Informações:
Sinopse
A progressive take on current events. Produced by an independent media collective at Vancouver Cooperative Radio.
Episódios
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Peace activists stage 14-day fast to oppose Canadian purchase of fighter jets
14/05/2021 Duração: 11minIn April, over 100 Canadians staged a hunger strike to raise awareness of the federal government’s plan to purchase 88 new advanced fighter jets for a total cost of over $76 billion. Dr. Brendan Martin is a member of the Vancouver chapter of the organization, World BEYOND War. He finished a two-week fast on April 23 as part of the No New Fighter Jets Coalition and joins us to talk about the campaign.
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Riley Yesno looks at federal budget from an Indigenous perspective
11/05/2021 Duração: 15minThe 2021 Federal Budget promised to support people living in Indigenous communities, and allocate over $18 billion over the next five years to improve the quality of life and create new opportunities. Riley Yesno says as “historic and unprecedented” as this Budget may be, that does not mean it is sufficient. Riley Yesno is a queer Anishinaabe writer, researcher, and public speaker from Eabametoong First Nation. She is currently a Canadian Journalism Foundation Fellow, and a Yellowhead Institute Research Fellow.
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City Beat: Decriminalizing poverty, social housing update, electric car race
09/05/2021 Duração: 13minIn July 2020, Vancouver City Council passed a motion to decriminalize poverty. Council heard about a variety of impacts, including the intersecting impacts of poverty, gender, and racism on interactions with police. A report on the implementation of this task came to Council last week and Ian Mass, our City Beat reporter, joins us to tell us about the outcome. Plus a social housing update and a new 3-day car race proposed for Vancouver.
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Activists unhappy with VSB motion to end police liaison program in schools
07/05/2021 Duração: 15minOn April 26, the Vancouver School Board voted to end its school liaison officer program. Meenakshi Mannoe is Criminalization & Policing Campaigner at Pivot Legal Society and was involved in the fight to remove police from school. She joins us to talk about her concerns with the motion the Vancouver School Board passed and what’s next for the campaign to remove police from schools.
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Federal government fails to protect threatened southern Mountain Caribou
04/05/2021 Duração: 14minAll Mountain caribou in Canada are at risk of extinction, and none more so than the southern Mountain Caribou of BC and Alberta. Herds have been in decline for over three decades. In March, the federal government rejected an emergency order under the Species at Risk Act to protect the threatened caribou. We speak with Charlotte Dawe, Conservation and Policy Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.
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Developer behind demolition of social housing fights to keep deal private
30/04/2021 Duração: 12minHolborn Properties bought 224 Little Mountain social housing units in 2007 with a promise to rebuild. Fourteen years later, the lot still sits empty. Activists are fighting to see the sales agreement that the BC Liberal government signed with Holborn. A government arbitrator ordered BC Housing to release the contract but Holborn continues to fight to keep it private. We catch up on what’s happening with David Chudnovsky of Community Advocates for Little Mountain.
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Yellow Objects takes inspiration from Hong Kong democracy protests
27/04/2021 Duração: 17minYellow Objects is part digital experience and part theatrical installation. The work is inspired by the democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and created by Derek Chan, co-artistic director of Rice & Beans Theatre. Derek Chan grew up in Hong Kong and is a playwright, director, performer and translator. We speak with him about how the work came about and how he adapted it once the pandemic made live theatre productions impossible.
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New doc follows parallel journeys of gay refugee and his queer sponsors
25/04/2021 Duração: 19minSomeone Like Me, premiering at Toronto’s Hot Docs this month, documents what happens when a group of strangers from Vancouver’s queer community sponsor Drake, a gay asylum seeker from Uganda. With the help of Rainbow Refugee, they embark on a year-long quest for personal freedom. We speak with filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams.
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Artist Henry Tsang's virtual tour of Vancouver's 1907 Anti-Asian Riots
24/04/2021 Duração: 16minThe 360 Riot Walk is a multilingual interactive tour which invites participants to trace a layered history of labour politics, anti-Asian racism, and community resistance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The tour has 13 stops between Gassy Jack and Oppenheimer Park. We speak with artist Henry Tsang, creator of the 360 Riot Walk.
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Canada's poor track record on affordable vaccines
22/04/2021 Duração: 21minThe Canadian and Ontario governments recently announced they are giving $470 million to Sonofi Pasteur, a French vaccine maker, to build a new plant to manufacture vaccines for influenza. In December we talked with Colleen Fuller about how the Mulroney government sold off Canada’s Connaught Labs and their research and production capacity. We’ve connected with her again to get her take on Canada’s role in the provision of affordable vaccines, here and abroad.
