Sally Lane is the mother of Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen who has been detained for more than five years in northeastern Syria in conditions akin to torture. Matthew Behrens is a long-time activist and a member of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture. Scott Neigh interviews them about Jack’s case and about the campaign to push the Canadian government to finally take action to bring Jack back to Canada.
Darlene Okemaysim-Sicotte is part of a grassroots group called Iskwewuk E-wichiwitochik, or Women Walking Together, that has been working for many years in Saskatoon on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Scott Neigh interviews her about what that work has involved.
Nina Newington is a long-time activist and an organizer of the Last Hope Camp, whose participants have been living in tents on the land since December to block the logging of an ecologically important forest in southwest Nova Scotia. Scott Neigh interviews her about the practicalities of taking this kind of direct action, about the broader struggle to defend forests in Nova Scotia, and about the Last Hope Camp.
Jillian Maguire and Kim Benson are teachers in British Columbia. As such, they are both members of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), and they have recently been organizing to get their pension plan to divest from fossil fuel industries. Scott Neigh interview them about the BCTF Divest Now campaign and about their success in getting the BCTF to pass a motion in favour of divestment.
Alex Silas and Angella MacEwen live in Ottawa and are active in their unions and their communities.
Manuel Salamanca Cardona is an activist with the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC), which organizes with immigrant and migrant workers in a wide range of contexts in Montreal. Scott Neigh interviews him specifically about the struggles of workers employed by temp agencies, and about the work of the IWC-affiliated Temporary Agency Workers Association, which fights for improved conditions and labour rights for temp agency workers.
Ellie Ade Kur and Abby Stadnyk are grassroots organizers with abolitionist politics. They are also both involved in Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada (Between the Lines, 2022), a new book collection bringing together pieces by organizers and scholars writing in the context of the constellation of efforts to defund and abolish the police in Canada over the last two years.
Sakura Saunders and Rachel Small are long-time organizers with experience in a range of movements. Both are active with World Beyond War, a decentralized global network with the goal not just of opposing the war of the day but of abolishing the institution of war.
Sarah Switzer, Andrea Vela Alarcón, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez, and Casey Burkholder all have long histories of involvement in a range of grassroots, community-based work, and they are also researchers in academic and professional settings.
Jesse Cardinal is a Métis woman who lives in Treaty 6 territory and is the executive director of Keepers of the Water, an Indigenous-led organization with a mission of protecting the water in the Arctic drainage basin. Scott Neigh interviews her about the threat posed by the Alberta tar sands and other resource extraction, and about the organization’s work.
Emma Clark and Hayley Bryant are grade 12 students at Western Canada High School in Calgary, Alberta. Scott Neigh interviews them about the feminist organizing they do as members of a group at their school called the Committee on the Status of Women and Girls (CSWAG).
April Thomas is a land defender and member of the Secwépemc Nation, from the Canim Lake Band in the central interior of what is colonially known as British Columbia. Scott Neigh interviews her about the trajectory of her work defending the land, about grassroots opposition to the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline expansion project, and about Secwépemc Say No TMX and the ongoing court battle in the wake of the arrest of land defenders at the Secwépemc Unity Camp.
Hanen Nanaa works in research and policy development in the federal political context and as an outreach coordinator for the Syrian Canadian Foundation, but today Scott Neigh interviews her in her role as director of the BAM Collective. The acronym “BAM” stands for “Books Art Music,” and the group is a youth-led collective based in Ontario that seeks to empower equity-seeking groups through community engagement and the arts.
Brie Villeneuve is a Grade 12 student at Grant Park High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Piper Lockhart is a Grade 11 student at Collège Louis-Riel, a French-language high school in Winnipeg. Both are core organizers with Manitoba Students for COVID Safety, a student-led group advocating for safer schools in light of inadequate action from the Manitoba provincial government to keep educators, staff, and students safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Martha Paynter and Frédérique Chabot have each spent a lot of years doing a lot of different kinds of grassroots political work related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Scott Neigh interviews them about why such work is important, and about why in Canada today it is vital that it centre prison abolition, migrant justice, and other struggles led by people who are regularly “discarded” and dehumanized by dominant systems.
David Alton and William Turman are founding members of a multi-issue grassroots group in southern Ontario called GroundUp Waterloo Region. Scott Neigh interviews them about their commitment to what they call “messy activism” and about the group’s work supporting other grassroots groups, filling community gaps, building grassroots infrastructure, and holding politicians to account.
Anna Badillo and David Heap are members of People for Peace, a local grassroots peace group in the city of London in southwestern Ontario. Scott Neigh interviews them about the group’s two decades of action on a wide range of issues, and in particular about their work opposing the manufacture in a London plant of the light-armoured vehicles (LAVs) being sold to Saudi Arabia in the largest arms deal in Canadian history.
Joe Curnow is a professor in the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba, a long-time community organizer, and a member of the organizing and communications team for the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA). Scott Neigh interviews her about UMFA’s recent strike, in which an organizing orientation allowed the union to accomplish quite a lot despite very challenging circumstances, and about the lessons it holds for other public sector unions.
Today’s guest on Talking Radical Radio is a Kashmiri-Canadian and a member of Canadians for Peace and Justice in Kashmir, a group of Canadians – some of whom have ties to the region, some of whom do not – committed to working in this country towards a just peace in Kashmir. Scott Neigh interviews him about the history of the conflict in Kashmir and about the work of CPJK.
For more than 20 years, A.J. Withers was active with one of Ontario’s best known grassroots groups, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Recently, Withers released a new book telling stories of and drawing lessons from four of OCAP’s key campaigns over the years related to homelessness. Scott Neigh interviews them about OCAP and about Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing (Fernwood Publishing, 2021).