Author Archives: YU Free Press

About YU Free Press

The YU Free Press is a new and exciting alternative monthly newspaper produced by volunteer graduate and undergraduate students at York University. Our principal objectives are to challenge the mainstream corporate media model as well as to provide a fundamental space for critical analysis and commentary of the news around us – both on and off campus – to a community of student,s faculty, and staff alike. We are firmly opposed to oppression in all its possible forms (gender, sexual orientation, race, ability, religion, creed, etc.) and are dedicated to upholding and promoting a clear vision of social justice through the publication of labour, union, and activist-positive material.

Call-Out for New Collective Members!

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The YU Free Press is an alternative newspaper produced by volunteer graduate and undergraduate students at York University. Our principal objectives are to challenge the mainstream corporate media model and to provide a space for critical analysis and commentary of the news around us – both on and off campus – to a community of students, faculty, and staff alike. We are firmly opposed to oppression in all its possible forms (gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, religion, class, etc.) and are dedicated to upholding and promoting a clear vision of social justice through the publication of labour, union, and activist-positive material.

We are seeking new Editorial Collective members to fill the following positions:

Features Section Editor: Together with a co-editor, manage the Section email account, actively solicit content, gain permissions to reprint already printed articles, read all articles submitted prior to Content Selection meetings, communicate with Photo Editors to acquire pictures and captions, contact/communicate with authors, edit, proofread, fact-check, word count, consider liability, select pull-quotes, consider aesthetics of Section, etc.

Website Manager: Responsible for the ongoing upkeep of the website: adding articles, photos, monitoring comments, etc. Also responsible for maintaining the current layout, or creating a new layout and maintaining that.

Layout Editor: Maintains layout email account, creates layout using final packages sent from Section Editors, coordinates with the printer for print date and delivery, and coordinates with Section Editors for aesthetics of the pages.

In addition, we are looking for Volunteers to fill the following non-editorial positions:

Copy Editors: Responsible for receiving articles from the Copy Editor Coordinator, editing mechanics and formatting, using tracking feature (if any content or legal issues are noticed, notify Copy Editor Coordinator), and sending articles back to the Copy Editor Coordinator by the deadline.

Distribution Team: Along with the Distribution Team Leader and other volunteers, team members are responsible for ensuring stands are regularly refilled and maintained.

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To apply for a position, please fill out a brief application form, found below. We will contact you once we receive your email with the completed application form. Applications and any general inquires can be email directly to: info@yufreepress.org.

For brief application form please see:
http://www.yufreepress.org/docs/application.doc
http://www.yufreepress.org/docs/application.pdf

Food for Thought (and Praxis): The Food and Politics Issue

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Submissions Call-Out

Over the last two generations, the food system has increasingly become “controlled” by the international market. Farmers are pushed further into debt; diabetes and chronic illness plagues communities across the globe; and entire countries are faced with famine and starvation while their governments continue to export grains.

For our next issue, we welcome submissions on any topic related to food, food politics, and the implications of the current food system. We are also interested in your art, poetry, and short stories about your relationship to food. Submission deadline will be January 6th, 2012.

You can also send us letters to the editor(s), campus and community events, photos (w/ proper credit), and drawings or designs. Please submit all articles, photos, community event notices, and art to info@yufreepress.org. All general inquiries and submissions can be sent to: info@yufreepress.org.

Suggested word counts: News: 50 to 750 words; Features: max 2000 words; Comments: max 1200 words; Arts: max 1500 words.

If you have not submitted to the YU Free Press before, but would like to, this is your chance. The YU Free Press has experienced tremendous success since its inception, and it is due to the support and dedication of our writers, volunteers, allies, and readers. For that, we sincerely thank you for making us what we are today! Please email us at info@yufreepress.org if you have any further questions! Thank you, and we look forward to receiving your submissions!

