[opirgyork] Contested Spaces: OPIRG's Community Research Symposium | Saturday, May 30

[OPIRG York]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: OPIRG Toronto <opirg.toronto at utoronto.ca>


Hi everyone,

This is a special announcement to draw your attention to *OPIRG's Community
Research Symposium* entitled *'Contested Spaces'* happening this *Saturday,
May 30 at OISE (252 Bloor Street West) from 10:30am to 6:30pm.*

This is your opportunity to hear from and engage in a dialogue with
activist-academics and community organizers on current struggles within
movements for social and environmental justice. The symposium is designed
to problematize and challenge people’s perspectives on research, encourage
social investigation and engage in collective, creative problem solving and
skills sharing around community concerns. Whether you’re a student,
non-student, activist or someone curious about activism, everyone is
encouraged to participate and attend!

You can find details on our facebook page
<https://www.facebook.com/events/835123236561481/> and on our website
<http://opirgtoronto.org/node/237>. Please forward through your networks!
The full schedule along with the workshop and panel descriptions follows
below:

*CONTESTED SPACES: OPIRG-Toronto's Symposium on Community Research*

*Saturday, May 30 | OISE, 252 Bloor Street West (St.George Subway Station)
| Lunch and refreshments provided by OPIRG*

*Schedule at a glance (for workshop/panel descriptions see our website
<http://opirgtoronto.org/node/237>. or continue reading below):*

*10:30-11:00:* Coffee in OISE 5280

*11:00-12:30 *
OISE 5240: *Workshop:* Building Towards a General Assembly
OISE 5230: *Panel*: Safer Spaces: Confronting Oppression in Campus and
Community Organizing

*12:30-1:30:* OISE 5280: LUNCH

*1:30-3:00:*
OISE 5260: *Workshop*: Rehearsing Resistance to Child Welfare Intervention
into our Families
OISE 5240: *Workshop*: Mobilization in Latin-America and the Caribbean
OISE 5230: *Panel*: Community Research in Action

*3:15-4:45:*
OISE 5240: *Workshop*: Mobilization in Latin-America and the Caribbean
workshop continued…
OISE 5260: *Panel:* Resistance to Pan Am: Local Impacts of Mega Sporting
Events
OISE 5230: *Panel:* Competing and Interdependent Agendas: Social,
Environmental, and Legal Justice?

*5:00-6:30:*
OISE 5260: *Workshop*: Canadian Extractivism: Extracting Resources,
Extracting Culture, Extracting Labour
OISE 5280: CUPE 3902 Post-Strike Exhibit

-------------

*Workshop/Panel Descriptions:*


*OISE 5240: Workshop: Building Towards a General Assembly*

This workshop invites students, activists, and community members to engage
with experience and practical advice in organizing General Assemblies in a
campus context. Facilitators will discuss topics ranging from reflections
on the Quebec Student Strikes (2012, 2015) to practical means to implement
General Assembly structures in the local and Ontario-wide context.

*OISE 5230: Panel: Safer Spaces: Confronting Oppression in Campus and
Community Organizing*

What is a ‘safe space’ and how do we go about creating ‘safer spaces’?
Whether we are talking about violence against woman and slut-shaming,
transphobia, Isalmophobia or ensuring that all are welcome and accommodated
within resistance movements, creating ‘safer spaces’ is an important
project in our current social and political context. This panel will
explore how dominant configurations of space rely heavily on exclusion -
limiting the agency of oppressed and marginalized peoples - and will share
some alternative avenues whereby space can be re-imagined and reconfigured
to create more meaningful engagement and social change.

*Panelists:*

*Merle Davis*: York University and Gendered Geographies

Through a case study of York University Merle will critique dominant
understandings of sexual assault. She will also discuss how dominant
narratives that suggest carceral methods of protecting women from violence
are oppressive.

*Merle is an undergraduate student at York University. She organizes with
the Mining Injustice Solidarity network and No One Is Illegal- Toronto.*

*Alvis Choi:* I Am Safe, I Am Safe Not.

>From the perspective of an 8th line (alternative duties) member of the CUPE
3903 strike, this talk contemplates safe(r) spaces as actions rather than
locations. The speaker would address how safe(r) spaces is as much a
perception as an action. Further, how such perception weighs heavily in the
success of organizing across class, race and gender.

