Ken Loach’s award winning newest film I, Daniel Blake (2016), brilliantly exposes the discipline, humiliation and frustration which people who rely on welfare benefits are subjected to in contemporary Britain. To coincide with its Toronto release, we are showing Cathy Come Home (1966), Loach’s first great film on this subject, made exactly 50 years earlier. Cathy Come Home is the … Keep reading »

Art vs Alt is a day of conversations and a platform for presentations of work by concerned artists, a day to come together to work out how to collectively confront the dramatic rise of the right. The conference is open to anyone interested in the culture and politics of the left. Discussions and plenaries on … Keep reading »

Uneven and combined development remains crucial for understanding the continued widening and deepening of capitalism. However, the nature of the heterogeneous and uneven development of contemporary capitalism, especially since the 1970s, makes problematic the characterization of capitalist totality, as a coherent stage and as a singular, albeit uneven, combination. This complicates the successful pursuit of … Keep reading »

Social / Website Launch on Saturday February 3rd, 7pm at Dooney's.

Grab a seat and pour yourself a cup of ambition for our special International Women's Day screening of 9 to 5! Join Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lilly Tomlin in making boss-napping great again in this comedy classic about women office workers at the dawn of the '80s. The themes of sexism and work taken up … Keep reading »

Kevin Skerrett (Research Officer for the Canadian Union of Public Employees) and Chris Roberts (National Director of Social and Economic Policy for the Canadian Labour of Congress) discuss the significance of their edited book, The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism (Cornell University Press, 2018). Heather Whiteside and Janice Folk-Dawson speak to the issues the book raises … Keep reading »

Drawing the Left exhibit opening and reception, featuring cartoons by and discussion with Union Art Service (UAS) collective members. The Drawing the Left exhibit highlights cartoonists of the Union Art Service (UAS) collective. UAS was founded by Cy Morris and Mike Constable shortly after the 1976 General Strike against Pierre Trudeau’s contract busting Wage Controls. … Keep reading »

Liter-ally: Poetry Towards Renewal brings together Toronto-based poets to address the opportunity and challenge of Left renewal. How are poets rethinking politics on the left? What role might poetry play in left politics today? Poetry as art. Poetry as thought. Poetry as resistance. Join us for an evening of readings and spoken word performances by a … Keep reading »

As the Doug Ford Conservatives unpack their agenda, towns and cities across Ontario are getting ready for the October municipal elections. In Toronto, much of the early public debate leading up to the elections has been narrow and dominated by the Tories’ Bill 5, which proposes to cut in half the number of wards for … Keep reading »

Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or ‘sharing’ economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges raises important questions for workers and unions. Do emerging platforms such as Uber and AirBnB mark a significant shift in rent-seeking production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive? How can they be regulated across multiple jurisdictions and … Keep reading »