Updated Schedule!
QPIRG McGill and the SSMU present….
CULTURE SHOCK 2011
October 17-21, 2011
On McGill Campus and in the Community
We are excited to bring you the sixth year of Culture Shock in Fall 2011! Mark it your calendars, its going to happen from OCTOBER 17-21!
Culture Shock is an annual event series dedicated to exploring the myths surrounding immigrants, refugees, indigenous people and communities of colour. Culture Shock seeks to bring together members of these communities to engage in dialogue about issues relevant to their lives, as well as to educate non-members around some of the issues faced by communities of colour in Canada and beyond. Every year, QPIRG and the SSMU bring panels, workshops, film screenings and fundraiser parties to McGill students and the broader Montreal community as part of the Culture Shock programming. Culture Shock is co-organized annually by the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).
All events are free and open to the public.
All venues are wheelchair accessible, unless otherwise noted.
Please keep an eye on the QPIRG McGill website for room changes, which may occur for the SSMU and QPIRG to act in solidarity with the striking MUNACA workers.
For childcare or translation, please reserve 48 hours in advance at qpirg@ssmu.mcgill.ca or call us at 514-398-7432.
*** NEW LOCATION: CULTURE SHOCK 2011 KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Monday, October 17th, 6pm
Art as a Weapon: Critical Thinking and the Media
Artist talk and Installation Project
Featuring Theodore A. Harris and Sundus Abdul Hadi
Clubs Lounge (4th floor), Shatner Building (3480 rue McTavish), McGill University
This year, QPIRG and the SSMU are thrilled to invite political collage artist, writer and poet Theodore Harris from Philadelphia, alongside Montreal-based painter and collage artist Sundus Abdul Hadi. Together these two socially conscious artists will discuss the idea of “Art as a Weapon: Critical Thinking and the Media,” with the aim of sparking discussion around how to use art as a tool for positive social change. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the artists, and will be accompanied by installation work from both artists.
Sundus Abdul Hadi was born to Iraqi parents in the UAE in 1984 and raised in Montreal, Canada. As a painter and multi-media artist, Abdul Hadi draws her reference from her frequent stays in the Middle East in juxtaposition to her critical consumption of the Western media. She has taken part in group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Dubai and Palestine, with solo shows of her multimedia series “Warchestra” held in Toronto, and Ottawa. She is currently working on a new series on “Flight.” For samples of her art, see http://www.warchestra.com/
Theodore A. Harris is a collagist, collage theorist, and poet based in Philadelphia.PA. In the words of poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka, Harris “ takes scraps of America North and threads them through his truthoscopic sensibility, for instance, pieces of newspapers, headlines, images from the diversity of our mostly grim experience, and he tells it to us again, and clearer.” Harris has co-authored with Amiri Baraka - Our Flesh of Flames (Anvil Arts Press). He has held residences at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center New Orleans, LA; at the 40th Street A-I-R Philadelphia, PA; at Hammonds House Museum and Resource Center of African American Art Atlanta, GA, and at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas New Haven, CT. He has exhibited in over 20 solo and group exhibitions; most recently, he curated Surface Politics: Looking Beneath Aesthetics and Formailism, Solan Joose Philadelphia, PA. For a sample of his art, see http://www.leftcurve.org/
Both artists will also have an ongoing installation from Monday, October 17th – Wednesday, October 20th at Café l’Artère, 7000 avenue du Parc.
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
WORKSHOP
Monday, October 17th, 1pm-3pm
Anti-Racism 101: Building Support Across Colourlines
Shatner Building, 3480 McTavish, Lev Bukhman Room (203)
This workshop is an opportunity for people of all backgrounds and experiences to learn (or learn more, or learn differently) about racism, experiences of racial discrimination, and practical ways of making a difference. Participants will look at racism as a complex issue that goes beyond generally rejected acts like hate speech and slurs. Participants will also have the opportunity to look at the different forms that racial discrimination can take in the university setting and beyond. Finally, through practical exercises, participants will learn skills and language that they can use to respond to discrimination and act in solidarity with other students and members of communities of colour.
