Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Mark Smolinski writes that wearing a mask to limit the spread of COVID-19 is best characterized as a sign of mutual respect. (But sadly, that goes a long way toward explaining the anti-mask movement among adherents to political movements built on exclusion and dehumanization of others.) And John Michael McGrath argues that Ontario should be moving toward a rule requiring masks, rather than resting on its laurels in having merely flattened the curve.

- Iglika Ivanova examines how different types of workers have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic in British Columbia - with people already facing precarious work situations suffering the most. And Bruce Arthur comments on how migrant farm workers in Ontario have been left to bear the risks of COVID-19 with no support from the employers or governments who have chosen to put them in danger.

- Nick Falvo examines the stingy social policies in Canada and other English-speaking countries - including a pitiful ratio of 15 units of affordable housing being lost in Canada between 2011 and 2016 period for every subsidized unit created.

- Meagan Day writes about the increasingly-recognized connections between race, class and police violence. Elizabeth Renzetti discusses how Indigenous women are all too often hurt rather than helped when they seek assistance from law enforcement, while Kim Beaudin and Justin Piché note that the continued mass incarceration of Indigenous people is an insurmountable obstacle to reconcilation. And David Bell reports on the violence used by Calgary's police against a man who was sleeping peacefully until their arrival.

- Finally, Nora Loreto discusses how Canada too easily avoids answering for its own structural racism by pointing to the U.S.' failings.