yellowsweatygorilla

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Canadian Megapatch 2019

The Canadian Megapatch adds the Canadian pyramid to Football Manager 19, with the forthcoming Canadian Premier League, an expanded Voyageurs Cup, League 1 Ontario, and Première Ligue de soccer du Québec. Over 1000 players, coaches, referees, and journalists have been added! This is in addition to 3d kits and logos!

Download file here -> http://www.yellowsweatygorilla.com/cpl/FM19-cdnmegapatch3.0.zip

If you want a more expansive CONCACAF region, with dynamic reputation (ie. Canadian Premier League will grow or fall in relation to other leagues in the continent), I recommend downloading and using these files that make this mod compatible with Uncle Sam’s North American files. (Remember NOT to activate my continental file if you use this one): http://www.yellowsweatygorilla.com/cpl/FM19-unclesam.zip

1 June 2019 Changes (3.1) -Roster update

11 May 2019 Changes (3.0) -Head-to-head match-ups between FCE, Valour, and Forge now determine CL qualifications (credit to modelcitizen) -Faces for each CanPL player and staff added (credit to workthespace, stevieg42) -Stadium photos (credit to workthespace) -AMSL with Cavalry and Edmonton U21 now playable -Added PCSL, MMSL, L1O Reserves, NSSL -Roster updates -Staff updates (including L1O/PLSQ) -Hundreds of minor tweaks to improve long-term play-throughs

27 April 2019 Changes (2.6) -Added all USports teams and staff -USports draftees on student contracts are now set as on loan from USport team -Added One Soccer journalists -Roster Updates

19 April 2019 Changes (2.5c) -Fixed bug where the CCL was not selecting the correct Canadian Championship winner for qualification -The best spring record between Edmonton, Forge, and Valour in year 1 now qualifies for the CL (unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to only take into account head-to-head record)

18 April 2019 Changes (2.5b) -Fixed bug that sent first week results to the Autumn Season -Roster update

13 April 2019 Changes (2.5) -Season now split into 10/18 games (adapted from Unclesam’s mod) -Roster updates -Coaching updates -Changed kits so that away kits feature more for certain teams -Adjusted youth coaching/recruitment ratings for CanPL teams -Lowered CanPL reputation to just below Mexican second division

8 April 2019 Minor Changes (2.4b) -Removed duplicate player/added journalist/roster update

7 April 2019 Changes (2.4) -Added 3d kits for all CanPL teams -Added 2d kits for all CanPL teams (courtesy of 'themodelcitizen') -Season now starts in 2019 <assuming you select CanPL as starting date> -Updated rosters and kit numbers -Added journalists

15 March 2019 Changes (2.3): -CCL will now draw the correct Mexican teams -CL will now qualify six teams for the CCL (credit goes to @UncleSam for figuring out a way to do this) -L1O Playoff format as per announcement -Some more missing L1O players added

7 March 2019 Changes (2.2): -Fixed L1O playoff format to reflect real world format -Added missing L1O players -Fixed a number of player positions -Got rid of 1 month gap in CanPL spring season -CanPL now also schedules matches on Sundays

Changes: -Canadian Premier League will have a split Spring/Fall season, with 12 games each half -Championship game between Spring and Fall winners (if it’s the same team, the 2nd best team from the overall table will be drawn) -All Canadian Premier League rosters are up to date as of 28 Feb 2019 -Updated club finances to reflect media deal announced -Canadian Championship format updated to reflect announced 2019 format (after the first year, the three later stage CPL teams will be allocated to: CPL champion, CPL runner-up, best team based on overall standings) -New clubs added to L1O: Durham United -New clubs added to PLSQ: CS Monteul

-CONCACAF Champions League will closely reflect to announced 2020 format with the following exceptions: Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica will each have one team automatically qualify;  three instead of six teams will qualify from CONCACAF League -CONCACAF League: CanPL will qualify to the preliminary stage; an addition of a 3rd place playoff game to determine final qualification to CCL

Previous Additions:

-Playable CPL, L1O, PLSQ -Full rosters for L1O, PLSQ, Canadian PDL (over 1000 players added) -Canadian referees, journalists (100+) -Usport coaches, physios, fitness coaches, etc. (100+) -Club and competition logos Screenshots:

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CUPE 3903 Day of Action - 18/07/18

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Refugees Welcome banner unfurled for the second match in the row after a community resistance led to MLSE overturning a previous decision to bar “Refugees Welcome” banners from the stadium. We were kindly invited to bring the banner over to RPB Supporters Group Section 112, where the banner received a raucous reception.

