📢 Our Spring issue is out now! Featuring: Fighting for consent culture on campus. Plus: A reading list on Canada’s imperialist past and present, building bonds with South Island Cultural and Education League, WITM winners, and more! 🎨: Gurleen Rai

We’re coming to town! Briarpatch is excited to present … A Vancouver Special! Join us on Saturday, April 18th for a fundraiser in support of Briarpatch’s grassroots journalism. The evening will feature readings and presentations by local writers and community organizers.

24 hours left in our 2026 Spring Sale! Take advantage and sign up for an annual subscription to Briarpatch. Use SPRING26 to get quarterly doses of grassroots reporting and analysis from Canada's up and coming voices on social and justice issues important to us all.

In 2024, we signed onto the global Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In support of this boycott, we have withdrawn our magazine from Indigo Books & Music!

2 days left to get $6 off your annual subscription! Use the code SPRING26 to get a discount on your annual print subscription to Briarpatch.

Have you signed up for our Spring Sale? Don't miss the chance to get $6 off your annual subscription. Use the code SPRING26 to subscribe and receive our quarterly issues.

Interested in hearing about contemporary issues facing Canadians and the world from a fiercely independent perspective? Use SPRING26 to get $6 off your annual subscription. Subscribe to get a unique blend of journalism and our critical commentary:

Want to get $6 off an annual subscription? Now’s your chance in our Spring Sale! Use the code SPRING26 to get $6 off your annual subscription and start receiving quarterly doses of feisty, critical analysis delivered right to your door. Subscribe with the code SPRING26.

As the use of AI in the workplace grows, @thisguynelson talks to labor unions about navigating the use of such technologies while ensuring worker solidarity. briarpatchmagazine.c... #Canlabour #artificialintelligence

In response to police brutality in the 1960s and 70s, police reforms were marketed as “community policing.” In a revised version of Policing Black Lives, Robyn Maynard challenges the ruse of “dialogue,” showing how these reforms maintain the status quo.

In Montreal, the union confederation that represents metro workers and officers is pushing for transit constables to be armed. Melissa Folk points out a glaring contradiction: how can a labour union which promotes justice and equality support an increasingly policed system?

Between the suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, student debt, and repressive university governance, many have become disillusioned with higher education. In this article, Augie Faller offers tangible solutions to creating new alternatives.

Students have always been at the forefront of social change, pressuring their institutions to evolve. But, as Robert Lexier writes, the violent suppression and policing of the Palestine protests set a dangerous precedent for student activism. briarpatchmagazine.c... #Palestine #activism

Workers’ right to strike is under attack. Governments across the country have infringed on labour rights through coercive means. Read Adam D. K. King’s reading list to understand the right to strike, and how to resist repression.

Punch Up, my political collective, wrote this article to contribute to movement-wide discussions about sexual assault and other common forms of harm among activists. We make the case for building infrastructure - in group design, organizing practices, and organizational culture - to prevent harm.

This is an article we’ve been working on forever, about how preventing harm through better social movement infrastructure is great.

We are delighted to announce the shortlisted entries in our 15th annual Writing in the Margins contest. Thank you to everyone who shared their work with us, and congratulations to our shortlisted entrants! Stay tuned for the final winners! briarpatchmagazine.com/announcement...

Kicking off our first issue of the year, Punch Up Collective offers us five concrete ways to take a more intentional approach to building up our organizing infrastructure.

Our Northern Writing Prize is launching again in collaboration with NJTI to help writers, photographers, and artists tell stories about the North. Submit your pitch for a chance to win $600 and publication in Briarpatch. More details here: briarpatchmagazine.com/northernwrit...

📢 Our first issue of 2026 is out now! Featuring: Montreal's cop-ification of transit constables, universities trampling student movements, building movement infrastructure to diminish harm, understanding the right to strike, and more! 🎨: Casper Slack

📢 Our first issue of 2026 is out now! Featuring: Montreal's cop-ification of transit constables, universities trampling student movements, building movement infrastructure to diminish harm, understanding the right to strike, and more! 🎨: Casper Slack

last week to enter our Writing in the Margins contest and get your submissions seen by our incredible panel of judges!

9 days left to submit to our Writing in the Margins contest!

Meet the judges for our 15th annual WITM contest and get your best poetry, photography, and creative writing in front of them before December 15th! briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/vie...

Deadline extended to December 15th for our annual Writing in the Margins contest! If you've been thinking about entering, this is your sign to do it! Full details below:

📢 Our labour issue is out now and ready to order! Featuring: pushing against harmful drug policy, rural unionism, garment worker wins, a reading list, and more Cover art by Amanda Priebe

We are SUPER EXCITED to welcome IndigiNews to the UNRIGGED journalism community joining @independentnl.bsky.social @ricochetmedia.bsky.social @briarpatchmag.bsky.social @pressprogress.ca @pivot.quebec + 27 other independent publishers across the (so-called) country! Find out more at unrigged.ca💫

Our AGM is coming up on Monday October 20! 4:30 p.m. PST/5:30 p.m. CST/MDT and 7:30p.m. EST Come find out what we've been up to and/or put yourself up for a position on our board! Registration is required to receive the link for the meeting. briarpatchmagazine.com/agm Hope to see you soon!

