QPIRG McGill

Community Dinner
2025-03-11 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | SSMU Flex Space, 3480 rue McTavish, room 106, Montreal, QC, H3A0E7 2H7, Canada
Come for a free vegan meal and hang out with QPIRG!
SSMU Flex Space (Room 106, 3480 rue McTavish)

Accessibility:
The SSMU University Centre is wheelchair accessible. There are single-stall, accessible bathrooms on the second and fourth floor.

Fuck le Pinkwashing
2025-03-12 19:00 - 21:00 | SSMU Flex Space, 3480 rue McTavish, room 106, Montreal, QC, H3A0E7 2H7, Canada
Fighting rising islamophobia & transphobia in Quebec education through solidarity & accomplicity
‘Fuck le Pinkwashing’ is a workshop and community dialogue that seeks to explore how we can collectively resist oft-invoked, consent-manufacturing rhetoric in educational settings which can position Muslim and Queer communities against each other. This discussion takes place in the context of Bill 21, Quebec’s infamous law prohibiting teachers from working while wearing religious symbols, and the National Assembly’s recent inflammatory, Islamophobic remarks in the wake of the report on the Bedford School. Likewise, in 2023, the Comité de sages sur l’identité du genre was also formed with the mandate of investigating the “issue” of gender identity in schools following protests organized by Hands Off Our Kids, a group backed by far-right donors, which opposed the inclusion of contemporary gender and sexuality curricula in schools. Together, RECESS facilitators, invited collaborators and workshop attendees will study the possibilities for solidarity-building between communities through a variety of lenses, including organizing for social justice, student organizing, radical pedagogical practices, the (re)politicization of teachers’ unions, electing accomplices into school boards and service centers, and navigating the gray areas of educational policy and law.
There will be free vegan meals served at the end of the event. Please RSVP at the link here.
SSMU Flex Space (Room 106, 3480 rue McTavish)
Accessibility:
The SSMU University Centre is wheelchair accessible. There are single-stall, accessible bathrooms on the second and fourth floor.

Eviction: Film Screening
2025-03-14 18:00 - 20:00 | 3475 rue Peel, 3475 rue Peel, Montreal, QC, Canada
with Director Mathilde Capone
Since 2010, Parthenais has held within its walls the life of a whole queer community. They are gay, lesbian, trans, and they live together in Centre-Sud in the heart of Montreal, in a triplex that is falling apart. Between the parties that sometimes welcome more than two hundred people until the wee hours of the morning, the collective dinners, the great joys and the small despairs, this old flat has transformed the lives of its tenants. Twelve years later, the building is bought by a wealthy family who wants to live there, gentrification being the order of the day. This marks the end of a mythical space that has transformed Montreal’s queer scene for a decade. The boxes are too small to contain all the stories that have taken place within these walls. EVICTION is the story of this turning page, as the distraught residents search for a new place to call home in the midst of a housing crisis and land speculation.
Read more
(2023, 1 hour 30 minutes)
3475 rue Peel
Accessibility
Unfortunately, the theatre space at 3475 rue Peel is not wheelchair accessible.

Drylongso: Film Screening
2025-03-15 18:30 - 21:00 | 7080 rue Alexandra, #506, 7080 rue Alexandra, #506, Montreal, QC, Canada
Regards Noirs
(1998, 1 hour 26 minutes, 4k restoration)
A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying, brash Oakland, California, art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship (April Barnett) and experiencing love, heartbreak, and the everyday threat of violence. Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men. (Criterion)
Directed by Cauleen Smith.
7080 rue Alexandra, #506
RSVP at the link here

Home is Where Public Transit Is
2025-03-17 17:00 - 19:00 | QPIRG-Concordia, 2100 rue Guy, #205, Montreal, QC, H3H 2M8, Canada
Climate Justice Montreal
In this workshop, we will discuss how economic, physical and social access to public transit shapes the way we live and defines our home. We will also discuss the role of public transit for unhoused communities and the way it could act as a sanctuary space. For many of us, especially in disadvantaged communities, public transit is not only a means to get from one place to another; it also determines where we can live and work, and the way transit routes are designed maps our entire lifestyles, placing limits on where we can establish a place to call home. How could we make public transit more harmonious with a radical vision of what home is in terms of relationships, care and community? How could we transform public transit spaces to better serve our needs in terms of housing and living?
QPIRG-Concordia (2100 rue Guy, #205)
Accessibility
The QPIRG space itself is wheelchair accessible.
There is an elevator in our building. There are two entrances. The entrance at 2100 Guy has one flight of stairs.
For step-free access, use the entrance at 1625 de Maisonneuve Ouest.
Buzz #0205 to be let through the automatic doors, then take the elevator up to the second floor. The door to the space can be opened by automated button, and swings out.
There is a paid parking lot beside the building, entrance on Guy.
A list of other spaces downtown (Ville-Marie borough) reserved for people who have the blue-and-white parking permit can be found here.

Understanding and Supporting Sex Workers in our Communities
2025-03-18 17:30 - 19:30 | QPIRG-McGill, 3516 Avenue du Parc, Montreal, QC, H2X 2H7, Canada
This workshop offers an in-depth introduction into various dimensions of the sex industry, the history of the global sex worker rights movement, the laws impacting sex work in Canada and the unique conditions under which sex workers navigate issues of consent, violence and self-determination. Particular attention is paid to the connection between sex worker rights and migrant justice.
RSVP here
QPIRG-McGill (3516 Av du Parc)
Accessibility:
The library space at 3516 is partially accessible – there is a ramp to the front door, but the door is not automatic. Please ring the doorbell or call us at 514-284-2664 if you require assistance.
There is a gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor, but it is not wheelchair accessible.

