spiked

Friday June 26, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay – Friday June 26, 2020

‘Defund the police’ movement hits semantics roadblock

Activists calling to “defund the police” are encountering early opposition to their slogan, with some supporters saying it’s confusing and others worrying the overall goal could be misinterpreted.

June 10, 2020

The phrase, which has become a rallying cry among some advocates during the George Floyd protests, broadly refers to cutting funds for law enforcement and redirecting them toward social programs, particularly those focused on crime prevention and alternative forms of public safety.

The slogan became an easy target for President Trump and other Republicans who have seized on the wording in an attempt to paint Democrats as supporting lawless communities. However, top Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), quickly distanced themselves from the phrase.

“The slogan may be misleading without interpretation,” Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this past week, adding that he understood the phrase to be more about deep-rooted reform efforts.

“I don’t think anyone other than the far extremes are saying we don’t want any kind of policing at all,” he said.

But the need to explain the meaning behind the wording comes with its own set of critics.

June 18, 2015

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing, and there’s a lot of explaining going on,” Meghan McCain, a right-leaning commentator said on ABC’s “The View.”

“If you mean reform, say reform. If you mean defund, say defund. People are confused,” she added.

Evan Nierman, the CEO and founder of crisis communications PR firm Red Banyan, said the message has its pros and cons.

“The plus for them is that it’s a phrase that’s a call to action, it’s something tangible that they can demand. Rather than just saying ‘equal rights for all’ or ‘justice for all,’ we want this concrete thing,” he said.

But long-term, Nierman said he didn’t think it was a good slogan.

“It may be good at prompting a conversation, but the language is so extreme that it alienates. If they came up with something that more accurately portrays the policy, it might get more public support,” he said.

Some prominent activists and political leaders have pushed back on the idea that a grassroots slogan should be changed so that it has broader appeal.

“Lots of DC insiders are criticizing frontline activists over political feasibility and saying they need a new slogan. But poll-tested slogans and electoral feasibility is not the activists’ job. Their job is to organize support and transform public opinion, which they are doing,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted.

“And by the way, the fact that ppl are scrambling to repackage this whole conversation to make it palatable for largely affluent, white suburban ‘swing’ voters again points to how much more electoral & structural power these communities have relative to others,” she added. (The Hill) 

 

Friday June 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 12, 2020

Migrant workers in Canada face unsafe working, living conditions: report

Migrant workers in Canada are facing unsafe living and working conditions amid a series of COVID-19 outbreaks on Ontario farms, according to an advocacy group.

May 7, 2020

Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC) on Monday released a report summarizing complaints made to its tip line between March 15 and May 15 by workers from Mexico and the Caribbean about racism, threats, surveillance, poor access to food, and dirty cramped bunkhouses, with 40 people in a dorm reportedly sharing one shower in one case.

“We are in the midst of a human rights catastrophe,” MWAC executive director Syed Hussan said on Monday.

The report comes after a series of recent outbreaks on Ontario farms that have seen hundreds of migrant workers reportedly test positive for COVID-19. Two migrant workers, identified as Bonifacio Eugenio Romero and Rogelio Muñoz Santos, both from Mexico, have died from the virus. At least two other migrant workers are in intensive care, MWAC said.

May 9, 2019

“The employer was not interested in our well-being, only in the work we do for him,” a farm worker from Mexico, identified as Edgar, said through a translator at an MWAC video news conference on Tuesday.

Employment and Workforce Development Minister Carla Qualtrough’s office on Monday said in a statement that there is “more to do” to protect migrant workers in Canada.

“The reported cases of inappropriate behaviours and unsafe working conditions are completely unacceptable,” the statement said, noting the government has already pledged $50 million to farmers to help with the costs of housing and paying workers for 30 hours a week during the mandatory two-week quarantine upon their arrival in the country.

But MWAC said it has received complaints from workers who reported not receiving their full quarantine pay. Others reported not receiving enough food during that two-week period.

“Sixteen workers reported receiving only one loaf of bread and a carton of eggs to feed them all for two days,” MWAC said. “One group of nine workers called us about being placed in a house where dogs had been living, that smelled of dog urine and had not been cleaned prior to the workers’ arrival. (Financial Post) 



 

April 10, 2011

A letter in today’s Spec made the brutally obvious comment after the story that Trevor Garwood-Jones’ architecture firm may oversee the resign of Hamilton’s City Hall:

Re: ‘Garwood-Jones eyes City Hall rebuild’ (Column, April 9)

I am a relative newcomer to Hamilton (five years), but I have lived in several Canadian cities. I was appalled to read that the city is trying to secure the services of the architect who designed Hamilton Place, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Hamilton Convention Centre. I find all three buildings remarkably unattractive, particularly from the outside.

