video from LTE6

Hamilton Spectator video from the day-long conference LIVING THE ENVIRONMENT that OPIRG takes part in each year with the Hamilton Community Foundation Youth Advisory Committee and Mohawk College.

Scenes from a Clothing Swap

ThreadWork working group in action! Huge success and hugs all around!

thread media work

Open publication - Free publishing - More sports

Front Page: McMaster Students for Social Justice working group
Page 20 - ThreadWork working group.

Can media domination be far away?

More Haiti

Cosponsored by OPIRG McMaster

Haiti

OPIRG Board member Kojo Damptey will show a short video about Haiti and facilitate a discussion about global justice issues. Join us on Monday, October 25th in MUSC 203 at 5:30 p.m. for pizza and discussion.

If you have a musical talent, please speak to Kojo or Dean. We are planning a music night/coffee house for MONDAY, NOV. 22 at the Phoenix Main Lounge. Proceeds will benefit a local food bank.


Disclaimer: this is not an official opirg mcmaster sponsored event, and is posted for information purposes only. Please contact the event organizers with any questions or concerns.

FAIR THEE WELL

storm feed

the opirg spectrum 2010

Here are the 14 new and returning working groups at OPIRG McMaster for 2010-2011 - in a couple days you will find all the contact and descriptions to help you decide where to apply some of your volunteer energies. Go to opirg.ca and click on the working group you are interested in to find out more.

• Biodiversity Guild 
• Body Equity
• Community Volunteer Action
• Dominican Republic Self Help 
• First Nations Student Assoc.
• Food For Life (NEW)   
• Guatemala 
• Hamilton Freeskool 
• Hamilton Womyn's Bike Collective (NEW!) 
• Inter City Homeless Outreach (NEW!) 
• Migrant Workers Resource 
• McMaster Students for Social Justice (NEW!) 
• Save More Students 
• ThreadWork (NEW!)

wordle of the day...

clean up Cootes!

Cootes Clean-Up

The McMaster Outdoor Club welcomes you to help us clean up Cootes Paradise on Sunday October 17th. 

This clean-up aims to remove the garbage from Cootes Paradise to give visitors a more enjoyable nature-experience and, most importantly, to preserve the habitat of many plants and animals. 

The event starts at 10 am and finishes around noon for a free BBQ. There will be prizes for the oddest junk collected, and gloves, bags and maps are provided. We would love to see you there!

Disclaimer: this is not an official opirg mcmaster sponsored event, and is posted for information purposes only. Please contact the event organizers with any questions or concerns.

garlic bus video

Check out the planting/trespassing in the name of preserving local farm land and the climate!




Disclaimer: this is not an official opirg mcmaster sponsored event, and is posted for information purposes only. Please contact the event organizers with any questions or concerns.

Garlic Bus deets

Protest with Garlic this Thanksgiving weekend!

You may have heard that the city is planning to develop employment lands on prime agricultural lands around Hamilton airport.   You may also know that most of the garlic available in our stores is imported from China (even though it grows very well here in Ontario).

So for Sunday Oct 10th's global climate action day, we're putting on a bus to take people out to the aerotropolis lands for a protest planting of garlic!

The bus will be leaving at 10.10am from the Skydragon Centre on King William St in downtown Hamilton

map   http://bit.ly/adcbDw

and will return at 1pm.  There's a $3 charge for the ride.
Everyone can sign up for the bus - or just to be kept informed about local climate change actions - by going to

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C3ZMHQK

Come along, bring friends - and your favourite spade & gardening gloves!

Hamilton350.com

Disclaimer: this is not an official opirg mcmaster sponsored event, and is posted for information purposes only. Please contact the event organizers with any questions or concerns.

transportation for liveable communities: Great news for student transit - Guelph/Hamilton

transportation for liveable communities: Great news for student transit - Guelph/Hamilton: "Service that was dropped by Canada Coach between Guelph and Hamilton has been picked up by Aboutown Transportation! Looks like two trips a day..."

Check out the good news!

climate change and local non-violent action

Following the Gandhi Peace March, and Peace Week at Mac, will students join in some active non-violence on climate change locally?  Plant some garlic for the environment?

CATCH News – October 3, 2010

Hamilton climate change

In the wake of another extreme rainstorm last week, the city has proclaimed October as “climate change action month in Hamilton” and is reporting that greenhouse gas emissions from city facilities declined in each of the last two years. A media release on Friday highlighted a half dozen activities this month including a protest garlic planting on aerotropolis lands taking place on October 10 as part of the world day of climate action.

The planting focuses on the combined threat to Hamilton’s food security from loss of local farmlands and global weather disasters. This year’s heat wave in Russia and the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, along with flooding is Saskatchewan and China and continuing drought in Australia, have pushed up world wheat prices by 70 percent.

The Hamilton 350 Committee wants residents to plant garlic in their home gardens on Thanksgiving Sunday and ride a ‘garlic bus’ to the airport area to sow garlic cloves on lands expected to be added to the city’s urban boundary at city council’s last meeting before the elections.

The city media release says Hamilton is “a leader in reducing the impact of climate change” both because of the level of engagement of its residents and the results being achieved in lowering city government emissions by 2 percent in 2008 and 4.5 percent last year.

“Hamilton is seen as a leader in the use of advanced fleet technology that reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change,” says the release. ”It has the second-largest fleet of hybrid and other clean and efficient vehicles in Ontario and actively promotes new fleet technology.”

The city is seeking public feedback on its first greenhouse gas inventory issued last fall, and says it will hold a “climate change summit” early next year. Hamilton appears to have been particularly hard hit by extreme rainstorms with 15 in the last five years severe enough to trigger flooding of homes.

Last Tuesday’s storm appears to have exceeded the once-in-25-years criteria, making it the seventh to do so since the summer of 2005 that have included at least two one-in-a-hundred year events. Dozens of homes experienced flooding which also closed numerous roads, although it’s unclear if the Red Hill Parkway was one of them.

The Hamilton Spectator reported on-line early in the day that “north end ramps are closed along the Red Hill Parkway as water levels are rising” and that witnesses were reporting two-metre-deep accumulations. However the city subsequently denied the road was closed and the newspaper didn’t mention it in its printed story on Wednesday. The expressway was shut twice in July because of flooding caused by heavy rain.

The city release includes praise from Mayor Eisenberger for Hamilton’s “level of engagement”, and says it shows “what can be done”.

“During October there are a number of activities taking place in the Hamilton community that combine education and awareness with action,” notes the release. “Some of the topics being addressed include the connection between the food we eat and climate change (www.hamilton350.com/events); daily transportation (www.smartcommutehamilton.ca/en/schools/wearyellowday); and ways to make our community more sustainable in the areas of water, energy, waste, health and wellbeing etc. (www.mcmaster.ca/sustainability).”

CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org. You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to info@HamiltonCATCH.org.

landing a disaster?

Hamilton's political disaster in waiting? Find out more about AEROTROPOLIS! (before it's too late)

20 reasons to stop the monster!

take it, Easy!

(OPIRG Board member...)

KOJO "EASY" DAMPTEY

 Live @ 

WELLINGTON TAVERN

222 Cannon Street East

Saturday, October 2, 2010

11-12pm

E-Mail easythepianoman@gmail.com

Facebook: Kojo Easy Damptey

Myspace: www.myspace.com/easythepianoman