Sunday 29 December 2019
A deadly holiday season for workers in Delhi
On December 8, 2019 a fire killed 43 workers and injured more than 50 in a factory in Delhi, India. No, it was not Rana Plaza again, the Bangladesh disaster of 2013 that killed over a thousand and injured 2500+. This time the workers were producing bags for locals, not consumer clothing for westerners, but they have in common company contempt for the health and wellbeing of poor workers. Industrial Workers of the World and the Maquila Solidarity Network,
this picture from theguardian.com
Businesses flouting regulations is part of the problem but inadequate regulations and policing of them are also specifics that the two incidents also have in common. Notwithstanding the various codes of conduct that have been drafted since rana Plaza in 2013, underlying inequality and the desperation of workers dependent on urban factory jobs to survive, remain. Delhi is a long way from Canada but as long as workers can be dangerously exploited in any country their relative worth and status is lessened everywhere. To help workers in Toronto we must do what we can to help workers wherever they are being harmed. Local internationalist union organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and the Maquila Solidarity Network, an NGO whose activism for workers has been long supported by TorontotheBetter will help you to engage in the struggle for better conditions for workers everywhere.
Businesses flouting regulations is part of the problem but inadequate regulations and policing of them are also specifics that the two incidents also have in common. Notwithstanding the various codes of conduct that have been drafted since rana Plaza in 2013, underlying inequality and the desperation of workers dependent on urban factory jobs to survive, remain. Delhi is a long way from Canada but as long as workers can be dangerously exploited in any country their relative worth and status is lessened everywhere. To help workers in Toronto we must do what we can to help workers wherever they are being harmed. Local internationalist union organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and the Maquila Solidarity Network, an NGO whose activism for workers has been long supported by TorontotheBetter will help you to engage in the struggle for better conditions for workers everywhere.
Thursday 26 December 2019
"Homelessness in the GTA" - Cathy Crowe visits Peel Poverty Action Group on Feb.6, 2020
TorontotheBetter is a non-profit network of Toronto area based socially purposed enterprises. "Our Toronto Includes the GTA"
Saturday 21 December 2019
Cathy Crowe video talks about new book "A Knapsack Full of Dreams" and homelessness in 2019
See: our new TorontotheBetter video "Cathy Crowe in conversation with Paul Pakeman and Friends" on Youtube at:
On behalf of TorontotheBetter we thank Cathy for all her work as well as
her new book, and thanks also to Pance of the Centre for Social Justice for video
production. Stay tuned to this blog for more events in the new year.
Let's make 2020 a 20/20 vision and action year for Toronto and the world we share.
On behalf of TorontotheBetter we thank Cathy for all her work as well as
her new book, and thanks also to Pance of the Centre for Social Justice for video
production. Stay tuned to this blog for more events in the new year.
Let's make 2020 a 20/20 vision and action year for Toronto and the world we share.
Tuesday 17 December 2019
"Homelessness in the GTA" - Join Cathy Crowe on Thursday Feb.6 2-4pm in Brampton
TorontotheBetter is pleased to support the Peel Poverty Action Group in its upcoming forum with homelessness activist Cathy Crowe at the Knights' Table soup kitchen in Brampton on Feb.6. Cathy will talk bout her new book "A Knapsack Full of Dreams" and today's homelessness crisis. The event is free for all.
KnightsTable is located at 287 Glidden Road #4. For more information call 416-707-3509. or 905-454-8725.
"Our Toronto Includes the GTA"
KnightsTable is located at 287 Glidden Road #4. For more information call 416-707-3509. or 905-454-8725.
"Our Toronto Includes the GTA"
Friday 13 December 2019
For long sight and clear vision: Practice 20/20 in 2020 - with some recommended reading
These are bad times, indeed with right-wing popular sounding leaders worldwide occupying seats of power and business promoted as the only self-respecting game in town.That nationalisms and religious sectarians of all stripes have found willing followers is attributable to the gaps between leaders and led that have arisen following a long period of market fundamentalism that increased social division and left many adrift, hopeless, and searching for rescue. When most else is removed the weakest are often left with little that offers felt substance than national or religious identities. Look carefully at recent elections and we see that identity politics is working, as social solidarity support is weaknened. Parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930's are, sadly, accurate.
Long sight, both rear view and forward reveals therfore that to avoid more catastrophe as our world diversifies we must live together in peace and as much harmony as we can muster. It will help if enterprise, as well as the state, is committed to some core social purposes other than evading visible legal violations, say the kind that TorontotheBetter celebrates in the enterprises listed in our online directory, the first of its kind when we started it at the beginning of our now still teen-aged century.
Our proposed new charter for enterprise will contribute to this better world goal and, with the help of users as well as producers, our goals can become reality as people and organizations work for the same end: a better world for all. Such a charter represents a kind of socialism from the bottom up.Though there must be a degree of voluntarism the state must use carrots and sticks to encourage/discourage policy adoption. Thus, long sight can foresee the day when social purpose (better, not just good) will be in the DNA of all enterprise.
Long sight tells us not to sacrifice the planet for a few more kilometres or calories per hour/meal, while clear vision recognizes that humans have more in common than separates us. TorontotheBetter calls us all to use 20/20 in 2020, We don't want, or have, to, drown (asphyxiate) in carbon dioxide.