Sarah Malik is an Equity Educational Advisor specialized in Race and Cultural Diversity at the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (www.mcgill.ca/equity_
KEYNOTE PANEL
Monday, October 17th, 6pm
Art as a Weapon: Critical Thinking and the Media
Clubs Lounge (4th floor), Shatner Building (3480 rue McTavish), McGill University
(Details above)
WORKSHOP
Tuesday, October 18th, 1pm-3pm
Temporary Foreign Workers and the Struggle for Migrant Justice
Shatner Building, 3480 McTavish, Lev Bukhman Room (203)
Presented by the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC)
Every year, more and more migrants are brought to Canada by the Conservative Government under the new Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Yet at the same time, we see the rates of deportations increasing and the prospects of coming to Canada for most potential immigrants decreasing. In 2010 more migrants came under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program than were accepted as Permanent Residents. Many of these migrants are forced to live as indentured labor under migrant worker programs where their right to be in this country is tied completely to their employers. This situation leaves little to no recourse for thousands of migrants across the country.
The Immigrant Workers Centre has been working alongside migrant workers and their families who have precarious status in Canada, often forced to work in temporary placement agencies which create highly exploitative work conditions. The Centre also works with Temporary Foreign Workers to defend their rights to stay permanently and to have their basic labor rights respected. This workshop will explore these campaigns and the growing use of migration as a form of exploitative labour by governments, and as a model of economic development by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The workshop will be presented by:
Tess Tessalona - Founder of the Immigrant Workers Centre and member of PINAY-Filipina Womens’ organization that works with domestic workers under the Live-In Caregiver Program
Abdel Kader Belaouni - Community Organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre. Kader spent four long years in sanctuary here in Montreal while fighting for his right to attain refugee status in Canada. He finally won his case in 2010.
WORKSHOP
Wednesday, October 19th, 1pm-3pm
NGOs and Social Change: A Workshop with Ponni Arasu
Shatner Building, 3480 McTavish, Lev Bukhman Room (203)
Non-government organisations have a history of about 30 years in India. Today, they have become the primary contexts within which social change work is imagined. This presentation will include stories from the early days of NGO-isation in India, with a special focus on women and gender related concerns, and will reflect on how this history has impacted social movements in India today. It will use the history of NGOs to raise larger questions on how processes of social change could be and are imagined and how they are framed by the very structures we hope to oppose. It will also reflect on the possible ways of thinking through which we could utilise and yet think beyond paradigms of rights, identities and ‘issue based work’ that this model forwards and imagine a focus and means of creating holistic radical change in our everyday work as activists.
Ponni Arasu is a queer feminist activist. She has worked with the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India; her work involves a range of human rights issues including gender, sexuality, labour and conflict. She co-founded a number of collectives that work on a range of issues relating to gender and sexuality including Anjuman, the Jawaharlal Nehru University students queer collective; and the Nigah media collective, based in Delhi. The collective has organised the annual Nigah Queer Fest in Delhi for the past three years. She is currently involved in a project to archive the lives of women in various social movements in India from the 1970s onwards. She has studied History and Law.
WORKSHOP
Thursday, October 20th, 1pm-3pm
Campus Life through Slanted Eyes: Issues of Race in Canadian Post-Secondary Education
Shatner Building, 3480 McTavish, Lev Bukhman Room (203)
Facilitators: Cassandra Zawilski, SSMU Equity Commissioner and Ryan Thom, SSMU Equity Outreach Coordinator
Cassandra Zawilski is the SSMU Equity Commissioner for 2011-12.
Ryan Thom is the SSMU Equity Outreach Coordinator for 2011-12. He loves getting his queer on, applying red nail polish, and kicking racial stereotypes to the curb.
