It was quite the performance. CTV Power Play host Evan Solomon’s response to former Green Party leader Jim Harris demonstrates just how enamoured the media is with Annamie Paul’s pro-imperialist identitarian politics. While I have ideological differences with Harris, he is correct that Paul’s refusal to repudiate her senior adviser’s threats to defeat sitting Green MPs is the root of the recent conflict within the party.

Annamie Paul’s perspective has overwhelmingly shaped coverage of the dramatic and bitter conflict within the Green Party. The media has even uncritically reported Paul’s claim that Elizabeth May, who abused her authority to promote Paul’s candidacy in last year’s leadership race, is part of a conspiracy against her. As 25-year Green Party member Constantine Kritsonis noted, “Straight out of the twilight zone! The Annamie Paul gang blames Elizabeth May!”

Hopefully, the recent hostage exchange and trend of Chinese-Canadians rejecting the Conservatives will embolden those within the Canadian government who prefer engagement over conflict with the world’s emerging superpower. One would also hope that thoughtful citizens will see through the reactionary anti-China propaganda and come to understand this country’s self-interest lies with an internationalist foreign policy.

The polls are tightening up in Election 44 and we have a live one on our hands. With the Conservatives taking the lead, it’s anyone’s guess who will form government after election day, right? Well, not exactly. The problem is that the popular vote doesn’t really mean squat. It’s little more than a temperature check for the national mood and leaves Canadians in the dark about where we really stand in this election.

An unsettling trend in law enforcement is occurring whereby police officers are weaponizing copyrighted music to thwart bystander recordings of police from going viral. It is not a mistake or a game but a growing police tactic. During a recent exchange with Black Lives Matter activists, an Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy in California was caught on camera pulling out his phone to soundtrack the interaction with Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”

Apartheid lives long after headlines have declared one or another victory, and discomfited politicians praise this or that ceasefire. But the fragmented nature of mainstream media coverage serves Israel’s narrative well, distracting from the unbroken continuity of the Nakba and Israeli apartheid, and making it difficult for the Canadian public to grasp the magnitude of Israel’s battering of human dignity.

Shifting perspectives is no easy task because news media has immense power to inform public discourse about drug use. Simply put, we urgently need coverage that gives space to the most marginalized folks in our society in order to humanize decades of drug policy failures. This would go a long way in an effort to change attitudes about drug use during the worst public health crisis in a century.

We should take this moment to reflect on political writing as a collective act. The writer comes from a community, physical and digital. The writer produces material that goes into those communities, even if we do not all experience life in those communities the same. Even during a pandemic, these spaces can be productive and powerful, serving as a part of the struggle for justice and accountability.

Following the circulation of a recent video of a violent altercation with police, Montréal mayor Valérie Plante has renewed calls for police body-worn cameras. The cameras are also currently being discussed in Winnipeg. Viral videos on social media have arguably done more for police transparency and accountably than body-worn cameras. Perhaps a better idea is to encourage the public to record police encounters with citizens.

With the arts facing a host of market failures, the promise of disruption and decentralization offered by 2021’s buzziest acronym—NFTs, or non-fungible tokens—seems messianic to a nascent class of techno-optimists who seem eager to come to the aid of the starving artists among us. Unfortunately, however, NFTs look to be more like an expression of venture capitalism and commodification than a salve to the world’s ailing creative industries.