About 

SAMANTHA PONTING is a Toronto (T’karonto) commmunications professional, labour activist, and community organizer.

She currently works as a Communications Officer for the Society of United Professionals, where she uses strategic communications to educate, organize, and mobilize. She is passionate about engaging with the labour movement to advance social justice and equity. 

A lifelong independent journalist, Samantha has written on such subjects as migrant rights, civil liberties and Islamophobia, labour struggles, healthcare, and Canadian corporate accountability for a variety of Canadian independent media outlets. She has served on two editorial boards. Her interest in documentary filmmaking was sparked by a formative trip she took as a freelance journalist in 2019 to Central America to investigate the labour practices of Canadian garment companies operating overseas.

Passionate about research, Samantha co-led a research project investigating workplace racism in BC’s healthcare sector, and in 2020 authored a groundbreaking 78-page report on the subject, which received praise from the BC Ministry of Health’s lead for Indigenous Health. Her writing on border security and migration can be found in the book compilation Urban (In)Security: Policing the Neoliberal Crisis, published by Red Quill Books.

Her most recent community organizing has focused on international solidarity efforts with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network and tenant organizing with the Oakwood Vaughan Tenant Union.