If you're the book-, not just blogpost-, reading kind we recommend two books at this time: Peter Linebaugh's 'Red Round Globe Hot Burning", about the importance of commons (plural), and Raghuram Rajan's "The Third Pillar." about the key role of community(-ies) to our lives. Commons and community are agents of the long sight and clear vision that allow us to survive when bullies aggress and the fearful retreat. Brexit and "make us great again-ism" are today's prime examples in the west. Remember: we can all be great if we conserve and cooperate. TorontotheBetter's recent interview with Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe and the memory of another Canadian hero who fought for the poor, Norman Bethune, in whose tradition Cathy rightly belongs, should encourage us all to practice 20/20 in 2020.
For the above and other new better world books at discounted prices contact postmaster@torontothebetter.net with Books in the subject line. Good prices and avoidance of corporate glutton Amazon. To us 20/20 sounds like a good plan for 2020.
Long sight, both rear view and forward reveals therfore that to avoid more catastrophe as our world diversifies we must live together in peace and as much harmony as we can muster. It will help if enterprise, as well as the state, is committed to some core social purposes other than evading visible legal violations, say the kind that TorontotheBetter celebrates in the enterprises listed in our online directory, the first of its kind when we started it at the beginning of our now still teen-aged century.
Our proposed new charter for enterprise will contribute to this better world goal and, with the help of users as well as producers, our goals can become reality as people and organizations work for the same end: a better world for all. Such a charter represents a kind of socialism from the bottom up.Though there must be a degree of voluntarism the state must use carrots and sticks to encourage/discourage policy adoption. Thus, long sight can foresee the day when social purpose (better, not just good) will be in the DNA of all enterprise.
Long sight tells us not to sacrifice the planet for a few more kilometres or calories per hour/meal, while clear vision recognizes that humans have more in common than separates us. TorontotheBetter calls us all to use 20/20 in 2020, We don't want, or have, to, drown (asphyxiate) in carbon dioxide.
If you're the book-, not just blogpost-, reading kind we recommend two books at this time: Peter Linebaugh's 'Red Round Globe Hot Burning", about the importance of commons (plural), and Raghuram Rajan's "The Third Pillar." about the key role of community(-ies) to our lives. Commons and community are agents of the long sight and clear vision that allow us to survive when bullies aggress and the fearful retreat. Brexit and "make us great again-ism" are today's prime examples in the west. Remember: we can all be great if we conserve and cooperate. TorontotheBetter's recent interview with Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe and the memory of another Canadian hero who fought for the poor, Norman Bethune, in whose tradition Cathy rightly belongs, should encourage us all to practice 20/20 in 2020.
For the above and other new better world books at discounted prices contact postmaster@torontothebetter.net with Books in the subject line. Good prices and avoidance of corporate glutton Amazon. To us 20/20 sounds like a good plan for 2020.
Monday 2 December 2019
By the way, in case you missed it, Norman Bethune was a communist.
Among the newest set of movie-sparked accolades for Canada's revolutionary 20th century hero, Norman Bethune, most of the press coverage steps over, or downplays the basic motivation and context for his key interventions in two of the most important events in the political history of the last century, the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and the Chinese revolution in 1949. Just as much as Tommy Douglas, originally opposed by Canada's medical establishment but now universally celebrated as a national hero, communist party member Bethune was a strong, though long isolated among Canadian physicians, voice for publicly funded healthcare available to all in Canada, rich or poor. With the communist party he joined he stood for the rights of all to a decent life free from debilitating sickness and exclusion. Thus he was a foundational builder of the values of the modern Canada most here now support and defend and in China, where the writer of this post spent some time teaching, the words Norman Bethune appear in the name of many hospitals built after the revolution of 1949.
For all the positive attention likely to come the way of Bethune's memory as the newest movie on his life goes into production let no-one forget the ideals that led him to do what he did in revolutionary struggles that ultimately changed the lives of billions for the better and ultimately cost him his life. As a celebrant of what social enterprise, at its best, can do for the betterment of human life, at the same time TorontotheBetter recognizes and supports the fundamental importance of free public services as rights of all in any jurisdiction that wishes to call itself democratic and for the people. As is only too clear at our moment in history this principle has still to be learned in certain places and by certain leaders. Let Bethune's revolutionary spirit be re-animated in fact, not just on film, as it is by current activist healthcare professionals like Cathy Crowe, campaigner for Canada's homeless, whose recent interview with TorontotheBetter will soon be available on this blog, and, will too, we trust, contribute to a new generation of social and political action, especially for the poor and the marginalized, in a country historically known for the quality and extent of its social support.
Thursday 28 November 2019
Faeces and the politics of cultural resistance
When
inequality gets unbridgeable, aspiration impossible and enclosure shrinks urban spaces ever tighter, the excluded strike back. And let there be no doubt, exclusion is the key, whether physical, social or psychological. Recent
events in Toronto, where an immigrant is reported to have thrown fecal matter at educated targets in
university libraries has drawn horror and disgust in the mainstream media. But
the real story is not about faeces, which many homeless on the street live with
24/7/365. No, the real stories are the excluded thrower's resentment at societal “winners”
and the reasons for it. Understanding these reasons has no place in most mainstream coverage to date, but a growing sense of exclusion is probably at the
root of it. Better get used to it, as class warfare explodes in our continuingly neoliberal times. The faeces serve as a
fitting symbol. If neglect continues who knows who may be
the next target of the resented?
Wednesday 27 November 2019
Things getting worse for the homeless in Toronto - says Cathy Crowe.
