• • Body Politics
  • On The Job

  Six Degrees of Inoculation

  May 2, 2013 • deb singh

  When I started at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, I was given a benefits package**. My coworkers helped me to use my benefits package, not just for health care but also for self-care. And so my adventure on new ways to care for myself began!

  Once I got my teeth cleaned, and some of my basic health care needs met, I started to explore my self-care options. I realized I seriously needed a massage, and my coworkers and friends raved about a community acupuncture centre named Six Degrees Community Acupuncture.

  Now, I grew up in the western medical model. When I have a headache, I take an Advil. When I am sick, I down some cough syrup. Acupuncture? Needles in my body? Uh, no thank you. Another bit of context is that it takes me a while to trust a healer. I’ve had lots of them: doctors, therapists, counselors—and some have been whack. So going to an acupuncture clinic didn’t just make me have to learn a new healing method, it also made me have to learn to trust a new practitioner.

  Because of the many rave reviews and suggestions for a great massage, I booked an appointment. The acupuncturist asked me questions about my health and asked me what I wanted. I said a massage. And so she gave me one. I walked out of there after the first visit light as air.

  The next time I went back was the same: I left feeling calmer, elated, feelings of clearness and weightlessness. And the next time was like that, and the time after that.

  Soon, I enjoyed many visits where my practitioner was open to hear me talk about anything, always asked me what I wanted to work on (in terms of massage) and left me feeling relaxed and taken care of.

  After many appointments, my acupuncturist asked me if I wanted to try acupuncture. My acupuncturist had been so nice to me … so I let her poke me. (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job

  Toronto event: action for International Workers Day

  May 1, 2013 • Julia Horel

  

  Creative commons May Day poster made by the Public Studio: http://thepublicstudio.ca/work/detail/may-day (The Public Studio)

  ---

  From the Facebook event:

  Join us in the streets for the annual May Day of Action in Toronto.

  5:30 PM: Rally and March starting at City Hall and ending at Little Norway Park in solidarity with striking workers at Porter (Queens Quay and Bathurst)

  On International Workers Day, we march to build a Solidarity City. Solidarity City is a unified struggle for: Respect for Indigenous Sovereignty, Status for All, an End to Imperialism and Environmental Destruction, an End to Austerity and Attacks on the Poor and Working class, continued resistance against Patriarchy, Racism, Ableism and Homophobia and Transphobia

  - Organize a contingent: bring a group of people from your class, organization, neighbourhood, or union local to this demonstration, bring your demands, banners, flags and signs.

  - Help fund a bus, food, transit tokens, ASL, and materials for the day. If you or your organization or union local can make donations of money or in-kind, please help us make this day as participatory and accessible as possible. Cheques can be made to No One Is Illegal and mailed to 260 Queen Street West, PO Box 60006, Toronto, ON M5V 1Z8. Please put May Day in the memo line and email nooneisillegal@riseup.net to let us know.

  - Build the movement: add your organization to the list of endorsers for this day of action. Fill out this form http://bit.ly/ZDRwKU

  - Get the word out. Call, text, and email your friends. Share the facebook events, or better yet, start your own! Make sure to tag everything, including pictures and videos after, with the hashtag #May1TO.

  More info: www.may-1.org

  ---

  Please feel free to post actions and events in other communities for International Workers Day in the comment section!

• • On The Job

  Labour, Harm Reduction, and Allyship

  February 11, 2013 • Meg Pirie

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: labour doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And yet, we tend to think about this large part of our lives as somehow separate from “real life.” I’m not sure if this need to segment our labour is a product of Western education founded on arbitrary divisions or a way to detach from work lives that, for some, are filled with precarity, malaise, or just plain boredom. That’s another blog post.

  Nevertheless, segmenting labour and rigidly defining who does what, where, and how is also a way of ensuring that collective organizing is hampered.

