At the centre of the University of Southern California’s campus in Los Angeles stands a statue of Hecuba, queen of ancient Troy. “A statue celebrating the women of Troy,” says USC’s website. “Hecuba would defend her children and her city with fierce passion and loyalty. She would urge the Trojans to fight on, even when they were outnumbered, exhausted, facing impossible odds.” USC is suffused with the imagery of Troy, said by ancient writers like Homer to have been sacked by the Greeks after they entered the walled city by hiding inside the fabled Trojan horse. The motto of USC’s sports teams ..read more

The 2024-2025 federal budget saw some important steps made in improving income inequality and giving more support to working Canadians. The newly announced National School Food Program aims to spend over $1 billion over five years to provide school meals for more than 400,000 children. Additionally, the government is increasing the capital gains tax on the sale of large assets, as well as raising the income tax on Canada’s 0.13 per cent richest Canadians. While steps like these will help give more opportunities to working class families and will ensure that some of the wealthiest families wil ..read more

About 10,000 Alberta union nurses will be transferred from Alberta Health Services (AHS) to Recovery Alberta without recognizing employee contract rights. The move would affect an estimate of 3,200 United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) members—and in response, UNA filed an unfair labour practice complaint on April 8. After months of uncertainty around the Alberta government’s plan to refocus healthcare, UNA and other labour unions that represent AHS workers were caught by surprise earlier this month on April 2. UNA was informed of the transfer of thousands of nurses to Recovery Alberta, the new ment ..read more

To resolve the climate crisis, everyone should do their part. But to truly turn things around, we need a transformational shift away from profit-driven consumerism. Everything we do as individuals can make a difference — from driving less to reducing meat consumption to using heat pumps instead of fossil-fuelled home heating. But the biggest obstacle to resolving the climate and other crises is the excessive amounts of power and wealth large corporations and the extremely rich — as well as state-controlled entities — have amassed under our global economic system. A recent study by world-renow ..read more

‘To err is human, to forgive divine’— a timeless phrase from an essay by 18th century poet Alexander Pope on the essential role of constructive criticism in helping writers learn from their mistakes. But the expression has become a popular aphorism attesting to the challenge intrinsic to forgiveness in our daily lives—making mistakes is easy, but forgiving them requires an exercise of our higher nature. So how do we ask for forgiveness for our own transgressions, and how do we forgive those who trespass against us? Can we forgive ourselves as well as others? Can victims ever make the transiti ..read more

This was the question over 700 diverse speakers and participants—a 33 per cent increase over prior year—gathered to tackle at the tenth annual DemocracyXChange, three day summit held in Toronto, April 11-13. The conference is organized by the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University in collaboration with Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).   Over 65 speakers and participants alike shared their questions, concerns, expertise and insights on the state of modern democracy in Canada and around the globe. Topics included Russian ambitions, role of capitalism, online harassm ..read more

Happy birthday, rabble.ca! Today, we celebrate 23 years running.  We’re especially grateful to reach this milestone in 2024, after what has been a particularly tough past few months.  As you may know, independent journalism across the country has been hit hard recently, with some organizations making the tough decision to close operations. Thankfully, with the support of our readers, partners, contributors, writers, friends and more, rabble.ca is able to continue to bring you ‘news for the rest of us.’  Read our 2023 annual report today Each year, rabble.ca releases a comprehen ..read more

To hear Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner tell it Monday, you’d almost think there’s been no inflation in Alberta since the pandemic.  Well, Horner is a scion of Alberta’s enduring and (mostly) Conservative Horner political clan who says he “had the opportunity to buy my grandfather’s ranch,” so perhaps he didn’t notice it quite the way the rest of us have.  It’s also true that the United Conservative Party (UCP) has had an active policy of wage suppression, and not just in the public sector, since before Jason Kenney became premier in 2019.  Unionized working people have no ..read more

Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled the 2024-25 federal budget on April 16. The biggest focus of the budget was addressing the housing crisis in Canada with a wide range of policies: including building new houses on federally-owned land, big fiscal support for new housing projects, and even converting underused federal office buildings into apartments. The budget also contained a suite of measures aimed at addressing other aspects of the cost-of-living challenges facing Canadians: including funding for free school lunches, the new pharmacare and dental care programs (negotiated ..read more

Indigenous leaders and land defenders attended Royal Bank of Canada’s 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 11 to send the bank their message: put an end to fossil fuel financing.  Delegates from across North America travelled to Toronto, O to criticize RBC’s ongoing funding of fossil fuel projects and their violations of Indigenous and human rights. But RBC’s efforts to listen to Indigenous and frontline land defenders were shallow to say the least.  During the questioning period, a mere 60 seconds were allotted to delegates, some of which were interrupted by RBC’s board, exec ..read more