[opirgyork] Upcoming trainings + ILLEGAL(IZED) Film Screening & More!

Sun Jan 25 06:51:15 PST 2015

Hey everyone!

Lot's of great things happening in and around the community this week and
upcoming! Check it out below!

If you're interested in volunteering at OPIRG York, or have any questions,
please get in touch with Victoria, at victoria.opirg at gmail.com. We always
need volunteers! And stop by the OPIRG York office anytime -- Room 449C
Student Centre!

-- OPIRG York

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*TODAY'S DIGEST:*

*//////// OPIRG YORK \\\\\\\\\\\*
1. *February 7th**: *JFAAP Meeting
2. *January 29th: *OPIRG York & Tool's 4 Change Present Anti-Oppression 101
3. *January 30th:* Call Out for Submissions for UnderCurrents Environmental
Justice Journal
4. *February 9th: *ILLEGAL(IZED): A Short Documentary and Guest Speakers

*//////// COMMUNITY \\\\\\\\\\\*
5. *February 7th: *Call-out for Event to Stop the Burying of Nuclear Waste
in Ontario
6. *N/A: *OCAP Statement
****************

*1**. Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty Meetings*

JFAAP meets at 6pm at Seneca College in Yorkgate Mall (North West corner of
Jane and Finch) Room 218/219 (2nd floor of the mall) on the 1st & 3rd
Wednesday of every month; new members are always welcome!

*Next Meeting:*
*Wednesday, February 4th @ 6pm*

****************

*2. *
*OPIRG York & Tool's 4 Change Present Anti-Oppression 101*

*January 29th, 3pm-6pm*

*Room 430 @ the Keele Campus York University Student Centre*

OPIRG York members and volunteers are being prioritized for this workshop.
Please contact Victoria atvictoria.opirg at gmail.com for more information
about the workshop.

You need to *REGISTER* for this Training:
*https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/anti-opression-york-university-tickets-15276936729
<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/anti-opression-york-university-tickets-15276936729>*
*York students can choose the "I am a member of a sponsoring organization"
option!

*Description:*
Many of us are not aware that we live in a society that benefits certain
people at the cost of other people being denied these same benefits. In
this workshop, we will explore, define and unpack the terms Privilege and
Oppression and the different ways they affect us/and the society we live
in. We will also take a closer look at “Anti-Oppression” and the work that
it often includes – and excludes. Through collective strategizing and art,
we will examine and explore a more wholesome approach (one that includes
accountability, healing, creation and resistance) in the ways we navigate
our own personal journeys in grounding ourselves within these systems and
the different ways we can support each other.

*Facilitator:* Rinchen Dolma
Rinchen Dolma is a long time OPIRG York member, past York student and
currently a Community Engagement Facilitator at Canadian Roots Exchange.

*https://www.facebook.com/events/1529786000625409/*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1529786000625409/>

****************

*3. Call-Out for Submissions for UnderCurrents - Environmental Justice
Journal*

*Date: January 30th*

*UnderCurrents Journal of Critical Environmental Studies*

*Call for Submissions: Environmental Justice*

Over thirty years has passed since community activists gathered together
and fought back against toxic dumping in their town of Afton in Warren
County, North Carolina. The decades-long resistance that took place in
Warren County marked the founding of the environmental justice movement in
the United States, a movement that, to this day, is predominantly led by
women of colour. The framework of environmental justice has since been
adopted and adapted in activist and academic circles around the world.
However, though environmental justice is a relatively new term, the idea is
centuries old. As Agyeman et al. point out, Indigenous peoples on the land
now called Canada have long been “articulating environmental injustices in
relation to loss of land, Aboriginal title, and devastation of their
traditional territories and the life forms they support” (7). This issue of
*UnderCurrents* therefore encourages broad and inclusive interpretations of
environmental justice as a tool for expressing intersections and alliances
between social and environmental movements.

