[opirgyork] ReBuilding Bridges Conference- Full Schedule available!

[OPIRG York]

*ReBuilding Bridges Conference*
*November 15th-18th, 2012*
*Toronto, ON.*

Rebuilding Bridges is a convergence of community organizers, educators,
radicals and activists from across different social movements, intent on
engaging in conversations and discussions about our political work.

*WORKSHOPS & PANELS: Saturday November 17th and Sunday November 18th, 10
am-5 pm*
*Saturday: Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street*
*Sunday: Bahen Centre, 40 St. George Street*
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*WEBSITE: *rebuildingbridgesto.wordpress.com
*FACEBOOK EVENT: *https://www.facebook.com/events/293407270768607/
***Please continue to check these two online versions for any changes,
updates, etc.*
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******FULL REBUILDING BRIDGES SCHEDULE******

*Pre-Conference Event: *
*TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13th:*
Pre-Conference Book Launch
Tuesday November 13th, 7 pm
OISE room 5250 ( 252 Bloor Street West)
Canadian History through the Stories of Activists
Toronto Book launch and Talk by author Scott Neigh
Co-sponsored by OPIRG-Toronto
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/454340501274521/

*THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15th: *
I <3 Heart Alt Media Fundraiser - Opening Concert for ReBuilding Bridges
Conference
Thursday, November 15th, 9 pm-1 am
Co-organized with the Toronto Media Co-op and the York University Free Press
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/425473674183054

*SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17th:*
Rebuilding Bridges is co-sponsoring a day long educational series on the
Tar Sands. Check out the Facebook event here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/505545582789129/

*SATURDAY & SUNDAY SCHEDULE*
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*SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17th *
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*WORKSHOPS: 10-12pm*
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*1. Mad Positive or Mad Patronizing? Access and Accommodation with/in Mad,
Disability, and Allied Social Justice Movements*

This presentation will critically reflect on the experiences of two
activists from Toronto-based Mad communities in an effort to challenge the
ways words like “access”, “accommodation”, “inclusion”, and “barriers” are
thrown around and distorted within activist spaces including Mad,
Disability, and allied social justice movements. Drawing on our lived
understanding of and engagement with Mad culture and survivor ethics, we
will discuss possibilities for Mad positivity and different ways we create
accessible, accommodating, and inclusive spaces and relationships. We will
also describe Mad positivity gone wrong – and how mainstream and community
efforts at Mad positivity sometimes perpetuate patronizing attitudes and
actions.


*2. Activist Anti-Oppression: Moving Beyond Workshops and Mission Statements
*
*(a facilitated discussion)*

This session will provide space at Rebuilding Bridges for a conversation
about anti-oppression practice in Toronto. This conversation will explore
our motivations and attempts to push beyond from the standard 2 hour
workshops and 1/2 page mission statements. Workshops and statements are
important places to flag our analysis of oppression and exploitation, but
our command of terms and list of anti's – however impressive – do not
replace the messy work of self and communal transformation. Lots of awesome
resources have been developed by academics and activists to help us
critique and respond creatively to power and privilege as they manifest in
social movements. But anti-oppressive work to radicalize our understandings
of power and create alternative forms of community has also been resisted
by many on the Left. This session will encourage activists to step back
from their particular work and share their different ideas, struggles, and
successes with putting anti-oppression into practice. What kind of traction
has anti-oppression received in Toronto? Where can we draw inspiration?
What kinds of projects would we like to see in the future?
We will begin by suggesting some of the reasons why anti-oppression is
something worth reclaiming, and a few ways we can bring anti-oppression
into activist and academic work. And we'll suggest some resources for folks
new to this work.


*LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED: 12-1pm *
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*WORKSHOPS & PANELS: 1-3pm*
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*1. These past 20 years: Radical Queer History in Toronto.*

Our city is facing an important moments of our history when it comes to
radical LGBTTQ2I resistance. With the recent scandals behind Pride
Toronto’s dismissal of political groups into their parade, and the
relentless racism and classism of our immigration system, radial activists
and organizers today need to draw on the past experiences and successes of
those who began fighting for justice to continue the fight for freedom and
justice of LGBTTQ2I individuals and communities.

