting, but the schools had the kids well prepped, which makes every difference.  They knew who I was and were excited to see me, and we had a wonderful time together.  The librarian, Kimberley Thomliston, was clearly the person who had the kids so fired up.  I learned later that she has an alter ego as Mary Mary the Library Fairy: we appeared together in a video for the school website.  It was tremendously silly but you should have seen the shine in the eyes of the kindergarteners.  

(Pictured: actual fairy)

Tuesday was a day of little town and long roads.  We were in Kyle, Beechy, and Lucky Lake – all K-12 schools in little towns.  Kyle and Beechy were particularly small, with grades 5 – 12 easily fitting into a single classroom.  No one I talked to could ever remember having a visiting author: only TD Book Week could have made it possible to go.    

In Kyle the bicycles were dumped in a heap – unlocked – on a slope outside the school, and muddy cowboy boots and sneakers lined the vestibule.  There I met my first young author, a grade 10 girl who positively glowed at the chance to meet a “real author,” as she put it – but she seemed real enough to me.  She was electric and had so many questions that we were almost late to Beechy.  

Beechy might have been my smallest school, farthest from anything.  It was also the one where the kids heard about the political and peacekeeping ideas in my book and wanted to talk about North Korea and global warming and the social implications of online communities.  It’s a big world.  Never think kids from little towns don’t know that.

Then it was on to Lucky Lake – which I shall always remember fondly as the home of the most unlikely espresso shop in Saskatchewan.  Future TD Book Week authors:  it’s at the gas station, right across from the grain elevators.

(Pictured: espresso shop)

Wednesday morning was early and I was starting to get tired – there were long roads to travel before even reaching the first reading, in tiny Pense, and then another drive into Regina.  Albert Community School in Regina was one of my most striking stops.  It was visibly poor: they were collecting shoes to give away to their students.  Their ancient laptop – the only computer in the library – would not run my PDF.  It was also largely First Nations kids.  I wish I had known going in:  I have a book with a First Nations setting and I could have brought a couple of my more interesting props to serve those kids better.  I was really touched to get to spend part of my lunch break talking to some of the keener kids about First Nations heroes in fantasy and science fiction.  I made Ninja write a paragraph on representation in fiction.  

Across town, the Regina Public Library could not have been more different than Albert Community School – they have in common only that both were excellent.  It is clearly one of those places where a single librarian makes all the difference: Debbie-Lynn Baston, with whom I fell in library love.  It was mutual: she shared her event evaluation with me:  

"Erin was EXCELLENT.  She was, in my opinion, the best author visit we have had (or at least that in which I've been involved).  She was engaging, humorous, passionate and enthusiastic and seemed to really capture the audience's attention.  She was very prepared and receptive to questions, of which there were many.  She had a great way of circling back to her main focus, which was to keep on trying even in the face of failure.  It was a great message for the students to hear and was told in such a relatable way.”  

Thursday was another day with a lot of driving. At least Ninja was getting a sense of Canada’s scale!  In Monmartre I met my second young author, a senior who had already written two novels.   I cannot express how important it seems for these young writers in remote places to meet other writers.  One can actual see something shifting in their eyes.  If TD Book Week did nothing but serve these two kids, the girl in Kyle and the boy in Monmartre, it would have been worth it.  

After visiting the mini Eiffel Tower in Monmartre and the world’s largest red paper clip near where we got gas in Kipling, we got stuck at a closed highway in Moose Mountain.  This made us about 15 minutes late getting into Manor, and for the first time I couldn’t reach the library.  When I finally got there the kids were restive, so I threw out my presentation and did improve exercises with them:  for instance, I made them walk across the room as if on a tight rope, and then use that to write sentences describing a character’s physicality when the character is frightened.  I think some of them may have learned something.  I learned that they are required to climb a rope down from the school balcony in gym class, which made me glad I was not from Manor.

Manor library turns out to be hard to reach because it is so tiny – a converted church in a town that doesn’t even boast a gas station.  The regular librarian was out with an injury.  (It turned out to be her cell phone I’d been trying to contact when stuck in traffic.)  The library was opened for us by volunteer board member Thelma, who was about 95.  My daughter and I spent an hour talking to Thelma about how Saskatchewan was changing.  I thought Thelma was a highlight of the trip.  Ninja did not agree, because I made her write a paragraph on agriculture.

Then at last it was on to our last stop: Estevan.  I’d spilled something on Arwen’s map – everything was getting a bit punchy by this stage – and I made the mistake of letting my cell phone navigate into the city.  It took us through an actual strip mine, and then down a washboard industrial backroad.  I remember saying:  “This is the ugliest city I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been to SMELTERS in CHINA.”  But it was all the phone’s fault: once on the actual streets in neighbourhoods, Estevan is lovely.  

Even so, Friday dawned early, and by this point I’d hit the famous TD Book Week wall.  My phone said the nearest coffee was in Clifton, North Dakota.  I was tempted, but instead dragged myself to Sacred Heart school – where I found the kids waiting outside to welcome me with banners that they’d made. Later in Spruce Ridge they had posters with countdowns to my visit.  Again, prepared and enthusiastic teacher librarians make even huge gym-based presentations a pleasure to do.  It was a bang up ending to the trip.  

