The Many vs The Money
Call for participation: Info Fair and Workshop proposals
On Saturday, Oct. 4 and Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025, the NB Media Co-op and collaborators will host a New Brunswick Social Forum in Fredericton under the theme: The Many vs The Money.
We are calling on everyone interested in building a fairer future in New Brunswick to participate. The NB Social Forum will feature an Info Fair, inspiring Speakers, and Workshops to inform and foster reflection on ways to strengthen social movements, activist groups, and community-based solutions in practice and theoretical analyses. We aim to build capacity and solidarity to more effectively fight capitalism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy and other structures that divide and exclude us.
New Brunswick has a strong activist community and many civil society and community-based groups and organizations. We have had many important wins. Yet we need to do more and do it more strategically, especially now at a time of economic upheaval when consequential decisions are being made on our behalf.
Inequalities are on the rise in New Brunswick and all over the planet. For many people struggling to pay rent, secure, affordable housing is an impossible dream. Many workers are not unionized and many do not have a living wage. Migrant workers are tied to one employer, ‘a breeding ground for modern day slavery,’ and are denied services because of their immigration status. Community members need support in their efforts to ensure they are resilent to the changing climate. Local farmers struggle to sell their produce to New Brunswick communities while large food retailers make record profits from imported food. The voices and desires of Indigenous nations and communities are marginalized on their unceded homelands and their rights outlined in the UN Declaration are not fully recognized. Ecosystems that sustain us are contaminated or vulnerable to toxins.
The NB Social Forum will share examples of and ideas about community-based solutions: create worker and consumer cooperatives; de-asphalt, revitalize and sustain our living environments; develop energy democracy; build non-market housing; decentralize power; collectively share care work; demilitarize our societies; strengthen solidarity actions with communities experiencing genocide, war and displacement globally, and create the conditions for a decent life for all.
We must move beyond criticism, to organize and move forward, to develop more ways for to engage with our neighbours, colleagues, and all New Brunswickers, to root ourselves in our living spaces, to develop bonds of trust with those around us, to foster community. These alliances will be necessary to fight against exploitation, protect our natural spaces, and build lively, livable neighbourhoods together.
We invite you to propose Info Fair tables and Workshops for the NB Social Forum to share your materials, ideas, tactics, strategies, reviews of past and recent experiences, and alternative models that enable us to celebrate and move towards a post-capitalist world.
Submit an Info Fair and / or Workshop proposal
The NB Social Forum will be held at Cathedral Memorial Hall in Fredericton on the first weekend in October 2025. The NB Social Forum will be bilingual: participants can present information and workshops in either English or French, or both. Translation will not be provided.
The Info Fair and Workshops will be on Saturday, Oct. 4. We have space booked for xx tables in the large hall and 8 workshops, each for two hours, in smaller rooms. Info fair participants are responsible to supply literature and banners for their tables. Workshop proposers are responsible to organize their workshops and cover all their workshop costs.
The NB Social Forum will supply the Info Fair tables and Workshop rooms at no charge, invite plenary speakers to inspire and motivate us, and publicize and advertise the Forum to attract as many people as possible. The NB Social Forum will be open to all participants, free of charge. We have limited subsidies available (maximum $300) for workshop organizers to help defray travel for groups in need.
Use this form to submit a proposal. All proposals include the name of contact person with email address and cell number, the name of group represented, and website if available. Info Fair proposals can choose either a full table (size here) or half a table, depending how much literature you have to share. Workshop proposals will include the title of the workshop, how many people you would like to participate in your workshop, and a workshop description (250 words maximum) including what you hope participants will learn. The organizers will review submissions and confirm space as proposals arrive, so please submit early to ensure your space. The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM on August 29, 2025. If you have any questions, please email us at info@nbmediacoop.org.
Who is organizing the NB Social Forum 2025?
The host, NB Media Co-op, currently in its 16th year of publication, is the longest-running media cooperative in Canada. Our flagship publication, also called NB Media Co-op, began in 2009 following a successful New Brunswick Social Forum in 2008 in Fredericton, where 200 people rooted in a variety of social movements gathered under the hopeful banner, “Another New Brunswick and World are Possible.” As an independent media outlet, we publish stories not covered in the mainstream commercial media. Our stories take a social justice lens and include the perspectives of workers, students, Indigenous and racialized peoples, and other groups marginalized by society.
Collaborator CEDAR (Contesting Energy Discourses through Action Research) is a five-year project in the Environment & Society program at St. Thomas University. Partners and collaborators are the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group Inc. (PRGI) representing the Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada, Wolastoq Grand Council, NB Media Co-op, Sierra Club Canada Foundation, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and academic researchers at the Université de Moncton and University of British Columbia.
In preparing this call for workshop proposals, we drew inspiration from La Grande Transition event in Montreal in May-June 2025 and The Many vs The Money event in Halifax in February 2025. Check back on this page for updates. Updated March 19, 2025
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