Referendum and the Signified: Political Spectacle in the Form of Ten Questions, with Jeremy Appel

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Jeremy Appel joins Team Advantage to discuss the impeding Alberta referenda. He makes he case that this vote is largely theatre to justify actions the UCP government already intends to make, and emphasizes that the immigration questions, rather than the separation question, pose the most immediate danger.

References

Events

Anti-Imperial organizing in Calgary: An Interview with Wesam Cooley

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Activist and organizer Wesam Cooley sits down with Team Advantage to discuss the pragmatics of organizing street actions in a city like Calgary. We discuss a bit of Wesam’s personal history, the experience and theory he brings to his efforts, the challenges of coalition building in a radical movement, and how to deal with police repression. Wesam also tells us about the Calgary People’s Assembly and the upcoming event on July 5.

From Turtle Island to Palestine – Calgary People’s Assembly

Prairie Unpopulism – How the west wasn’t won (A Nenshi & Beck Story)

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Team Advantage joins forces with Team Unmaking Saskatchewan to dig into just what is wrong with our provincial wings of the New Democratic Party. The liberal outsider in Nenshi and the establishment backed pragmatist in Beck both seem allergic to doing politics. Are left populism and robust social democratic policy impossible here, or is there another path these parties could take?

Resources:

Related Episodes:

In Solidarity With Trans Children

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In Alberta as elsewhere reactionary backlash is targeting trans people, particularly trans children. Team Advantage examines the framing of this backlash and explores how it may be rooted in the cultural construction of childhood and education. We also review the history of trans identity, working towards a better framing and ways to stand in solidarity with trans children.

CONTENT WARNING – Discussions of childhood sexual abuse and suicide. Timestamp: 22:30- ~28:30. Also flagged in the audio so you can skip to avoid.

Additional Resources

Student Power with Dr. Roberta Lexier

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In 2024, university campuses across Canada saw encampments and other protest actions. In a new book and podcast series Dr. Roberta Lexier places these actions within the broader history of student activism in Canada since the 1960s. How does student activism differ between Québec and the rest of Canada? How can radical praxis can be maintained in a rapidly turning over student population? How does student activism intersect with off-campus politics – and when and why does the state respond with violent force?

Follow Dr. Lexier at @robertalexier.bsky.social and check out her work here:

Champagne Neoliberalism OR Effervescent Austerity

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In the lead up to the federal budget, the government signalled that it would include sharp cuts, referencing the steep austerity of the 1995 federal budget.

Team Advantage takes a look at what the budget actually contains, situates it in the current political moment and examines how it actually compares to 1995. We ask how the nation building rhetoric Carney campaigned on could actually have been implemented, and what can be done about a government at war with workers.

Further Reading

Related Episodes

Alberta Teachers and the End of Collective Bargaining: Text Resist to 55255

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Alberta’s teachers have been ordered back to work, and their right to strike, collectively bargain, or even present a legal challenge have been stripped away by Danielle Smith’s UCP. How is organized labour in Alberta responding to this existential threat?

Previous episodes on public education:

“Balance” in Climate Change, Cursive Writing: Alberta’s Curriculum Review
When Public Isn’t Public: Education in Alberta

Previous episodes on trade unions and collective bargaining:

Watch the entirety of the AFL’s October 29 response to Bill 2.

Read Gil McGowan’s feedback on Roberta Lexier’s presentation about the need to organize towards a general strike: https://x.com/gilmcgowan/status/1681761153826033666

Further reading:

Escape from the Planet of the Mines – Canada’s Resource Imperialism

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Canada exists to put holes in the ground and extract surplus value for shareholders. In this episode, originally recorded in 2021, Team Advantage opens the Canadian trench-coat to find total corporate impunity. We discus how the Canadian state facilitates resource extraction within its borders and around the world at the expense of the common good, then imagine what mining might look like in a better society.

Works Cited:

The Death and Life of Canadian Socialism – Live at the Progressive Publics Symposium

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Every century or so the Canadian left gathers at the Royal Canadian Legion #1 in downtown Calgary to inaugurate a new era of progress. In 1932 it was J.S. Woodworth and the gang at the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (which would become the NDP). On July 13, 2025 it was Team Advantage, Shama Rangwala, André Goulet, Roberta Lexier and Rob Rousseau.

This live recording begins with a discussion of what the Progressive Publics symposium is all about before saying goodbye to the NDP with a brief history. Then the team discusses the possibilities of a socialist project to come. With live heckling from the audience! (Mostly Jeremy Appel.)

Elbows to the Left – Is Canada Worth Fighting For?

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Rhetorical and real threats to Canadian sovereignty pose a tough question to critics of the Canadian state: Do we align with liberal nationalists in defense of the Canadian project or do we remain skeptical?

In this episode Team Advantage traces a brief history of Canadian nationalisms, including earlier attempts at imagining a socialist national project, in order to better understand the current moment of rising nationalist sentiment. We ask if it’s even possible to extricate a good Canadian nationalism from the history of colonial land theft and genocide that undergirds this state, revisit the one time Canada was actually cool, and offer trenchant critiques of Canadian civic statuary.

Works Cited

Related Episodes