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TFC fans representing!

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These are my favourites from May Day 2015.

To view all of my photos from the rally: http://blog.yellowsweatygorilla.com/post/117910813533/may-day-2015-part-1

http://blog.yellowsweatygorilla.com/post/117910997843/may-day-2015-part-2

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May Day 2015 - Part 2

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May Day 2015 - Part 1

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Cross-Canada Day of Action: No 4 and 4! Toronto

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Solidaridogs of CUPE

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CUPE 3902/3903 Support Rally

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I finally bought a used Olympus OM-D E-M5, which will serve as my primary camera. Very impressed with its capabilities considering its small size. I still need a prime lens, but the kit lens was fairly sharp for what it is. Sceneries are from Princess Point in Hamilton, ON.

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Social Work as a ‘Bullshit Job’: Critiques of Social Work’s Potential for Social Justice in the Context of Professionalization and its Code of Ethics

I recently participated in a focus group examining “contemporary social work students’ responses to social justice practice principles as stated in the Social Work Code of Ethics”, and thought I’d collect some of the ideas I had shared about the topic.

Some see the code of ethics and mobilization within the profession as a venue for the furthering of social justice, but a broader analysis of social work and my experience in the field has led me to find this problematic. I do believe, as Bonnycastle’s “From Social Equality to Compassion: A Critique of the 2005 CASW Code of Ethics” expressed, that the code can illuminate trends that are occurring in the field. Bonnycastle specifically suggested that the trends seem to sway towards neoliberalism. The removal of mentions of egalitarianism and humanitarianism from the code’s preamble was telling, but I believe that even the elements of the code referring to social justice that have remained are not liberatory. The problem is, “Value 2: In Pursuit of Social Justice” makes no mention of collective action; social justice is understood through the lens of social welfare and policy. Social justice is understood as a service provided to people. With this underlying assumption, it is unsurprising that there is no identification of broader systems and discourses (of capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy etc.) as a target of resistance. Instead, the code serves either as a call to innocence by avoiding mention of these processes (rendering these processes invisible – despite the impacts of these processes being ever present) or a reinforcement of end of history narratives that presuppose capitalist liberal democracy as a bygone conclusion, that resistance to these structures are futile or irrational.

For example, there are calls for equal protection under the law but no acknowledgement that the foundations of law itself, its very existence, was formed for the subjugation of and through the subjugation of others - whether in terms of colonial relationships or property rights. As well, there is an understanding of injustice as purely individual, instead of systemic. And by individual, I mean an understanding of injustice as issues of misguided intentions, ‘prejudices’, and stereotyping. I am not saying that these aren’t important to address, but a significant erasure has occurred by not bringing into account the broader discourses that lead to these behaviours. By not addressing the root causes, not only does this ‘social justice approach’ only serve as bandages at best, it serves to reinforce systemic oppression by implying that the issue is only to be addressed at an individual level, at worst.

Unsurprisingly, the definition of advocacy we often see and hear talked about in the field is largely limited to an individual micro level. For example, a social worker might help a client appeal an ODSP judgment; a social worker might challenge a psychiatrist’s understanding of a client’s self-expression; I even had a manager tell me once that I was doing good advocacy work by speaking to a psychiatrist to allow my client to stay at the hospital longer. Once again, this is not unimportant work. it is work that makes measurable differences to the lives of people we work with (well, at least in some of the examples), but they do not serve a liberatory end goal. They do not challenge the legitimacy of the existing social order and thus, can easily be appropriated and absorbed into dominant discourses, especially when the work does not occur in the context of collective action that challenges it. Like with diseases, emphasis on these forms of advocacy over others (mutations) can serve to make the dominant discourses more resistant to forces that challenge it, by giving an impression that substantive change can occur within its confines.