This panel discussion will showcase activists, artists and community
organizers that over a spam of 20 years have been organizing for change for
and inside the LGBTTQ2I community in the city of Toronto. We will hear from
first-hand accounts of people involved in the bathhouse riots, the AIDS
Crisis, Black and South Asian LGBT activists amongst other important
moments in our LGBT history. With an understanding of how issues of racism,
poverty, gender inequality, ableism and xenophobia impacts our queer/trans
community on the daily, this panel hopes to bridge the gap between previous
incarnations of queer resistance and current organizing efforts.


*2. Final Cut: Revolution*
*Using video in our activist communities *

Either for promoting an event or a cause or for recording and visualizing
demos and actions, video making has become an important tool for our
activist communities. This workshop aims to bring a critical and radical
analysis of video making on the videos that have been produced recently
along with reviewing the history and techniques of video making in the
context of direct action. Particularly, recent videos around migrant
justice and indigenous sovereignty will be reviewed and analyzed. Simple
video making skills and resources will be shared. A guest co-facilitator
will discuss their experience of video making for activist groups.

Co-presenters of this workshop along with participants will be trying to
answer these questions: What is video making in activist communities? Why
we need video-making techniques? When we are making videos? Who is making
videos? For whom we are making videos? How we make a video? What is the
value of our videos?

This workshop will be followed by a series of video making workshops, such
as hands on camera, light, sound, location, how to edit your movie using
Final Cut Pro and imovie, sponsored by OPIRG-Toronto throughout the year.

*WORKSHOPS & PANELS: 3-5pm*
*
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*1. WEAVING STORIES OF RESISTANCE*
*Art as a process of movement building*

Learn how to re-purpose unused posters to make rad notebooks. And in the
process, we'll be exploring how our experiences of belonging and community
might shape how we imagine of our movements of today and tomorrow.

*2. Taking care of communities: building accessible and inclusive movements*

Who is in our movements? How do we think about inclusion? Who determines
who is or isn’t valuable?

We want to facilitate a discussion about how activist and community
organizing is structured and how relationships of inclusion and exclusion
operate. We are hoping to have serious conversations about building
inclusive and accessible movements that addresses activist burnout and
self-care.  With these conversations, we hope to address the often
taken-for-granted practices that often prioritize some people and
communities over others.

The goal of this discussion is to shed light on the diverse ways many
people participate in radical and revolutionary activist work, yet many are
often excluded from organizing spaces implicitly or explicitly.  With this,
we would like to hear proposals on different models of radical
accessibility and self-care. This not only means hearing from what
individuals do, but also hearing about different community models that
adopt a radical, cooperative politics in disability justice and self-care.

Coming out of this discussion, we want to work towards a model of
organizing where value in our movements can be radically revisioned, moving
beyond the limitations of contemporary capitalism that addresses
exploitation and oppression in our lives.

*SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18th *
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*WORKSHOPS & DISCUSSION TIME: 10-12pm*
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*1. Brick by Brick: Discussion circle on prison abolition*

While the crime rate steadily decreases, prisons continue to expand. A
Conservative agenda of more punitive sentences, harsher crime legislation
and increased criminalization of of poor, indigenous and communities of
colour is clear, but how do we fight back? We invite those interested in
prisoner support and prison abolition work, and those who are organizing or
have already worked on these issues, to share their ideas and stories, and
propose strategies for building a larger anti-prison movement in Toronto.
Coming out of this discussion, we hope to incorporate new people into
current organizing and begin to develop a network of organizations working
against prisons, to support each other with events and campaigns.

*2. Fighting Where You Stand*

Under the now-familiar watchword of austerity, the past several years have
witnessed simultaneous cuts to our social services, pensions, jobs and
wages -- while politicians of all stripes and colours continue to siphon
public money into tax cuts and subsidies for their wealthy friends,
continued war and occupation abroad and a massive expansion of the
Prison-Industrial-Complex at home. Federal legislation has drastically
reshaped this country's immigration policies, in a disgusting affront to
human dignity intended to appease the wishes of the corporate class. In
Ontario, devastating cuts to OW and ODSP and a looming restructuring of the
education sector will soon take effect. And, of course these policies of
austerity are not confined to this country -- as the continued tragedy
unfolding in Europe starkly demonstrates. Yet, faced with a common enemy,
people around the world are beginning to rise up. Massive social uprisings
have broken out in Spain, Greece, Chile and Quebec -- speaking truth to the
lie of inevitability that nominally shrouds the neoliberal capitalist
agenda. Though they may appear to outsiders as spontaneous outbursts of
rage, these inspiring examples of resistance are in fact the product of the
tireless work of thousands of organizers preparing the conditions for
social rupture to occur.

