A stack of books.
A stack of books. Credit: Kimberly Farmer / Unsplash Credit: Kimberly Farmer / Unsplash

This new year has been kickstarted by increasing conflict and aggression, and a lot of confusion and misinformation.

When it comes to misinformation, we have to recognize that it has been a staple of rulers throughout the ages to try and spin the story so that we no longer know our own history – not even our history of struggle, let alone our history of successful struggle. In fact, we often do not even know the names of the leaders who led those struggles.

The first casualty of war is the truth, as the oft repeated axiom attests.

Reading short form texts on social media often does not help. And now with AI (artificial intelligence) one is never really sure what is solid, accurate reflection, and what has been ‘scraped’ from the web and rewritten by generative AI.

To start the new year I have a few recommendations on what we might be reading to let us know where we have been, and also where we might be headed — and just maybe, find a bit of inspiration in the stories and information that long-form documents can provide.

Harvesting Freedom

Firstly – rabble.ca has often published on the harsh working conditions and rights of migrant farm workers in Canada. Human rights and labour advocates have for several years lobbied for changes in federal government policies to recognize the contributions of migrant farm workers to food production and Canadian society.

Harvesting Freedom: The life of a Migrant Farm Worker in Canada by Gabriel Allahdua published by BTL Books in 2023 is a first-person account of the struggles of a farmworker born in St. Lucia.

This book covers a lot of ground and puts a very human face on the farm workers who come to Canada. It’s also an insight into the conditions that lead farm workers to leave their families and their communities to earn money to provide for them. It’s a touching and also a tough read at times. But, it is also an inspirational read, a very personal journey about why and how a person becomes a migrant worker. In the process it dispels many myths. And it is also a call to action to recognize human and workers rights. Various articles on rabble.ca have included detail about the condition of migrant workers, and this book is an excellent way of providing a more in-depth, first-person look at a very important issue.

Humans

Humans: The 300,000 year struggle for equality by Alvin Finkel, is a 416-page book published by Lorimer in 2024.

If you are feeling down about the challenges ahead and wondering if efforts by common folk will ever change anything, this is the book that could help perk you up. As its author Alvin Finkel stated in an email sent to me awhile back: “I believe it is a hopeful book for our hopeless-seeming time.” Prescient, I would say – particularly given the happenings of 2026 so far.

Understanding how communities and individuals have made a difference throughout the ages might well re-energize your outlook. The preface to the book, titled “A People’s History”,  helps set the stage for what this book presents. From Johanna Ferrour of Rochester, England and her organizing of demonstrations challenging the feudal state in 1381, to revolts around the same time organized by an orphaned Chinese peasant called Chu Yüan-Chang against the power of dynasty, Humans chronicles a grassroots, bottoms-up, history to explain “how change occurs over time in human societies.”

This tome is ambitious and a very deep dive into a people’s history throughout the ages.

As noted in the introduction: “Humans emphasizes the voices and agency of the oppressed. They challenge our understandings of many events and phenomena… Humans is based on historical, anthropological, archaeological and sociological studies of various parts of the world in different eras. It is an attempt to integrate all of that knowledge into an overview of the history of our species.”

Most histories focus on a few individuals and events, and, according to author Finkel “on the depredations of the ruling classes rather than the struggles of the oppressed to resist and remove their shackles.”

Author Alvin Finkel traces early foraging societies and Indigenous communities, tracks struggles from feudalism through to capitalism, through to European Imperialism, popular reaction to the First World War, the 1930s Great Depression, the Second World War through to the Cold War, and into popular struggles that have taken place from the 1980s to the 2020s. Chapter 12, the final one of the book, takes us into climate change, pandemics, warfare, “and the search for a better world.”

Alvin Finkel is a founding member of the Alberta Labour History Institute, an emeritus professor of History at Athabasca University where he taught for 36 years, and the past president of the Canadian Committee on Labour History.

This tome is indeed a ride through 300,000 years of struggle. And each page is filled with a lot of learnings. Finkel is to be commended on this immense contribution.