The need for more discourse on environmental justice in Canada could not be
more evident. In Toronto, we are seeing how environmental racism is
unfolding with the development of Line 9 and how it disproportionately
impacts Jane and Finch, a working-class racialized neighbourhood. This
local manifestation of environmental injustice is linked by complex
networks of pipelines and politics, networks that are expanding rapidly
(think Northern Gateway, Keystone XL, and Energy East) to keep pace with
industry in the tar sands. In Federal politics, the neoliberal Harper
government is leading the nation without debate into a Foreign Investment
Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China, investing heavily in the prison
industrial complex and armed forces, and enacting sweeping omnibus bills
that blatantly undermine environmental law, deregulate Canada’s waterways,
and reduce protection for species at risk. Meanwhile on the international
level, Canadian mining and oil companies practice predatory environmental
injustice throughout the global South.

Yet communities are not idle in the face of these and other injustices.
>From localized actions to mass movements, from Line 9 walking tours to Idle
No More, and from anti-pipeline demonstrations to the Elsipogtog Nation’s
iconic anti-fracking protests, activists in Canada and abroad are
challenging the inequitable distribution of environmental impacts and
amenities, and the integrated effects on our bodies, health, and lands.
This issue of *UnderCurrents* responds to these and other movements, asking
the following critical questions: What are the connections across and
between environmental and social movements? How have the commitments of
these movements changed over time, and who has been affected by these
shifts? What bonds have been broken and what new ones have formed? Whose
voices are heard, and whose voices are silenced? In a world facing
continued environmental and political crisis, how can we learn to build
alliances and live together for today and tomorrow?

*UnderCurrents* welcomes both creative and scholarly work, including
essays, poetry, photographs, visual submissions, video, audio, mixed
formats, and more. Submissions could contribute to, but are not limited by,
the following considered in relation to environmental justice:

Alliance building
Animal studies
Arts, activism and the environment
Child poverty, health, and the environment

Classism
Community responses to environmental disaster and state violence

Critical race and critical disability studies and activism
Critical urban planning
Decolonization and resistance

Educating for environmental and social justice

Environmental health

Environmental racism
Gender and the environment

Indigenous sovereignty

Migrant justice
Mining justice and resource extraction
Neoliberal globalization

Poverty

Prison-industrial complex in Canada
Reproductive justice

**See the following three sources for excellent introductions to Canadian
environmental justice.*

Agyeman, Julian, Peter Cole, Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Pat O’Riley, eds. *Speaking
for*

*Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada*. Vancouver: U British Columbia
P, 2009. Print.

Gosine, Andil, and Cheryl Teelucksingh. *Environmental Justice and Racism
in Canada:*

*An Introduction*. Toronto: Edmund Montgomery P, 2008. Print.

Selby, David, and Tara Goldstein. *Weaving Connections: Educating for
Peace, Social*

*and Environmental Justice*. Toronto: Sumach P, 2000. Print.

***Submissions are due Jan. 30th 2015.* For guidelines please visit:
*http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/currents/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions
<http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/currents/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions>*

*** If you are unsure about whether or not your work fits within the
framework of environmental justice, or if you are looking to join the
*UnderCurrents *collective to gain valuable editorial experience, feel free
to e-mail us at*currents at yorku.ca <currents at yorku.ca>* with any questions.

****************

*4. Illegalized: A Short Documentary with Guest Speakers*
*Short Documentary Screening and Guest Speakers:*
*ILLEGALIZED* *(30 min)*
*Date: February 9th*

*Location: CLH M (Curtis Lecture Halls Room M)Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm*

*Illegalized* is a new documentary film exposing discriminatory Canadian
immigration laws which cause migrants to become imprisoned on the basis of
class and race. By looking at the alarming case of Deepan Budlakoti, a now
stateless Ottawa born man, and those imprisoned for years in the Lindsay
East Correctional Centre, who are neither released or can be deported, the
horrifying situations in which migrants find themselves are uncovered. This
is the truth of the Canadian immigration system that everyone should know
about.

Join us for the first ever screening of this groundbreaking film! We will
be honoured with the presence of a few of the film participants. A Q&A will
follow.

We will be collecting donations for the* Justice for Deepan Budlakoti
<https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForDeepanBudlakoti>* committee.