It is 2019 in a rich country called Canada, tent cities like the ones under the Gardiner Expressway above are appearing around urban centres, and in a recent cold spell two of our homeless neighbours recently died outside in Toronto, our largest city. TorontotheBetter's Nov.26th conversation with homelesss advocate Cathy Crowe identified the realities of life in today's Toronto. Along with the explosion of heftily priced condos more people in the city are in need of any home at all and for those who suffer the consequences of homelessness insitutional reponders, are simply put, less than responsive. Shawn, Paul and others in attendance who told us of their own periods of homelsssness know first hand how quickly lives can collapse when stable, afforable accommodation is unavailable, while Tyler expressed his sense of feeling invisible to many of those he had to interact with in this circumstance. The truth is that the homeless are caught in traps at both ends of what Cathy has called the de-housing process. The base-level problem is that there are not enough affordable homes and waiting lists are growing, while those living homeless then suffer not only ill health but lack of empathy as well as stigma. To make matters even worse, popular resistance in the form of improvised shelters, aka tent cities, are being demolished and political support has waned where once it was stronger, at least in some quarters.
Videos of Cathy's TorontotheBetter presentation and our ensuing conversation will soon be available on this blog. To be notified about when they are please send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net with "emergency" in the subject line. How can we hasten the action on homelessness that is all too obviously required? Time for the city to declare an emergency, said Cathy, as was previously done a decade or so ago, when homelssness was formally identified by activists,including some TorontotheBetter workers, as just as much a disater as those environmentally and conflict generated. To join the homelessness resistance struggle with Cathy, Health Providers Against Poverty and others, sign the petition declaring homelssness an emergency at www.change.org.
Wednesday 13 November 2019
Cathy Crowe in conversation with friends - Nov.26,2019 11.45am 720 Bathurst St.
As a street nurse, Cathy has been the driving force in raising awareness about the shameful crisis of homelessness in Canada and will answer questions from TorontotheBetter and our guests on Tuesday Nov.26 from 12 noon to 1pm at the home of the Centre for Social Justice, 720 Bathurst Street, Toronto in Meeting Room #1(2nd Floor). Discounted copies of Cathy's book will be available at the interview and questions may be submitted ahead of time to postmaster@TorontotheBetter.net.
Monday 4 November 2019
Business for a better world? The good, the bad and the ambiguous
When old certainties crumble what fills the vacuum is often reminiscent of poetic horrors that shamble towards Bethlehems of various kinds. Mainstream capitalism, wounded by its near catastrophic failure in the Great Recession of 2008 noted the bad press that went with its lastest failure and reached out for makeovers that positioned it as friends of the people. From A&W to Walmart with several stops in between and alongside them many for-profit enterprises now expend much of their capital, both financial and social, to convince the buyers that fund them that they are actually not as single-mindedly self-interested as many thought. At TorontotheBetter we call this trend "cred appropriation" and, in its most extreme form, cred expropriation, suctioning up the ideas and values validated by social movements that did the hard work of campaigning for causes. What's an innocent consumer to do with mega corporations shouting out their environmental empathy and their love of small children, dogs and grannies (of course)? Be very afraid, we argue, These late coming social consciences simultaneously decry the taxation and accountability are the necessary coniditions of any serious attempt to right the wrongs of inequality and environmental catastrophe that scourge our world from east to west and back. Without a coherent politics there can be no redemptive change. Enterprise, like civic society, can play roles, but wishing and half measures will not get us where we have to go.
Saturday 26 October 2019
Join the new co-operative movement - follow up to Oct.24 TorontotheBetter "Introduction to Platform Co-ops" screening
There is an alternative to corporate ownership of the Internet. It is the Internet as a commons. For those who were unable to attend our movie screening - we heard from a few of you - you can listen to founder Trebor Scholz's exciting explanation of platform co-operativism in the YouTube video "How Platform Cooperatives Can Unleash the Network" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSTgAucRqE&t=30s
TorontotheBetter [www.TorontotheBetter.net], a programme of worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services, Toronto's original non-profit multi-sector social economy centre, is in the process of becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative to lend its support to the movement. An online membership form will soon be available. If you are interested in becoming a member of the TorontotheBetter co-op send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net.
TorontotheBetter - working for a better economy for all, in Toronto and beyond.
TorontotheBetter [www.TorontotheBetter.net], a programme of worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services, Toronto's original non-profit multi-sector social economy centre, is in the process of becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative to lend its support to the movement. An online membership form will soon be available. If you are interested in becoming a member of the TorontotheBetter co-op send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net.
TorontotheBetter - working for a better economy for all, in Toronto and beyond.
Friday 25 October 2019
Faceboook and the Internet wild west: 2019 book "Zucked" challenges social entreprise and national governments.
Roger McNamee, the author of the unfortunately titled but important 2019 book "Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe " is in as good a position as anyone to know why it's time to end the wild west that the Internet soon became. following its now naively, albeit understandably, aspirational "nerd"-beginnings. In Zucked he nails the adolescent techy dreams that propelled Facebook founder and colleague Mark Zuckerberg and other privileged young entrepreneurs to metaphorically surf their way to massive fortunes by exploiting the regulatory vacuum that online enterprise long enjoyed. Privileged personal data was sold or used for market validation tasks. Beyond insider details about foreign election interference and privacy violation that were undoubtedly what made this book a must-publish item for major publisher Penguin, McNamee offers serious proposals for what to do about the problems he exposes. It is for this reason that he has been invited to provide give expert testimony to both Canadian and US governments. In some sense for governments the challenge is easy in that they must clearly impose greater constraints, both financial and structural on online development ne enterprises like Google, Twitter and, of course Facebook.
