March 27th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Taking on the new empire
Tibet backers at China’s Consulate show protest focus has shifted from once-mighty U.S.
By Andrew Cash
As I walk up St. George to the Chinese Consulate on Tuesday, March 25, a chill runs through me, and not because winter has made an unwelcome late-March comeback.
I’m thinking of something a friend of mine said recently: “Once China takes over the world as the dominant superpower, we’ll all be pining for the days of the American empire.”
Sitting on the frozen sidewalk across the road from the consulate, 40 supporters of the Tibetan freedom struggle are staging a week-long hunger strike (from 10 am until 4 pm). Such gatherings are becoming a common sight here.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Human Rights, Now Magazine | 1 Comment »
March 6th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Give a little bit… more
A $5 music levy for Web surfers would save our songwriters from online ad stranglehold
By Andrew Cash
Songwriters are at the bottom of the music industry food chain. They don’t get asked for their autograph at airports and, aside from cashing the infrequent royalty cheque at which at least the bank manager raises an eyebrow, they trudge along in their craft largely unheralded and anonymous.
So it’s interesting that these lowly folks now caught in the crossfire between file-sharers and multinational labels may have tapped into one of the most promising solutions so far to the entire downloading dilemma.
That’s the intro to a possibly historic meeting, Thursday, February 21, at Ryerson where the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) – to much fanfare, not to mention gnashing of teeth – debuted its version of a plan to monetize the downloading and sharing of music files.
The problem the songwriters are dealing with, indeed, the one plaguing the entire industry at a time when voracious Internet appetites demand instant diversion, is how to get paid while still making the peer to peer experience feel free.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Music and Digital Culture, Now Magazine | 2 Comments »
February 28th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Rinkside sellout
Home Depot banner fiasco a sign city staff is soft on corporate infiltration
By Andrew Cash
For local indie bands, postering in Toronto has never been more challenging. Sometimes the notices get torn down by the city’s vigilant poster squad before the paste is even dry.
But if you’re a mega-corp, the city doesn’t seem to mind when you slather ads all over public spaces – at least not on the pristine white boards of Withrow Park’s outdoor rink, where massive orange plastic Home Depot signs recently marred the landscape.
The background here is that the Depot and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment ponied up about $80,000 to help refurbish five sad-sack rinks, including Withrow’s, in Riverdale this winter. An open-air Leafs practice at the rink honoured the donation a couple of weeks back.
But after the team bus pulled away, the community was left with a fresh paint job in the clubhouse, some new mats for the dressing rooms and a snow blower – and Home Depot and Leafs signage all over the boards. The Leafs insignias were one thing, but, residents asked, what’s with the orange takeover?
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February 27th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Andrew Cash’s Record Release Show
uh—
new collection of songs release show…..
live analogue presentation of digita….
Whatever you call a record these days Cash calls his new one Murder =
It’s his first solo release in over a decade and he’s celebrating with an intimate show to mark its on-line release
Thursday March 13, 2008
The Rivoli 334 Queen St. W.
Wanna go? He’d love that.
15 bucks at the door or you can buy advance tickets here
He’ll be playing everything off the new record, old solo tunes, Cash Brothers songs, Ursula, and who knows maybe even the odd L’etranger tune.
Show starts at 9:00. with friend and special guest Michael Johnston.
Have a listen to Murder = in its entirety here.
Info on other up coming shows in Southern Ontario is here
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February 14th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Icy stickhandling
Reluctant Leafs fall flat at Withrow PR stunt – maybe they’re just too rich
By Andrew Cash
It’s like a ufo landed in the park and out walked, or in this case skated, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Scrambling up a huge snowbank at Withrow Park on Monday morning (February 11) to catch a glimpse of the Leafs, who are holding an outdoor practice in my neighbourhood rink, I squeeze into a standing-room-only spot. Sure, I’ve brought my kids, the two-year-old decked out in a Leafs jersey, but it’s me who’s really excited. There’s Mats Sundin actually on my home rink, where I play shinny in the winter and ball hockey in the summer, and Andrew Raycroft standing in the very net I so rarely score on.
This is the rink my Leafs-swagged toddler is learning to skate on. Wow.
A couple of hundred students from two local elementary schools are the luckiest kids in the city this bright and freezing morning.
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February 7th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Mr. Premier, butt out
McGuinty feeds black schools fracas so we’ll forget Libs created the mess
By Andrew Cash
Local democracy is making a comeback, folks, and Big Daddy Dalton don’t like it much.