However, I think the bigger problem - the reason why mobilization around the code or to social work curriculum as it stands is unlikely to be very effective in achieving goals of social justice - is that it doesn’t challenge the central assumption of professionalization. And, this view is hardly a fringe perspective within the history of the field. Jane Addams, now considered a founder of the field, hated calling herself a social worker; she opposed professionalization. Instead, Addams believed in mutual aid, unlike the charity perspective that has become and remained predominant. She believed in considering the people we work with as ‘neighbours’ and ‘comrades’, instead of ‘clients’ or ‘service users’. Through this understanding, we can both provide the emotional and physical sustenance needed, while building movements to challenge broader discourses.

Importantly, this definition also allows us to recognize and legitimize the healing work of many outside the privileged white middle-class - whether it is pow wow ceremonies with First Nations, mutual aid societies in the Chinese migrant communities, or the Black Panther Party’s breakfast and medical programs. This recognition could also lead to acknowledgment that the broader conditions of colonialism and capitalism have taken away the capacity for communities to self-organize, heal, and remain autonomous - whether it is the banning of pow-wows or the proliferation of wage slavery through enclosure (I am specifically thinking of the examples of parents having to work multiple jobs etc. and having less time for relationships). It is only through this context and history that ‘professional’ service provider had emerged. We, as social workers, are an example of what Graeber called bullshit jobs, arbitrary jobs that have emerged through bureaucratization in capitalism. And just as some of the jobs that Graeber had focused on - bankers, managers - are the exclusive realms of the largely white middle-class, care and healing work has also become increasingly exclusive. Now, in order to be deemed a legitimate care-given or provider of resources, one often has to obtain a MSW, a major obstacle to those without the money or know-how to navigate academia. While historically, responses to loss or tragedy would have been to emphasize community support, today, a grief counsellor is brought in - with limited measurable improvements. The gap between the service-provider and the receiver has continued to increase and with it, the emphasis on discourses that paint the people we work with as objects of intervention. This discourse stands in opposition to community mobilization and community approaches to problems. And despite genuine and well-intentioned attempts of some in the field to incorporate social critique in their work (e.g. narrative therapy, open dialogue approach, feminist therapy), these attempts often serve to reinforce or strengthen dominant discourses if this work does not occur in the context of community building and if this work does not challenge the idea of expert knowledge. I am still uncertain whether these contradictions can be reconciled.

Returning to questions of colonialism, a perfect example to what I am describing is the reservation system. Indigenous people were taken from their lands, places where they obtained sustenance, and had white ‘Indian agents’ that serve as gatekeepers to food and tools. As social workers, despite good intentions and the fact that we do sometimes do work that help mitigate the effects of oppressive discourses, we as professionals – perhaps more importantly – play a role of maintaining oppression, simply by being social workers. We must recognize that we are ‘Indian agents’ on a much broader scale. Ryan offered an important critique regarding how the use of ‘Indian Agents’ as a metaphor “undermines the specificity of particular histories”. It’s also particularly important as social workers served literally as ‘Indian Agents’ in countless examples, such as the 60s scoop, when social workers took indigenous children away from their families.

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UTSU Takeover

In light of the recent developments at University of Toronto student politics, thought I'd bring up the time student activists took over UTSU, in opposition to their tacit support of university policies that would have led to the eviction of APUS and increase in student fees to subsidize athletic facilities.

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Anarchist Re-Imaginations of Mental Healthcare

Today, I attended a great talk by Bonnie Burstow on anarchist re-imaginations of mental health care, entitled ‘Toward a World with Commons and without Psychiatry: an Anarchist Vision’. The talk spoke to a lot of my concerns having worked in the mental health field for the past couple years, but also spoke to some of my aspirations for the provision of mental healthcare in a collective manner. Firstly, Burstow outlined the foundations of the contemporary mental health field and its interventions into the lives of those deemed unwell - parens patriae and the responsibility of the state to protect. Parens patriae (parent of the nation) is the notion that the state - like a 'patriarch' - could and should intervene in the lives of people when the state deems it to be in the people's best interest - as defined by the state. The second foundation is the idea that the state is responsible for protecting the peace or its citizens from the other. These two assumptions underpin our practices as mental health provider and through its application serves as a means of social control of those understood as different, while reinforcing state power. 

