From extreme education and climate fright, to no longer easy billionaire wealth and privileging the views of the enviornment’s majority, this summer’s Courage My Pals podcast series as soon as extra delved into the complexities of residing inner the convergence of COVID, capitalism and climate.
After a winning glide final yr, this summer’s Courage My Pals podcast series returned with a slate of dynamic and in-depth discussions on considerations of energy and wealth inequality, colonial legacies, the climate crisis, exploitation of labour, land and sources, impacts on frontline populations including on their mental smartly being, and suggestions of resistance.
In Education, extreme pedagogy and the style forward for finding out in a post-pandemic world, author and public mental Henry Giroux launched the series with a focal level on education and extreme pedagogy as a correct, political and emancipatory resistance to some years of rising authoritarianism. He argued: “To chat about education this day, is to in actuality focus on the conflict over company. The conflict over identity. The conflict over energy.”
Amid the extra than one crises of this 2nd, it’s some distance serene the climate crisis that dominates. There is now not any longer a corner of the planet, nor a corner of our lives that is exempt from its impacts. It changed into therefore fitting that climate changed into the dominant theme all the top procedure thru Courage My Pals this summer.
In episode two, Ecological misfortune: Mourning the past, fearing the future and finding hope, main direct on climate trade and mental smartly being, Ashlee Cunsolo talked about how the injure and disappearance of natural ecosystems is being felt by communities across the enviornment, including Indigenous peoples in Canada’s North and the “generation of misfortune” it’s some distance ushering in.
From a UN Refugee Convention that fails to acknowledge the legitimacy of climate migrants to the ways in which international locations, including ours, police borders, the FCJ Refugee Centre’s Loly Rico and Rachel Bryce from the Canadian Affiliation of Refugee Attorneys targeted on Wrestle, climate and refugees: With out boundaries crises in a bordered world and the politics of asylum and how this 2nd is making an try out our correct and precise obligations to those fleeing crises – and in many circumstances, crises that we now possess had a hand in growing.
We returned to the topic of mental smartly being, this time in the distance of job, in episode four, Psychological smartly being and wellness in the distance of job: Are we working smartly? From harassment and precarity, to the ways in which stress and burnout are built into space of job culture in Canada, Jon Weier and Tom Parkin talked about the growing smartly being crisis going thru workers and the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation’s upcoming document on Psychological Health and Wellness in the Region of labor.
Episode 5 took us across borders and beyond the slim confines of Western discourse to concentrate on the planet’s majority in COVID, capitalism, climate: The celebrated of double-standards between the global north and the global south. Executive director of Tri-Continental Institute for Social Study, Vijay Prashad discusses how the Global South contends with lethal legacies of colonization and Western hegemony thru the raft of present crises, including COVID: “…as soon as the West crossed the [vaccine] threshold of 70%. What does it topic now if of us are going to die in natty numbers in completely different places? That’s the perspective. And that’s a significantly disturbing attitude.”
In episode six, COVID, inequality and the billionaire dwelling-glide, journalist and activist Linda McQuaig and Oxfam Canada’s Ian Thomson endured on the theme of disparity with the exceptional magnify to the already exceptional wealth and energy of the natty-prosperous significantly all the top procedure thru this pandemic, and what this procedure for the non-billionaire majority and the democracies meant to guard them.
We closed the summer series with a two-share focal level on Climate fright and climate justice organizing: Fearing the future, finding hope and combating for our planet. In episode seven, originator of the Land Abet Circulation and member of Indigenous Climate Circulation, Bryanna Brown talked about her work inner climate justice organizing and the extreme want for Indigenous management. “ One quote that Indigenous Climate Circulation makes exhaust of that I love is,” Colonialism prompted climate trade; Indigenous Rights are the resolution.’”
In share two, climate justice activist Aliya Hirji and Nationwide Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of College students, Marie Dolcetti-Koros concluded the podcast with a focal level on younger generations; their abilities of the climate crisis, their anxieties and hopes for the future and the mandatory role they play in combating for a in actuality dazzling and sustainable world.
And as we carry this summer’s series to a cease, we’re confronted by one more wave of COVID, a fourth dose – and contemporary global smartly being emergency with the creation of monkeypox, even as ERs conflict to build originate. Conflicts continue to rage across the enviornment, some deemed extra newsworthy than others, however all equally intensive and pricey to lives and lands. More of us are caring about hiking meals and gasoline costs amid declining employment numbers and diminishing social security. And as these on the very top continue to retreat into billionaire bubbles of impolite wealth and privilege, and populations from Sri Lanka to the UK seek political upheaval, whereas an unremitting climate crisis continues to relate a planet that constantly appears to be like to possess completely different priorities.
On the opposite hand, in the phrases of the big Tommy Douglas: Courage my chums; ‘tis no longer too leisurely to fabricate a higher world.
There is serene great to talk about and serene great to hope for.
After a winning 2nd season, we’re delighted to snarl that Courage My Pals shall be returning on a extra in style basis to rabble’s Needs No Introduction podcast in the fall.
In the in the intervening time, please strive this season’s episodes, and sigh us who you’d purchase to hear on our next installment of the define. Any other time, thanks for listening.
Look you in September!
Courage My Pals is offered by The Tommy Douglas Institute and rabble.ca, with the strengthen of the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation.
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Resh Budhu, coordinator of the Tommy Douglas Institute and co-producer of the Courage My Pals podcast, has worked in social justice considerations of gender equality, anti-racism, education and the arts. Resh…
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