*Guest Speakers:*

*Tings Chak:* Tings Chak is a multidisciplinary artist and architect whose
work draws inspiration from migrant justice and anti-colonial struggles.
She is an organizer with No One Is Illegal - Toronto and the End
Immigration Detention Network.

Joining us through Skype:
*Deepan Budlakoti:* Deepan Budlakoti is a community organizer on issues of
migration and an active member of No One Is Illegal (NOII) Ottawa. He is
currently fighing the state for recognition of his own citizenship.
Although he was born in Ottawa, Canada is refusing him access to
citizenship rights and is attempting to deport him to India, where he has
never lived and where he is not a citizen.

*Others to be confirmed*
Supported by* Opirg York <https://www.facebook.com/opirgyork> *and

*No One Is Illegal - Toronto
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/nooneisillegaltoronto/>https://www.facebook.com/events/1539019886358098/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1539019886358098/>*

****************

*5. Call-Out for Event to Stop the Burying of Nuclear Waste in Ontario*

*Date: February 7th*

*Time: 1pm-5pm*

*Burying Nuclear Waste in Ontario?*

Come hear from frontline voices who have been resisting both the creation
of nuclear waste, and the burial.

Sat. Feb 7, 1 - 3 p.m. speakers, 3 – 5 p.m. breakout groups

St. Stephens in the Field Church (On College, just west of Spadina, north
end of Kensington Mkt), Toronto

*Speakers include:*

*Brennain Lloyd*, Northwatch

*Lorraine Rekmans*, Serpent River First Nation

*Chris Peabody*, Brockton Town Councillor

*Angela Bischoff*, Ontario Clean Air Alliance

* <https://www.facebook.com/events/572832252851041/>*

*https://www.facebook.com/events/572832252851041/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/572832252851041/>*

* <https://www.facebook.com/events/572832252851041/>*
*angela at cleanairalliance.org <angela at cleanairalliance.org>*

****************

*6. OCAP Statement for Public Release! [Please Share Widely]*
*January 21, 2015*

*To Executive Committee of Toronto City Council:*

   Along with many others in this City, we would like to express our
outrage that some $3.8 million will be allocated to light up the Bloor
Viaduct for the Pan Am Games.

   Recently, three homeless men died on the streets of this City and
another perished as he sought respite from the cold at the Peter Street
Referral Centre.  The waiting list for housing stands at close to
170,000 people while those struggling to obtain or retain a place to live
are routinely denied access to the Housing Stabilization Fund by Toronto
Social Services offices.  Tens of thousands of people in this City turn to
food banks in order to survive.

   Recently, the community had to take action to ensure there were a few
more spaces in the homeless shelter system and to win the belated
opening of long promised drop in space for homeless women and trans
people.  Yet, when the circus comes to town and a privileged few stand to
make a killing, money is no object and millions can be allocated for
something so tacky as the lighting up a bridge.

   We call on you to kill the lights on the Bloor Viaduct.  Instead, we
demand you use the $3.8 million to open up TCHC units that are now
standing empty because lack of repair has made them uninhabitable while
tens of thousands wait for a decent place to live.  To proceed with this
obscene misuse of public resources will be an insult to
communities living in poverty that we shall have no alternative to respond
to.

*Ontario Coalition Against Poverty*

                **
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
157 Carlton St #201
Toronto, ON
M5A 2K3
Phone: 416 925 6939
Fax: 1 855 714 0566 (toll free)
www.ocap.ca
Twitter: @OCAPtoronto
Facebook: facebook.com/OcapToronto

-- 

-OPIRG York
--
www.opirgyork.ca
416-736-5724
opirg at yorku.ca

*There are many ways to get involved at OPIRG. Apply to be a working
group: **http://opirgyork.ca/working-groups
<http://opirgyork.ca/working-groups>*
Contact victoria at opirgyork.ca for further information.

*We also have two collectives: *PrOPIRGanda Radio and the Radical Reading
Room. You can contact us about ways to get involved in these collectives:
opirgyork at gmail.com.

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