The only trouble was staying awake all the way back to Regina for the flight.  Fortunately, the drive from Estevan to Regina is exactly covered by one sing-along of Hamilton.  I made Ninja write a paragraph on federalism.  

(pictured: the American revolution.)

(Actually they I swear they call this “Yankee Ridge,” with an arrow pointing down toward the US border in a “we’re slightly worried” way.  Canada, honey, I don’t see no Yankees and that sure ain’t no ridge.)   

[punkwyrm]

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90!!! 💖

10. What game were you best at in P.E.?

Uhhhhhhh honestly do not remember. I was pretty good when we played football? Purely cause I wasn't afraid to tackle people? But also when we did softball or dodgeball I was pretty good.

20. Preferred place to write?

I really like writing in a notebook. It feel Right. My laptop is where everything eventually ends up, but I mainly love notebooks.

30. Places you find sacred

Where nature is abundant and reclaiming. Places where it's quiet and you can hear the animals moving around. Places where I can sit and be alone and the world has disappeared. Bowen Island. Liminal spaces. The mountains.

40. Weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

Oh god idk... School is so boring lmao. Ummm one time my kindergarten teacher set off the fire alarm by burning pizza in the microwave. Drama classes were always wild and things go silly very quickly. My English teacher used to tell us stories from redneck Saskatchewan. University is a weird place too, people just kinda do whatever? Seen a lot of weird things happen there lmao. So nothing like Crazy but a lot of small events.

50. What made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

UMMMMMMM idk??? Probably something that my friends did? I've cried laugh with my friends a lot. I have a terrible memory and don't remember like what the topic was, just that we were losing it.

60. If you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want to be in?

I don't?? Watch anime lmao. But uhhhhhhh of the few I've seen... Probably a spooky one? Something like Soul Eater would be cool?

70. Left or right handed?

I am right handed

80. Earth or Jewel tones?

Earth! Tones! Are! My! Shit!

90. Luckiest mistake?

I've never made a mistake once in my life. (Lies) um... My shitty memory strikes again. I do not? Know? I don't think I've ever made a mistake that turned out lucky ? They always are! Bad ! Aha...

THANK YOU DI ILY!!! 💕💕💕💕

[herdeffect-com]

What is HERD BEHAVIOR?

