Podcast appearances and mentions of chris ramsaroop

Listen to longtime migrant rights activist, Chris Ramsaroop detail many of the ways Canada's Temporary Foreign Workers' Program amounts to indentured slavery, how workers are fighting back and what we need to do as allies to help. Organizing as unprotected workers isn't easy and it comes with heavy repercussions. Chris talks about the different tactics and supports used by Justica /Justice for Migrant Workers.All of our content is free - made possible by the generous sponsorships of our Patrons. If you would like to support us: PatreonFollow us on InstagramResources: Vulnerable Open Work Permit Details Harvesting Freedom | Justicia for Migrant Workers

For our season finale of Courage My Friends, we return to this year's George Brown College Labour Fair, The other P3s: pandemic, privatization, precarity,,, and planet!!  In the panel on ‘Food Industries: Feeding Ourselves on a Precarious Planet', moderator Lori Stahlbrand is joined by guests: Joshna Maharaj, a chef, social gastronomy activist, educator and host of the Hot Plate podcast; Chris Ramsaroop, an  organizer, educator and activist with Justice for Migrant Workers; and Charlotte Big Canoe, partner and membership director at The Full Plate. The four discuss food justice, social gastronomy and the rights of workers from farms and factories to fine-dining and food agencies in these times. Maharaj explains: “Social gastronomy is a practice about the power of the kitchen to change lives. Now that is a giant thing to say. But essentially what we're talking about is a growing movement of chefs who are finding really meaningful ways to use our craft to support and nurture communities. It's using our celebrity, our purchasing power and our influence to build a more just and sustainable food system … But also it's about taking the idea of hospitality beyond restaurants, to institutions, to community spaces, and to public policy.”  Ramsroop likens the current migrant worker system to that of indentureship: “People who come to work in Canada are on a Tied Work Permit … They have no labour and social mobility. And once they try to exert their rights or if they get injured and sick, in most cases they're sent home and they will not be so-called, named or able to return back to Canada… [Under] ‘agricultural exceptionalism' or ‘corporate exceptionalism' … we create something as a crisis, you get rid of all the rules and regulations and you say that the industry can … .ramp up production, bring people to come to work and face no accountability when things hit the fan … We tried to warn people to say, look, you cannot have workers coming to work in Canada under very precarious conditions, people are going to die. Nobody listened. Nobody took the initiatives or steps to protect workers. And lo and behold, we saw what happened during the pandemic and farm workers.” Reflecting on her organization and supporting food industry workers, Big Canoe says: “So what we want to focus on at The Full Plate is thinking about those little things that might make a difference for you in this role and might make it so that you feel you can stay in hospitality a little bit longer … Often you get to a point where your body can't take it anymore. You're mentally drained. You just want to do something else and kind of exit. And that's a really hard place to be in because it makes it so that people don't value this industry and ..we want people to love it. Because for a restaurant setting, people come to you on their best days. They come to you to celebrate … milestone moments in their life. And they also come in on some of their worst days and they want a little bit of a lift up...It's not just a set of hands bringing food to a table … For the people there to stay in that industry and continue to provide hospitality to others, we have to also give the hospitality back to those folks.”   About our guests:  Joshna Maharaj is a chef, a two-time TEDx speaker and activist who wants to help everyone have a better relationship with their food. She believes strongly in the power of chefs and social gastronomy to bring values of hospitality, sustainability, & social justice to the table. Maharaj works with hospitals & schools in Canada to build new models for institutional food service. Her first bookTake Back the Tray (May 2020) captures the lessons and experience from her work in changing institutional food systems around the globe. She is an enthusiastic instructor of both culinary and academic students, constantly finding ways to make food stories come alive. Maharaj hosts Kitchen Helpdesk, a weekly call-in food show on CBC Radio, and she co-hosts a food and drink podcast called HotPlate, currently in its fourth season. Charlotte Big Canoe is the partner and membership director at The Full Plate, a Toronto based non-profit that provides access to services and supports to hospitality workers in need. The Full Plate was founded in early 2020 by a group of women in the hospitality industry, and has grown to include access to produce boxes or grocery gift cards, wellness programs for hospitality workers, and training focused on inclusive environments in restaurant spaces. Big Canoe  is of mixed heritage, with her father's family from the Chippewas of Georgina Island, and her mother's family being Irish settlers. Big Canoe has worked in various roles in the hospitality industry over the past 14 years, with a focus on wine and spirits education.  Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, a grassroots activist collective that has been organizing with migrant workers for nearly 20 years and whose work is based on building long term trust and relationships with migrant workers and includes: engaging in direct actions, working with workers to resist at work, launching precedent setting legal cases, and organizing numerous collective actions. Ramsaroop is an instructor in the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Toronto and a clinic instructor at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law. Ramsaroop is working to complete his PhD at OISE/University of Toronto. Chris is also currently assistant professor at New College, University of Toronto, Community Engaged Learning. Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.  Images: Joshna Maharaj, Chris Ramsaroop / Used with permission. Charlotte Big Canoe / https://thefullplate.ca/about.  Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.  Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Injila Rajab Khan and Danesh Hanbury (Street Voices)   Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.  Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.  Host: Resh Budhu. 

