QPIRG McGill

Starting, Sustaining, and Strengthening a Community Collective
2021-03-17 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | Quebec
Imagining a better future, one beyond this point of current struggle, requires empowering communities with the resources needed to create this future by themselves and for themselves. But what is a community? How does one build or partake in a community? What are the resources needed by a community? How does one offer or distribute resources within a community? And how does one instigate collective communication and action within a community?

Community Cooks Collective is a mutual-aid organization founded in April 2020 in response to the exacerbated food insecurity experienced by many in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through months of growth and adaptation, the organization has developed into the hub of an expanding community revolving around passions for cooking and for acting in solidarity with those experiencing food insecurity. It is currently run by a group of dedicated volunteers who coordinate the cooking, collection, and transportation of meals to local Indigenous shelter Resilience Montreal on a weekly basis.

Drawing on my experience co-founding and co-managing this collective, I will guide workshop attendees to finding their own answers to the questions posed above and provide tangible steps to addressing these responses. Many practical facets of community organizing will be explored in detail, such as recruiting new collective members, facilitating meetings, applying for funding, keeping record of finances, using social media effectively, and planning for long-term sustainability. Points of discussion will include:

how to maximize accessibility
how to prioritize Indigenous solidarity
how to function in a non-hierarchical manner
how to use mixed-media for educational purposes
how to emphasize mutual-aid.

The objective of this workshop will be to empower community members to explore and realize their own potential in instigating the change they wish to see in their immediate environment.

Tomo (she/they) is a community organizer and musician originally from Vancouver, now based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, she co-founded Community Cooks Collective, a mutual-aid organization that co-ordinates the weekly cooking and delivery of meals in bulk to local shelter Resilience Montreal. In December 2020, she graduated from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University with a master’s degree in violin performance, where she previously completed her bachelor’s degree and a graduate diploma. When she is not organizing with fellow collective members or practicing and teaching violin, she can be found working at the local women’s shelter Chaînon, volunteering through the Generations Program at the Yellow Door, and preparing for her next triathlon.
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Live closed captioning in English will be available on Zoom for this event.
Whisper translation from English to French will be available for all events with 24 hours notice unless already provided; please email info@qpirgmcgill.org to request. // La traduction chuchotée de l’anglais vers le français sera disponible sur demande avec 24 heurs de pré-avis; envoyez un courriel à info@qpirgmcgill.org.

Being Black @ McGill
2021-03-16 17:00 - 19:00
Being Black at McGill can be exciting, frustrating, joyful, lonely, and so many other things. Join us to connect with other Black students and staff and learn about the supports available on campus and in the community for Black students! The facilitators of Being Black @ McGill will lead us in a discussion about our experiences, survival strategies, and future dreams as Afro-diasporic students at McGill. We will end with a visioning activity that will help us move towards building a safe community.

Vanessa Richardson is a U1 undergraduate student at McGill University. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts degree with an Honours in Philosophy and Double Minor in Cognitive Science and Canadian Studies. Vanessa works as a Student Skills Assistant at Teaching and Learning Services. She has facilitated workshops such as Introduction to Anti-Racism, Introduction to Anti-Oppression and Fostering Inclusive Communities.
Khan Bouba-Dalambaye is McGill alumni, having completed both a Bachelors and Masters degree (Counselling Psychology). He has just under a decade’s worth of experience working as both a clinical counsellor, and high school guidance counsellor, here in Montreal. Khan has also recently emerged as one of the city’s leading experts in the area of EDI. He is happy to be working with McGill to help design and implement the university’s Anti-Black Racism Action Plan.
Shaquiera Hamilton is a 4th year student studying International Development with a double minor Psychology and GSFS (Gender, Sexuality, Feminism, Social Justice). She has been facilitating student workshops for over 3 years now for multiple McGill clubs and student groups. She is very excited to help facilitate this upcoming workshop and further engage with McGill’s Black community.
Antoine-Samuel Maufette Alavo is the Black Student Affairs Liason at McGill.
Melissa-Anne Cobbler is a bonafide 80’s baby who is made up of Montréal winters, Caribbean roots, and Audre Lorde quotes. She identifies as a Black womxn womanist who has lived and worked in Southern Africa and the Caribbean. Melissa holds an MA and MSW respectively from Concordia and McGill Universities, and works from the pillars of intersectionality and narrative to support individuals in cultivating their own stories. She currently is a Wellness Advisor at McGill.

