Mayday was celebrated in Hamilton this year with the second annual "Mayday 2008: A Festival of Liberation" held from April 26 to May 3. The festival was organized by the Sky Dragon Community Development Coop (Hamilton's major hub for all things left) and co-ordinated with the Hamilton District Labour Council, the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, and Hamilton Artists Inc.

Common Cause Hamilton participated by organizing several events. As part of the week long series of discussion groups and film screenings, we organized a showing of the documentary, Grass Through Concrete, which chronicles the hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful struggle to stop the building of a major highway through Hamilton's urban forest, the Red Hill Valley.

CALL TO ACTION: UofT PRESSES CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST 14 FOR MOBILIZING AGAINST FEE HIKES

***URGENT CALL FOR SUPPORT – PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY***

SIGN THE PETITION: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fightfees/index.html

University’s level of hostility and repression against students unprecedented in the last decade

Community Release: Toronto; April 25 2008

WHAT: Allies for Just Education - Community Support Meeting
WHEN: Monday April 28, 6pm
WHERE: Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil St (http://tinyurl.com/4sn49c)

Dear Allies,

Over the past several weeks, a wide coalition of students, alumni and workers at University of Toronto have come together to protest and organize against proposed fee hikes and to demand accessible education. This coalition has organized public meetings, a sit-in and demonstrations which have received wide community support (see www.fightfees.ca).

Jamila Ghaddar is a member of
MacMaster Universities Student's for Palestinian Human Rights. She recently talked to Linchpin about the banning of the term Israeli apartheid on campus by the administration and student union.

Linchpin: O.K. Can you start by telling me what Israeli apartheid is?

Jamila Ghaddar: Well Israeli apartheid is a term that was coined by Israeli senior officials then used by Israeli academics and then taken up by the Palestinian movement both in Palestine and the international solidarity movement. It’s based on the international apartheid convention which outlines the kind of apartheid as a system that systematically has separate and distinct types of treatments for different racial or other types of groups under its jurisdiction.

Linchpin: What is happening at McMaster right now? The term Israeli apartheid has been banned?

EMERGENCY RALLY TO DEFEND STUDENTS' RIGHTS
Tuesday March 25, 4:10 PM
Simcoe Hall (27 King's College Circle)
University of Toronto
Map: http://tinyurl.com/2oatgu
ACTION ITEM: Statements of solidarity and support; endorse and organize a contingent for the rally.

Join us in a peaceful demonstration outside the University of Toronto's administration building to protest police aggression against students and rising fees: Tuesday March 25, 4:10 PM, outside Simcoe Hall (27 King's College
Circle).

Photos from the Student Sit-in, demanding an end to rent increases and dialogue with the administration.

Press Release

University of Toronto Students Occupy President's Office
Police violence used to force students out

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 21, 2008 – Toronto

March 20, 2008 thirty-five University of Toronto students occupied Simcoe Hall, the home of the President's Office, to protest a 20% fee increase. The nonviolent sit-in was accompanied with a peaceful rally outside the building—until the police began brutalizing those inside. This was captured by multiple video cameras.

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.

by Matt Morgan-Brown

The Ottawa Anarchist Discussion Group (OADG) is regularly held every second Sunday afternoon and is made of local Ottawa community organizers and participants who share an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-oppression politics. We are involved in diverse struggles and prioritize maintaining a link between theory and practice.

by Gesyk of Exile Collective

Exile started off with a bunch of young, like minded activists, who came together to discuss the possibilities of opening up a anarchist store front/resource centre in central Ottawa. We all knew that Ottawa needed a safe space for radicals and the like to be able to discuss ideas and organize, and in our country’s political crapital, of all places, it is absolutely crucial that members of the community have access to alternative media and resources.
The Exile Infoshop is a collectively-run, volunteer-based, worker owned and operated project organized around the anarchist principles of anti-oppression, equality, community building, and worker control. We believe in egalitarianism, cooperation and a collective struggle against abuses of power.