bird behavior describes how individuals in a group can act collectively without centralized direction the term can refer to the behavior of animals and herds packs bird flocks fish schools and so on as well as the behavior of humans and demonstrations riots and general strikes sporting events religious gatherings episodes of mob violence and everyday decision-making judgment and opinion forming rolla fact shatter and fritz proposed an integrated approach to herding describing two key issues the mechanisms of transmission of thoughts or behavior between individuals and the patterns of connections between them they suggested that bringing together diverse theoretical approaches of herding behavior illuminates the applicability of the concept to many domains ranging from cognitive neuroscience to economics a group of animals fleeing from a predator shows the nature of herd behavior in 1971 in the oft cited article geometry for the selfish herd evolutionary biologist W D Hamilton asserted that each individual group member reduces the danger to itself by moving as close as possible to the center of the fleeing group thus the herd appears as a unit in moving together but its function emerges from the uncoordinated behavior of self-serving individuals the philosopher søren kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were among the first to criticize what they referred to as the crowd jerky guard and herd morality and the herd instinct Nietzsche in human society modern psychological and economic research has identified herd behavior in humans to explain the phenomena of large numbers of people acting in the same way at the same time the British surgeon Wilfred Trotter popularized the herd behavior phrase in his book instincts of the herd peace and war 1914 in the theory of the leisure class Thorstein Veblen explains economic behavior in terms of social influences such as emulation where's the members of a group mimic other members of higher status in the metropolis and mental life 1903 early sociologist georg simmel referred to the impulse to sociability in men and sought to describe the forms of association by which a mere sum of separate individuals are made into a society other social scientists explored behaviors related to hurting such as Freud crowd psychology carl jung collective unconscious ed Gustave Le Bon the popular mind swarm theory observed in non-human societies is a related concept and is being explored as it occurs in human society large stock market trends off and begin and end with periods of frenzy buying bubbles or selling crashes many observers cite these episodes as clear examples of herding behavior that is irrational and driven by emotion greed in the bubbles fear in the crashes individual investors join the crowd of others in a rush to get in or out of the market some followers of the technical analysis school of investing see the hurting behavior of investors as an example of extreme market sentiment the academic study of behavioural finance has identified hurting in the collective irrationality of investors particularly the work of Nobel laureates Vernon L Smith Amos Tversky Daniel Kahneman and Robert Shiller hay and more on 2004 analyzed a model of herd behavior in a market context their work is related to at least two important strands of literature the first of these strands is that on herd behavior in a non market context the seminal references are banarjee 1992 and bit Chandni Hersh lifer and Welch 1992 both of which showed that herd behavior may result from private information not publicly shared more specifically both of these papers showed that individuals acting sequentially on the basis of private in formation and public knowledge about the behavior of others may end up choosing the socially undesirable option the second of the strands of literature motivating this paper is that of information aggregation in market contexts a very early reference is the classic paper by Grossman and Stiglitz 1976 that showed that uninformed traders in a market context can become informed through the price in such a way that private information is aggregated correctly and efficiently in this strand of the literature the most commonly used empirical methodologies to test for hurting toward the average are the works of Christian Wong 1995 and Chang Chang and Khurana 2000 overall it was shown that it is possible to observe her type behavior in a market context the results refer to a market with a well-defined fundamental value even if her behavior might only be observed rarely this has important consequences for a whole range of real markets most particularly foreign exchange markets one such her dish incident with surprise volatility that surrounded the 2007 uranium bubble which started with flooding of the cigar Lake Mine in Saskatchewan during the year 2006 crowds that gather on behalf of the grievance can involve hurting behavior that turns violent particularly when confronted by an opposing ethnic or racial group the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 New York draft riots and Tulsa Race Riot are notorious in US history the idea of a group mind or mob behavior was put forward by the French social psychologists Gabriel tarde and Gustave Le Bon benign hurting behaviors may occur frequently in everyday decisions based on learning from the information of others as when a person on the streets decides which of two restaurants to Dinan suppose that both look appealing but both are empty because it is early evening so at random this person chooses restaurant a soon a couple walks down the same street in search of a place to eat they see that restaurant ax has customers while B is a and choose on the assumption that having customers makes it a better choice because other passers-by do the same thing into the evening restaurant a does more business at night than be this phenomenon is also referred as an information cascade heard behavior is often a useful tool in marketing and if used properly can lead to increases in sales and changes to the structure of society whilst it has been shown that financial incentives cause action in large numbers of people herd mentality often wins out in a case of keeping up with the Joneses communications technologies have contributed to the proliferation to consumer choice and the power of crowds consumers increasingly have more access to opinions and information from both opinion leaders and formers on platforms that have largely user-generated content and thus have more tools with which to complete any decision-making process popularity is seen as an indication of better quality and consumers will use the opinions of others posted on these platforms as a powerful compass to guide them towards products and brands that align with their preconceptions and the decisions of others in their peer groups taking into account differences and needs and their position in the socialization process Lessig and PARCC examined groups of students and housewives and the influence that these reference groups have on one another by way of herd mentality students tended to encourage each other towards beer hamburger and cigarettes whilst housewives tended to encourage each other towards furniture and detergent whilst this particular study was done in 1977 one cannot discount its findings in today's society a study done by Burk leakin li and jiang in 2014 on the social influence on shopper behavior shows that shoppers are influenced by direct interactions with companions and as a group size grows herd behavior becomes more apparent discussions that create excitement and interest of greater impact on touch frequency and purchase likelihood grows with greater involvement caused by a large group person this Midwestern American shopping outlet were monitored and their purchases noted and it was found up to a point potential customers preferred to be in stores which had moderate levels of traffic the other people in the store not only served as company but also provided an inference point on which potential customers could model their behavior and make purchase decisions as with any reference group or community social media can also be a powerful tool in perpetuating herd behavior it's immeasurable amount of user generated content serves as a platform for opinion leaders to take the stage and influence purchase decisions and recommendations from peers and evidence of positive online experience all served to help consumers make purchasing decisions gonna wat and who Orton's 2015 study concluded that social influence is essential in framing attitudes towards brands which in turn leads to purchasing tension influencers form norms which their peers are found to follow and targeting extroverted personalities increases chances of purchase even further this is because the stronger personalities tend to be more engaged on consumer platforms and thus spread word-of-mouth information more efficiently many brands have begun to realize the importance of brand ambassadors and influencers and it is being shown more clearly that herd behavior can be used to drive sales and profits exponentially in favour of any brand through examination of these instances marketing can easily transcend beyond commercial roots in that it can be used to encourage action to do with health environmentalism and general society herd mentality often takes a front seat when it comes to social marketing paving the way for campaigns such as Earth Day and the variety of anti-smoking and in the obesity campaign seen in every country within cultures and communities marketers must aim to influence opinion leaders who in turn influence each other as it is the herd mentality of any group of people that ensures a social campaign success a campaign run by Psalm l'Opera in Spain to combat teenage obesity that campaigns runnin schools are more effective due to influence of teachers and peers and students high-visibility and their interaction with one another opinion leaders in schools created the logo and branding for the campaign builds content for social media and led in school presentations to engage audience interaction it was thus concluded that the success of the campaign was rooted in the fact that its means of communication was the audience itself giving the target audience a sense of ownership and empowerment as mentioned previously students exert a high level of influence over one another and by encouraging stronger personalities to lead opinions the organizers of the campaign were able to secure the attention of other students who identified with the reference group heard behavior not only applies to students in schools where they are highly visible but also amongst communities where perceived action plays a strong role between 2003 and 2004 California State University carried out a study to measure household conservation of energy and motivations for doing so it was found that factors like saving the environment saving money or social responsibility did not have as great an impact on each household as the perceived behavior of their neighbors did although the financial incentives of saving money closely followed by moral incentives of protecting the environment are often thought of as being a community's greatest guides encompass more households responded to the encouragement to save energy when they were told that 77% of their neighbors were using fans instead of airconditioning proving that communities are more likely to engage in the behavior if they think that everyone else is already taking part herd behavior is shown in the two examples exemplify that it can be a powerful tool in social marketing and if harnessed correctly has the potential to achieve great change it is clear that opinion leaders and their influence achieve huge reach amongst their reference groups and thus can be used as the loudest voices to encourage others in Collective direction

https://youtu.be/dc_akq0KdJo

[debrahnesbit]

Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 9: The Remarkable Growth of Free and Open Materials

“Free” materials for educational purposes are sometimes derided as sub-standard works based on the premise that you get what you pay for. Inherent in the argument is that value is associated with cost and that turning to materials without cost means relying on materials without value. Yet the reality is that free materials are free as in “freely available” with the costs of production or business models that support those works rivalling conventional publication approaches. Free or openly available materials are not outliers. For example, the University of Guelph told the Industry committee that 24 per cent of materials in their course management systems consisted of open or free online content.

