The meaning of Hillsborough
Liverpool fans hold up banners commemorating those who lost their lives in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Photo by Andrew Cowie/AFP. The following article originally appeared in the January/February 2013 edition…
Simon Black
A Decade of Playing Left-Wing: Sports Heroes of the 2010s
Sports journalism is not immune from the year-end “listicle”, the clickbait content that dominates the Web every December. While I admit to being a sucker for these “best of” exercises,…
MMA’s Norma Rae
Photo by Esther Lin (MMA Fighting) Leslie Smith is a mixed martial arts (MMA) athlete and a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) top-ten fighter. But the biggest fight of her…
The World Cup is a Crime Scene
Photo by Getty Images On the eve of World Cup 2018, soccer’s international governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, announced that the United bid of Canada,…
Race, class, & The Revolt of the Black Athlete
“I sit with Kaepernick” poster in Brooklyn • Photo from MassAppeal.com Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Harry Edwards’s classic of activist scholarship, The Revolt of the Black…
The athletes’ revolt
Photo by Brook Ward By the time San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand against oppression by taking a knee during the national anthem, it will…
Olympics, debt and repression
Vancouver: Protest to “Take Back Our City” on the afternoon of the Olympics opening ceremony, February 12, 2010. Photo by Sally T. Buck; posted on Flickr. Andrew Zimbalist is professor…
The Importance of Making Trouble: In conversation with Frances Fox Piven
Photo by Johnny Silvercloud Dr. Cornel West has said, “The future of the United States depends in part on how it responds to the legacy of Frances Fox Piven.” Frances…
When it Comes to Poverty Reduction, Budget 2016 Earns Failing Grade
Photo by Ted McGrath Another provincial budget, another Liberal betrayal of Ontarians living in poverty. Despite past promises, the provincial government’s Budget 2016 does not prioritize poverty reduction. Wh...
“We the North” and the “Marketing of Blackness”
The Raptors are hot. Toronto’s professional basketball team sits atop the Eastern Conference and are arguably the NBA’s most exciting team to watch. But on-court swagger has been paired with…
Racism and Anti-Racism in Canadian Sport: An Interview with Dr. Janelle Joseph
Janelle Joseph is a Banting Research Fellow at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Her research represents the first national interdisciplinary study to merge theories of youth studies, Afrocentricity,…
On Sport
Terry Eagleton has got it wrong. In his 2007 book The Meaning of Life, the literary theorist and doyen of the British Left proclaimed, “It is sport, not religion, which…
How Martin Luther King’s legacy speaks to our Canadian reality
n April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Most Canadians, even those with little knowledge…
The Shock Doctrine, Toronto Style
I doubt Rob Ford reads Naomi Klein. Between studying committee reports and football playbooks, the new Mayor likely doesn’t have the time or the inclination to keep up with Canada’s…