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City Beat: Bus ridership, social housing and two new community centres
20/04/2021 Duração: 14minIt is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic has drastically reduced transit ridership, and that rebuilding rider confidence will be challenging. Councillor Jean Swanson has a motion before Vancouver City Council specifically focused on preserving bus ridership, which makes up over 60% of transit trips in Metro Vancouver. Redeye collective member and City Beat commentator Ian Mass joins us to talk about all the goings on at Vancouver City Hall and beyond.
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BC needs to double down on its commitment to $10-a-day childcare
19/04/2021 Duração: 13minA year into the pandemic, it’s clear that any recovery plan has to include public investment in child care. The Canadian child care sector was fragmented and under-funded before the pandemic and it’s just gotten worse. A new study by David Macdonald and Martha Friendly of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives surveyed child care providers in 37 Canadian cities and found staggering differences in how much parents pay for child care fees across the country. We talk with Iglika Ivanova, senior economist with the CCPA-BC office.
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Uber pitches its Flexible Work+ plan to provincial governments in Canada
16/04/2021 Duração: 15minThe ride-hailing giant Uber recently announced its answer to complaints about lack of benefits and labour protections for its workers when it unveiled its Flexible Work+ plan last. Uber is asking provincial governments to amend labour legislation to allow gig workers to accumulate benefit funds that they could spend on things like health insurance and pension plans. We speak with Brice Sopher, an Uber Eats courier and organizer with the Gig Workers United union.
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Upcoming provincial budget in BC must address systemic inequality
14/04/2021 Duração: 14minThe upcoming provincial and federal budgets are being called the most important in a generation with the opportunity of addressing long standing systemic inequality and injustices. Alex Hemingway is an economist and public finance policy analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office. He joins us to talk about what British Columbians are hoping to see in these budgets.
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Province allows clear-cutting of one of last intact old-growth areas in BC
12/04/2021 Duração: 26minOn April 1. BC Supreme Court granted an injunction to logging company Teal-Jones Group to remove Fairy Creek/Ada’itsx forest defenders. This clears the path for the destruction of one of the last intact old-growth areas on Vancouver Island, on the territory of the Pacheedaht First Nations. We speak with two people from the Sierra Club, senior forest and climate campaigner Jens Wieting and forest relations coordinator Ma̱k’wa̱la – Dakota Smith.
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Eight formerly-enslaved men bring class action lawsuit against chocolate companies
10/04/2021 Duração: 20minAccording to a recent study, more than one and a half million child laborers were working in cocoa growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana in 2019. In a landmark human rights case, eight young men from Mali are bringing a class action suit against big chocolate companies. They managed to escape after being trafficked as children and forced to harvest cocoa in Cote D’Ivoire. We speak with lawyer and executive director of International Rights Advocates Terry Collingsworth.
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Outbreaks of infectious diseases linked to deforestation and monoculture
06/04/2021 Duração: 11minAccording to a recent study, outbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas that have been stripped of their forest cover or land that is used for monoculture plantations. The study, published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines. We speak with Claire Lajaunie, researcher with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France.
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City Beat: South False Creek, the 2030 Olympics and post-Covid recovery
05/04/2021 Duração: 14minVancouver City Council is at risk of slipping into divisive politics which will hinder a solution for South False Creek residents who fear eviction from their homes. Plus the push to host the 2030 Olympics, plans for the post Covid economic recovery and policy overload for City staff. We talk with our City Beat reporter, Ian Mass.
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Justice at Spotify campaign demands fair payment for musicians
01/04/2021 Duração: 18minMusic streaming services like Spotify are great for people who love to listen to music but have robbed musicians of much of their income. Musicians say the paltry payout rates are unfair and make it hard to make a living through their work. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) launched a campaign called Justice at Spotify last fall, and they organized worldwide protests outside Spotify’s offices this month. We speak with musician and UMAW organizer Zack Nestel-Patt.
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Cuba leads the way on vaccine development in Latin America
29/03/2021 Duração: 15minIf you were asked to name the countries that have produced vaccines against Covid-19, you probably wouldn’t think of Cuba. Yet Cuba is currently the only Latin American country developing Covid-19 vaccine candidates. The Soberana 1 and 2 vaccines have shown strong immune response against the virus during clinical studies. Conner Gorry is Senior Editor of MEDICC Review and has been reporting on the Cuban health system from Havana for nearly 20 years. She spoke with me from Minneapolis.