Open Sources Guelph #426 - May 18, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we go back into the internet toilet. Yay? No, not yay, because we've got to tackle the increasing craziness of Canada's own version of U.S. culture wars (passports, anyone?), and then speaking of sewers we have to get back into the mind of a former game show host/con artist who was once the leader of the free world. For the interview this week, good news! An exemplar of the ways that labour organizing still matters.

This Thursday, May 18, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Prêt-à-Passport. It's been a strange week in Canada. The reveal last week of the newly designed passport erupted into a full blown controversy because images of Terry Fox and Vimy Ridge were replaced with image of bears and people skating. Confused? It's just the Canadian version of the stupid culture wars drowning American politics, like these new F**k Trudeau "parties" in Canadian Tire parking lots. Is there anyway we can pull the plug on this kind of silliness?

Town Hall Pass. Last week, CNN - "America's news leader" - held a Bund meeting on live TV. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, somehow still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, was invited to take part in a so-called town hall where he lied about the 2020 election, defamed a women he was found guilty of sexually abusing, and called the host a "nasty person". So it begs the question, did the U.S. mainstream media learn anything from the last eight years?

Union Specific. Earlier this month, it was announced that a Starbucks in Uptown Waterloo had successfully organized under the United Steelworkers union, which is a first for a Starbucks here in Ontario. There's a growing demand for union representation in the service industry, which has long be able to block labour organizing on the ground through various "union busting" tactics, including Starbucks. But labour won this round, and in this week's interview we're joined by organizers Jaymi and Kale who will tell us how they did it.

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.