To counter this, Burstow suggests that there is a need for what she calls mad literacy. Mental health professions - and society-at-large - are largely mad illiterate. She described this as a lack of understanding or willingness to understand those whose behaviours do not conform to social norms. In one example, she spoke of a woman who would knock on doors at night naked. This, to many, would be an act indicative of irrationality and would demand detainment or removal. However, after discussions with this woman, a different conclusion could be found. Firstly, clothing is often seen as representative of civilization. Thus, a shedding of clothing can be understood as shedding the trappings of civilization. Secondly, this individual was acutely aware of global events, watching news of war spreading around the world and issues of poverty every evening. Turns out, she would go door-to-door out of exasperation and a desire to warn others of the bad news. Her behaviour may not be expected, but at the same time, is it that irrational to consider that extra-ordinary action may be a reasonable response to war and poverty?

So, what would be the response to this from an anarchist perspective? Burstow suggests the idea of befriending, a return to an emphasis on basic human relationship building. In terms of what this would look like in practice, in the case of the woman whom felt compelled to knock on doors at night, the apartment residents could come together to discuss solutions. Perhaps a committee of volunteers could be organized, whereby, on a rotational basis, neighbours could sit and comfort the individual during nights of anxiety. Perhaps, a platform could be provided for this individual to express the causes for her concern. These solutions may appear vague, but the idea is not to prescriptive but to harness the creativity of the community. Burstow called for the "commoning of services", returning healing back to the commons. A return of healing to the commons requires the challenging of expert knowledge, the idea that mental health care should remain in the purview of mental health professionals. Burstow critiqued professionalization, suggesting that the idea for the need for professional responses is rooted in mad illiteracy (for further exploration on how professional responses can be problematic, check out my previous post on violence against racialized communities). The use of the term befriending, as well as, the follow-up conversation on countering expert knowledge reminded me of a number of anecdotes both from my social work training and at work. During my therapy internship at a university counselling service, our counselling sessions were recorded and analyzed after by a group of psychologists and social workers. I was told time and time again, "you are being a friend, not a therapist". I really struggled at this placement, and finally quit with my confidence shot. I had shared this anecdote with Burstow, whom responded, "in other words, you were not acting like a jackass". I have also heard persistently the critique that many clients just want us to be friends, and that if it got to the point where we were just 'acting as friends', clients should be discharged. Others have even suggested that services that only served to have workers befriend  clients should have their funding cut altogether. Burstow believes that these comments come from a subconscious desire to defend the profession. The idea is to discourage organic human connectivity as a response to mental health challenges, since anyone has the capacity to engage in this. Indeed, when I heard these comments at my internship, underlying all my self-conscious thoughts about ineptitude was also a murmur of "but I want to be their friend?"  This discussion of professionalization also reminded me of David Graeber's popular article, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. A previous comment I made regarding the article seems relevant:

How much of the need for my role as a social worker is simply created by the modern capitalist condition that takes away from people's capacity to build meaningful connections and maintain relationships with friends and family? After this circumstance is manufactured, whereby people lack the time or capacity to connect, I get sent in to 'look after' people feeling completely alone and marginalized. And, this is not to say that as social workers, our jobs are meaningless.I would like to think that many genuine relationships and connections are made through our work. However, the idea of the mending of social relations as a professional specialization is surely a unique product of our time and one that would boggle the minds of anyone from outside. 

It is not to say that there is no role to be played by people whom want to focus on mental healthcare as their line of work. However, Burstow believes that the emphasis should be placed on skill-sharing with other community members, to train others with the goal of building autonomy. This vision differs significantly from what others have written regarding social services from an anarchist perspective. For example, Chris Spannos's reimagining social services for a participatory society argues that the possibility of having more resources dedicated to social services will be realized in an anarchist society - this I don't disagree. However, he fails to acknowledge how institutional mental health care is inherently counter to ideas of collectivity and liberation. He even goes on to suggest ACT teams as a positive model and that the DSM should only be adapted to new realities instead of abolition.  

