Requiem for Gaza: In Conversation with Joe Sacco
Needs No Introduction
In our third episode of the season, we are very pleased to feature celebrated cartoonist, author and pioneer of cartoons journalism, Joe Sacco and his recently released Requiem for Gaza, a profound work of graphic reportage co-authored with journalist Chris Hedges. We discuss the experience of Palestinian families displaced by the ongoing genocide, the imprint of history on the current moment, the killing and chilling of journalism and the obligation to truth in a time of relentless and arrogant power. On the dedication of Requiem for Gaza to Palestinian journalists, Sacco...
info_outline
What Is Reconciliation Without Truth? Protecting Residential School Survivor Records
Needs No Introduction
Kimberly Murray and Connie Walker discuss the impending destruction of 38,000 residential school survival records and the project to preserve them. In our second episode of the season we are joined by co-leaders of the Indian Residential School Records Project, Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist Connie Walker and former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Kimberly Murray. We discuss the scheduled destruction of 38,000 records containing the testimonies of Indian Residential School survivors, the resilience and courage of survivors,...
info_outline
The carbon bootprint: How Canada’s war economy fuels the climate crisis
Needs No Introduction
In the season 11 premiere of the Courage My Friends podcast series, we are pleased to welcome environmentalist, feminist, peace activist and Senior Researcher with Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Tamara Lorincz and climate policy researcher and advocate with Greenpeace Canada, Keith Stewart. As we head into the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice, we discuss Canada’s accelerating shift toward a militarized economy, what this looks like and how this is not only failing to address our true security needs, but is coming at considerable cost to our sovereignty, people...
info_outline
Diana Chan McNally: Bringing community work to Toronto’s City Council
Needs No Introduction
This week, we welcome and spotlight community worker, homelessness advocate, and candidate for Toronto City Council, Diana Chan McNally. We discuss Chan McNally’s run to become City Councillor for Toronto’s Ward 4, Parkdale-High Park, top-of-mind issues for the Ward and the city, provincial encroachment on municipal government and her vision of bringing community work to municipal politics. Chan McNally says: “Part of why I'm running too, I also very much do not appreciate the provincial encroachment on municipalities. I have a history of fighting Ford. I have won resources from...
info_outline
Labour Fair 2026 Keynote: New modes of organizing for a working peoples’ city
Needs No Introduction
Today’s episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features the keynote discussion from the 34th annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College. Founding representative of the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council Sean Smith and member of the Parkdale Housing Justice Network (PHJN) Matt Whitfield, discuss the crises of labour precarity and housing insecurity, how these are the outcomes of systems rigged against workers and communities and methods of effective grassroots and labour organizing toward the building of working peoples’ cities. On the housing “crisis”, Whitfield...
info_outline
From ecosystems to economics: How Canada’s conserved and protected areas contribute billions to the economy
Needs No Introduction
In episode six we welcome national director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Sandra Schwartz and CPAWS economic analyst, Jason Wong, lead author of the CPAWS white paper, . We discuss the first of its kind report that offers a new way of valuing conservation and the protection of our lands and waters, not as barriers to economic growth,but as long-term and essential green infrastructure that enriches our lives,our communities and our economy. Explaining the reasons for the report, Schwartz says: “The point was actually to have a different way to talk to...
info_outline
Labour Fair 2026: The radical labour of care
Needs No Introduction
This latest episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features “The Radical Labour of Care” panel discussion with: Indigenous midwife, leader, and educator, Claire Dion Fletcher; crisis outreach worker, case manager, and advocate in Toronto’s Downtown East, Lorraine Lam; and program director of the Latinx Womyn’s Program at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Grissel Orellana. It is moderated by Eliza Chandler, associate professor in the School of Disability Studies and executive director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan...
info_outline
Mining, militarism and organizing against the march to war
Needs No Introduction
In the latest episode of the Courage My Friends series, we welcome organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network Kara Anderson and welcome back Canada organizer for World Beyond War and coordinator of the Arms Embargo Now Campaign, Rachel Small. We discuss Canada’s radical turn toward militarism and its ramping up of defence spending, the many and deep connections between militarism and mining in the mining capital of the world and solidarity organizing against the march to war. Reflecting on Canada’s increased defence spending, Small says: “ Canadian military spending...
info_outline
Pension divestment: From funding crises to a radical pension politics
Needs No Introduction
In our third episode of the season, Tom Fraser, a union researcher and author of Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, and Becca Steckle, a research and policy analyst with Just Peace Advocates, join us to discuss how Canada’s public sector pensions are funding crises from housing to genocide, the restructuring of Canadian retirement security into capital funding for militarism and welfare erosion around the world and the urgent need for divestment toward a radical pension politics. According to Fraser: “What I see as specifically contradictory about the structure...
info_outline
Oxfam Inequality Report 2026: Resisting the rule of the rich and protecting freedom from billionaire power
Needs No Introduction
In our second episode of the season, executive director of Oxfam Canada, Lauren Ravon returns for our annual focus on the Oxfam Inequality Report and this year we are also joined by senior director of Strategy and Innovation at Family Service Toronto and national director of Campaign 2000, Leila Sarangi. We discuss Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, the capture of political power by the billionaire class, the rise of authoritarianism and how this is being lived in Canada. Ravon says: “One of the...
info_outlineIn our third episode of the season, we are very pleased to feature celebrated cartoonist, author and pioneer of cartoons journalism, Joe Sacco and his recently released Requiem for Gaza, a profound work of graphic reportage co-authored with journalist Chris Hedges. We discuss the experience of Palestinian families displaced by the ongoing genocide, the imprint of history on the current moment, the killing and chilling of journalism and the obligation to truth in a time of relentless and arrogant power.
On the dedication of Requiem for Gaza to Palestinian journalists, Sacco says:
“I can't think of journalists with more integrity and more courage. ..Everything that was happening to the people they were reporting on was happening to them. They also had targets on their back, quite literally. Israel was assassinating journalists and often killing the journalists along with their families ..We could not but, dedicate the book to them….A lot of the Western press has not stood behind these journalists that are undergoing things that ..no journalist really could imagine in the West….So we dedicate this to the journalists of Gaza. They've done amazing reporting. I doubt the foreign press coming in is going to do as good a job.”
About today’s guest:
Joe Sacco is a Maltese-born cartoonist and journalist based in Portland. He is a seminal figure in comics journalism, establishing the form’s seriousness and legitimacy in the 1990s with his groundbreaking investigative graphic novel Palestine. He has since become the most prominent figure in the genre he virtually created, and has published numerous investigative works of graphic journalism, including Safe Area Goražde, Footnotes in Gaza, Paying the Land, and The Once and Future Riot. He is also the co-author with Chris Hedges of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. His most recent book, also co-co-authored with Hedges, is Requiem for Gaza. Sacco is the recipient of the American Book Award, multiple Eisner and Harvey awards, and in 2023 was awarded a Doctor of Literature degree (Honoris Causa) by the University of Malta.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.
Image: Joe Sacco (Photog. Daniel Mordzinski) / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, The Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Nick Seebruch, rabble.ca.
Host: Resh Budhu.