Feb 132013
 
Emera's Profiteers rally organized by the Power to the People campaign in June 2012.

Emera’s Profiteers rally organized by the Power to the People campaign in June 2012.

For Immediate Release
February 13, 2013

Halifax, NS – Halifax Regional Council should never have allowed the Oval to be named for Emera/Nova Scotia Power, one of the biggest corporate bullies in the province, says Solidarity Halifax, an anti-capitalist organization in the city. To challenge Council’s decision, Solidarity Halifax will be holding a contest to rename the Oval. Full contest details available at: http://solidarityhalifax.ca/campaigns/power/nameouroval/

“Emera/Nova Scotia Power has drained $2 billion in profits out of our province since it was privatized in 1992,” says Brian Crouse, a member of Solidarity Halifax’s Power to the People Campaign. “Emera cuts off families’ heat in the winter, charges some of the highest rates in the country, and is dragging its feet on green energy – they don’t deserve to have a public facility named after them.”

Solidarity Halifax has also produced a two-page handout that explains how Emera got the right to name the Oval, details on financials and the back-room meetings HRM Council held to make this awful decision. The analysis piece can be found here: http://solidarityhalifax.ca/analysis/renaming-our-oval/

The public is encouraged to propose alternative names for the Oval and make nominations for the contest. Nominations will run from Wednesday, February 13 until Thursday, February 21. Finalists will be announced on Saturday, February 23 and voting will run from February 23 to March 7. The winner will be announced on March 9.

“HRM Council should cancel the contract with Emera/Nova Scotia Power, rename the Oval and adopt a new policy for how public facilities are named,” says Crouse. “Beyond that, the province needs to step in and put an end to private, for-profit electricity by bringing Nova Scotia Power back under democratic, public ownership.”

Weather permitting, Solidarity Halifax members will leaflet the public at the Oval on Wednesday, February 13 at noon to start the conversation about the contest.

For more information please contact:

Brian Crouse
Mobile – (902) 222-1564
brianccrouse@gmail.com

Feb 072013
 

The University of the Commons and the University of Enclosure

A talk with Max Haiven
Hosted by Solidarity Halifax

February 16, 1:00PM
Old Brewery Market, Lower Water Street, Halifax

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/533481533350015/

In Quebec, a massive student strike defied the law and brought down the provincial government to prevent tuition fee increases. Across Canada, university campuses have been key incubators of the Idle No More movements, both for indigenous peoples and their settler allies. And around the world, from Egypt to New York to Greece to Chile to Nigeria, students have been leading the struggles against austerity in the name of a different future. Yet at the same time, universities have become more corporatized, commercialized and rationalized than ever, with skyrocketing tuition fees, staggering levels of student debt, massively inflated class sizes and deteriorating working conditions for teachers and support staff. This presentation advances the idea that there are two forces contesting the future of the university. On the one hand, there is “The University of Enclosure”: a tool by which society is brought into conformity with the ruling socio-economic paradigm of colonialist capitalism. On the other, there is “The University of the Common” where new ideas, new relationships and new forms of solidarity are being built. The struggle between the two is a struggle over the soul of education itself.

————————–————————–————————–—–

Max Haiven is a long-time university sector activist. After being involved in the student movement in Halifax in the early 2000s he organized with unions representing precarious academic workers in Ontario. Currently, he is a member of the transnational Edu-Factory Collective and the Halifax-based Radical Imagination Project. He holds a PhD in cultural studies and is a post-doctoral fellow at New York University, and he teaches at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. More information: maxhaiven.com

Feb 012013
 

Solidarity Halifax members take aim at income inequality and the exploitation of poverty.

Note: Articles published by Solidarity Halifax members do not necessarily reflect positions held by the organization.