The series on misleading on fair dealing continues with an examination of freely available materials, including four sources: public domain works, open educational resources, open access publishing, and hyperlinking to third party content (prior posts in the series include the legal effect of the 2012 reforms, the wildly exaggerated suggestion of 600 million uncompensated copies each year, the decline of books in coursepacks, the gradual abandonment of print coursepacks, the huge growth of e-book licensing, why site licences offer better value than the Access Copyright licence, my opening remarks to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and transactional licensing). Public domain

Despite efforts by some to dismiss its value, the widespread use of public domain works within Canadian classrooms underscores its continued relevance. The Ontario Book Publishers Organization published a study last year funded by Ontario Creates on the use of Canadian books in English classes in Ontario Public and Catholic schools from Grades 7 to 12. The study surveyed teachers and school boards on which books (including novels, short story collections, creative non-fiction, poetry and plays but not textbooks) are taught in English classes. The goal was to see whether Canadian books were included in class lists. The survey generated hundreds of responses (27 from school board participants and 280 from the Ontario Teachers Federation) resulting references to 695 books by 539 authors.

Working with Sydney Elliott, one of my research assistants, we reviewed the OBPO data to identify the presence of public domain works in Ontario classrooms (ie. the use of works for which the term of copyright has expired). The results were striking as the data confirms that public domain books are an essential part of the English curriculum. Of the top 20 titles, half are in the public domain today or will enter the public domain within the next few years. William Shakespeare is unsurprisingly responsible for many of these titles, but he is not alone. Other very popular public domain works include books by F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Orwell along with books by John Wyndham and John Steinbeck that will enter the public domain in Canada by the end of the decade.

The importance of the public domain within the classroom extends far beyond the most popular works, however. The survey identified 99 books that received at least four separate mentions from respondents. Of those 99 books, 20 are in the public domain and two more will enter the public domain shortly. This covers a wide range of additional authors including Huxley, Conrad, Shelley, Bronte, and McNamee. These books are widely used as they represent 35% of the total mentions. Expanding even further to the entire list of 695 books, 96 are in the public domain or about to enter it.

It should be noted that there was another large category of works currently used in Canadian classrooms beyond the nearly 100 public domain titles. Our review identified another 27 titles that are scheduled to enter the public domain within the next 20-25 years including works from authors and poets such as Agatha Christie, J.R.R. Tolkein, and W.H. Auden. These works – which appear regularly on class lists – would be directly affected by copyright term extension agreement in the new NAFTA that will lock down works from the public domain for decades. The copyright term extension represents a significant shift in Canadian copyright that requires a re-balancing as part of the current reform process. Open Educational Resources

The BC government became the first Canadian province to launch an open textbook initiative in 2012, committing to 40 new online, open textbooks for 40 popular post-secondary courses. The initiative has since grown and been emulated in other provinces. For example, the Ontario government launched a new Open Textbook Library for Ontario in 2016 that will feature hundreds of openly licensed, professionally created textbooks providing students with access to free digital texts in dozens of university and college courses.

As governments increasingly recognize the importance of investing in open education to support learners at all stages of their lives, publishers have taken note of the changing market dynamics. A 2017 report prepared for the Association of Canadian Publishers acknowledged:

The OER movement continues to grow and is becoming a cornerstone of the Canadian K–12 educational system. The proliferation of OER content is evident across the country and there are numerous initiatives that support the development, access, and distribution of content.

Described in the Access Copyright commissioned report from PWC as a “threat”, the open textbook model provides a cost-effective alternative to expensive textbooks and licences. Indeed, internationally, SPARC estimates there has been more than $1 billion saved through open educational resources. The works are paid for, but once created, can be freely used and modified without the need for further licences, payments or permissions. This also provides a strong rebuttal to those who suggest that open textbooks may be inferior to the pricey, publisher versions. The open textbooks are written by teaching professionals, peer reviewed, and professionally developed in the same manner as commercial textbooks. The difference is that once created, they can be freely used, reused, and modified.

The impact of open educational resources is being felt at universities across the country.  For example, UBC reports:

Since 2011, at least 155 UBC courses have been identified as using open textbooks, OERs, or freely accessible resources instead of traditional textbooks. And if we look across those past six years, 47,423 UBC students were enrolled in those courses using open resources. The estimated cost savings for students has also increased over the past few years. The replacement of traditional textbooks with open resources has potentially saved UBC students between $4.7 to $6.7 million since 2011.