But for social enterprise, the challenge emerging from the Facebook "catastrophe" is more complex. This is because 21st century social enterprise has been the beneficiary of the same unregulated online space that facilitated the rise of Facebook - low/no start-up costs and little case-history, let alome law, about what is socially acceptable and what is not. Social enterprise must preserve its space for innovation that fills gaps in our still "neo-liberally" dominated political culture, while supporting the need to curb predatory license. The best current option, since governments are usually slow and reluctant actors is to promote alternatives to corporate entrepreneurialism. One such is that of the platform coop movement championed by Trebor Scholz, described elsewhere in this blog. Towards the end of McNamee provides useful suggestions of existing utilities like non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo to facilitate readers' benevolent instincts.
This is a key book for Internet and available from this blog's founder, Libra (libra@web.ca)
for a non--Amazon status boost. Stay tuned to this blog for more about the challenges of social enterprise in a time of neoliberal cynicism.
But for social enterprise, the challenge emerging from the Facebook "catastrophe" is more complex. This is because 21st century social enterprise has been the beneficiary of the same unregulated online space that facilitated the rise of Facebook - low/no start-up costs and little case-history, let alome law, about what is socially acceptable and what is not. Social enterprise must preserve its space for innovation that fills gaps in our still "neo-liberally" dominated political culture, while supporting the need to curb predatory license. The best current option, since governments are usually slow and reluctant actors is to promote alternatives to corporate entrepreneurialism. One such is that of the platform coop movement championed by Trebor Scholz, described elsewhere in this blog. Towards the end of McNamee provides useful suggestions of existing utilities like non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo to facilitate readers' benevolent instincts.
This is a key book for Internet and available from this blog's founder, Libra (libra@web.ca)
for a non--Amazon status boost. Stay tuned to this blog for more about the challenges of social enterprise in a time of neoliberal cynicism.
Tuesday 22 October 2019
Election results reject anti-social economics
Even if the Canadian federal election results were mixed according to region an demographics, so muting support for a wall to wall social economy it's clear that neoliberalism and social conservatism were rejected in favour of social investment, climate action and inclusion, though to different degrees and in different ways. For TorontotheBetter and other social economy supporters our challenge must be to make "nice to haves" into "must haves" as happened in the past with pensions, education and, most famously, medicare. Rights to clean air, clean water, healthy food, and free transit must be the next progressive regulatory agenda, and more and more, particularly the young, are demanding them. Originally private organizations brought many of these issues to pubic prominence but to make their benefits available to all, not just a well-off few will require government action in the form of regulation.
Wednesday 16 October 2019
Ontario government abolishes electronic handling fee for recycling end-of-life electronics
Few recent government acts can have been more reactionary than this in Ontario, at a time when our planet is drowning in waste materials and warming dangerously from their creation so TorontotheBetter simply refers you for information to www.recyclemyelectronics.ca and calls on you to express your feelings about this act to your local political representatives. Of course what recyclers must also do is reject the marketing and associated consumerism that promotes unnecessary acquisition of electronics, and all other materials, in the first place. There is a contradiction here that we must do our best to solve by resisting the voices that encourage wasteful purchasing even if they may also contribute to its safe final disposition.
Wednesday 2 October 2019
Platform co-operativism: why it's here and what it can be
In the dire condition that progressive movements in the U.S. and now, it seems, increasingly around the world, found themselves, after the election of president Donald Trump cooperativism appeared to Trebor Scholz, the activist behind the platform cooperativism movement, as a welcome breath of fresh political air. And there is no doubt that a more egalitarian sharing of collective wealth will be fostered by cooperative organization, as it as been for nearly two hundred years.But a realistic appraisal of what the coop movement has done and can do is necessary before the supporters of the movement, like TorontotheBetter think that this movement alone will correct the ills of inequality and environmental collapse that growth at all costs has unleashed upon the world. Here we consider what cooperativism has done and what is needed if it is to do more.
Platform Cooperativism, led by Trebor Scholz of the Platform Cooperative Consortium is an initiative to provide an alternative to the currently dominant actors in the virtual world where all increasingly live our lives. In place of aggressively competitive and individualistic entrepreneurs hip of tech giants Google, Facebook etc. Platform coops democratic member ownership and control.
As a worker co-op from our inception Libra, Torontothebetter’s creator welcomes such a socially constructive movement In our increasingly reactionary political environment, where right wing extremists everywhere have been seizing the moment of faltering liberal democracy.
Life will not improve for the majority of the world’s peoples until the progressive banner of collective justice and liberty flies again in mainstream public discourse.
That this coop initiative shares the limitation (ultimately comfortable subordination within market economies and relative neglect of state economic intervention), as well as the strengths of modern cooperativism, does not negate the importance of the economic resistance it represents.
However, just as was vindicated by the cooperative commonwealth federation in Canada, the original successful champions of of public health care, economic action requires simultaneous political agency to realize its goals.
All those who, like TorontotheBetter, seek a world characterized by collaboration rather than dog eat dog competition must ask themselves what they can do to foster it. In a world that is now transformationally electronic as the 19th century was steam- and the 20th oil- powered, popular struggle must evolve from the streets to the airwaves.