*Alvis Choi is a graduate student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies
at York University. They are a trans-identified artist, performer, and
facilitator. They currently serve on the board of the Chinese Canadian
National Council Toronto Chapter and Mayworks Festival. *

*Nashwa Khan:* Muslims at the Margins

This presentation will engage with the notion of cultural competency for
Muslims and its nuances in a post 9/11 society. This will be based off of
both qualitative and quantitative research, experiences within spaces like
this, provide meaningful tips and hopefully a dialogue of some sort can
manifest. This links into how to shape social change and/or organizing on
campuses in intersectional ways. Muslim spaces and Islamophobia are
pervasive even in left leaning spaces and finding ways to actively work
against Islamphobia in progressive spaces is needed to move forward
together. Muslim women along with other identities on the margins need to
be given more than just a seat at the table. More specifically this
presentation will be looking at authentic ways to integrate identities on
the margins without paternalism, casual racism or violence.

*Nashwa Khan identifies as South Asian/African Diaspora living and learning
in the Greater Toronto Area. She was the planner of the Hamilton
unconference series known as "Change Camp", created as a way for
individuals to share stories and experiences from different walks of life.
She is an avid storyteller, and lover of narrative medicine and public
health education. She is a columnist at http://www.comingoffaith.com/
<http://www.comingoffaith.com/> Feel free to tweet her @nashwakay or find
her at https://nashwakhan.wordpress.com/
<https://nashwakhan.wordpress.com/> or
https://thefeministburrito.wordpress.com/where
<https://thefeministburrito.wordpress.com/where> she is usally blogging
some thoughts.*

*OISE 5260: Workshop: Rehearsing Resistance to Child Welfare Intervention
into our Families*

Enough talk, lets act! This presentation will use theatre to share stories
of state intervention into our families and invite participants to jump
into the scene and rehearse resistance. We will use theatre as a safe space
to try on and try out various methods of resistance to Children’s Aid
Society intervention in families, as well as improvise creative new
alternatives to empowering and supporting families. No acting experience
required – only a willingness to try on and try out new models of
supporting and empowering families. We will follow up the experiential
portion of our session with an open discussion around a few of the central
research questions that our group is exploring: Is it possible to work with
Children’s Aid Society in developing alternatives? How can we embrace
reform yet mobilize for radical transformation?

*Community Action for Families is a grassroots organization mobilizing to
create radical community based alternatives to Children’s Aid Society
intervention in our families. We are a community of mothers, people who use
drugs, sex workers and allies. We aim to develop a voice and that is
collective and strong, which challenges the belief that separating &
controlling families fosters healthy communities. We believe that food,
shelter, freedom, availability of necessary transformative services and
access to power are what really create strong families.*

*OISE 5240: Workshop: Mobilization in Latin-America and the Caribbean*

Interactive workshop where you will experience popular education methods as
we learn about mobilization in Latin-American and the Caribbean. Explore,
experience and probe into movements from the student uprise in Chile, to
the landless worker's movement, to the Zapatista mobilization. You will
contribute to a mural that will serve as a live documentation of your
experience in this workshop that will use multimedia elements. Guest
appearance by local musicians.

*The Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN), based in
Toronto, is a democratic, non-profit and independent organization, which
brings together organizations that carry out work in solidarity with the
progressive and democratic transformation processes taking place in Latin
America and the Caribbean. *

*LACSN was created in August of 2008 with the objective of strengthening
the coordination between its member organizations and its diverse
activities of solidarity. In its initial stages its focus was solidarity
with Honduras, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. As part of its central
activities LACSN has held educational workshops and conferences; actions in
solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean who struggle
for their rights; denounced any injustice on the part of the Canadian
government, corporations or other organizations that violate the autonomy
and sovereignty of the people of the region.*
*On September 26th 2010 LACSN held its first annual convention that
resulted in the election of a coordinating committee. There was agreement
to prioritize its efforts in 2011 on 3 main pillars: Anti Mining,
Indigenous Sovereignty and Environmental Justice.*

*LACSN will continue to be an alternative and progressive political voice
with a communitarian vision for the city of Toronto.*

*OISE 5230: Panel: Community Research in Action*

Research is often thought of as the specialty of experts in ivory towers,
but increasingly grass-roots and community initiatives are demonstrating
that research can be much more dynamic. Using alternative formats,
community research employs unique methods (i.e. narrative) to illuminate
unseen knowledges, and is often directed by individuals with lived
experience with what is being investigated. This panel will showcase some
examples of community research models, helping the audience re-image what
research is and the importance of producing research led by community
voices.