Nope, our paternalistic preem has wagged his finger at all those irresponsible trustees on the Toronto District School Board who had the audacity – after listening to their constituents and their conscience – to vote in favour of creating an Africentric alternative school.
In calling for residents to lobby their trustees and “put a stop to this,’’ Premier Dalton McGuinty is fanning the flames of an already heated debate that has, up until his meddling, been a model of public participation. There have been forums, committees struck, kilos of newsprint and stacks of reports going back over a decade.
The January 29 board meeting was a gleaming example of local control in action, and not just because trustees voted the right way. The chambers were packed to the rafters with parents, teachers and students, both for and against, sitting side by side.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Race Relations, Youth Issues | No Comments »
January 31st, 2008 Andrew Cash
A Class act, finally
Board does the right thing and votes for black-focused school
By Andrew Cash
When the “s word,” segregation, gets uttered again, there’s an audible groan from those sitting around me.
I’ve ducked out to the overflow section at TDSB headquarters on north Yonge Tuesday night, and am watching the debate leading up to the board’s historic vote on creating the first Africentric school in Toronto on closed-circuit TV.
About 70 others are here, too, and the main chamber’s jammed to the rafters. They’re all black. I’m the only white, and I find myself wondering how many of those whacking this issue with the “s’’ word ever actually mix with those not of their own kind.
The folks here – young parents with little kids, students, elders, professionals, punks – have been waiting for three hours. They’re good at waiting. I’ve seen many of them before at different public meetings in the north end. Waiting. Waiting for the city, the province or in this case the school board to finally listen.
Their patience is humbling. What many (not all, for sure, but many) have been saying is that an Africentric school is part of what they desperately need if they have any hope of rescuing their mostly male at-risk youth.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Race Relations, Toronto, Youth Issues | No Comments »
January 31st, 2008 Andrew Cash
Harvesting the heights
Garden guru revives ancestral African farming to seed ’hood hope
By Andrew Cash
The walk through the public housing project surrounding Lawrence Heights Community Centre is mid-winter bleak.
The four-storey apartments hug the barrier wall behind which the Allen Expressway’s white-noise roar blankets the sonic landscape. Orphaned patches of grass are squeezed like afterthoughts between sidewalks, concrete and asphalt.
But it is these scattered bits of green that excite Anan Lololi, former bass player for 80s reggae group Truth and Rights and founder of AfriCan Food Basket.
What he sees under this useless vestige of British outdoor aesthetics is not only untilled plots of organic farmland but a vehicle for black youth to reconnect with their roots.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Environment, Food Security, Now Magazine, Race Relations, Youth Issues | 1 Comment »
January 17th, 2008 Andrew Cash
Matter of trust
School safety tome shockingly calls for a narrowing of trustees’ role
By Andrew Cash
If you’re a mandarin at the Toronto District School Board, the temperature may be a bit too hot this week. Julian Falconer’s exhaustive report on school safety, dropped January 10, left no stone unturned. But among all the details about sexual harassment and intimidation, the tome goes somewhat silent on one striking fact: if you’re a concerned parent and want to talk to your elected school board rep, good luck.
Fact is, our harried and elusive crew of trustees are busy doing something else a lot of the time. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re earning a poverty-line wage to oversee a multi-billion-dollar public institution – one critical to your child’s future.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics, Race Relations, Toronto, Youth Issues | No Comments »
December 20th, 2007 Andrew Cash
Rocket’s space invaders
Time for stroller-pushers and people with disabilities to take on TTC
By Andrew Cash
I’ve taken up the challenge of riding the subway with my young kids as if it were training for an urban iron man competition where strength, endurance and speed are tested in a gruelling and hostile environment.
I’m not, of course, the only sort of person experiencing the TTC as a formidable opponent. Physically disabled people are getting so pissed off that some of them have taken to direct action. On Friday, December 7, 40 members of the Disability Action Movement Now (DAMN) blocked all four entrances to the St. Patrick station at King and University for a few minutes during rush hour to make their point.
It’s one I get, even though transporting tots gives me but a mere taste of the transit rigours faced by the DAMN folks.
For example, it’s rush hour and I’m waiting for the eastbound subway at Bloor and Yonge with one kid in a stroller. Not one of those SUV models, mind you, but the sleekest of aluminum-framed umbrella strollers.
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Now Magazine, Transit | 1 Comment »