In this episode of Labour Intensive Jody Tomchishen sits down with activists Taneeta Doma and Chris Ramsaroop of Justice For Migrant Workers to discuss the demands of migrant workers for regularization. Under the current legal framework migrant workers are exploited with few legal protections, as they worry about speaking out for fear of deportation.   Visit their website: https://harvestingfreedom.org/ Follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/j4mw Or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harvestingfreedom/ Sign up for the Shift Work newsletter for union updates curated by Emily Leedham of PressProgress: https://pressprogress.ca/shiftwork/ Consider supporting this podcast by becoming a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/labourintensive Follow the podcast on social media: https://twitter.com/Labintpod https://www.instagram.com/labourintensivepod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@labourintensivepod Labour Intensive is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, a national community of more than 50 progressive podcasts including Alberta Advantage, Press Progress Sources and Tech Won't Save Us. Find out more at: https://harbingermedianetwork.com/

This week on rabble radio, labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga is joined by Ethel Tungohan. Today, Tungohan and Calugay-Casuga discuss the expectations and assumption of care work in Canada.  Calugay-Casuga and Tungohan talk about Matatag: Filipina Care Workers During COVID-19, a photo series project by Filipina nurses, support workers, and caregivers during COVID-19. The two also talk about the “invisibilization” of care work in Canada, particularly for women and racialized communities and how a complete breakdown of colonized thinking, learning and working in Canada must take place in order for true labour equity to take place.  Tungohan appeared on a recent episode of Courage My Friends: ‘Migrant workers and ‘the pandemic paradox': The unseen hands that truly keep us afloat.' In this episode, she joined Jhoey Dulaca and Chris Ramsaroop to discuss temporary foreign workers in Canada. Be sure to tune into that episode after this!   Tungohan's new book, Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care is set to be released August 2023.  Join us for Off the Hill next week!  The federal budget for 2023 is soon to be announced. Who decides the budget? Who influences it? And where does all that money go? Last year's budget was aimed at growing the economy in Canada and making life more affordable and equitable. But did it? Our guests will dissect these questions and more in our Off the Hill panel this month.  Guests include MP Leah Gazan, rabble columnist and policy researcher Chuka Ejeckam, economist David Macdonald and rabble parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg. Hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies.  Save your spot for this free event today! Join us this March 23, 2023, 7:30 PM ET / 4:30 PM PT.  If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