  I mention this labour vacuum in the opening paragraph because I’ve noticed lately that the phrase “having it all” has been the focus of a lot of press, both mainstream and feminist. And while women still earn far less than men, this trendy topic is embedded with its own set of assumptions. For one, much of the focus on these issues is urban, heteronormative, cis-gendered, and white-collar. This “you can have it all/bust down that glass ceiling” is also founded on the in-no-way-universal desire to have a family/be a mother.

  But when we talk of ceilings, we tend to ignore the remainder of the structure, so to speak—especially the ‘basement,’ an issue Laurie Penny has written about extensively. In Sarah Jaffe’s recent article “Trickle-Down Feminism”, she highlights mainstream feminism’s willful omission of the labour experiences and issues faced by women of colour post-recession and women employed in low-wage service sector and domestic jobs.

  “While we debate the travails of some of the world’s most privileged women, most women are up against the wall,” Jaffe writes. “The brave new economy being rebuilt in the wake of the financial meltdown is being built on low-wage service work.” (I strongly encourage you to read the rest of this amazing feature.) Although these statistics are American, consider that women have regained only 12 percent of jobs lost during the recession that began in 2008, while men have regained 63 percent of jobs lost.

  To put it bluntly, our labour is interwoven with gender. Some labour is gendered and, in being gendered, devalued. If we look at current labour statistics, the bulk of these exploited positions are filled by women of colour. It’s intersectional, systemic violence. Which is precisely why collective responses should be equally intersectional. For this reason, the current emphasis on the having it all/glass ceiling debate does nothing but work within the boundaries of patriarchy. There is nothing radical about this.

  So where exactly does harm reduction fit in and what is harm reduction? (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • On The Job
  • Sporting Goods

  What I learned while trying not to watch the Olympics

  August 17, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  Now that we’re no longer inundated with the minute-by-minute updates from London—newsflashes brought to you by Coke and McDonalds—it’s time to take part in Ye Olde Olympic retrospective and for me to confess the following: My name is Meg. I am a feminist. But I also love the Olympics. That said, I am highly, highly critical of the corporate ethos that governs not just the Games’ infrastructure, but also how the labour of amateur athletes is discussed and constructed.

  Really though, there is much to learn from the Olympics. In fact, the Olympics provides us with a perfect snapshot of hypercapitalism. Hypercapitalism is, in brief, extreme capitalism at the expense of traditional values. What exactly ‘traditional values’ implies is anyone’s guess.

  My personal interpretation of hypercapitalism as it relates to the Olympics is extreme capitalism projected as [fictitious] ‘unity’ and ‘oneness’ that is, in reality, founded on exploitation: of the environment; of labour (I’m including behind-the-scenes media workers, athletes, and low-wage service workers that make the Olympics hum along in host cities); and colonialism, since more often than not Olympics are held in settler states or nations that are directly benefiting from ongoing colonization.

  There’s tons to talk about and I’m only scratching the surface in this post. You could spend several posts dissecting sexist and racist media coverage, so I’m going to focus on a few instances that struck a chord with me.

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job

  Feminism is for everybody: Join the global boycott against Hyatt Hotels

  August 2, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  A little over a week ago, a worldwide boycott of Hyatt hotel chains was announced in the US, organized by UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt hotel workers.

  Hyatt is guilty of labour abuses that are becoming more common in this age of austerity, including ever-increasing, oppressive workloads (cleaning thirty rooms in a shift, to start); limited time off; and of course, hiring contract workers to cut costs, to name a few. Additionally, there are experiences of on-the-job sexual harassment, racism, and union busting. For the largely female workforce that make up housekeeping staff—many of whom have immigrated to the United States—systemic racism and the threat of immigration keeps workers from coming forward against their employer.

  To put it bluntly, Hyatt’s “escalating patterns of worker abuse” is illegal. Moreover, this is immoral. We all have the right to safe, equitable working conditions. And we all have the right to unionize.