Click here to register.
Live closed captioning in English will be available on Zoom for this event.
Whisper translation from English to French will be available for all events with 24 hours notice unless already provided; please email info@qpirgmcgill.org to request. // La traduction chuchotée de l’anglais vers le français sera disponible sur demande avec 24 heurs de pré-avis; envoyez un courriel à info@qpirgmcgill.org.

Afropresentism: "Time -Traveling Desire and Reservoir Knowledge" in the #DigitalDiaspora
2021-03-15 18:00 - 20:00
“Facing devastation again and again, Black folks need in and for each other becomes both time-traveling desire and reservoir knowledge”. This assertion by Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal serves as the departure point for this keynote presentation which explores the Afropresentist practices of Black diasporic creatives on social media. First defined in 2017 by Neema Githere as “a digital genre fusing archival, documentary, and fine arts on and through new media in the expression of an Afrofuturist lived reality”, Afropresentism has since come to encompass a broader spectrum of embodied practices both on and off-line. This keynote invites attendees along a non-linear journey investigating how Afropresentism challenges and alchemizes the complexities of modern-day digital enmeshment.

Neema Githere is a guerrilla theorist and curator hailing from Nairobi, Kenya whose work explores indigenous cybernetics and love as a method of transportation. Their experimental practice termed ‘data healing’ seeks to illuminate the links between technology, nature and spirituality to investigate how working from this intersection can combat the data trauma – a term coined by Olivia M. Ross – that saturates our virtual worlds. Other projects of theirs include Afropresentism – a term they coined in 2017 to articulate digital diasporic cultural production in the here and now – and Radical Love Consciousness, a collective that focuses on re-indigenization through grassroots learning networks.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Live closed captioning in English will be available on Zoom for this event.
Whisper translation from English to French will be available for all events with 24 hours notice unless already provided; please email info@qpirgmcgill.org to request. // La traduction chuchotée de l’anglais vers le français sera disponible sur demande avec 24 heurs de pré-avis; envoyez un courriel à info@qpirgmcgill.org.

(Postponed) Street Medic 101: An Intro to Protesting Basics
2021-03-12 14:30 - 16:30
∗ Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been postponed. Please keep an eye on this event page for more updates. Thanks so much for your understanding and we can’t wait to bring you this awesome event at a later date <3

Join the Montreal Street Medic Collective (MSMC) for our very first training workshop!
As protests against various injustices are on the rise in Canada and around the globe, we thought it was important to take a moment to talk about how our community can protest safely in a time of growing police aggression towards protesters. This workshop will cover some first-aid and protester safety basics. It will also be an opportunity to learn more about the collective.
Click here to register.

This workshop will be facilitated by Andrea. Andrea is a Latinx queer with over 15 years of experience in community organizing Tio’tia:ke. She is a nurse and director of health services at Head & Hands and a community worker at Cactus SIS. She is passionate about harm reduction, decolonization, anti-authoritarianism, and queer family.
The MSMC is a new collective that aims to provide first-aid training and first-aid support at various demonstrations for Black, Indigenous and other communities who have been disproportionately targeted by police. Our services are free and open to the public. For anyone interested in volunteering with MSMC please email mstreetmediccollective@gmail.com for more information.

Live closed captioning in English will be available on Zoom for this event.
Whisper translation from English to French will be available for all events with 24 hours notice unless already provided; please email info@qpirgmcgill.org to request. // La traduction chuchotée de l’anglais vers le français sera disponible sur demande avec 24 heurs de pré-avis; envoyez un courriel à info@qpirgmcgill.org.