In the second episode of the Courage My Friends podcast, Series III, Jhoey Dulaca (caregiver and organizer with the Migrant Workers' Alliance for Change), Ethel Tungohan (Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism) and Chris Ramsaroop (activist and organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers) discuss temporary foreign workers in Canada, the multiple and barriers they face and the struggle for recognition, rights and belonging.  Speaking to the situation facing foreign migrant workers, Dulaca says, “In the beginning it was a dream. It's not what happens in reality. The promise of Canada is when you get in, you are allowed to apply for permanent residence. That's the selling point, why I came here… They allow you to come here, but they won't allow you to have permanent status. And with permanent status, you are exercising your rights.”  Dulaca continued: “A lot of these people are tied to their employers. When I was working as a caregiver, I was tied to my employer and I couldn't do anything. If I was being abused, I couldn't just go and  look for [other] work. Just like the farm workers, they're tied to their employers and the system is made for them to shut up. First and foremost migrants come here to support their family. ..That's what makes it hard for workers to stand up for their rights.”  As Tungohan says, the situation facing these workers is structured into the system itself: “The thing about Canada that I find very perplexing is that it's always been constructed as a liberal immigrant receiving state. And  to a certain extent that's true, but only for certain groups of people. So the easiest way to think about Canadian immigration policies is that there's citizen-track immigration and non-citizen- track immigration. And I would argue that temporary labor migrants tend to fall [in] the latter group.” On speaking to the need for organized resistance, Ramsaroop says: “It's about the role of power and asymmetrical power imbalances..There are no industry specific regulations. And coupled with this constant threat of deportation and permanent loss of work, this is why workers are .. working at heights without protections, being sprayed with pesticides and chemicals, working at a peace-rate system which has numerous and multiple forms of injuries on their bodies.So it is critically important to see this as structural violence .. This is an entire system that's been built to meet the needs of the employers, not thinking about the needs of workers. And this is why trying to build power across the industry and across all forms of temporary work is necessary and essential to change the power imbalance that exists.” About today's guests:  Ethel Tungohan is the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, and associate professor of Politics and Social Science at York University. She has also been appointed as a Broadbent Institute fellow. Previously, she was the Grant Notley Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta's Department of Political Science.  Her research looks at migrant labor, specifically assessing migrant activism. Her forthcoming book, “From the Politics of Everyday Resistance to the Politics from Below,” won the 2014 National Women's Studies Association First Book Prize. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and Canadian Ethnic Studies. She is also one of the editors of “Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility,” which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2012. Dr. Tungohan specializes in socially engaged research and is actively involved in grassroots migrant organizations such as Gabriela-Ontario and Migrante-Canada. Joelyn Dulaca is a careworker organizer with Migrant Workers Alliance for a Change which is a coalition of migrant  careworkers, healthcare workers, farmworkers and international students.  A former careworker herself, who had to work away from her children to chase the Canadian dream; she had experienced the struggles of working as a live-in caregiver and is now dedicated to organize caregivers to fight for better immigration, labour laws and permanent status for all. Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, a grassroots activist collective that has been organizing with migrant workers for nearly 20 years and whose work is based on building long term trust and relationships with migrant workers and includes: engaging in direct actions, working with workers to resist at work, launching precedent setting legal cases, and organizing numerous collective actions.  Chris is an instructor in the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Toronto and a clinic instructor at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law. Ramsaroop is working to complete his PhD at OISE/University of Toronto. Chris is also currently assistant professor at New College, University of Toronto, Community Engaged Learning. Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.  Image: Ethel Tungohan, Jhoey Dulaca, Chris Ramsaroop / Used with Permission Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (voice of Tommy Douglas); Kenneth Okoro, Liz Campos Rico, Tsz Wing Chau (Street Voices)  Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.  Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca Host: Resh Budhu

On “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Dani talks with Chris Ramsaroop, the founding member of Justicia for Migrant Workers in Ontario, Canada. They discuss the lack of support for migrant farm workers, efforts to help migrant farm workers obtain benefits, and the implications of automation in the agriculture sector. While you're listening, subscribe, rate, and review the show; it would mean the world to us to have your feedback. You can listen to “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” wherever you consume your podcasts.

Scholar Shaka McGlotten and activist Chris Ramsaroop join our host, Natalie Kerby, to discuss data in the context of labor. The episode addresses the historical ways that data has been used to organize labor, the labor of making ourselves visible to data-centric systems, and the different ways that people, and more specifically workers, are resisting datafication.Shaka McGlotten (@shakaz23) is a professor of anthropology and media studies at Purchase College, SUNY and 2020-2021 Faculty Fellow at Data & Society.Chris Ramsaroop (@j4mw) is an organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers and a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

Interdisciplinary researcher Shaka McGlotten and scholar/activist Chris Ramsaroop join our host, Natalie Kerby, to discuss data in the context of labor. The episode addresses the historical ways that data has been used to organize labor and the different ways that people, and more specifically workers, are resisting datafication. This season, "Becoming Data," is a partnership between the magazine Public Books and the research institution Data & Society. Follow us on Twitter @PublicBooks and @DataSociety. View full episode notes and a transcript here.

For the rest of this week Food Tank alongside the ReFresh working group will be airing daily podcasts with panelists discussing “The Intersection of Food + Tech.” Over the next five days we are featuring 20 speakers co-hosted by Danielle Nierenberg and Forbes Magazine’s Chloe Sorvino. You can also watch these conversations live at 2PM all week. Additionally, Food Tank and ReFresh just released a new policy platform on the intersection of food and technology. Please visit FoodTank.com to download your free copy. Today’s theme is “Reducing Inequities Through a Digitally Skilled Workforce.” Panelists include Kevin Krueger, Facebook; Jose Oliva, HEAL Food Alliance; Chris Ramsaroop, Justice for Migrant Workers; Dr. Sekou Siby, ROC United; and Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, Farmworkers Association of Florida

Alex MacKenzie, a scientist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Ottawa explains how examining waste water could help to predict outbreaks of COVID-19; Many people seem to be getting into the holiday spirit already. Our happiness columnist Jennifer Moss explains how it can be of real benefit to our mental and emotional well-being; Christian Leuprecht, a security expert who teaches at Queen's University and Royal Military College in Kingston outlines what the military's role will be in the distribution of the vaccine for COVID-19;Not Your High School's Sex Ed is a website created by two students, Deirdre Cleveland and Nicole Johnston, who think kids aren't getting all the information they need from their classes at school; Chris Ramsaroop of Justice for Migrant Workers talks about the strain on workers who will be isolated here far from home during the holiday season; Charlie Pinkerton of iPolitics offers analysis of the economic update presented yesterday by the federal Minister of Finance; In Orillia, 1 out of 8 households were already experiencing food insecurity before COVID-19.Chris Peacock of The Sharing Place Food Centre in Orillia updates us on the local situation..