  (more inside…)

• • Body Politics
  • On The Job

  Press release: Ontario Court leaves most vulnerable sex workers unprotected

  March 26, 2012 • Julia Horel

  http://maggiestoronto.ca/press-releases?news_id=86

  March 26, 2012 - In a ruling which many sex workers are calling a disappointment, the Ontario Court of appeal today released a decision that upheld the law against communication for the purposes of prostitution, modified the law against living off the avails of prostitution and struck down the law against operating a common bawdy house.
  
  “The vast majority of all prostitution arrests are under the communication law. The failure to strike down the communication law means that the most vulnerable sex workers will continue to face arrest, police harassment, prosecution and violence.” –Emily van der Muelen, Assistant Professor, in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Ryerson University.
  
  “I reject the conclusion that street work is so bad for neighborhoods that stopping it is more important than protecting women’s lives.” -Lux, a current sex worker with street experience.
  
  “This is a letdown for the most vulnerable sex workers who are largely street, Indigenous and transgendered sex workers” – Keisha Scott, Coordinator, Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project
  
  While striking down the bawdy house law may increase security for some sex workers, on it’s own, it is simply not enough. “The anti prostitution laws work together to jeopardize sex workers safety. it is not tenable to have a safe place to see a client if you can’t screen him first or clearly set out what you offer, your rates and your safe sex requirements. Further, many street-based workers don’t have access to an indoor place to work.” - Kara Gillies, a long time sex worker and activist for law reform
  
  Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project is Canada’s oldest sex worker run organization dedicated to assisting sex workers in our right to live and work with safety and dignity.

• • Event Listings
  • On The Job

  Toronto SHAMELESS event: Hustle & Dough

  March 5, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Sunday, March 11, 2012
  3:00pm-5:00pm

  Join us for an exciting roundtable of youth sex work activists talking about youth who trade sex and celebrate the launch of the labour issue of Shameless magazine!

  Part of a month-long celebration of International Sex Workers’ Rights Day.

  Featuring:
  Jessica Danforth (Yee)
  Kyisha Williams
  Phoenix Katt

  Wheelchair accessible location and washrooms.
  ASL interpretation available and light refreshments served.

  For more info, contact sexworkisrealwork@maggiestoronto.ca

  Facebook event here.

  

  
  

• • On The Job

  Taking on the Union Busters

  February 6, 2012 • Meg Pirie

  We live in a time where our rights are on the job have been carved away, bit-by-bit, whether it’s hapless governments or multinationals who benefit from neo-liberal policies. For this reason, participatory mobilization alongside collective bargaining has never been more important. The following video helps illustrate this point.

  Precarious work in its many forms is open to myriad abuses and our experiences with labour intersects with ableism, racism, sexism, colonization, transphobia and homophobia. We need labour laws that continually evolve so as to reflect an inclusive, exemplary society. Dr. Stephanie Ross is right to point out that if current governments refuse to enforce existing labour laws, then they become empty rhetoric with no application.

  But surely, this sort of labour abuse couldn’t happen when you’re unionized, right? The ongoing erosion of collective bargaining rights at the hands of the existing federal government has demonstrated that unionized or not, Canada is open for business.

  (more inside…)

• • All About Shameless
  • On The Job

  Issue 19 out now!

  January 18, 2012 • Sheila Sampath

  

  On November 2, 2011, Oakland went on strike. In a formidable display of solidarity and support, workers across the city united in opposition to oppressive government policies, industry exploitation and state violence.

  At home in Toronto, I watched while an estimated three thousand protesters successfully forced an operational halt to the Oakland Port. I was moved when I saw local businesses shut down in solidarity and I cried when I saw hundreds of school-aged children carrying crayon-coloured “Occupy our future” placards. The messages of anger, frustration and solidarity were echoed in Occupy and Decolonize protests across the world.

  When workers are able to shut a city down, we are reminded of the power of labour. In the same way that we work to support our causes, our families and ourselves, we are, everyday, supported by hundreds of fellow workers: workers in the public sector who educate us, keep us safe and keep us healthy; workers in the private sector whose labour is sewn into the clothes we wear, assembled in the computers we use and written in the books we read. Labour is embedded in every product we consume and every service we rely on.

