Playing Left Wing

From Rink Rat to Student Radical

Yves Engler

What makes a student radical? Can students in the 21st century play a part in changing the world? What were those troublemakers thinking when they blocked former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Concordia University in Montreal? Playing Left Wing answers these and other questions by telling the story of how a former junior hockey player became media spokesperson for the “most radical” university students in Canada. An entertaining read, Playing Left Wing is also an informative inside look at the thinking, motivation and politics of the latest generation of student activists.

Contents

• My Year as Student Council Vice-president 
• The Route from Hockey to Student Activism 
• The Importance of Speaking Truth to Power 
• Some Good reasons To Be an Activist o More Good Reasons To Be an Activist 
• Another Good Reason To Be an Activist 
• Understanding the Game You’re Playing 
• After the Revolution o What I Learned in School 
• The Trouble with Activism 
• A Mini-manual of Creative Activism 
• If We Had No Activists 
• Alternatives to Capitalism 
• How Politics is Similar to Hockey

About the Author

Former Vice President of the Concordia Student Union, Yves Engler is a Montréal activist and author. He has published three books: The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy; Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical; and (with Anthony Fenton) Canada in Haiti: Waging War on The Poor Majority.

”Yves became a foreign-policy expert by working as a night doorman in Montreal...He’s in the mould of I. F. Stone, who wasted no time with politicians, who all have an agenda, but went instead straight to the public record.”
- Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail

Excerpt

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