Stay tuned to TorontotheBetter to learn more about our own platform coop initiatives. Local and global events are planned in the fall of 2019. TorontotheBetter will host a PWYC movie screening, sign-up and discussion in Toronto in September (details TBA) while the Platform Cooperative Consortium will hold a broadcast conference from New York in November. To echo a famous poet from the centre of the industrial revolution it is not too late to seek a better world.
Please send questions and comments by email to postmaster@torontothebetter.ne
Platform Cooperativism, led by Trebor Scholz of the Platform Cooperative Consortium is an initiative to provide an alternative to the currently dominant actors in the virtual world where all increasingly live our lives. In place of aggressively competitive and individualistic entrepreneurs hip of tech giants Google, Facebook etc. Platform coops democratic member ownership and control.
As a worker co-op from our inception Libra, Torontothebetter’s creator welcomes such a socially constructive movement In our increasingly reactionary political environment, where right wing extremists everywhere have been seizing the moment of faltering liberal democracy.
Life will not improve for the majority of the world’s peoples until the progressive banner of collective justice and liberty flies again in mainstream public discourse.
That this coop initiative shares the limitation (ultimately comfortable subordination within market economies and relative neglect of state economic intervention), as well as the strengths of modern cooperativism, does not negate the importance of the economic resistance it represents.
However, just as was vindicated by the cooperative commonwealth federation in Canada, the original successful champions of of public health care, economic action requires simultaneous political agency to realize its goals.
All those who, like TorontotheBetter, seek a world characterized by collaboration rather than dog eat dog competition must ask themselves what they can do to foster it. In a world that is now transformationally electronic as the 19th century was steam- and the 20th oil- powered, popular struggle must evolve from the streets to the airwaves.
Stay tuned to TorontotheBetter to learn more about our own platform coop initiatives. Local and global events are planned in the fall of 2019. TorontotheBetter will host a PWYC movie screening, sign-up and discussion in Toronto in September (details TBA) while the Platform Cooperative Consortium will hold a broadcast conference from New York in November. To echo a famous poet from the centre of the industrial revolution it is not too late to seek a better world.
Please send questions and comments by email to postmaster@torontothebetter.ne
Sunday 29 September 2019
"Introduction to Platform Co-ops" PWYC movie-Thursday October 24, 7.00 OISE/252 Bloor St. W.
With recent revelations about Facebook and other Internet giants raking in millions in to date largely unregulated and untaxed wealth, gained through the unpaid contributions of millions around the world it is clearly time to divide up online wealth in a fairer way. TorontotheBetter,Toronto's first multi-sector online social economy information hub, is pleased to align itself with the new Platform Co-op movement by developing its own platform co-op, an open online tool that like other platform coops will share proceeds equitably with its members. Our purpose is to inform, and educate about the opportunities for a fairer Internet through cooperative ownership, a new field of operation for the long established and proven cooperative economic model. To learn more about the movement join us at our introductory PWYC movie on October 24th in room 6-259 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. A better Internet world is possible. Let's be part of it.
www.TorontotheBetter.net
This bag is not green or black; it is blank, and as empty as possible. Make it yours for no money down.
Stop working unpaid advertising for cosporations. It's easy Reject their bags and bring your own. Even better if you can resist all the pressures to buy more. Make your blank bag an empty one as often as you can.
Anti-consumers of the world unite! That bag you may be carrying, harmless receptacle, limp, passive-seeming, its fellow plastic brothers and sisters silently eloquent, lining the oceans of the world, is crying one thing, "Buy More",even when it says it's "green". Buy green, buy responsibly, buy union made, but bring your own blank bag for the contents. The logo-printed bag exists to hold whatever you buy while advocating more buying, and our climate tells us we have bought and consumed enough already. What's really in the bag, triumphant connotations aside, even if you didn't buy anything today, is the cash machine of the company whose name is on the outside. Free it may be to have, but you're an unpaid advertiser like it or not.
Dump the bag; there are lots of plain ones available. Green consumerism may be better than the un-green kind, but consumerism it remains.
Monday 2 September 2019
Eating healthier? Social enterprises have made a start but the best that is yet to come requires political action
One of the first snterprises that joined our directory when we started soon after the start of the second millennium was the now venerable and still vibrant Big Carrot. Time has proven them and us correct in that more and more, particularly millennials and post-millennials want to put only healthy organic ingredients in their body when they eat. So "we the people" have won the policy struggle, but until healthy food becomes a social requirement rather than the luxury it still is at many enterprises we will not be serving the public as a whole. Social enterprises like Big Carrot have often shown the way, but it is up to popular and public will to make the socially desirable an affordable public good.
Saturday 24 August 2019
Platform alternatives
Since Trebor Scholz of the Platform Co-operative Consortium and the scandals at Facebook Corporation under "adolescent genius" Mark Zuckerberg raised the alarm a few years ago more and more Internet users have become aware of the need for political and personal control of the online utilities they use. Here is a useful discussion of some of the options: https://internethealthreport.org/2019/what-if-facebook-were-owned-by-its-users.
As a programme of worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services TorontotheBetter sits in Scholz's platform cooperativism camp, but let's remember as well the non-profit browser model of Mozilla's Firefox, still going strong after many years. Another, and better, Internet world is possible.