YU Free Press Editorial Collective

Moving Cameras through Fences: Illustrations of the Prison Industrial complex at the Rebels with a Cause film festival

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By Hadiyya Mwapachu

Rebels with a Cause, the inaugural film festival organized by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) at York, took place in the week of October 24-28, 2011 at various locations around the York campus. The festival successfully screened films that are artistically, politically, and socially critical, combined with artist’s talks, panel discussions, and Q&A’s. The films represented the voices of York students, alumni and faculty, as well as independent filmmakers from the larger Toronto community. OPIRG’s Rebels with a Cause aims to (re)introduce its audiences to the political and social spheres at York and its community, while inciting action and educating through the avenue of film. For recorded discussions and list of films, visit www.opirgyork.ca/node/161

The following article reviews highlights from the festival.
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Film Review: Outside the Law / Hors La Loi

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By Vicky Moufawad-Paul

If Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and Gilles Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) were to have a baby, and that baby was a film, that film would be Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside the Law / Hors La Loi (2010).

Jamel Debbouze, Sami Bouajila and Roschdy Zem as the three brothers from Outside the Law film poster / www.premiere.fr


When Outside the Law premiered at the Cannes film festival, French troops in full riot gear surrounded the Palais where the film screened. Claiming that the film purports historical inaccuracies, parts of France’s establishment disagree with the film and tried, unsuccessfully, to stop it from playing. But in actuality, the controversy really is bound up in the issue of perspective.
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Misrepresented and Distorted: An ‘Identity Crisis’ Clarification

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By Sheri Granite

Sheri Granite, Tied, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.

If you went looking for an art exhibition at Accolade East by an oppressed Palestinian artist who grew up in a world where death rituals were common, you were misinformed, and may have been surprised to find an art exhibition at Accolade West by an artist who happens to be Israeli, an international student who was never oppressed, and knows nothing of common death rituals.

My art, identity, and artistic focus have been significantly misrepresented, distorted, and altered in the Nov. 2, 2011 issue of Excalibur describing my art exhibition Echo.
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Art Review: ORIFICE

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By Amy Saunders

ORIFICE, as described by the artist, “is a video installation that uses back-projections on screens made of fabric to create a box in the middle of the gallery that viewers may enter to be enveloped within the video. The videos are comprised of different tight shots of artist Brendan Tang throwing clay on a potter’s wheel. The clay has been dyed to mimic flesh and blood and will play between recognition and abstraction; as something both viscerally familiar but traumatically foreign from the internal body.”
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My Night in Wonderland: How Art Saved Nuit Blanche

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By Gina Webb

Simon Granovsky-Larsen

I couldn’t stay away from Nuit Blanche. I love art but I wasn’t expecting much; there is something disturbingly disingenuous when a big bank tells us that we are going to see our city transformed by contemporary art like we’ve never seen it before. I wasn’t overly excited to go, yet I knew I wouldn’t stay in. I also always jump at the chance for a good old-fashioned all-nighter with friends.

I knew that the streets would be crowded. I knew that some art projects would be impossible to see, and others possible after an hour’s wait. I knew that it would be cold and I knew that its sprawl was vast.
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An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk

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By Black Women’s Blueprint

We the undersigned women of African descent and anti-violence advocates, activists, scholars, organizational, and spiritual leaders wish to address the SlutWalk. First, we commend the organizers on their bold and vast mobilization to end the shaming and blaming of sexual assault victims for violence committed against them by other members of society. We are proud to be living in this moment in time where girls and boys have the opportunity to witness the acts of extraordinary women resisting oppression while challenging the myths that feed rape culture everywhere.
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United in Occupation

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by Amy Saunders

Concepts of democracy have, over time, become skewed into a close representation of dictatorships. As a people, we have adopted an ‘imaginary democratic belief’, suspending our understandings of political truths in the voting booth, signing on to whatever political power reigns majority, while the minority idles by, waiting and hoping to be heard. Within this falsehood of democratic governing systems, we have been promised equality, access and freedoms. We have seen those realities dissipate, as the truths of our lives become increasingly unfair, impoverished and marginalized. The truth of access in this imagined democratic system has shrunk significantly, with truth now lying in limited access to healthcare, rights, education and livable wage standards. We have sat and watched the decline of our country, our world, our people.

No more.
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