Facilitating Change

Work alongside farmworkers in Florida

I had the pleasure of doing a bit of work for the Student-Farmworker Alliance for my master’s practicum. I learned about the situation of farmworkers in Florida from a 2003 article by John Bowe in the New Yorker: “Nobodies: Does Slavery Exist in America?” (download PDF). You may be surprised, but U.S. Department of [...]

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Designer wanted for book on urban ecology, activism, local history

We are looking for a print designer to create a 40- to 70-page book to be published in April 2009. The book, Memorial of Weeds: Wildest Dreams for Our Urban Cores, will document “Sprout Out Loud!” (an environmental art project) alongside community reflections about a controversial piece of land soon to be developed by the [...]

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Contribute to the Memorial of Weeds

Memories, stories, dreams, visions, photos, newspaper clipping, city plans, archives — you name it, we want to include it in an upcoming book: Memorial of Weeds: Wildest Dreams for Our Urban Cores. I’m helping Montreal artist Emily Rose Michaud, the force behind the Mile End’s Roerich Garden, to produce a book that will document community happenings [...]

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Reflections on “I Believe in Open” candidate responses

I was just browsing through the results section of the ibelieveinopen.ca campaign website. Candidates can respond yes or no to each of the five commitments and post comments, some of which give nice insights into the sort of people you may be voting for. I noticed two things: Andrew Graham, the NDP candidate from New Brunswick Southwest, [...]

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I believe in open: Take a stand for government transparency

I recently joined the advisory board of VisibleGovernment.ca, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that promotes online tools for government transparency in Canada. We’ve just launched our first project — ibelieveinopen.ca — a site that collects pledges from Member of Parliament (MP) candidates to commit to making five improvements to government transparency. The site also collects signups from [...]

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