Ultimately, Burstow posits three challenges for professionals in the mental health field whom have a desire to resist the current arrangements:

1. Investigate how we can increase the credibility of everyday people and minimize ourselves;  2. Investigate how we can transfer our skills to the common;  3. Investigate how we can help those that come into contact with us build community 

I agree that these are crucial questions we must attempt to answer if we are to respond to emotional struggles in a way consistent with liberatory values. 

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The Mental Health Field and Our Complicity in Police Brutality and Repression of Racialized People

During Canadian Mental Health Association's annual Black History Month panel today, I was pleasantly surprised, even shocked, to see Kabir and Letanya representing the Justice for Jermaine campaign at my office. They gave a great talk about the circumstances behind Jermaine Carby, another young man murdered by the police and someone whom was going through the mental health system, as well as the context of police brutality - as did Jordon Veira and Tennial Rock. 

The talk focused on the important and urgent need for continued opposition to the police and their targeting of Black and other marginalized people. However, often missing within the mental health field is acknowledgment of our complicity in this brutality we claim to oppose. Just as the police has a long history of supporting state and capital in the subjugation of racialized people, psychiatry and the broader field of mental health has not only assisted in this process but stood as a henchman, equal in standing. 

Drapetomania was a common diagnosis given to Black slaves who ran or resisted against the slave master, with the idea being that a racialized person was inherently passive and that resistance itself was a sign of mental disorder. In the 1950s and 60s, thousands of civil rights activists were locked up in asylums and diagnosed with schizophrenia on the basis that resistance in the face of tyranny (violence as they called it) was a major symptom (in fact, countless studies have shown that racialized people are still disproportionately diagnosed with schizophrenia). I even remember reading that Malcolm X had a psychiatric assessment as a part of his FBI file. 

Here in Canada, I often think of the example of a Chinese man in 1930s BC who was left wandering destitute and homeless after suffering injuries from a coal mine explosion. In utter frustration, he hurled a brick through a Bank of Montreal window hoping for some reprieve through arrest - food and shelter. He was quickly taken to a mental asylum and deemed unwell. When he refused to stop speaking his native tongue of Cantonese, he was understood to have Been speaking-in-tongue. He, along with 65 others, was taken in chains by boat back to China - especially ironic, as many had been brought in chains as indentured servants to work in mines and on the railroad prior.  bell hooks suggests that anger in the face of oppression is legitimate, and the mental  health field has had a long history of debasing the notion of anger not only as legitimate but as necessary.

But of course, these are not anecdotes confined to history books, just as processes of colonialism leave an imprint on people, it leaves an imprint on 'professional practices'. The most overt is the use of 'forming'. For those not familiar with the mental health field, social workers - and indeed just about anyone - can apply to a psychiatrist or a justice of the peace for someone to be deemed a risk to themselves or others and brought into a hospital and held for 72 hours ... which then can be extended to two weeks ... three weeks ... and so forth. Many times social workers apply for a form with the best of intentions, genuine concern for the people they work with, but the consequences and coercive nature of this practice cannot be denied. In my own work, I have seen a number of these examples. One that has remained especially visible in my memory was when I was instructed to allow police into an agency-run residence to execute a forming. I shamefully was too scared to intervene as I witnessed police drag a racialized client through the hallway, across the icy driveway, into the police car. I remember intricately, the cut on his face, the blood on his chin. Prior to this, the individual had only asked that he be shown the form - well within his legal rights. Apparently, the two police officers had left it in the car and refused to bring it to him; instead, in mockery of the individual, an officer showed him his notepad, claiming it was 'magic'. I don't know what has happened to this individual since, or whether he had filed a complaint, but what I do know is that by silently standing by - whether or not I had been afraid - I had been complicit.