*Panelists:*

*Kelly Rose Pflug-Back:* Network for the Elimination of Police Violence

Police violence, like other forms of state-sanctioned violence, often goes
unreported for a variety of reasons. Mechanisms which allege to ensure
police accountability are notoriously flawed and do not serve the interests
of the people, and many individuals targeted by police may be unable to
come forward due to the fear of being criminalized. The Network for the
Elimination of Police Violence relies on community-based, action-oriented
research in order to collaborate with communities and individuals
experiencing police repression and move towards tangible solutions. Through
outreach, capacity building, and promoting our mobile Cop Watch app (which
allows users to record and report police interactions), NEPV works with
individuals and a communities to compile evidence of police brutality and
misconduct and put this knowledge to work in increasing visibility of the
issues and building a strong public movement.

*Kelly Rose Pflug-Back is an award-winning writer, social activist, and
student based in Toronto. Her poetry, journalism, and fiction, has appeared
in places like the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, Canadian Women
Studies, Write, Counterpunch, and many others. She has a BA in Human Rights
and Human Diversity from Wilfrid Laurier University, and her book of poems,
These Burning Streets, is available from Combustion Books. *

*Pallavi Roy: *Green Settlement: environmental focus to settlement

Since 2008, CultureLink has committed to what we call Green Settlement®:
promoting and fostering healthy and sustainable lifestyles for all new
Canadians. Half of all adults living in Toronto are born outside of Canada,
and hundreds of countries and languages are represented among Toronto
residents. However, the environmental movement in Toronto and the
environmental programs doesn’t reflect this diversity in population. Thus a
research project was initiated to understand the barriers and challenges to
newcomer participation in environmental programs. The project aims to bring
an environmental focus to settlement work, thus making the environmental
movement more inclusive for newcomers and the settlement sector greener.

*Pallavi is a recent graduate from Ryerson University with a Masters in
Environmental applied science and management. She is currently working at
CultureLink Settlement Services as a Metcalf Sustainability Intern. Her
project aims to bring an environmental focus to settlement work, thus
making the environmental movement more inclusive for newcomers and the
settlement sector greener. Pallavi is an environmental researcher and
community activist with interests in sustainability, energy policy and
community engagement. She is passionate about sustainability issues of
urban life and is active in the community promoting adoption of sustainable
lifestyle choices. Her previous work experience includes working with
various not for profit organisations in Toronto like Jane’s Walk, Toronto
Green Community, Foodshare, David Suzuki Foundation among others*

*Sharmeen Khan: *Community Based Research and Activist Media

My talk will focus on the role of activist media in community based
research. Both media and research are integral to strong, radical movements
against capitalism and yet we often fall in traps of normative methods of
research and dissemination. My talk will focus on how activists can engage
with activist media as part of their research process as well as
dissemination. By using creative methods of research, the role of activist
media can not only be used for outreach and education, but also for
historical memory and empowerment

*Sharmeen Khan is a research collective member of the Media Action Research
Group (MARG). She has been active in alternative media for 15 years and is
the founding editorial member of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and
Action. She also works at CUPE 3903. *

*Jocelyn Kane: *Statelessness in Canada: Research Initiatives and
Partnerships

The Canadian Centre on Statelessness (CCS) is a non-profit organization
that seeks action against statelessness through research, advocacy and the
fostering of a national community of allies. Founded in 2014, the Centre's
mandate is to affect societal, political and legislative changes as they
relate to the protection and status of stateless persons in Canada. CCS is
a centre where those who wish to join the cause can meet and discuss issues
online, collaborate and partner in the course of advocacy and research, and
learn about statelessness in the Canadian and global contexts.