The province-wide estimates from the BC Campus are even higher, with student savings of nearly $10 million, almost 100,000 B.C. students using open textbooks, and nearly 500 faculty adopting the open textbooks.  Other studies provide similar numbers. The University of Saskatchewan says it use of open textbooks has saved 2,750 students a total of $275,00 in the 2016-2017 academic year, and more than $400,000 since it first launched in 2014. A study by David Annand and Tilly Jensen projected cost savings of $217,500 per year for the University of Athabasca, based on using an open textbook for an introductory financial accounting class (of 1,500 student enrollment) alone.

The shift toward open educational resources represents a win-win-win-win scenario: free textbooks for students, reduced long-term costs for education and government, financial support and compensation for creators of the texts, and high quality, Canadian materials freely available for use by teachers across the province.

Open Access

As open access publishing grows in popularity – the European Union has announced plans to ensure that all publicly-funded scientific papers will be freely available by 2020 and Canada now has a similar open access policy in place for government-funded research – the majority of new research publications will soon be freely online and accessible to all. This should be celebrated as it creates equality of access and better ensures that the work of researchers is made available to everyone, including teachers and students.

The role of open access licensing is particularly important, since the public has effectively already paid for many of the publications by funding research and researchers. Further, the continued growth of open access reflects a desire of the authors/researchers to ensure their work is widely disseminated. In many disciplines – the sciences, health, engineering, and law to name several – open access is increasingly the standard, meaning that Access Copyright’s demands for licence payments would require hundreds of thousands of students to pay for copying that does not require a licence.

The emergence of open access publishing has enabled free access (as desired by the author) to millions of articles. According to a report by Montreal-based Science-Metrix, more than half of all research publications in some countries and fields of study are now freely available online. The shift toward open access becoming the default form of disseminating research in many fields is a remarkable change given that conventional publishing in expensive subscription-based journals was the standard in many areas of research as recently as ten years ago. The move toward open access means that global research is far more accessible to everyone—scientists, researchers, and the general public. It also means that courses that rely on the latest research found in journal articles will increasingly be able to access and distribute those articles to students at no cost.

Hyperlinking to Third Party Materials

Another notable source of materials on digital CMS are hyperlinks to third party websites that may feature content that a teacher or professor wishes to incorporate into the curriculum. The works are not copied by the educational institution, but rather merely referenced by way of a hyperlink. The government explicitly supported educational use of Internet-based materials in the 2012 reforms with the following provision at 30.04(1):

it is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution, or a person acting under the authority of one, to do any of the following acts for educational or training purposes in respect of a work or other subject-matter that is available through the Internet: (a) reproduce it;
 (b) communicate it to the public by telecommunication, if that public primarily consists of students of the educational institution or other persons acting under its authority;
 (c) perform it in public, if that public primarily consists of students of the educational institution or other persons acting under its authority; or
 (d) do any other act that is necessary for the purpose of the acts referred to in paragraphs (a) to (c).


The Act does contain several conditions, but it permits widespread use of Internet-based materials by education.

Moreover, the Supreme Court of Canada considered the legal status of a hyperlink in the 2011 decision of Crookes v. Newton. The court concluded:

Hyperlinks thus share the same relationship with the content to which they refer as do references.  Both communicate that something exists, but do not, by themselves, communicate its content.  And they both require some act on the part of a third party before he or she gains access to the content.  The fact that access to that content is far easier with hyperlinks than with footnotes does not change the reality that a hyperlink, by itself, is content neutral – it expresses no opinion, nor does it have any control over, the content to which it refers.

Given the state of the law, some may find it odd to even include hyperlinks within a discussion on freely available materials since it does not appear to trigger a copy or copyright issue. Yet Access Copyright proposed including hyperlinks within its educational tariff.  When the Copyright Board called them on it by asking for a legal justification in light of the Supreme Court jurisprudence, the copyright collective admitted (Document AC-21):

Access Copyright has not introduced any evidence about the prevalence of the use of links and the extent to which they point to unauthorized uses. Given the lack of evidence, Access Copyright is not claiming any specific or additional value in the tariff for the right to post a link or a hyperlink in this proceeding.

It then folded on the issue altogether: “Access Copyright has no objection to the Board removing this permitted use from the certified tariff.”

The initial inclusion of compensation for linking is part of a broader trend of overreach, however, with Access Copyright seeking compensation for uses that are already covered by other sources, including site licences, fair dealing, or transactional licences. There are many other materials that are freely available for use, including works for which the term of copyright has expired, open educational resources, open access for journals, and third party content posted online that may be incorporated through a hyperlink.

The post Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 9: The Remarkable Growth of Free and Open Materials appeared first on Michael Geist.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247009 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2018/11/misleading-on-fair-dealing-part-9/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[cmkshama]

On April 1, 2017, I rallied with healthcare providers, labor activists, and ordinary people organizing for world class healthcare to discuss the defeat of Trumpcare and how we can build the movement for “Medicare for All” style single-payer healthcare in Washington and the US. See my speech below (video may not be visible if you are using an adblock service).

Just over a week ago, on March 24, ordinary working people all over the country joined together in celebrating Trump and Ryan’s utter defeat and failure to pass Trumpcare!

