Talking Radical Radio

In episode #455 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Krista Wylie. She is a parent in Toronto and a co-founder of the Fix Our Schools campaign. They talk about the $16.8 billion repair backlog in Ontario schools and about Wylie's years of campaigning to get the provincial government to take seriously the impact that has on students, teachers, and other education workers, and to invest adequately in school repair and renewal. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/05/24/radio-pushing-ontario-to-fix-its-massive-school-repair-backlog/

In episode #454 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Sally Lane and Matthew Behrens. 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. Behrens is a long-time activist and a member of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture. They talk about Jack's case and about the campaign to push the Canadian government to finally take action to bring him, and the 40+ other Canadian Muslims detained in northeastern Syria, back to Canada. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/05/17/radio-challenging-government-abandonment-of-citizens-detained-abroad/

In episode #453 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Darlene Okemaysim-Sicotte. She is part of Iskwewuk E-wichiwitochik, a grassroots group in Saskatoon that has been working for many years on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. For a more detailed description of the episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/05/10/radio-long-years-of-grassroots-work-for-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/

In episode #452 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Nina Newington. She is a long-time activist and an organizer of the Last Hope Camp, a forest defence action whose participants have been living in tents on the land since December to prevent the logging of an ecologically important forest in southwest Nova Scotia. They talk 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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/05/03/radio-defending-the-forest-in-southwest-nova-scotia/

In episode #451 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Jillian Maguire and Kim Benson. They are teachers in British Columbia and members of the BC Teachers Federation, and they have been organizing to get their pension plan to divest from fossil fuel industries. They talk about the BCTF Divest Now campaign and about their recent success in getting their union to pass a motion in favour of divestment. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/04/26/radio-union-members-pushing-their-pension-plan-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels/

In episode #450 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Angella MacEwen and Alex Silas. They are union and community activists in Ottawa, and members of Community Solidarity Ottawa, a coalition of unions, community organizations, and residents that came together during the recent convoy occupation of their city's downtown to give voice to grassroots opposition to the convoy, its far-right organizers, and its harmful tactics, while also demanding that governments do more to support working-class communities and frontline workers during the pandemic. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/04/19/radio-ottawa-residents-against-the-convoy-and-for-solidarity-and-social-justice/

In episode #449 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interview Manuel Salamanca Cardona. He is an activist with the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and the Temporary Agency Workers Association (TAWA) in Montreal. They talk about the struggles faced by workers employed by temp agencies, and about the work of TAWA. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/04/12/radio-temp-agency-workers-getting-organized/

In episode #448 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interview Abby Stadnyk and Ellie Ade Kur. They speak about their own abolitionist politics and organizing, and about *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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/04/05/radio-dispatches-from-the-movement-for-police-abolition-in-canada/

In episode #447 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Sakura Saunders and Rachel Small. They are, respectively, a board member and the Canada organizer for 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. They talk about the organization's work globally and in Canada, about their war abolitionist politics, and about what their members and supporters have been doing to demand peace in Ukraine. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/03/29/radio-demanding-a-just-peace-in-ukraine-and-the-abolition-of-all-war/

In episode #446 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Sarah Switzer, Andrea Vela Alarcón, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez, and Casey Burkholder. They all have long histories of involvement in a range of community-based work, and they are also researchers in academic and professional settings. They speak today about Beyond the Toolkit, a research project in which they worked with people involved in community facilitation, community arts, community-based participatory research, and related work to understand how they were adapting to the drastic changes imposed by the pandemic and to develop tools to support them. For a more detailed description, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/03/22/how-grassroots-community-based-initiatives-changed-due-to-covid-19/

In episode #445 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Jesse Cardinal. She is a Métis woman who lives in Treaty 6 territory and the executive director of Keepers of the Water, an Indigenous-led organization with a mission of protecting the water in the Arctic drainage basin. She talks about the threat to the water posed by the Alberta tar sands and other resource extraction, and about the organization's work. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/03/15/radio-indigenous-led-water-protection-in-the-north/

In episode #444 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Emma Clark and Hayley Bryant. They are grade 12 students at Western Canada High School in Calgary, Alberta. They talk about doing feminist organizing at their school as part of a group called the Committee on the Status of Women and Girls (CSWAG). For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/03/08/radio-feminist-organizing-by-high-school-students/

In episode #443 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews April Thomas. She 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. She talks about the trajectory of her work defending the land, about grassroots opposition to the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline expansion project, and about the ongoing court battle in the wake of the arrest of land defenders at the Secwépemc Unity Camp. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/03/01/radio-grassroots-secwepemc-resistance-to-the-trans-mountain-pipeline/

In episode #442 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Hanen Nanaa. She is, among other things, the 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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/02/22/radio-talking-politics-arts-and-social-justice-with-bipoc-youth/

In episode #441 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Brie Villeneuve and Piper Lockhart, both of whom are high school students in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They are also core organizers of 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. They talk about the pandemic, about the problems with the Manitoba government's response, about the student walkout their group organized in January, and about what needs to happen to make schools safe. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/02/15/radio-high-school-students-organizing-for-greater-covid-safety-in-schools/

In episode #440 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Martha Paynter and Frédérique Chabot. Paynter is a registered nurse, a researcher, an activist, and the founder of an organization called Wellness Within, which works for reproductive justice, health equity, and prison abolition. Chabot is the director of health promotion at Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, an organization that does public education, health promotion, and advocacy in Canada and globally. In the context of Action Canada's annual Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Week campaign, they speak about why advocacy in these areas 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. For a more complete description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/02/08/radio-next-steps-for-sexual-and-reproductive-rights-activism-in-canada/

In episode #439 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews David Alton and William Turman, who are members of a multi-issue group in southern Ontario called GroundUp Waterloo Region. They talk 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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here:

In episode #438 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Anna Badillo and David Heap. They are members of People for Peace, a local grassroots peace group in the city of London in southwestern Ontario. They talk 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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/01/25/radio-opposing-the-arms-industry-in-one-canadian-community/

In episode #437 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Joe Curnow, 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). They talk 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. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/01/18/public-sector-workers-building-power-in-tough-times/

In episode #436 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews 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. They talk about the history of the conflict and about the work of the CPJK. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/01/11/radio-working-in-canada-for-a-just-peace-in-kashmir/