Monday 31 August 2020
NBA - If it looks like a strike, why not call it a strike?
The language being used about the recent NBA players' work stoppage [aka strike] tells us something about the state of professional sports in 2020. The most common term used in the m,ainstream media is a "boycott". But is that really what we should be calling it?
Players are taking a worthy and important stand against the continuing outrage of racism in professional sports where black and other racialized players punch above their demographic weight. Finally we hope the nonsense of a sports/politics separation will be laid to rest. Sports is as political as everything else in our lives, invluding economics. One suggestion when engaging in a work stoppage - don't use the gentle word boycott. Call it what it is: a strike. Another word of advice, If you're in a strike situation you don't tell the boss when you will end it. Set some goals to be achieved before you return to work. In this case with multi-millionaire players it's not about wages/. When it comes to racism in sport there are lots of targets to choose from, including racist owners who make money from people of backgrounds they demonize in private. Expose them.
Monday 24 August 2020
Free to WE to Me [?]
Two idealistic north Toronto teenagers got together in the early 2000s after seeing theabject working conditions of children in far off Asian countries laboring to produce consumer goods for the West. Craig and Marc Keilburger set up a non-government organization inspirationally called “Free the Children” designed to liberate young people from abusive workplaces. It caught the mood of the times and achieved significant support social support as many people and organizations were seeking something other than the race to the bottom set in motion by neo-liberal policies. So successful was the initiative that it led to the creation of a broader initiative – Me to We to engage young people globally in social activities for the good of their communities. Free the Children became Me to We as ambitions and aspirations grew. Eventually the Canadian government signed on, seeing Me To We as a tool for engaging Canadian youth and eventually a major contract was awarded with some money flowing to clearly compromised persons in high places in Canadian public life. In the meantime Me to We generated a charitable foundation (WE) giving the seal of selfless do-gooding to what happened in the Me to We penumbra. What is wrong with this? Beyond the clear ethical problems of insiders rewarding themselves for ostensibly charitable activity, there is a more insidious problem to which social enterprises are vulnerable. How do you draw the line between self-interest and selflessness? The Keilburgers became famous and idealized by many through their idealistic endeavours and much good has no doubt been done. But there took place an escalation of organizational scope and ambition that was not only difficult to maintain without engaging in questionable practices ironically similar to those of the corporations Free the Children originally exposed but seems ultimately to have succumbed to the lure of Growth. In effect, insofar as the Keilburgers became an enterprise then a charity, Free eventually became Me. The challenge for all social enterprises is how to avoid such trajectories.
Monday 17 August 2020
Tech recycling - the environmental challenge of digital times: TorontotheBetter speaks with pioneer Dennis Maslo of Computation
Comtech recycler Computation is a long time TorontotheBetter directory listee so we recently spoke to founder Dennis Maslo about what they do and where we are as a society in managng the challenge of technological waste. Computation was a pioneer in its field and Dennis told us about his own wakeup call when more than twenty years ago he he saw "a computer by an elevator downtown marked as 'garbage for removal' and was iinspired to set up Comptation as a solution to the problem. Twenty years later Computation thrives, though the tech recycling challenge has grown as more of us carry and use more of this equipment every day and constant technological changes enforce a rapid pace of obsolescence. It is a key problem of our digital times so TorontotheBetter salutes Dennis as a pioneer with the vision and commitment to help us confront it.
Tuesday 11 August 2020
What do the USA, Brazil and India have in common? The highest numbers of COVID-19 deaths in the world and something else
Right-wing nationalist governments with neoliberal policies that favour “free markets” and cutbacks in Public spending. The results are clear: Inequality grows and inequality kills. Those who die most are the most unequal: the poor, the homeless, the racially excluded. Abandon austerity and invest for a better world is the way forward. Prevention is the Better way says TorontotheBetter.
For the latest figures by country see www.coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