This workshop is presented by SSMU Equity as part of an effort to identify and combat issues of systemic racism that directly affect the lives of people of colour on university campuses. The workshop title is inspired by recent anti-Asian media items, including Maclean’s “Too Asian” article, reactions to Amy Chua’s book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, and Alexandra Wallace’s ‘anti-Asian rant’ on YouTube. The workshop will use these media items, and the resulting controversy, as a starting point to open up a broader discussion of the academic, economic, and social institutions that act as barriers to People of Colour on university campuses – students, faculty, and staff. The workshop will also briefly look into the history of movements led by students of colour, such as Black and Latino movements on Californian campuses, as well as intersections between feminist, queer, decolonization, and anti-racist organizing. Together, we will deconstruct the stereotype of the ‘model minority’, debunk myths such as ‘self-segregation’ and ‘reverse racism’, and devise practical forms of resistance and solidarity for use on campus. Some discussion and explanation of the SSMU Equity Policy and Student Equity Committee will also take place, and students will receive information on filing equity complaints with SSMU.
***NEW LOCATION: PANEL DISCUSSION with Salwa Ismail
Thursday, October 20th, 6pm
Analysis and reflections on the revolutions in Egypt and Syria
Part of the Tadamon! Teach-in: Reflections on the Revolutions in the ‘Arab World’
Café l’Artère, 7000 avenue du Parc (#80 bus)
Since the fall of 2010, popular uprisings have taken place across North Africa and the “Middle East,” challenging authoritarian regimes, and in some cases toppling long standing rulers. Movements in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq and Syria have mobilized in various forms against austerity measures, authoritarian governments, and imperialism. In North America, Western media outlets and the academia have attempted to grapple with the causes and effects of these uprisings, discussing the implications of these changes. This panel will discuss these issues, and is part of a two-day teach-in organized by Tadamon! about the uprisings in the “Middle East” and North Africa. The goal is to critically examine the issues, and for participants to find out how to get involved.
Salwa Ismail is professor of politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and author of Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State.
Tadamon! is a Working Group of QPIRG McGill.
WORKSHOP
Friday, October 21st, 1pm-3pm
Refugees in the City: A Workshop by B. Refuge
Shatner Building, 3480 McTavish, Lev Bukhman Room (203)
This workshop will discuss refugee rights in the Canadian context, by presenting personal refugee stories, providing an introduction to a few of the programs available to refugees through community organizations (with a focus on B. Refuge and Montreal City Mission), and finally discussing how to get involved. The workshop is scheduled to last one hour, with the option of staying for a short documentary film screening at the end.
Viktor Anyangwe is a member of the governing body of Montreal City MIssion and is also a volunteer with this organization. Viktor is a doctor, born in Cameroon, and also a refugee claimant in Canada.
Workshop co-presented by B. Refuge (a Working Group at QPIRG McGill), Montreal City Mission and McGill Chaplaincy.
***NEW LOCATION: TEACH-IN
Sunday, October 23rd, 11am-4pm
Reflections on the Revolutions in the “Arab World”
Room H-760 and H-762 Hall Building, Concordia University, 1500 de Maisonneuve O.
With workshops happening all day, from an introduction to the Arab Revolutions to a discussion of the UN bid for Palestinian statehood, Tadamon! will continue on from Thursday’s panel discussion for a participatory day of discussions and reflections on the Revolutions in the “Arab World.”
11:00am -12:00pm: Welcome
Concurrent Workshops:
1a) 12:00 – 1:30pm Introduction to the Arab Revolutions
A 101 workshop on the origins and causes of the revolutions now taking place across the Arab world.
1b) 12:00 – 1:30pm The Ongoing Revolution in Syria
An analysis of the struggle for freedom in Syria, including historical background, current situation, and solidarity efforts in Canada.
Half an hour Break
2a) 2:00 – 3:30 pm The UN Bid for Palestinian Statehood
A critical analysis of the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN, focusing on the larger contextual issues of refugee rights
2b) 2:00 – 3:30pm Linking Our Struggles: Resisting Austerity in Montreal
Making the links between struggles against austerity here in Montreal and those in the Arab world.