Wednesday 10 July 2019
Co-ops to our economic resscue? "Everything for Everybody", the new book by Nathan Schneider, suggests coops as a cure for what ails capitalism
Book Review: Everything for Everybody: the radical
tradition that is shaping the next economy/Nathan Schneider [Nation Books] (2018)
For those seeking alternatives to the ongoing economic
“in-equalization” of what has been called marketworld, that is, the global
market economy where, like it or not, we all exist in in 2019, Nathan
Schneider’s new book celebrates
the co-operative movement’s aspiration, and its achieved reality, of common wealth through cooperation, thoiugh he still recognizes the compromises and contradictions of actual co-operatives.
Coops arose in the 19th century to salvage human value in the wreckage of dog-eat
dog capitalist industrialism and one special virtue of cooperatives is their dual
local/global federated democratic structure. But their materiality means the
above niche is increasingly outdistanced in the geographically barrier-less electronic
world. Co-ops persist but can they
retain the advantages of their special distinction as all key relations get etherealized,
i.e. dehumanized, in the virtual world? However relational friendly Skype and Facebook may
be should E-coops rely on them to sustain their trustworthiness and intimacy? Are core co-op values still relevant
when the virtual "friends" are orthographic, more than personal. In theory perhaps yes, but as a lived
reality of material fellowship? We sisagree. And as
problematic as ever is the co-operative tendency to introversion and relative passivity
vis a vis their external political worlds. Co-ops are alternatives to the market status
quo. Are they serious opponents of it? Time for a revitalized new co-op world online, as motivates the recent call for worker-owned platform co-ops. DStay tuned to thie space for more on virtual cooperativism.
NOTE: All books reviewed in our blog are available at your local public library, unless otherwise noted, and/or are available for purchase from TorontotheBetter's parent worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services Co-op. For a quote and to purchase email us at postmaster@torontothebetter.net with EforE in the subject line. Of course you can buy the book from Amazon but we are a worker co-op and believe that if you are here values matter to you as they do for us when it comes to where and how we buy things.
Sunday 30 June 2019
TorontotheBetter thanks Cedar Basket Gift Shop and Computation their commitment to a better Toronto
TorontotheBetter recently met with Jesse of Cedar Basket Gift Shop and the folks at Computation, both long time TorontotheBetter directory participants. We were there to find answers to practical daily needs that we, and all in Toronto, face on a daily basis. We needed value-based businesses to provide us with 1) an indigenous gift for a young relative's birthday, and 2) a recycler for some of our disused computer equipment. Cedar Basket Gift Shop a programme of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, reflects our core TorontotheBetter value of inclusion, while Computation makes Toronto better by reducing environmental contamination through its re-use of discarded hardware.
Thank you to both. Please support them and the hundreds of other community positive enterprises on TorontotheBetter's home website, Toronto's original online multi-sector social economy hub.
Thank you to both. Please support them and the hundreds of other community positive enterprises on TorontotheBetter's home website, Toronto's original online multi-sector social economy hub.
Saturday 29 June 2019
Ridesharing, carsharing and the "sharing economy" - a clarification for the unwary
It looks like the finagle of the so-called "sharing economy" has been put to rest in many minds , because the warm fuzzies of sharing conferred by the sematic latitude of the English word has been put to the test of credulity and failed. Simply put, Uber aint about sharing; it's about a bit of piecework income and as such it encourages more car use, and, in case you have been living in a prehistoric cave recently, the latest news is that more car use causes more atmospheric carbon and more destructive climate change. Far from reducing consumption ridesharing is likely adding to it, as more drivers drive extra kilometers in search of more income. By contrast, the admittedly easily confused carsharing, particularly in its non-profit, ideally co-operative form, actually reduces car use, because through it, credible data show, individuals are less likely to buy second cars, and overall fewer kilometers are driven because fewer cars are used. It's simple. The data show that through carsharing, when economically viable, over 10 drivers make use of 1 car. Less cars mean less accidents, less congestion and less pollution. It's simple but the word sharing means different things in different phrases. Be aware. Uber and other ridesharers are not helping us save the planet.
Sunday 23 June 2019
Libra (worker co-op) versus Libra (Facebook cryptocurrency)
our Libra preceded Mark Zuckerberg's recently announced cryptocurrency by several years. And far from seeking to displace established currencies we seek only to make them and the various enterprises they grease the wheels of, work for the good of all, not a tiny elite, like the Zuckerberg empire. With their currency aspirations out of the closet where will Facebook stop? Statehood, official UN status? They have more money than several small countries. What they don't have are citizens, even though many have been marketed into obedience. Enough already. Facebook you are not a country, and we at Libra, your predecessor, will oppose you. We hope you are prepared for any negative fallout for the Facebook empire from our policy.
Thursday 20 June 2019
Social Economy success (or failure?): Corporate Cred Appropriation reaches new heights (lows) - continued
Noticed anything peculiar about mainstream business marketing recently? They're talking about their ethics, or charities or general community vibes. A&W touts its nice to animal beyondmeatness, while H&M talks about its members (no longer just purchasers) . And in 2019 there are many more. Many might feel their bile rising about the idea of recreants reformed, since the bottom line motivation is still profit uber alles. But in spite of the credibility challenges posed by reckless guys turned best friends there is a good side to this story, a kind of moral capitulation as themes and discourse have edged from silent self-enrichment to planetary survival, or rather to self-enrichment and planetary survival.