In this episode Chris Ramsaroop discusses the struggle migrant workers face in Canada. He discusses the historical antecedents of the migrant labour/indentured labour regime which he links to slavery and the global political economy. He also speaks to workers conditions during the covid-19 pandemic, political education, and harvesting freedom.

Justin Hansford a Law Professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. talks about how police are responding to mass protests and whether certain of their tactics cause an escalation of violence; Chris Ramsaroop speaks on behalf of the the group Justice for Migrant Workers. He addresses the response to the recent outbreaks of COVID-19 at a number of farms in southern Ontario; Tianna Edwards writes a blog "Keeping Up with KIngston'. She discusses her experience that she recounts in her essay " Being Black in Kingston"; Arjumand Siddiqi the Canada Research Chair in population health equity of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health makes the case for compiling race-based data on infection during the pandemic; Lyndsay Bowen of the Kawartha Lakes Public Library tells about some of the books people have shared during their weekly virtual book club meetings; Family doctor Peter Lin explains some of the risks of spreading the coronavirus when people gather in crowds to demonstrate; Craig Thompson of Patient Ombudsman explains why they think there is a need for their organization to also conduct an investigation into conditions at Ontario's long-term care facilities.

This week's Global Research News Hour explores some of the historic divides along racial lines that have threatened working class solidarity. For the bulk of the show, two in-studio guests: Chris Ramsaroop of the Migrant Justice Network (Toronto) and Louis Ifill, a former program coordinator for the Winnipeg-based Workers of Colour Support Network, discuss how and why obstacles have persisted for migrants and racialized workers in Canada. IN the latter part of the show, Abayomi Azikiwe shares his insights into how and why the labor force in the industrialized northeast of the country has been split along racial lines and who has benefitted from those divisions.

TW: We talk about suicide in this episode. In this episode we talk with Chris Ramsaroop, organizer for migrant workers in Ontario, Canada (and total badass) about the nonprofit industrial complex, his work, what precarious work is, how men can be better allies, and racism in the sector. Resources: Bullying Bosses can Cause Employee Suicide […]

In this episode, Chris Ramsaroop, Greer Babazon and Nisha Toomey discuss Toronto's rapid gentrification. We visit the kitchen table to unpack what communities are most impacted by gentrification; explore how gentrification has been, and continues to be, justified by (settler colonial) logics of progress and inevitability; and we speak with a resident of Toronto's Junction area on the shifted/shifting community.

This episode explores the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada by considering the modes of surveillance, exploitation, denial and violence embedded in the program. Nisha Toomey and Chris Ramsaroop demystify false histories of Canadian innocence and the white settler anxieties entrenched in the state.

In episode #94 of Talking Radical Radio (December 17, 2014), I talk with Chris Ramsaroop and Melisa LaRue about a collaboration between Justicia for Migrant Workers and the Windsor Workers Education Centre. They are in the early stages of bringing migrant workers and Canadian workers together to talk about their commonalities and their differences, and to build solidarity in the face of shared experiences of predatory employers and precarious work. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: http://talkingradical.ca/2014/12/17/trr-migrant_non_migrant/

Chris Ramsaroop from Justicia 4 Migrant Workers is interviewed about how farm workers are organizing in response to the recent workplace deaths of two workers on September 10th: Ralston White and Paul Roach. A Pilgrimage to Freedom is being held on October 10th, Thanksgiving Weekend, and is the first march of this kind to focus on the conditions of people the government calls "temporary foreign workers". http://www.justicia4migrantworkers.org/

Chris Ramsaroop from Justicia 4 Migrant Workers is interviewed about how farm workers are organizing in response to the recent workplace deaths of two workers on September 10th: Ralston White and Paul Roach. A Pilgrimage to Freedom is being held on October 10th, Thanksgiving Weekend, and is the first march of this kind to focus on the conditions of people the government calls "temporary foreign workers". http://www.justicia4migrantworkers.org/

Chris Ramsaroop from Justicia 4 Migrant Workers is interviewed about how farm workers are organizing in response to the recent workplace deaths of two workers on September 10th: Ralston White and Paul Roach. A Pilgrimage to Freedom is being held on October 10th, Thanksgiving Weekend, and is the first march of this kind to focus on the conditions of people the government calls "temporary foreign workers". http://www.justicia4migrantworkers.org/