Trump and Ryan weren’t just forced to concede that the votes didn’t exist in the House — they were forced to admit that their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act are over for the “foreseeable future.”

For years, Republican Party politicians have been campaigning on the promise of repealing the Affordable Care Act. And we, working people, have fought consistently against such attacks, to defend the real, progressive gains that have been won through the ACA.

But Obamacare — the ACA — also already provides the big insurance companies, healthcare providers, and Big Pharma with too much power: the power to set impossibly high premiums; grossly overcharge for services; and jack up pharmaceutical costs.

And that is why, without a clear plan, it left Republicans painting themselves into a corner. Because they couldn’t just kill Obamacare. They couldn’t find a market-based alternative that would both increase profits for insurance companies while still providing affordable coverage to consumers. Their plan was so ramshackle that it divided, instead of uniting, their own 1% billionaire class.

But what was the main, fundamental reason that Trump was defeated? It was because working people fought back.

Trump, Ryan, and the Republican elite apparently took the calculated risk that in this political system, under capitalism and its oppressive conditions, the poor people who would have been most affected are the ones that don’t speak out and the ones who don’t regularly vote — so Trump thought that they could get away with it.

While this gross assumption proved a major political miscalculation on the part of Trump and the Republicans, the overwhelming majority of America, including a majority of Republican voters, strongly opposed Trumpcare.

A poll taken just days ahead of the events showed that Trumpcare had only 17% support. Tens of thousands of voters, including Trump’s voters, turned out to town halls, public meetings, and the offices of Republican representatives, and revolted against the prospect of losing what they had gained from the ACA. The revolts in the Republican town halls grew to such a point that Republican Congress members started hiding out from their own electorate.

While the defeat of this bill is a major victory, we must be clear that this is not the end of the fight. And that is why we are gathered here.

On the one hand, Republicans are guaranteed to continue their efforts to attack and erode healthcare, pass regressive tax reforms, and they will particularly go after reproductive rights and funding for women’s and trans healthcare providers, like Planned Parenthood.

On the other hand, we all know the Affordable Care Act is not enough! We need to tax the rich and deliver “Medicare for All” single-payer healthcare. And we need to seize this opportunity before us right now.

Trump and the Republicans face a major crisis in their party. Future efforts to force through right-wing, anti-women, anti-immigrant, and anti-worker laws will be imperiled by the divisions within themselves that have been exposed and deepened by the battle over healthcare.

But while Republican Party divisions have been highlighted, particularly the resistance of the far-right Freedom Caucus, we do not have the luxury of lulling ourselves into complacency.

We have to recognize this moment as an historic opportunity to fight for and win single-payer healthcare. And if we don’t recognize this opportunity, it will be a historic loss.

This successful resistance to the Republican healthcare plan has mobilized a whole new generation of millennials looking to fight back. It has energized physician groups, nurse’s unions, the AARP, and the socialist Left, which has long fought for single-payer healthcare.

But this resistance has also brought out a broad layer of working class voters who did not see themselves as political before this assault, and it has brought out even Republicans and former Trump supporters as well.

Bernie Sanders’ widely viewed town hall on healthcare in McDowell County, West Virginia is an example of just how reviled the Trumpcare plan is, and just how much potential there is to win working people over to a working-class agenda with a program of demands that raises the living standards and the quality of life for all.

The process of millions of working people who voted for Trump, who are realizing that the promises of “draining the swamp” are being systematically betrayed — that process has begun, sisters and brothers. And it is in this context that we have to build our fightback.

We need to unite our forces in a principled manner, around the demands that we all agree on. And right now, there is a shift taking place, a phenomenal agreement forming around the demand of building for nationwide single-payer healthcare.

But if we’re serious as a movement, then we have to be serious in our analysis: the primary obstacle that our movement faces, which must be overcome immediately, is the fact that the Democratic Party is firmly wed to donations from Big Pharma and Big Insurance. And if we are to have success, we cannot be wed to the Democratic Party.

Democrats have refused to bring Medicare for All or any single-payer proposal forward during the two years they controlled the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives.

Even at that time, the most progressive wing of the party wasn’t willing to fight for a proposal for single-payer healthcare, even though there was so much support for it. I don’t know if there is any reason to believe that they would do so now.

In early January, thirteen Democrats in Congress voted against Bernie Sanders’ proposal to allow Americans to buy cheaper medications from Canada and other countries, killing the amendment. Both of Washington’s Senators were among the thirteen. If they had voted the other way, the amendment would have passed. If we weren’t clear on where they stood before that vote — with the people, or with the CEOs — we should be clear now.

We shouldn’t be surprised if Democratic representatives aren’t willing to threaten billions of dollars in profit for the CEOs for the sake of our health.

Sisters and brothers, my question is: If Democrats support healthcare for all, what is stopping them from moving forward right now in states they control?

There is a movement in California that is fighting for single-payer healthcare. So why is California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown speaking out against single-payer rather than championing it? He recently said, “Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question.”

Well I know where you can get the extra money: Tax the Rich! Tax Wall Street! Tax the Billionaire Class! That’s how you “create” the money that was lost to us in the first place.

The best defense is a good offense. Imagine if California, Oregon, and Washington all won a West Coast-wide single-payer healthcare system by taxing big business and the super-wealthy. We can win it, but only if our movements refuse to be beholden to what’s acceptable to corporate politicians.