Until the Revolution

Another interesting read is Until the Revolution – Essays on Labour, Democracy & Public Policy by John Anderson. Readily available on all platforms and available in both hardcover and paperback, as well as a very affordable e-book, this offering “collects nearly forty years of articles, papers, and newspaper op-eds dealing with some of the most important issues that have affected Canada over the last four decades.”

Until the Revolution is conveniently sectioned so that you can skip forward or backward to essays or commentaries according to subject, headline, or date. The first contribution dates back to 1987 and the most recent essay is from 2023. That is indeed 40 years of published wealth.

Part One of Until the Revolution is titled “Regulating the Digital Economy for the People”. This chapter covers topics related to the early days of the ‘information revolution’ with a contribution from 1995, right through to commentaries from 2016 and 2017 about taxing and regulating the digital corporations such as Netflix, YouTube, Facebook among others. More recently, contributions from 2019 and 2020 discuss artificial intelligence and its growing impact on work and society.

Part Two moves into “Fighting Against Poverty and Against Inequality” with contributions that focus on a national poverty strategy, poverty among seniors, senior workers, child poverty, poverty and housing, and more.

Chapter Three enters the realm of “Building a Public and Social Economy” and the fourth section is dedicated to addressing “What kind of Workplace and What Kind of Workplace Training?” Topics covered include trade union investments funds, alternative models of public policy, privatization of water, mitigating precarious employment, among others.

Of particular interest right now is Anderson’s take on what the NDP should do to grow its support and constituency – a timely topic given the current leadership race. In the process Anderson touches on topics such as Via Rail, the case for postal banking. Anderson published Why Canada Needs Postal Banking, in 2023, for those wanting to explore a deeper dive into that issue.

As they say – what is old is new again — and so these writings are not only interesting because they remind us about key events over the last 40 years, but also because there is much to learn about alternatives that we need to continue to advance today.

Atlas of AI

You may have heard about Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford published by Yale University Press in 2021. And while the book might seem a bit dated considering the topic, this work actually has some very key information on artificial intelligence – particularly for those of us playing catch-up on the topic.

This 229-page book is interesting and well-written. It is called an atlas because this book is a series of perspectives or maps showing how areas of our society and world are being connected and carved out by artificial intelligence. For example, have you heard of conflict diamonds? Well the resources required by AI are now leading to the coining of the phrase conflict minerals. Conflict minerals are defined as “natural resources extracted in a conflict zone, then sold to feed the conflict.”

There are chapters on the impact of artificial intelligence on the earth, on data, on labour, as well as how the state and power are linked to AI. While we may have heard of these impacts, the Atlas of AI, provides minute details about the impact in various areas. Every page is filled with food for thought.

Even in the early pages, the author is clear about what AI is: “AI systems are ultimately designed to serve existing dominant interests… in this sense AI is a registry of power… we must  contend with AI as a political, economic, cultural, and scientific force… .”

Crawford goes on to note that while we need to ask questions, we need to realize that “dystopian forms of thinking can paralyze us.” The book covers workplace automation, through to examples of how workers are paid pennies, while their labour is used by AI to increase profits.

Some of the questions that need to be asked relate to the carbon footprint of AI. Exactly what is the cost in real terms of the resources used, of the electricity used, of agricultural land taken out of production by huge data centres, and more. Ask yourself – when an employer introduces AI, are workers ever allowed to opt out or be involved in the decisions of how AI will be used in their workplace?

As Crawford eloquently writes in the last chapter of the introduction to Atlas of AI:

“This book argues that addressing the foundational problems of AI and planetary computation requires connecting issues of power and justice; from epistemology to labor rights, resource extraction to data protections, racial inequity to climate change.”

In conclusion, Crawford notes: “… AI systems are expressions of power that emerge from wider economic and political forces, created to increase profits and centralize control for those who wield them. But this is not how the story of artificial intelligence is typically told.”

Crawford calls on us to understand what is at stake in order to make better collective decisions about what should come next.

Each of these books is a good read that takes us to where we have been… and toward what might be.

BW Lois Ross - Version 4 (1)

Lois Ross

Lois L. Ross has spent the past 30 years working in Communications for a variety of non-profit organizations in Canada, including the North-South Institute. Born into a farm family in southern Saskatchewan,...