To people walking along King Street, the convention centre with its plain, dismal brick wall looks more like a prison than a place you would want to visit, and finding the entrance is not only difficult but unpleasant.

It involves walking through a dark, poorly lit tunnel along a sidewalk littered with cigarette butts and other garbage. The art gallery suffered from the same forbidding exterior until it was enlivened a few years ago at no small cost.

Looking around downtown Hamilton, it would seem that a huge number of mistakes have been made over the past few years.

Let’s not compound them by bringing back Trevor Garwood-Jones to oversee the design of yet another brick fortress.

We need new vision and new ideas if this city is to move forward and prosper — not the same old, same old.

Anne Ingram, Hamilton

Ouch!

Garwood-Jones, the distinguished architect-emeritus of our generation has been slagged, big time. As I was saying to a workmate the other day he is one of a few well known personalites you don’t dare make fun of, unless they’re being roasted before a banquet hall audience of other civic untouchables chomping down on their $200 to $500/plate dinners. It’s easy to list them off, usually they’re charitable captains of industries, high profile artists, media personalities, big public service administrators and the odd orchestra conductor, University President, or former Lieutenant-Governor. Whenever I’ve poked fun at any of them in my cartoons I’ve often made my bosses very nervous, enough so that they’ve spiked a few from being printed in the past.

To be fair to Garwood-Jones not all of the buildings he has worked on are dismal concrete or brick fortresses from the exterior. He has renovated many buildings in the last 2 decades which aren’t exactly inspired from the concrete years of the 1970’s. The downtown GO Station is a prime example.

What’s unfortunate for Garwood-Jones was that he emerged on the scene in a big way in the 70’s when trends in architecture were all about brutal facades of poured concrete and sharp angles. Not much thought was made towards how people might feel working or learning in big boxes with hardly any windows and where doors were located in places you’d least expect.

I work in a building constructed in 1975 in the heyday of the brick bunker movement of architecture. I draw my cartoons in the corner of a room on the third floor facing 2 cinder block walls painted a grey-purple colour, and the only view anyone in the newsroom has of the outside world is a little window tucked into the northweast corner of the room. The same architect, Arthur Taylor, built another windowless brick building known as Sir John A. MacDonald High School, and funny enough, the Barton Street Jail.

Other big buildings that went up in Hamilton’s seventies boom years can be seen west of James street South in an area concentrated with cement highrise apartment buildings reminicient of a city scene from any big banana republic city. The hideous reminders of the concrete era of architecture are here to stay unfortunately. Garwood-Jones isn’t entirely the one to blame but he didn’t help the situation with some of the monsters he created.

November 17, 2009

The following cartoon will never get printed on Hamilton Spectator newsprint. I’m curious if it’ll get picked up somewhere else. Have I offended people by portraying the Prime Minister, who’s currently on a tour of India, as a religious symbol, or do people think I’ve offended people with this cartoon?

June 17, 2009

Spiked, killed, axed, rejected, whatever you want to call it, the above cartoon didn’t make it to print in today’s Hamilton Spectator. The higher-ups here felt my depiction of Jim Balsillie’s bid to bring the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes NHL team to our fair city arriving at its mortal conclusion was premature.

I can’t fire up enough indignation to howl about my liberties as a free thinking editorial cartoonist being squashed. Ultimately, it’s the power of those who sign my paycheque to determine what gets printed and what doesn’t, and if a cartoon isn’t in line with its corporate position then why let it run. In these difficult times for the newspaper industry, compounded by the recession, I’m just grateful to actually have a job.

The editorial printed alongside where the above cartoon was to run was topped with a headline which read “A setback, not the end”. It’s easy to imagine readers being confused with a half full glass editorial next to a half empty cartoon. That’s just one of the reasons for it not running.

Another more significant reason is the support the Spectator has put in to backing the bid to bring an NHL team to Hamilton. The spirit of the cartoon simply isn’t in lock-step with the boosterism made evident by the newspaper’s participation in support of the bid, whether it’s sponsoring a pro hockey franchise rally, or posting pro bid petitions in the Spec’s lobby.

As a lifelong Hamiltonian I’d love to one day see our own NHL team liven things up in the city. It would energize us, revitalize certain parts of the city’s economy and blah, blah, blah… ***insert positive spin offs here***. Still, while we’ve never been so close to getting a team, we’re a long way off from seeing it happen with all the obstacles in front of any bid, and all the hoops which need to be jumped through. I’m happy with the cartoon, and maybe someday, when it’s obvious to everyone that this bid for the Coyotes has kicked the bucket, it’ll run in the Spec. Then, we can move on and wait for the next bid to take shape.