Independent media has a rich, long history. Linchpin is following in and updating a tradition known for dissent, diversity, and the creation, cultivation and communication of new and challenging ideas, writes Greg Macdougall

While there may be longstanding problems with the way mainstream media works, what doesn't have such a long and storied history is the rise of 'mega-media', the mass corporate media institutions that put control of ever more of our society's means of communication into the hands of fewer and fewer for-profit companies. It is only in the past decade or two that this problem has reached critical levels, yet it's been ushered in as if this is 'business as usual.'

But it isn't business as usual. Laws regulating media have been changed, media companies have been bought up and/or merged at an alarming rate, and the media landscape is vastly different now than it was a generation ago.

The history of the working class is a history of remarkable innovation and constant renewal. Whenever the bosses think they have buried forever the threat of workers' revolt, workers find, time and again, the means to fight back. Today, the recent blooming of resistance among workers in the low-wage service-sector is one important sign of a renewed struggle against the bosses and their system, writes Lucian.

Common Cause is an Ontario anarchist organization that wants to see anarchists active in every town, neighborhood and workplace across Ontario.

A major focus of our activity is work at those crucial points where working class people are organizing together for control over their lives, the decisions affecting them and against oppression Our general approach is to involve ourselves with mass movements and work within these movements, in order to promote anarchist methods of organization involving direct democracy and direct action.

The methods of struggle that we promote are a preparation for the running of society along anarchist and communist lines after the revolution.