Poverty in Canada’s inner cities is deep, complex, racialized and often intergenerational. In this collection of essays published over the past decade, Jim Silver argues that urban poverty today includes not only low incomes, but in all too many cases also poor housing, poor health, low educational achievement, high levels of neighbourhood violence, racism, colonialism and social exclusion. As a result many poor people experience low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and may blame ...

New Mexico...Facility #6…that’s the entire name…one of dozens of unknown facilities scattered across the White Sands desert. Just a solitary sign on an old telephone pole out on the highway, not enough to reveal anything about the place. 6,317 miles across the Atlantic; a near-identical facility, Proiect Balcescu, north and east of Bucharest, Romania, a few clicks from the shadows of the Fagaras Mountains. What’s going on inside both facilities is, simply put, life-changing, and classified...

Brianne DeGarmo is an abused wife caught up in an illicit affair with Nick Mathis, a high-powered lawyer. Her husband, Daryl, is a self-made millionaire who owns a munitions factory and a hair-trigger temper. One day there's a very big boom. Who did it? Hard to tell when the intended target's been vaporized. You can make murder look like anything. The cops see it one way; the Samaritan sees it another way entirely. Who's right, who's wrong? No one knows until all the hard evidence is in, a...

Karma Sucks is the Second Episode of The Commandment television series. Savannah, GA reels under a new wave of techno-crime. 'Hit & Run' attacks are sweeping the country; victims are targeted at random, savagely beaten and left for dead. The twist: the perp records the assault as a first-person POV and immediately uploads the video onto the Internet. Social media meets aggravated assault, with instant celebrity as the prize. The cops are tasked with trying to stop this senseless, violent a...

The Commandment is the pilot to an original dramatic television series, and is presented as a complete screenplay. The story is set in Savannah, Georgia, the Bible belt South. Bob Lee St.John, an accused pedophile serial killer, is on trial. Suspected of three killings, all five year-old boys, forensic evidence ties him only to the third victim. A crucial witness is threatened; at trial she blurts out information about the two prior cases, all inadmissable. A msitrial is declared and Bob L...

1962, Leesville, Louisiana. Four white deputies come across an elderly black couple in a small diner. The couple are local champions of the civil rights movement. It is no chance encounter. Words are exchanged, their deadly intent clear, but they can't stop the truth from being confirmed before gunfire ends it. For fifty years the three surviving killers maintain the cover up. But truth has a way of coming out. A small life is saved, an older one lost, and the why of it is revealed to one ...

Scoundrels and Shirkers examines the deep relationship between capitalism and poverty in England since the 12th century. It exposes the dynamics of capitalism, from its origins in the long transition from feudalism to its current crisis under neoliberal capitalism, in producing poverty.The book, unique in the historical breadth of its focus, shows conclusively that poverty is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. In the search for profits and control of society’s econom...

Adult basic education transforms lives of pain and despair into lives of hope and pride. For people who are broken, defeated, and down on themselves, finishing a high school education can get them off social assistance and into work that pays a living wage. The benefits far outweigh the costs of adult basic education. It strengthens families and improves the lives of the children of adult learners, particularly those who are poor and marginalized, in ways that go beyond economics to the ve...

Across Canada, there is a severe shortage of decent quality housing that is affordable to those with low incomes, and much of the housing that is available is inadequate, even appalling. The poor condition of housing for those below the poverty line adds to the weight of the complex poverty they already endure, which includes worsening health, adversely affected education and neighbourhoods that are more prone to crime and violence. Using Winnipeg, Manitoba, as an example, Poor Housing exa...

Now in a second edition, Social Movements offers a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the field's historical background and major theories. Key issues are explored in the context of specific social movements and counter movements active within Canada and around the world, showing how these movements originate, mobilize participants, and bring about social change. Chapters on the women's, Aboriginal, gay and lesbian, environmental, and global justice movements reveal exactly how these g...

An unparalleled portrait of the Conservative Party and each of its nineteen leaders, Blue Thunder rollicks through 141 years of Canadian Conservative leadership.A sprawling, page-turning exposé, Blue Thunder draws upon a wealth of public and private material that Plamondon has enriched with fresh insights. Make no mistake. Blue Thunder is no hagiography. This is a warts-and-all portrait that examines in compelling and revealing detail the lows as well as the highs. Along the way m...

Renowned as a passionate Canadian, bestselling author Mel Hurtig has combed through world statistics to see how Canada really measures up — and the results are astonishing, and often shocking.This book is about how Canada has changed, very much for the worse, in the last twenty years. As a result of these profound (often hidden) changes, we are no longer the people we think we are. To take one example, the Canadian media usually leaves us with the impression that Canadians are real...