Writing in the Margins is back! Submit your creative non-fiction, poetry, and photography that on social and environmental justice for a chance to win $500 and publication in Briarpatch. Contest ends November 28th 2025. Learn more about the contest here: briarpatchmagazine.c...

📢 Our September/October issue is out! Featuring: the psychological toll of war reporting in Gaza. Plus: university interference in Nova Scotia, degrowth debate, and more. 🎨 cover illustration by Ibrahim Abusitta Link below to order your copy!

In our Jul/Aug 2025 cover story, Aliya Pabani and Jody Chan reflect on the lessons they've learned through organizing with No Arms in the Arts for over a year and the importance of continuing to organize within the cultural sector for a free Palestine. briarpatchmagazine.c...

Zohran Mamdani is promising to bring public grocery stores to New York City. To combat the grocery oligopoly in Canada, @nolore.bsky.social contends, we need the same. briarpatchmagazine.c...

At this stage in Israel's genocide of Palestinians, Anna Lippman questions the need to lend legitimacy to Palestinian resistance on the basis of anti-Zionist Jewish identity. briarpatchmagazine.c...

I have an article in this issue of Briarpatch arguing for public grocery stores. I wrote it months ago, back before I had even heard of Zohran Mamdani, but I did try to get an interview with him for the piece!

Farmers in Wilmot Township are facing land expropriation and no one is willing to tell them why. Ally Krueger-Kischak writes about their fight and the intricacies of rural agricultural expropriation. briarpatchmagazine.c...

Jenan Afaneh's photo essay consolidates the relationship between people, memory, and place, resisting the erasure of Ein Samiya. This piece was the honourable mention for the photography category (judged by Annie Sakkab) of our 2024 WITM contest. briarpatchmagazine.c...

Ambihai Akilan explores the politics of mourning, the precarity of state legitimization, and the need for settler solidarity with Indigenous communities. briarpatchmagazine.c...

📢 Our July/August issue is out now! Featuring reflections from No Arms in the Arts campaign, a case for public grocers, rethinking free trade and more. 🎨 cover design by Gudrun Wai-Gunnarsson; photos by Yuula Benivolski Link below to order your copy! briarpatchmagazine.c...

Last day to submit your pitches!

If you're in Ottawa this weekend, come find us at the Ottawa Anarchist Bookfair!

Madeline Berger has been involved with Distro Disco since 2021. They put together a practical guide to neighbourhood redistribution for others who want to start a distro in their community. Read it here: briarpatchmagazine.c...

📢 Briarpatch is now accepting pitches for our annual Labour Issue. Find a list of suggested pitches (non-exhaustive), guidelines on how to pitch us, and more details at the link below! Pitch deadline is July 7, 2025. briarpatchmagazine.c...

As we see the rise in fascism globally, ‪‪@harshawalia.bsky.social‬ 's reading list helps us make sense of how fascism operates as a consistent feature of capitalist liberal nation-states. briarpatchmagazine.c...

Catch us in Calgary this weekend!

In response to tariff threats by the U.S., there has been a resurgence of Canadian nationalism. However, Jasmine Veark writes, this renewed nationalism gives cover to punitive im/migration and drug policies. Read here ⬇️⬇️⬇️ briarpatchmagazine.c...

Savannah Kosteniuk honours the ways in which the Hampton Hub (2022-2025) drew on Black anti-fascist traditions and cultivated coalitional networks of care, modelling an ethics of abundance on the Prairies. Read now ⬇️⬇️⬇️ briarpatchmagazine.c...

Toronto Palestinian Families and Toronto Jewish Families are trying to combat anti-Palestinian racism from the Toronto District School Board, Marlee Wasser writes. Read here ⬇️⬇️⬇️ briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/vie...

"For Palestinians, Zionism cannot be leftward or rightward. Zionism means we die." From the author who wrote an exceptional piece on contextualizing Palestinian resistance for our Sept/Oct 2024 issue, this piece breaks down the fallibility of empire. briarpatchmagazine.c...

Longtime Briarpatch contributor David Camfield has published a sharp anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian examination of the history of actually existing socialist societies through Fernwood Publishing. Read the adapted excerpt below ⬇️⬇️⬇️ briarpatchmagazine.c...

@celeste.lgbt and @shewhoserenades.bsky.social reckon with journalism's role in trans genocides past and present. Art by Cee Lavery. Read at the link below! ⬇️⬇️⬇️ briarpatchmagazine.c...