This discussion will address current research projects as well as
collaborative proposals underway at CCS. Among others, these include
building a fully accessible online repository of legal cases concerning the
acquisition and revocation of citizenship in Canada that legal
practitioners, community partners, and researchers can consult in the
course of their learning on statelessness. A second project involves a
thirteen country comparative study of initiatives various border and
immigration agencies use in the course of data collection on stateless
persons. Challenges related to non-funded, community-based research will
also be discussed including issues of credibility, stakeholder support, and
access to resources and research participants.

*Jocelyn Kane is the founding director of the Canadian Centre on
Statelessness and works with social justice research initiatives that
predominantly involve those with precarious status, and concern issues of
identity, belonging, and inclusion.*

*OISE 5260: Panel: Resistance to Pan Am: Local Impacts of Mega Sporting
Events*

Mega sporting events such as the Vancouver Olympics and the World Cup in
Brazil saw a significant amount of backlash. This summer the PamAm and
ParaPanAm games will be hosted in Toronto. Behind the sleek rhetoric of
elaborate advertising campaigns, these events have a significant negative
impact on local communities and individuals, especially those that are
already marginalized. This panel will discuss the impact of mega sporting
events on local communities, the specific development projects that are
happening in Toronto and the various organizing and resistance efforts that
will be taking place in the weeks leading up to the events.

*Panelists:*

*Mary Jean Hande: *Class Struggle, Neoliberal Inclusion and Accessibility
in the 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games

This paper presentation looks at the upcoming 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games in
Toronto, and Para-athletics more generally, in the context of class
struggle. I will draw on both news media coverage and scholarly literature
to historically situate and analyze the inherent contradictions of
para-athletics in mega-sports events in terms of violent dispossession of
poor, disabled people through austere restructuring, incarceration,
aggressive gentrification schemes, and suspension of human rights,
particularly in host cities. I will also discuss how disability groups
fighting para-athletics and mega sports were able to elucidate class
struggle and create important alliances with other organizations. Finally,
this historical context will be applied to Toronto's own preparations for
the Pan/Parapan Am Games.

*Mary Jean Hande is a Doctoral Candidate in Adult Education and Community
Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the
University of Toronto. Her doctoral work dialectically analyzes both
informal and formal disability care provision and disability justice
activism in the Greater Toronto Area within the context of a rapidly
financializing global economy. Mary Jean is also committed to anti-poverty
organizing and community-based research, particularly in the context of
disability care work, transformative justice, and revolutionary praxis.*

*Jenna Murrell: *Neoliberalism Under the Guise of Identity Politics: How
Pan-Am Has Infiltrated U of T Campus.

The Pan American Games, not content with merely spending student money on
astro-turf fields and other spectacles of waste, has expanded its presence
on all U of T campuses through a barrage of student-financed propaganda and
programming to glorify the Pan American Games. The Pan Am Parallel
Programming Committee, formed by Hart House with a nudge from the official
Toronto 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games Organizing Committee, has donned an
anti-oppression guise in order to distract from the oppressive social
function of the Pan Am Games and confuse the political consciousness of
many progressive minded students.This presentation will be an exposé on how
much of the equity left on U of T campus, deceived by the equity aesthetic
of the Pan Am Parallel Programming Committee, has collaborated with the
neo-liberal agenda by participating in joint programming with the Pan Am
Parallel Programming Committee.

As will be argued in my presentation, if one is to see past the co-opted
form of identity politics pushed by the mega-event propagandists, then one
must understand mega-events not as neutral field (the political character
of which can be determined by the personal identities of its participants),
but rather as a structure that serves a social function within capitalism
in its neo-liberal stage.

*Jenna is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, and is one
of the student researchers in the ongoing TRACX research project on the
Pan/Parapan American Games. In addition to being a researcher, Jenna is an
organizer with the Revolutionary Student Movement, an anti-capitalist
student organization on Scarborough campus.*

*OISE 5230: Panel: Competing and Interdependent Agendas: Social,
Environmental, and Legal Justice?*

This panel invites, academics, activists, and lawyers to discuss the
competing, yet independent, agendas of the legal justice system and
community-based social and environmental justice organizing. Speakers will
review topics ranging from environmental justice organizing in the
Dominican Republic, migrant justice and anti-poverty organizing in Ontario,
and the limitations of compensation and remedial measures in the legal
justice system.

