Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
DURING my second year of university, I was exposed for the first time to mass, extraparliamentary political campaigning.
It was the fall of 1988, and the “Free Trade Election” was on. Of course, the main electoral contenders had lots to say about the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States (FTA) — the Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney championed it, the John Turner Liberals hated it, and Ed Broadbent’s New Democratic Party (NDP) opposed it — but the lasting images and memories for me were from a different source.
The FTA had been signed a year earlier, in October 1987, and mass opposition had already coalesced around a country-wide organisational structure called the Pro-Canada Network (PCN).
Organised workers at the notoriously anti-union global giant are scoring victory after victory, and now international bodies are pitching in to finally force this figurehead of corporate capitalism to give in to unionisation, writes EMILIO AVELAR



