National Network for Equitable Library Service

During the 1970s and 1980s, after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women made its far-reaching recommendations, the volunteer Ontario Committee on the Status of Women went head-to-head with the Ontario government of Premier William Davis to fully implement equality for women in Ontario. Areas of concern were in employment, pay and benefits, child care and reproduction rights, education and training, family law, pensions, politics and the civil service, and human rights generally.

"Our country is now as close to crossing the line from democracy to autocracy as it has been in our lifetimes." - E. J. Dionne, Jr. It is the public debate of the moment: is Donald Trump precipitating a crisis of American democracy? For some the answer is an emphatic "yes." Trump's disregard for the institutions and political norms of U.S. democracy is imperiling the Republic. The sooner his presidency collapses the sooner the healing can begin and the ship of state righted. For others Trump is not the villain in this drama.

In this latest RMB Manifesto, Canadian freshwater expert Robert Sandford takes readers to China and shares what it is like to deal with some of the most intractable freshwater problems in the world. It all started out innocently enough: an airliner over the Pacific and a flight attendant passing out bottles of water. What those bottles represented, however, was the depth of China's notorious bottled-water trade and the short-sightedness of the Government of Canada in declaring Canadian water an agricultural product that can be exported in billions of plastic bottles to China.

Throughout human history, great and free nations have been built on noble dreams. Recently, in some once promising nations, dreams of betterment and possibility, have been effectively compromised. The current political landscape, featuring cold partisan interest, calculated distraction, divisive fear mongering, negativity, and voter disillusionment, has enabled a perfect storm of toxic dysfunction. To make matters worse, personal integrity and accountability have become almost non-existent in political leaders.

"Ann Hansen's memoir combines a riveting story with a brilliant exposé of the inner workings of the prison industrial complex. Charged with empathy, courage, and an anarchist passion for justice, Taking the Rap, is a must-read for scholars, activists, and troublemakers." - Allan Antliff, director of the Anarchist Archive, University of Victoria When Ann Hansen was arrested in 1983 along with the four other members of the radical anarchist group known as the Squamish Five, her long-time commitment to prison abolition suddenly became much more personal.

Chosen by Now Magazine as one of the "18 must-read books for fall 2017". Fighting Dirty tells the story of how one small group of farmers, small-town residents, and Indigenous people fought the world's largest waste disposal company to stop them from expanding a local dumpsite into a massive land fill. As one of the experts brought in to assess the impact the toxic waste would have on the community, Poh-Gek Forkert was part of the adventures and misadventures of their decades-long fight.

"Corporatizing Canada is an impressive collection by activist scholars focusing on the commercialization by stealth of the public sector. Its accessible style is well integrated around three dimensions of corporatization that prioritize markets over social relations. A must-read for those interested in the next generation's approach to engaged political economy." -Wallace Clement, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Carleton University.

In June 2009, the democratically elected president of Honduras was kidnapped and whisked out of the country while the military and business elite consolidated a coup d'etat. To the surprise of many, Canada implicitly supported the coup and assisted the coup leaders in consolidating their control over the country. Since the coup, Canada has increased its presence in Honduras, even while the country has been plunged into a human rights catastrophe, highlighted by the assassination of prominent Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres in 2016.

A mugger to a stranger, "Give me your wallet or I will beat you to pulp!" It is a crime. An employer says to a worker: "Adding lung-saving ventilation will reduce my profit. Give me back some of your wages and I will let you keep your lungs!" This is not a crime. Our assumptions about the world condition is to see these situations as legally different from one another. But what if we, the critics of corporate capitalism, instead insisted on taking the spirit of law, rather than its letter, seriously?

As a precocious young girl, Surekha knew very little about the details of her mother Amma's unusual past and that of Babu, her mysterious and sometimes absent father. The tense, uncertain family life created by her parents' distant and fractious marriage and their separate ambitions informs her every action and emotion. Then one evening, in a moment of uncharacteristic transparency and vulnerability, Amma tells Surekha and her older sister Didi of the family tragedy that changed the course of her life.