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Currently viewing entries by Judy Rebick.
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Remembering the Waffle
Yesterday I did something I rarely do. I participated in an academic seminar. It was to mark the 40th anniversity of The Waffle, a radical youth movement inside the NDP. Hardly anyone under 50 knows what The Waffle was, unless you have ever tried to organize an opposition in the NDP where it remains a scary ghost. But it was a significant and almost unique formation of the 1960’s in Canada. Apparently scholarship on the 1960’s is the hottest thing in academe these days. Who knew?
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Protesting TIFF’s spotlight on Tel Aviv
Every once in a while the act of an individual can make a big difference to a struggle. On August 28, Toronto film maker and long-time gay activist John Greyson wrote an open letter to the directors of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) pulling his short film Covered out of TIFF, which is one of the world’s top film festivals and opens in Toronto on September 10. His decision was to protest of TIFF’s spotlight on Tel Aviv. This is the first time that TIFF has held a City to City spotlight and the spotlight is on Tel Aviv, a city that is symbolic to Zionist Jews of Israel’s success and to Palestinians of the ethnic cleansing that took place to found that state of Israel.
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Is the Party Over?
If there is anything to be learned from the NDP and NPI experience it is that the NDP is reluctant to actual change. In fact, most of the leadership of the NPI no longer see the NDP as an instrument of change. Though, perhaps change would be easier if the NDP had real leadership or at least a little more help from the political left.
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The revolution will be tweeted or whatever. People’s power and technology.
Sunday evening I spent almost an entire train ride from Ottawa to Toronto glued to Twitter following the posts from #iranelections, which is a way to get all the posts about the elections in Iran and following a twitterer with the handle Change for Iran who was posting from his roof top every few minutes and then going down to join the protests and coming back. It was an amazing experience to directly follow what was happening on the streets of Tehran as it was happening. More important, though, Twitter became a major source of information for those opposed to Ahmadinejad’s government and protesting what they consider to be fraudelant election results.
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