  The production and consumption of wage labour is a necessity under capitalism; a necessity made even stronger by the growing income gap and increase in privatization. However, pervasive austerity measures, the normalization of contract and precarious or unpaid work and global and migrant labour divisions make it harder than ever to earn a living with dignity and respect. These government and industry policies disproportionately affect already marginalized groups of people: the working class and poor, women and trans people, migrant peoples, (dis)abled peoples, people of colour, Indigenous peoples, and, significantly, youth. Under a system of global capitalism, these policies fuel the income gap and contribute to a cycle of deplorable workers’ rights.

  We spend a lot of time working, training to work, thinking about work, looking for work and recovering from work. While work has come to shape so much of our day-to-day lives, we need to start thinking about ways of using our work to shape the world around us. While work has come to define so much of who we are, we need to start finding ways of defining the terms of the work that we do. With this issue of Shameless, our labour issue, we hope to use our work to encourage you to think critically about your work.

  In this issue, we feature workers speaking about unions (p. 18), internships (p. 24) and sex workers’ rights (p. 28). We bring you stories about tree planting (p. 8), workers going green (p. 16) and young women farmers (p. 38). We help you learn your rights at work (p. 12) and consider the labour that goes into the clothes we wear (p. 40). By sharing these stories of fellow workers, we hope to facilitate a dialogue around what it means to work with dignity and respect, and to facilitate solidarity among working people that allows all of us to collectively speak up for all of our rights.

  I want to take this opportunity to thank our volunteer staff, writers and artists who continue to work tirelessly bring these issues to you. Shameless is a labour of love and we hope that with it, you are able to find love in what you do.

  Yours shamelessly,
  
  sheila
  
  sheila@shamelessmag.com
  

• • Activist Report
  • On The Job

  Tituba’s Revenge: organizing and advocacy for not-for-profit workers

  December 23, 2011 • Meg Pirie

  One of the greatest achievements of neoliberalism is the ways in which the state’s role shifted from caretaker to CFO. This ostensibly seamless transition saw the rise of the not-for-profit/non-profit sector (I use the terms interchangeably in this post), stepping in to provide necessary social services that were once the responsibility of our governments and elected officials. In other words, governments need not-for-profits, and not-for-profits, which might receive some funding form government agencies and need to comply with municipal by-laws, often prop-up governments without tackling the root causes of systemic marginalization. But perhaps the greatest achievement of all is a widespread perception and banal acceptance that this is a relationship between citizens and government that has always ‘been there’ and that no other alternative exists.

  This economic system founded on quantifiable outputs, results, and unfettered accumulation has seen the transformation of many not-for-profits from radical origins to mainstream models that mirror businesses. And while I’m not saying that all not-for-profits are bureaucratic houses of mirrors, they are workplaces and all workplaces are open to labour abuse.

  Moreover, not-for-profits do not exist in isolation; they’re part of a broader system of power and resistance. How these organizations elect to navigate said system varies. Some remain radical; others not so much. Regardless, labour abuses within this sector are relatively overlooked.

  With this in mind, the formation of Tituba’s Revenge earlier this year—a New York City collective comprised of anti-capitalist non-profit for workers who are predominantly queer women of colour—couldn’t be more timely. An ongoing working project, Tituba’s Revenge is dedicated to, in part,

  * dispelling myths about non-profits
  * redressing the current vacuum of analysis devoted to exploitative conditions within this feminized sector
  * highlighting the ways in which many non-profits help to reproduce capitalism
  * facilitating strategies for workplace organizing

  The collective is named after Tituba, a Black Caribbean woman brought to Salem, Massachusetts as a slave and later persecuted during the Salem Witch Trials for her use of African healing rituals. In this way, the act of naming is a powerful one: it gives voice to an individual lived experience and highlights shared histories of resistance.

  Their first pamphlet was just released (PDF link) and in short, it’s amazing. (more inside…)

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