Simply put the powers that be recognize that they have been ethically (aka PR) weakened by the myriad of organizations now engaged in a kind of capitalist repair project. Where, in pursuit of profit, corporations often had little, if any, regard for the damage to workers, consumers, the environment or the community as they did so. Of course there have always been ethical actors like Cadbury's since the onset of industrial capitalism, but for the most part profit at any cost had been the motivating drive. Among non-profiteers the question before us is this development good or bad. The cynic says bad, while our inner Polyanna says Halelujah. A better option is that of what Benckner has called realistic, albeit realistic utopianism. By force of public opinion corporate marketing options are being squeezed by a basic human instinct to do the right thing, if a right thing is available and clear. So we will call this a qualified good. But, of course, if quantitative profit is the arbiter the consequence is always flexible; as carbon pricing diehards, like the cancer causing cigarette companies did long ago.
When TorontotheBetter was conceived at the beginning of the second millennium we identified 4 key criteria for "better" businesses, of which environmental care was one. The others were worker rights, consumer transparency and community partnership. Check one box for recent business environmental awareness, but true success will only be validated when the same is true for our other boxes. We are waiting hopefully, but making capitalist businesses comprehensively social is to ask a leopard to give up on the spots and global economies have allowed the leopard to go spotless in one jurisdiction by retaining them in othersout of sight and mind. A kind of better word progress is being made, but we have a long way to travel before we reach the land of promise. We must remain aware and critical for real progress for all to be achieved. Even when all boxes are checked affordability remains a block for all except elites. Here is where government must intervene in market dynamics.
Simply put the powers that be recognize that they have been ethically (aka PR) weakened by the myriad of organizations now engaged in a kind of capitalist repair project. Where, in pursuit of profit, corporations often had little, if any, regard for the damage to workers, consumers, the environment or the community as they did so. Of course there have always been ethical actors like Cadbury's since the onset of industrial capitalism, but for the most part profit at any cost had been the motivating drive. Among non-profiteers the question before us is this development good or bad. The cynic says bad, while our inner Polyanna says Halelujah. A better option is that of what Benckner has called realistic, albeit realistic utopianism. By force of public opinion corporate marketing options are being squeezed by a basic human instinct to do the right thing, if a right thing is available and clear. So we will call this a qualified good. But, of course, if quantitative profit is the arbiter the consequence is always flexible; as carbon pricing diehards, like the cancer causing cigarette companies did long ago.
When TorontotheBetter was conceived at the beginning of the second millennium we identified 4 key criteria for "better" businesses, of which environmental care was one. The others were worker rights, consumer transparency and community partnership. Check one box for recent business environmental awareness, but true success will only be validated when the same is true for our other boxes. We are waiting hopefully, but making capitalist businesses comprehensively social is to ask a leopard to give up on the spots and global economies have allowed the leopard to go spotless in one jurisdiction by retaining them in othersout of sight and mind. A kind of better word progress is being made, but we have a long way to travel before we reach the land of promise. We must remain aware and critical for real progress for all to be achieved. Even when all boxes are checked affordability remains a block for all except elites. Here is where government must intervene in market dynamics.
Thursday 9 May 2019
“Killing Gaza” the movie - 1pm, May 11 @ 1pm in the Mississauga Public Library at Square One, 3100 Burnamthorpe Road Room CL-2 Mississauga
“Our Toronto includes the GTA”.
Toronto the Good - not so
TorontotheBetter - better
Toronto the Good - not so
TorontotheBetter - better
Friday 26 April 2019
Platform Co-operatives: the new social economy?
As Internet giants like Facebook and Twitter sprawl across and into masses of lives, the coop sector has been historically relatively stranded in small scale hard reality enterprises, even though many participate in federations and many others, like our own worker co-op LibraInfoknowledge,net, have long existed online. Things are changing now that a new breed of co-ops called platform co-ops have emerged taking co-op ownership and control to an unprecedented scale. For more about this emergence and the opportunity for co-ops to lead the social economy into the future see Trebor Scholz "Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy" at books.google.ca.
Wednesday 24 April 2019
Calling all Uber/Airbnb/"Sharing Economy" operatives to re-build the economy from your inside out
Like workers since the beginning of the industrial era
you're a means to an end:profit, and not for you but for the
company you toil for, be it now Uber, or Airbnb or any of
the many other examples of what activist Trebor Scholz,author
of "Uber-worked and Under Paid", calls Platform Capitalism.
There is a better alternative; it's called Platform Cooperativism,
where with your fellow-workers you own and control your
platforms, that is, your means of production and togeter ave te scope
needed to provide viable opposition. This will mean more money, of
course, but also more workplace control. As suggested
by Scholz we can take over our platforms and run them democratically,
as worker co-ops.We, at TorontotheBetter, are members of one and
can put you in contact with the Canadian Worker Coop Federation
if you want to learn more. To get some lived worker coop experience
from our oiver 10 years of existence call us at 416-707-3509 or email
us (postmaster@torontothebetter.net.).
Workers don't have to be Slaves or raw materials . Take over
your workplace and thrive better.
you're a means to an end:profit, and not for you but for the
company you toil for, be it now Uber, or Airbnb or any of
the many other examples of what activist Trebor Scholz,author
of "Uber-worked and Under Paid", calls Platform Capitalism.
