By Maria Calleja

There are two worlds in Ontario. On Christmas Eve of 2009 I was getting ready to sit down to a traditional dinner with my family while five migrant construction workers fell from a swing stage platform that snapped in two. The platform hovered 13 floors above Kipling Ave on an apartment that had been undergoing construction for three months. Four of the workers, Alexander Bondorev, Aleksey Blumberg, Fayzalla Fazilov and Vladamir Koroshi, died from the fall while a fifth worker Dilahod Mamurov remains in the hospital.

“The deaths represent a structural issue. Conditions need to be exposed and access has to be allowed for everyone,” Chris Ramsaroop from the Justice For Migrant Workers organization said.
Ramsaroop is concerned that migrant workers are not properly protected under the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario. He is also worried that when many migrant workers are injured they are often deported back to their home countries. He believes that in some cases when migrant workers try to put in a claim with the Workman’s Compensation Board deportation occurs before the benefits can be approved.

By Maria Calleja

Countless students wanted to catch a glimpse of activist Angela Davis at the Accolade East theatre at York University on Feb. 3rd 2010. After the 500 seat theatre at York was filled to capacity other students were filed into a lecture hall to watch a telecast of the famous ex black panther speaking her mind.

A woman once labeled a radical and jailed for her suspected involvement in the killing of judge Harold Haley in 1970, stood before the crowd speaking as any professor might. This lecture was far from ordinary as Davis, with her signature Afro now with tinges of Grey, electrified the crowd.

By Mikhail Saavedra

We all know or should know by now, that onion rings are not good for you. They have an unholy amount of fat, too many calories and really how much actual onion do you get out of it?  But for a large and ever growing number of Canadians (over 10oooo so far have joined) even this heart clogger is preferable to our current Prime Minister! The people interviewed for this report agreed that ” Onion ring is not perfect, but at least we know what we are getting” in a clear reference to its humbleness and lack thereof found in our current Prime Minister. While common wisdom would suggest that the only rings Canadians care about are of the Olympic sort, a new hero has emerged in our boring political landscape.

By Mikhail Saavedra

Well I guess I could start by “blaming” Leonard Cohen for this whole thing. I have been slightly addicted to his beautiful/heartbreaking writing for a while now, but a particular poem/song of his is what started this whole idea for me. “The Future” written back in 1992, is a pretty bleak song about how Cohen as a poet predicting how the world would turn out. Sadly he was pretty much dead on judging by current evidence. The poem speaks of walls among other things and that got me to look up walls around the world and how it seems that we have more of them around since the Berlin Wall went down. This search got me to a legend of rock, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) and his Magnum Opus “The Wall” which he is taking out on tour again likely this year. Well it also happens that Roger Waters is a dedicated supporter among other celebrities/corporations/grassroots organizations of Project Cinema Jenin.

Why is Cinema Jenin important to me? I am the publisher/creator of a magazine called Alternavox as well as a new film/documentary producer. From the very beginning the whole point of the Alternavox venture was to showcase the genuine creative vibe in any given city, be it art/music/film etc etc. I have been moved and motivated by this goal for a few years now. I also grew up in a Latin American family where not having the arts in all its forms could signal the danger of becoming an empty vessel of a person. Art was also a tool to help us survive the dark years of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. So after watching and reading what Cinema Jenin was all about, speaking to the organizers directly and finding out how incredibly moving the whole story was and how very inclusive they wanted this to be. How could I in good conscience not do something about this? But the question became larger after thinking deeply about it, how could ANYONE not want to do something about this? All those that believe that creativity and passion can enhance our common humanity should, I hope, be drawn to this particular project.