This workshop will outline how radical organizers can map their own social
terrain in order to determine which struggles are most strategic, practical
and viable to engage in -- and how we can ensure that they fit into a
broader revolutionary, anti-capitalist mass movement. We will employ a
variety of examples, ranging from campus and workplace organizing to
community projects such as Cop Watch, tenant organizing and
anti-gentrification campaigns in order to identify multiple strategic
points of intervention in the battle against austerity.

*LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED:12-1pm*
*
*
*WORKSHOPS & PANELS: 1-3pm*
*
*
*1. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: How and Why to Organize Against
Israeli Apartheid on Campus*

This workshops will explore the history and challenges of talking about
Palestine and advancing BDS politics on campus. Through facilitated
discussion, people will gain empowering tools to organize on and actualize
BDS in their groups and communities.

*2. Building Alliances for Collective Resistance; Strategies for Organizing
Against the Erosion of Health Care Services for Migrant Workers, Refugee
Claimants, International Students, and Undocumented People*

This roundtable is centered around the challenges that migrant workers,
refugee claimants and undocumented people, as well as international
students, come up against in obtaining access to health care services, such
as the threat of losing work, exorbitant service and treatment charges, and
deportation. Through our roundtable we aim to create a space where we can
discuss these challenges, share our knowledge and experiences, learn from
each other, and build upon one another's strengths. Speakers will talk
about their organizing efforts, the specific issues they focus on,
challenges they face, positive/transformative changes that have resulted
from their advocacy work, and will reflect on how to create strategic
alliances with other social justice movements. Following these
presentations the discussion will be opened up to the audience for
questions, comments and a strategizing session about how to develop a
movement towards health equity in Canada.

*CLOSING PANEL ON AUSTERITY & RESISTANCE: 3-5pm*

Austerity has become a catch phrase in the last few years as governments
implement cuts to programs and organizers fill the streets to resist. While
the impact of austerity has been felt differently from community to
community, the question of how to strategically build alliances remains an
important task for communities.

While the fight against the government’s anti-poor, anti-immigrant,
anti-native and anti-workers agenda for many years, this panel will
highlight the different strategies and politics coming from grassroots
resistance.  With cuts to social programs, anti-union legislation and tax
breaks to corporations, several different communities have responded with
diverse tactics and strategies.

This panel will hear from different activists across Toronto to hear their
analysis of fighting austerity and how collaboration and alliances can be
built. Organizers will share insight from their experiences with various
movements against city cuts, gentrification, anti-union legislation and tax
breaks for the rich. The panel will also discuss how to keep the momentum
going as marginalized communities are faced with continued hardship.


*MORE INFORMATION ABOUT REBUILDING BRIDGES: *

We are in a time of intense uprising, social unrest and student strikes,
but our movements remain fragmented and our campaigns mostly
one-dimensional. How have our movements lost out on valuable cross-movement
collaborations in the past? What can we learn from each other?

Though we may employ different tactics or prioritize
certain issues, we all envision and work towards dismantling a system built
on exploitation, colonialism and oppression, and building a better, more
just world. Let’s start speaking and sharing with each other!

Both the Toronto and York PIRGs will be celebrating
our anniversaries through reflecting on our history of work in this city.
With a mandate for education, action and research on social and
environmental justice, OPIRG is bridging gaps everyday between different
movements and campus and community based organizing. Rebuilding Bridges is
about connecting and reconnecting movements, sharing skills and knowledge
and building people power. We are stronger when we work together towards
grassroots social change!

Please contact us at rebuildingbridgestoronto at gmail.com, if you have any
questions about the conference, accessibility needs, childcare needs, etc.

Please e-mail us to join the organizing committee or to volunteer with
Rebuilding Bridges.

******
Check out the work that we do!

OPIRG Toronto: www.opirgtoronto.org
OPIRG York:  www.opirgyork.ca
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