There is a better alternative; it's called Platform Cooperativism,
where with your fellow-workers you own and control your
platforms, that is, your means of production and togeter ave te scope
needed to provide viable opposition. This will mean more money, of
course, but also more workplace control. As suggested
by Scholz we can take over our platforms and run them democratically,
as worker co-ops.We, at TorontotheBetter, are members of one and
can put you in contact with the Canadian Worker Coop Federation
if you want to learn more. To get some lived worker coop experience
from our oiver 10 years of existence call us at 416-707-3509 or email
us (postmaster@torontothebetter.net.).
Workers don't have to be Slaves or raw materials . Take over
your workplace and thrive better.
Wednesday 17 April 2019
With friends like these...corporate cred appropriaton reaching new heights/lows
You can't have it both ways, goes the folk wisdom. Still, many want to and try to. "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World", a 2018 book by Wall Street traitor/refugee Anand Giridharadas exposes the post-2008 crash make-over attempts of corporate philanthropy to equate making profits and doing good. As an insider-outsider who left the Wall Street world Giridharadas makes clear beyond fudging the political stretch to bursting of Pinnochio-like philanthropic "giving" with one hand (to take with the other through sales to the well-intended but gullible). Only abandonment of the consumerism that fills the other half of do-gooding corporations' "half-full/half-empty" marketed cup would have any real impact, even if we/they have increasingly limited Common Era time for delaying the inevitable. Problem: consumerism sustains most "developed" economies.
Our environmental options as societies dependent in large part on reeource extraction are often cast as half-empty or half-full. Green economic transformation involves severe job disruption.These options are always by definition both of course, but with the corporate world chasing street cred as young people, in particular, take seriously our planet's marginally mobile date with environmental Armageddon, forget the half full bit.This cup is empty. And see the following, recognizable by most, companies, now touting their own environmental commitments for what they are: shameless appropriators of the hard work done by alarm-sounding activists for many years
We must be under no illusion about the following:only serious and radical government action has the scale to pause our climate change descent to a fiery catastrophe. Airy words about the complementarity of the economy and the environment are not enough. Not all social enterprise is born equal, even if much of it has little practical effect in the overall scale of things. The idealistic entrepreneurs of TorontotheBetter enterprises, who want to do something good in the way they do business, can play a positive role by, in effect, counterbalancing some of the damages wrought by mainstream economic actors. But that net effect will only be positive if, as TorontotheBetter demands, they simultaneously support necessary taxation and related public intervention to transform society's economic norms for humans as well as products, from consume and discard to conserve, nurture, and transform. Social enterprise can be part of a better world as long as it does not oppose or distract us from the key public intervention that make their stated goals achievable. The phrase social enterprise is so broad we need some mechanism to identify those entities genuinely ocmmitted to a better world from those seeking only to profit from it. TorontotheBetter has a set of criteria that has in general worked by combining criteria for acceptance but adequate disclosire and enterprise transparency are always a challenge.
And then there is the increasing problem of the virtual invisibility of much of today's economic activity. In this environment increasing numbers of transactions occur outside public scrutiny and accountability through blockchain technology, while social media have grown up beyond the reach of traditional public regulation. The accountable public realm is now dwarfed by such virtual entities and their activities. Assuing we have acceptably sophisticated criteria how can we effectively apply them to isolate hard to reach virtual enterprises? More to come on this matter, including th rise of platform cooperatives as models for an alternative economy with scale and probity. Once solidly established they offer a set of concrete standards against which fake and compromised initiatatives will be found practicallyu wanting.As always, for progressive change development of the better must be accompanied by exposure of the worse..
Friday 12 April 2019
Toronto protests Assange extradition from Ecuadorean Embassy
Since we started TorontotheBetter at the start of the new millennium as well as supporting progressive enterprises we have also cricticized companies like Nestle, Coca-Cola and Canada's very own Loblaws, maker of the Joe Fresh clothing brand made in the building that collapsed in the tragic Rana Plaza disaster, when they fail to behave honestly and/or honourably. Whether it is corporate or state inhumanity it requires whistle blowers like Julian Assange to let the light shine on it. It is for that reason that Assange is likely to meet a bad fate if/when he is extradited to the US for his leak of US govt. hacking. The truth hurts and it destablizes companies and governments, but without it our world would be a worse place. Truthtellers like Assange and others are allies of all who seek to make our world a better place. As has often been said sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Saturday 6 April 2019
Public libraries contribute to urban inequality
A recent search for progressive texts in the Toronto Public Library system about public education and popular organizing revealed a disturbing trend; TPL is increasingly buying just one copy of key titles, but that one copy goes to the Reference Library at Yonge and Bloor, in the heart of downtown, where, increasingly, only the well-off can afford to live. You will look in vain for such titles in Scarborough or in northern neighbourhoods, like Jane-Finch, where the real need for such ideas and action is greatest. This policy is beyond tokenism; it is a calculated commitment to the status quo. If TPL wants to support social justice they should invest in the ideas that support it. The likely defensive arguments from TPL management is that they can't afford multiple copies and that they would not be read if they are bought. Our counter- argument is: "Go ahead and try it; your responsibility is not just to buy books, but to promote them locally where they are most needed. Social justice is not a hobby."
Friday 29 March 2019
The Zapatista Experiment 1994-2019. PWYC Movie - Wed. April 3, 2019
The Zapatista Experiment: 1994-2019 -A Better Economy Is Possible: -what we can learn from the indigenous innovators of Chiapas in Mexico.*Where: OISE (252 Bloor St.W. Room 6-259) *When: 7pm, Wed. April 3, 2019 *Cost:Pay What You Can
ATorontotheBetter PWYC movie series screening