Inappropriate Content: Censorship in Prison Mailrooms
2025-03-19 18:00 - 20:00 | QPIRG-McGill, 3516 Avenue du Parc, Montreal, QC, H2X 2H7, Canada
Hosted by Prisoner Correspondence Project
The Prisoner Correspondence Project is a solidarity project for gay, lesbian, transsexual, transgender, gendervariant, two-spirit, intersex, bisexual and queer prisoners in Canada and the United States, linking them with people a part of these same communities outside of prison.
Since its inception, one of the most significant barriers that the project has faced is the censorship of information and speech by prison mailrooms. Even the most benign materials–a form to fill out to be matched with a pen pal, or a list of free resources available from our library–have been flagged by prison staff as threatening to the security of the prison, and rejected. Repressive mailroom policies have direct consequences on the wellbeing of people inside, who are denied access to lifesaving information about harm reduction and gender/sexuality, or to handwritten letters from loved ones.
In this workshop, we will learn about some of the ways prisons use censorship as a tool of control–including through emerging technologies such as digital mail processing systems–, and how this affects prisoners; and will explore some methods of resisting censorship from the inside and the outside.
QPIRG-McGill (3516 Av du Parc)
Accessibility:
The library space at 3516 is partially accessible – there is a ramp to the front door, but the door is not automatic. Please ring the doorbell or call us at 514-284-2664 if you require assistance.
There is a gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor, but it is not wheelchair accessible.

Gaza as a Compass for Thinking
2025-03-21 17:30 - 20:00 | SHIFT Concordia, LB-145, 1400 rue Maisonneuve, Montreal, Canada
Keynote lecture by Dr. Alia Al-Saji, professor of Philosophy at McGill
Gaza as a Compass for Thinking: A decolonial philosophy of debilitation and resistance in colonial duration
Seventeen months into the genocide in Gaza, our philosophies remain for the most part either silent or complaisant, seemingly unable to think with a contemporaneous reality that would shake many of its presuppositions and theoretical tools. This is a colonial duration in which genocide continues to snowball—during the current ceasefire—through disease, cold, exposure, starvation, untreated injury, and the debilitation of the infrastructure for healthcare. Refusing the application of pregiven frameworks, I ask what an anticolonial/decolonial and feminist philosophy that accompanies and affectively registers this reality may be. What is it to take Gaza as the compass for thinking. What might it mean to resist and refuse the inevitability of this colonial duration. Drawing on concepts of qahr (suffering, oppression), ashla’a dismemberment), shaheed (martyr, witness) and sumud (steadfastness), found in Palestinian, Arab and Muslim thinking—and on thinkers from Fanon to Shariati, Azoulay, and Meari—I reconfigure an approach to philosophy that might begin to do justice to Palestine.
Bio:
Alia Al-Saji is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. Al-Saji’s work brings together phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, and feminist theory, with an abiding interest in questions of time and affect. She has published extensively in critical phenomenology and on the philosophies of Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Frantz Fanon, most recently: “Touching the Wounds of Colonial Duration: Fanon’s anticolonial critical phenomenology” (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2024). Her recent work extends Critical Disability Studies in colonial contexts, notably in: “A Debilitating Colonial Duration: Reconfiguring Fanon” (Research in Phenomenology, 2023).
RSVP here
Vegan meals will be served at the end of the event!
Masks are strongly recommended for this event. N95 masks will be available at the door.

De-escalation Workshop: Communicating Through Mental Health Crises
2025-03-22 13:00 - 14:30 | QPIRG-McGill, 3516 Avenue du Parc, Montreal, QC, H2X 2H7, Canada
Free workshop by Liz Singh
This is an introduction to crisis intervention and de-escalation. In it, we will cover: defining crisis, planning for crisis and crisis de-escalation, de-escalating yourself & basic suicide intervention.
This workshop will be given in two parts, totalling 3 hours:

a 90 minute online module
a second 90-minute in-person workshop where we will work through scenarios.

To register and access the online materials prior to attending the workshop, visit the link here.
About the facilitator:
Liz Singh is a community organizer concerned with harm reduction, public health policy, and decolonization.
Saturday, March 22, 1-2:30PM
QPIRG-McGill (3516 Av du Parc)
Accessibility:
The library space at 3516 is partially accessible – there is a ramp to the front door, but the door is not automatic. Please ring the doorbell or call us at 514-284-2664 if you require assistance.
There is a gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor, but it is not wheelchair accessible.

What does homelessness look like in our communities?
2025-03-25 17:30 - 19:00 | QPIRG-McGill, 3516 Avenue du Parc, Montreal, QC, H2X 2H7, Canada
With Lil Borger and Robbie Madsen
Society makes a lot of assumptions about what homelessness “looks” like. This 1.5 hour discussion-based workshop centers around community member Robbie Madsen’s life stories, and how wrong these assumptions can be about how homelessness happens, what it looks like, and how it feels.
QPIRG-McGill (3516 Av du Parc)
Accessibility:
The library space at 3516 is partially accessible – there is a ramp to the front door, but the door is not automatic. Please ring the doorbell or call us at 514-284-2664 if you require assistance.
There is a gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor, but it is not wheelchair accessible.