Other times, even good intentions are lacking, as I have seen people dragged back to hospitals as an administrator was unhappy that the 'patient's' discharge papers were missing the 'patient's' signature. This is admittedly pure speculation, but I would not be surprised that those formed - and unable to get out of the forming due to difficulties racialized people often face in navigating the psychiatric system - are largely racialized. But our complicity in violence is often more subtle, more insidious. I am referring to practices that serve the same purpose drapetomania and schizophrenia had. How often have we heard psychiatrists and other mental health professionals respond to concerns raised by Black clients of feeling followed or targeted as examples of delusional thought? In one fell swoop, the legitimacy of the person's complaints is erased. Even racialized practitioners often do this, despite a willingness to acknowledge and critique racial profiling by the police. We practice what Bonnie Burstow described as Mad Illiteracy - an inability or really, an unwillingness to understand or find meaning in statements made by those deemed 'mad'. If we were willing to listen, I would suggest that these individuals are only expressing a sensitivity (and by sensitivity, I don't mean it in a pathologizing context [ie. 'why are you being so overly sensitive']) to the very real violence that racialized communities experience everyday. And given the destructiveness of these state practices, why shouldn't these matters deserve an extra-ordinary response (note: I am paraphrasing an example provided by Burstow in her talk). The speakers spoke of a number of possible responses to this violence. Kabir spoke of the need for mental health agencies to cut ties with the police. This would indeed lead to measurable improvements to the lives of many however unlikely, but I would suggest the problem goes much deeper, that as I have described, the very foundations of the mental health field are rooted in racism and that divorcing it from the police does not acknowledge the fact that, the institutions serve not as subservient to the police but as a fellow henchman. Tennial suggested that the understanding of experience of racism through a mental health lens (specifically, PTSD) was a sign of progress and the proliferation of anti-oppression in mental health services/therapy was an example of resistance. While I would not downplay the need for recognition and examination of the emotional effects of racism, as can be seen with my previous arguments, it is very dangerous to understand experiences of racism through psychiatry as it will inevitably serve to devalue the expressions of oppressed people. Even if we were to ignore the more destructive elements of this, there is something profoundly problematic that people cannot acknowledge someone saying that racism has traumatized them as legitimate unless a psychiatrist describes this response as PTSD.  Secondly, I would suggest that the proliferation of anti-oppression principles - with therapists charging hundreds of dollars for empathatic therapy, narrative therapy, feminist therapy, and many more - not as progress but as appropriation. It is not to say that racialized people won't see benefits to attending such therapy (and a bit of self-disclosure, I see a therapist and am grateful for their assistance), and it is certainly preferable to more coercive forms of mental health treatment, but the one key element that makes mental health treatment crucial to the maintenance of oppressive structures - individualization - is not challenged. Instead of encouraging collective action, the promotion of these approaches suggests, despite the efforts of even the most well-intended therapist, that what needs to be fixed is the person instead of the social processes that have caused the damage. This in itself is a much broader question that I will leave to another day.

To end on a more positive note, I would like to emphasize another suggestion made by Kabir, that the most important response to these challenges is solidarity and collective action. One-on-one support can play a crucial role, but only in this context - of solidarity and collective action - can we avoid the trap of pathologization. Burstow also speaks to this in her talk, suggesting that the goal should be to replace mental health institutions and professionals as providers of mental health services with the community itself (note: I will be writing about Burstow's excellent talk on re-imagining mental heath care from an anarchist perspective shortly). If we truly want to address the emotional impact of racist violence, we must move away from the assumptions imposed by the mental health field. We must liberate the notion of healing from the self-proclaimed healers. And for those of us who work in the mental health field, many of us who came to this field out of a genuine desire to tend to the wounds inflicted by these very unjust arrangements, we must begin by acknowledging that we are complicit in the very violence against racialized people we say we oppose. 

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Playing with a Panasonic Micro Four Thirds GF2 my brother-in-law lent me, as I am considering purchasing an Olympus OMD EM5. I am actually really impressed at how a tiny camera handled such low light and high ISO sensitivity so well. Even the noise isn't too unpleasing.

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Playing with a Panasonic Micro Four Thirds GF2 my brother-in-law lent me, as I am considering purchasing an Olympus OMD EM5. I am actually really impressed at how a tiny camera handled such low light and high ISO sensitivity so well. Even the noise isn't too unpleasing.