সাবধান / SHABDHAN (“careful”) is a collaborative artwork by queer Bangladeshi artists L. Akhter and namrata. Part of the Mayworks Festival, the installation and accompanying poem is displayed at the easternmost Scarborough subway station, central to the homes, workplaces, and lives of South Asian migrant and marginalized people. Spring member Sarah Shahid spoke to the artists to understand the context of the art that explores surveillance faced by Bengali communities.

Entering year three of the pandemic, case counts have exploded, admissions to hospitals are rising, ICUs are filling up and our public services are at their breaking point. Workers are breaking their backs and risking their health to churn out profits and sustain an illusion of “normalcy.” 

Published in Our Times Magazine.

Retail workers are pushing back and organizing their workplaces, led by the women and People of Colour who have long been overrepresented in the industry. A growing wave of union drives across Canada in stores of all kinds — including cannabis dispensaries, coffee shops and bookstores — is creating alternatives to the status quo

Mayworks Festival of Working People & the Arts is a community-based festival offering free, virtual programming throughout the month of May. Spring Magazine caught up with Mayworks’ Executive Director, Carolyne Combs, to talk about the intersections of art and collective organizing and how this year’s festival explores issues of labour and social justice.

Published in Spring magazine.

In a press conference on Thursday, April 8, Professor Aimé Avolonto, Associate Professor in the Department of French Studies at Glendon College, York University, put forward a detailed allegation of anti-Black racism and harassment against the university and its administration.

Deepa Mehta condenses a complicated history of struggle within layers of bourgeois trivialities – a reductive approach to the radical politics underlining the Tamil Eelam liberation movement. Published in Spring Magazine.

While UberEats pours money into marketing schemes hiring “woke” celebrities as their ambassadors, they are committing wage theft from their workers in the middle of a global pandemic. Gig workers demanded better earnings, transparency, and respect, but got served an anti-union proposition they never asked for.

Despite the multiple attacks on communal harmony, workers’ right, freedom of thought, and social equity, Indian people continue to exhibit exceptional resistance against the far-right Modi government. Published in Spring Magazine.

Frustrated with the company’s continued negligence of workers’ safety and refusal to provide decent work, workers at Indigo’s Square One Mall location — its second busiest store in Canada — took action to unionize. Published in Spring Magazine.

Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) programmer Dania Majid talks about Palestinian “national” cinema, resistance, and community. Published in Spring Magazine.

Published in Spring Magazine

A look into female representation in Padatik (1973) and Ek Din Pratidin (1980)

Published in NOW Toronto on Feb 25, 2020.

Published in The Daily Star on February 22, 2020.

Published in The Daily Star on September 28, 2019.

Part of Crucial 21st Century Cinema Directed by Women project.

Published in The Daily Star on September 20, 2019.

Published in The Daily Star on January 25, 2019

Published in The Daily Star on January 11, 2019.