The story of how Canadian workers won their single-payer is a useful lesson to us in America. Canadian workers had long fought for their right to healthcare, but only succeeded when the workers, the labor movement, and the socialists in Saskatchewan built a party independent of big business, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF, which described itself as socialist.

In 1946, the CCF passed public healthcare programs in Saskatchewan. But you know what happened in Canada after that? Everybody in Canada wanted it!

The response from Canadian working people was so great that in 1961 the Federal government, run by big business parties, was forced to pass single-payer federally. Because the movement was so strong, they knew that if they did not pass it, the workers’ parties would come to power.

That is the type of bold approach that is needed in the coming months and years that can lay the basis for real national healthcare reform — a transition from a system designed for corporations, to one that is rooted in the interests of working people. To do this, we need to immediately unite our struggles.

And a huge, historic opportunity is coming up: May 1st, May Day, is International Workers’ Day, and historically in America, is a day for immigrant rights struggles. Let’s come together on May 1st in strike actions, protest actions, rallies and marches, and demand that America and Seattle be run in the interests of working people — not the super wealthy.

Many workers in Seattle will be going on strike, including public school teachers, immigrant workers, and student workers at the University of Washington. Let’s join together, and discuss the best strategies to move forward.

Let’s build our movement and win Medicare for All single-payer healthcare! Tax the rich!

[nettvnow-blog]

2017 IPF Trailer YouTube Round up

The IPF trailers are finally out which means that we get our best look at some of the (hopefully) upcoming web series in 2017 and beyond. IPF is a funding agency for Canadian digital productions and requires applicants to provide a trailer for their proposed projects. Not only is this a great chance to peak at where the Canadian industry is heading but it also means that us fans get a ton of new content to eagerly anticipate. As your resident Canadian grant writer and business affairs human, trust me when I say that these trailers can make or break the stage 1 portion of an application. 

So make sure you like and watch your favourites!

The IWCC-CIWC has done the hard work for me of compiling a list of IPF trailers which you can view here. So thanks to them!

With 66 videos on the list, there’s a lot of content to go through and we’re going to help you out with managing them. I’m going in blind to watch all the trailers once and then, as succinctly as possible, let you know what I think the upcoming web series is going to be about. Trailer only. No youtube descriptions or press or anything. Trailer only.

That’s right. I’m writing premises. What could possible go wrong?

Everything. Succinct is hard when the shows are this great. 

Zero Day – Kayla’s computer hacker brother drags her into a world where everyone wants the ‘encrypted crucible’ and are willing to kill to get it. (story occurs in real time)

Candiland – Candi with an I is a ‘probably straight’ guy who is experiencing his first time crossdressing like he’s always wanted.   

The Most Unpopular Girl at School – Told almost entirely through music playlists, facebook, and in-universe youtube videos, a high school student has an unflattering video leaked and must try to get it taken down.

Earthing House Huntress – A real estate agent decides to specialize in selling homes to aliens who are just looking for a place to belong here on Earth.

We Three Queens – A broke writer and his ‘rent boy lover’ move in with an elderly female widow.

Cam_Girlfriend – A Cam Girl tries to navigate a boyfriend who doesn’t seem to know her at all and her viewers who seem to know her better than he does.

Face Candy – Make-up counters are a cut throat business and the new girl needs to do whatever it takes to sell product. 

Grave Concerns – Two men with luscious beards have been hired to remove all dead bodies (new or old) from a town but it’s a little tricky when the corpses keep complaining about their grave-digging skills. 

#famous – A man seeks to create the best prank videos on youtube but runs into a number of problems with his real life responsibilities. 

Boring Girls – Three musicians discover that, for their dark music audience, shock value sells and start creating bigger and bigger scenes without caring if they become deadly.

Made With Love – A queer engineer is fired and decides to start a fashion line with her best friend even though she knows almost nothing about fashion. 

Wharf Rats – Set in PEI, two brothers dream of being fishermen and they’re just crazy enough to do whatever shenanigans are necessary to get a fishing boat.

Bad Life Choices – Two friends who really really like drugs and alcohol just keep making bad life choices. 

Cat Show – A girl puts on a cat show because she believes the rules of all the other cat shows, where her cat lost, are wrong. 

NarcoLeap – A girl has terrifying dreams that involve chasing, running and blood but whenever she looks in the mirror in the dream, she’s wearing someone else’s face. 

Life Coach – Despite her own life being in shambles, a woman decides to become a life coach and takes on a number of interesting patients. 

Cousins – Two snarky cousins are forced together and do not exactly get along.

Conversations For the End of The World – Radiation is killing off humanity and a father and son are just trying to live through the end of the world together.

Allie & Lara Make A Horror Movie – Allie and Lara are trying to make a horror movie; unfortunately ideas are easier than execution and their roommate is determined to cast herself as the lead.

Widow’s Web – Jennifer joins a group for widows over 60 and they end up taking justice for crimes against seniors into their own hands. 

Ran and Jaden – Two twenty year olds living their millennial life in Toronto.

SpeakEasy – In 1914, two men go into business with a shady character to get the money to keep their speakeasy and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep the cash coming. (based on a real life story)

Tight Knit – Two polar-opposite sisters take over their grandmother’s knitting store and knitting puns abound.

