Panels
Thursday, October 18th – 6:30pm
Reading room, Atwater Library, 1200 Atwater Ave (metro Atwater)
Book Launch: Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice
Presented by Jill Hanley, Aziz Choudry & Eric Shragge
Jill Hanley is Associate Professor in the McGill School of Social Work. She is cofounder and an active member of the Immigrant Workers Centre.
After close to 40 years teaching in universities, the last 12 in the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia, Eric Shragge has escaped through retirement and has joined the Immigrant Workers Centre as a volunteer staff member.
Aziz Choudry is Assistant Professor, International Education, in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University.[/EXPAND]
with Evelyn Calugay, Edward Ou Jin Lee & Norman Nawrocki
Evelyn Calugay is an active member of PINAY (Filipino Women’s Organization in Quebec) in 1995 and has been a full-time (volunteer) organizer since 2005.
Edward Ou Jin Lee is currently a doctoral student at the McGill School of Social Work. He is involved in a number of community-based initiatives, including Ethnoculture (an annual event to raise awareness about LGBTQ racialized communities) and AGIR (LGBTQ refugee and newcomer support and advocacy group).
Norman Nawrocki is a long-time community organizer, violinist, actor and cabaret artist who has recorded and released some fifty albums both solo and with his bands and written several books of poetry and fiction. He teaches part-time at Concordia University in the School ofCommunity and Public Affairs.”[/EXPAND]
Description: Grounded in the struggles in Canada, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as transnational activist networks, Organize!: Building from the Local for Global Justice links local organizing with global struggles to make a better world. From community-based labor organizing strategies among immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism for Palestine to organizing in support of Indigenous Peoples, the diverse range of authors reflect critically on the tensions, problems, limits, and gains inherent in a range of organizing contexts and practices.
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Friday, October 19th – 6pm
Leacock 219, McGill University (metro McGill)
Migration, Prisons and Art:
Resistance to Borders and the Prison Industrial Complex
WIth Favianna Rodriguez, the Termite Collective & No One is Illegal
Favianna Rodriguez is a celebrated printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland, California. Using high-contrast colors and vivid figures, her composites reflect literal and imaginative migration, global community, and interdependence. Whether her subjects are immigrant day laborers in the U.S., mothers of disappeared women in Juárez, Mexico, or her own abstract self portraits, Rodriguez brings new audiences into the art world by refocusing the cultural lens. Through her work we witness the changing U.S. metropolis and a new diaspora in the arts.
Cera Yiu and Andrea Figueroa from No One Is Illegal Montreal. No One Is Illegal-Montreal The No One Is Illegal campaign of Montreal is part of a worldwide movement of resistance, struggling collectively for the self-determination of migrants and indigenous peoples. We organize to be part of the resistance movement within the walls of Fortress North America. We recognize that struggles for self-determination, and for the free movement of people against colonial exploitation, are led by the communities who fight on the frontlines. The No One Is Illegal campaign lends tangible support to these struggles in our capacity as both participants and allies. In doing so, we seek to contribute to building a global movement for justice and dignity, while building links between communities of resistance locally and worldwide.
Maria Forti is a part of the Termite Collective, which is a group of creative and concerned people who want to expose the ever increasing repressive nature of prison through political parody and criminal cabaret. We usually write plays, but sometimes also give workshops.
Description: This year, QPIRG and the SSMU are thrilled to invite political printmaker and digital artist and organizer Favianna Rodriguez from Oakland, alongside Montreal-based organizers from No One Is Illegal- Montreal and Recon. Together they will discuss Migration, Prisons and Art, with the aim of sparking discussion around how borders and prison are interconnected in profiting out of migrants in the US and Canada and ways that art can be used as a tool of resistance. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers, and will be accompanied by installation work from Favianna Rodriguez at Le Cagibi.