*Panelists:*

*Karen O’Connor: *Intangible Damage: The Domestication of Environmental
Justice in the Dominican Republic

Toxic waste suggests the enduring damage of the mafia relationships that
define neoliberal capitalism in the Dominican Republic.  Environmental
justice is often ephemeral and delayed as environmental law inserts social
justice goals into bureaucratic frameworks with corporate logics that
subtract their revolutionary potential and defer justice endlessly into the
future.  This presentation will explore case studies in Samaná and Haina,
where transnational impunity resulted in health problems, death, and
disfiguration.  Some families manoeuvered within the disorienting corporate
politics of transparency and obfuscation to file legal claims for
compensation, however, these claims that set an important precedent remain
stalled in court.

*Karen O’Connor has completed her Ph.D. dissertation about technology and
violence in the Dominican Republic and is awaiting defense.  She
interviewed Dominican and Haitian women about how their daily routines and
community relationships shifted alongside increasing blackouts, coinciding
electrocutions, and electrical theft.  Her Master’s research explored
Ecuadorian sex workers’ experiences of state violence during police raids
that were orchestrated by the Ministry of Health, the National Police, and
the Machalan municipal government.  She lives on the east end of Toronto
with her seven year old daughter, Nia.*

*Chris Ramsaroop: *Organizing towards liberation: the limitations of legal
strategies for grassroots mobilizing

This presentation will speak to the experiences that Justicia for Migrant
Workers has had when we have engaged with the legal process. What are some
reflections, concerns and how do we build a larger organizing strategy
rooted in the communities we work in.

*Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with Justicia for migrant workers.*

*Stephanie Kepman: *Legal Justice vs. Social Justice: A look at resources
in Ontario

This presentation will take a general look at what legal and social justice
avenues/services are currently available to Ontarians and compare it to
what has been expressed as "needed" by the public.  It will also look at
the limitations of the legal system versus what the legal system can offer
to social justice and community organizing.

*Stephanie Kepman is a law student living in Toronto.  Originally from
Montreal, Stephanie completed her Droit Civil (LL.L) and Common Law (J.D.)
at the University of Ottawa.  She has also been involved in the community,
including being the Station Manager at CHUO 89.1 FM, University of Ottawa's
Campus and Community radio station, being on the Board of Directors of the
National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA) and volunteering
with Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls.  She completed her articles with Legal Aid
Ontario and hopes to be called to the Ontario Bar in 2015. *

*OISE 5260: Workshop: Canadian Extractivism: Extracting Resources,
Extracting Culture, Extracting Labour*

Members of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (a grassroots group that
organizes around the abusive practices of Canadian mining companies) will
share experiences of working in solidarity with mining-impacted communities
around the world to visibilize Toronto’s role in facilitating the flow of
global capital. Using the upcoming Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan American
Games as a case study, this workshop will create an opportunity for
participants to explore the connections between Canadian resource
extraction practices and the exploitation of Indigenous knowledge and
culture, the extraction of cheap student labour, and the co-optation of
groups thought to represent Canada’s tolerant ‘multicultural’ landscape.
Participants will use explorative, arts-based methods to map out some of
the ways in which Canadian nationalism and settler-colonial capitalism
treats land, people, and culture as resources to freely use and profit
from, all under the banner of ‘diversity’.

*The Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN) is a grassroots,
volunteer-run group that works to bring the voices and experiences of
communities impacted by extractive industries to company head quarters in
Toronto.*

*As such, MISN organizes to highlight and confront negligent mining
practices. We do this by (1) educating the Canadian public on mining
injustices in Canada and around the world; (2) advocating for stronger
community control and supporting self-determination in mining affected
areas; (3) denouncing corporate impunity and seeking substantive regulatory
change. Our work is in solidarity with affected communities in an effort to
be responsive to their calls for support.*

*OISE 5280: CUPE 3902 Post-Strike Exhibit*

With materials gratefully borrowed from the WeAreUofT Post-Strike Exhibit,
this is display of puppets, banners, photos and other materials from the
recent CUPE 3902, Unite 1 Strike. This strike was a transformative,
historic event on the University of Toronto campus. This exhibit is
intended to commemorate, share and document the strike experience with the
broader Toronto community so as to feed and sustain conversations about
education workers' labour struggles and push the struggle forward.

-- 

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



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