Little Piggies – Three friends put together dating video profiles to help podiatry doctor Katie find true love. 

Man Dog – A dog gets put into a human body and thinks he has the whole town fooled at how well we can play human but they all know. 

Late Fees – A Blockbuster employee can’t let go of the stores closing and starts to hang out in whatever random video rental store he can still find. 

Free Space – A small change is changing and the towns people are having trouble coping, so they turn to young Terry and his Bingo hall.

The co-op – A gay actor moves into a co-op with a bunch of artists across all genres and mediums who are all trying to catch their break.

Darkland – Strange things are happening like girls exploding and pig headed humans eating bloody fish and it’s scary.

Off Kilter – A choreographer comes back after 2 decades to work with an aging dancer and claim their comeback one last time. 

Boombats – Bobby opens an odd job business and the family has feelings about this. 

Blackout – A man starts having blackouts and memory loss and is terrified of what he might do but he’s not the only one blacking out.

Year – The world is ending and a father will kill anyone or anything who tries to hurt his son.

Valley Cats – An animated series where a former valley girl-cat becomes a reality tv star.

Climax, SK – An aging ‘James Bond-esque’ spy is forced to hide out in the small town of Climax, Saskatchewan where no-one believes he’s a spy.

Demo Time – A show about a quirky product demonstration sales team trying to sell the unsellable that’s literally pitched as a product demonstration. 

Kate – A small town girl moves to the big city of Toronto for the first time and wants to do everything she never got to do.

Masters of Bait and Switch – Three friends pull off a series of elaborate heists simply because they can. 

Rachel and The Dead -  A psychology student accidentally moves into an apartment that’s haunted by a dead guy.

Tokens – An on-call actress is always sent to auditions to fill the ‘token Asian’ role and is surprised to find herself cast in a role that doesn’t rely on her filling a diversity quota. 

The Rejects – A group of incompetent and quirky police officers are trying to work their way up from the bottom of the Toronto police ranks even as the Captain tries to deal with them. 

Hurry Up and Wait – Five best friends, all of whom are queer woc, struggle to navigate romance and breakups. 

Dominion – A detective noir series featuring supernatural humans chasing down a girl who has ‘Dominion’. 

Temps Double – A French series, Ben is a fast food worker who just wants to go home but the customers are making it difficult. 

Branded – Two girls try to sell branded content but after their star show dies they have to come up with a new smash hit idea as quickly as possible. 

Bachelor Daddies – Ricky, the smooth bachelor, lets his best friend Jay move in with him after Jay goes through a divorce

The Mavericks – In a dystopia, a teacher uses her dark superpowers bands with one of her students against the militaristic regime. 

P6HUT (Piche Hatt) – With a briefcase full of guns and money, a woman juggles multiple identities.  

Hit on Me – A paid assassin falls in love with his best friend and has to navigate killing people while navigating friendship hopefully becoming something more. 

Clairevoyant – Best friends are getting evicted and become psychics in order to make the money for their rent. 

Jib & Jab on a Quest – Jib and Jab are level 1 RPG mage and warrior characters who are trying to save the world and level up.

The Upload Series – An animated series about a rogue journalist leaking real news to the people despite the government’s outlawing of the press. 

The Vault – In this sci-fi adventure, humanity has to enter the vault to survive the apocalypse and the giant smoke monster that comes with it. (note: this is not 2011’s The Vault)

Act Up – A bunch of teenagers join or are forced to join the improv club and have to navigate high school. 

Rubbed the Wrong Way – This animated series stars two people who unlock a genie and can’t quite understand that he’s actually a genie. 

Imaginary Friends – To cope with her depressing life, Sally creates a number of imaginary friends who live in her head. 

Fak Yaass – Nico struggles to balance his sexuality with his disapproving Greek family. 

Dorian Gray – A man is hired by a mysterious employer and is drawn into a dangerous world after discovering that he’s working for the supernatural, immortal Dorian Gray. 

Witch Like Me – In this supernatural series, a witch fights a number of magical creatures.

Booby & Bogey – An animated booger lives inside the nose of a real life teenaged boy and they strike up a mentorship. 

Meld – Two people take a drug that is supposed to let them feel what the other is feeling but one of them gains the ability to meld with everyone around them and the creators of the drug are desperate to stop her. 

Wild Tales – An animated comedy series about aquatic life including a pregnant male seahorse and a penguin who wants to propose to his girlfriend.

Upheaval Times – A group of humans from the Medieval period are transported forward in time to modern society.

Interlude – Three women try and navigate their lives in the big city.

Gym Rat – Liz broke up with her cheater boyfriend and is now homeless so she starts living out of the locker in the 24hour gym and sleeping on the workout benches. 

In Search Of – Strangers join a facebook group to swap their un-needed items but end up making more personal connections until they’re not strangers at all.

So there you have it! All the great Canadian IPF 2017 trailers that we could find on YouTube. If there’s something that caught your eye, we’d encourage you to check out the trailer and lend it a view and a like to show your support. In addition, there are lots of great trailers on Vimeo and other platforms as well so be sure to check those out too!

Written by Aria Bauer