Antifascist Dad Podcast

My guest today is Jennie Worden, running a fantastic socialist campaign for Toronto City Council in my very own Ward 19, Beaches–East York. On the agenda: what choral music teaches about community. What tenant organizing teaches about shared struggle. Why Brad Bradford, our former councillor now running for mayor, is such a heel (my word not Jennie's), and what we have to do to repair the damage of 15 years of austerity at City Hall.

On Patreon this week is my summary of the attacks on Avi Lewis that followed his Yom Kippur post. I think it’s a crucial issue because right now, attacking critics of Israel, genocide and neocolonial brutality as antisemitic is the same thing as attacking the political alternative to capitalism and imperialism at the last moment in which we can bring the planet back from the brink.

Sources

Jennie Worden for Beaches–East York: campaign site
Beach Metro: Jennie Worden answers our question (Sept 2026)
Beach Metro: Erskine-Smith on his decision to run for Beaches–East York councillor
Toronto Life: The Good Liar: Meet Toronto's worst landlord
CP24: Owner and director of 500 Dawes Rd. fined for fire safety violations
Mayor Olivia Chow: Update on actions to protect tenants at 500 Dawes
CP24: Ford instructs Attorney General to seek injunction against Al-Quds rally
CBC: Al-Quds Day rally proceeds after judge rules against Ford government's injunction
CP24: NDP leader Lewis criticized over Yom Kippur post
CBC: Lewis says he was "absolutely not" holding all Jews responsible
CBC: Synagogue shooter's online username alluded to killing Jews, friend says
Ricochet: National Post crosses dangerous line with column on NDP leader
The Breach: I'm familiar with death threats. They show Avi Lewis is having an impact

Socials

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

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With Toronto's municipal election set for October 26, I'm spending the next few weeks with local socialist candidates! First is Chiara Padovani: social worker, food bank worker, co-founder of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, and candidate in Ward 5, where she came within 94 votes of unseating Frances Nunziata in 2022.

Chiara describes growing up in Mount Dennis, a social assistance system that hasn't kept pace with inflation in decades, and political insiders who told her not to knock on apartment doors because tenants don't vote. She walks me through the 16-month rent strike against Dream Unlimited, the sit-in that got a senior tenant back into her home, and Ontario's Bill 60. And Chiara explains why she thinks the tenant movement is where the labour movement was a century ago. 

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

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Sources 

Chiara Padovani 2026 campaign platform
Toronto and York Region Labour Council endorsement of Chiara Padovani
Toronto Integrity Commissioner report on Councillor Nunziata, July 2024
Canadian Dimension: Inside Toronto's growing tenant revolt
The Green Line: What is the Toronto Tenant Union
NOW Toronto: Over 300 Toronto tenants still on rent strike
Progressive International: Canada, How Tenants Fought Back
Toronto Tenant Union: Tenants take Barney River to the LTB
CBC News: Ontario tenants accused of arrears must pay half to raise complaints under Bill 60
NYC Mayor's Office: Rental Ripoff Report release
City Limits: 3 Takeaways from the First Rental Ripoff Report
NYC Mayor's Office: Housing Court Fast T...

I sit down with Kevin Skerrett, a pension researcher who spent thirty years as a Senior Research Officer for CUPE and co-edited The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism. We trace how Canadian pension funds went from holding government bonds to becoming some of the world's most aggressive private-market investors.

We start with the nineteenth-century labour movement's demand for a universal, state-provided pension, and follow the mid-century turn toward employer-specific, financialized plans in the US, before tracing the same shift through the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan.

Kevin walks me through his own disillusionment negotiating joint union trusteeship in the 1990s, OMERS' role in privatizing Nova Scotia schools, and CPP Investment Board's involvement in privatizing Rio de Janeiro's water system under Bolsonaro. We close on what a $30 billion OTPP surplus could fund if fiduciary law required something other than maximum return.

Up now on Patreon: my interview with Chiara Padovani, running for Toronto City Councillor in Ward 5.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: @matthew_remski
YouTube: @antifascistdad
TikTok: [@antifascistdad]
Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast
Order Antifascist Dad

Sources

Kevin Skerrett, OMERS AC board bio
The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism (Cornell University Press / LERA, 2018)
Kevin Skerrett interview on pension fund capitalism, rabble.ca
Chiara Padovani, 2026 campaign, Toronto & York Region Labour Council

Part two of my conversation with Dr. Lara Sheehi about her outstanding book From the Clinic to the Streets, focusing on how the "psychic intrusions" of confusion, fear, despair, and exhaustion function as tools of imperial and state power that  disconnect people from movements.

We review a 1970  interview with Ghassan Kanafani, whose refusal to accept "dialogue" as a neutral premise models what Sheehi calls psychic militancy. She also reframes grieving as reality-testing and divestment from power's narrative, contrasting it with Mark Fisher's diagnosis-without-tools "capitalist realism."

Sources

From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures — Pluto Press

Psychic Militancy Podcast

Lara Sheehi — Palestine Book Awards

Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences — Anton Jäger, Verso Books

Occult Features of Anarchism — Erica Lagalisse, PM Press

"Rejecting the Conversation Between the Sword and the Neck" — Verso Books, on the 1970 Kanafani/Carleton interview

PFLP Ghassan Kanafani, Richard Carleton interview COMPLETE

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? — Mark Fisher

Socials:

Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram @matthew_remski
YouTube @antifascistdad
TikTok [@antifascistdad]
Patreon antifascistdadpodcast

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Since October 7th, young people who have joined antifascist and anti-genocide organizing on campus have faced one of the most disorienting accusations available: that their solidarity with Palestinians is antisemitic.

This week I talk with Daniel Sailofsky, a University of Toronto prof and member of the non-Zionist Jewish Faculty Network, about what it was actually like inside the U of T encampment — Shabbat services, multifaith prayer, Zionist agitators trying to provoke a reaction — versus how it was covered in the press.

We dig into the federal government's CASE report (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences), published in August. Its respondent were recruited through avowedly Zionist organizations, it had no safeguards for verifying identity, and its definitions of anti-Zionism and antisemitism were absolutely melted.

Is this conflation of terms the last rhetorical weapon defenders of a genocide have left?

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: [@antifascistdad]

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Sources/resources

https://www.danielsailofsky.com/ 

Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund https://www.pcrf.net/

https://decolonizepalestine.com/myths/ Decolonize Palestine, a simple and clear site that demystifies a lot of Israeli propaganda

CASE (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences) report – Canada.ca

Flawed by Design: JFN's response to the CASE report

Episode 44: Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 2: Gaza Encampment w/ Sara Rasikh – Antifascist Dad Podcast

Episode 42: Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 27: The Proto-Fascism of "Trust Me" Carney w/ Leftie Jane – Apple Podcasts

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act – Department of Justice Canada

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence, by Benjamin S. Case – Firestorm Books

Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, by Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon – Grove Atlantic