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#WSF2016: #Decolonizing our #Faiths

18 Thursday Aug 2016

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So the first session we actually made it to at the World Social Forum was on Wednesday afternoon. We meant to go to one in the morning too, LOL but it got moved to Friday morning amidst a great deal of confusion! At least we made the afternoon one, though. And I’m so glad we did, as it was really fantastic!

The workshop we attended, then, was called “Decolonizing Our Faiths”. It was presented by the Community of Living Traditions, which is an intentional community living just outside New York City. They are a community of Jews, Christians and Muslims working to live together in peace and fellowship while staying true to their faiths, and also while working for peace and justice in the wider world. It sounds like an amazing community, and the people I heard speak from it were awesome! I went because interfaith organizing is something I’ve been interested in for a very long time. I practice as a Christian, although I would definitely describe myself as a “cafeteria Anglican” LOL. And I know for myself what an important role my faiths, both as a Christian and as a Phantom Phan, play in informing my work for justice and peace! And I know, too, that that’s so for many others around the world. Yet, of course, I also know that one faith alone doesn’t have all the answers and can’t do it alone. So having different faiths work together for change is incredibly important! But it can also be incredibly hard because of all the histories of war, forcing conversion and other imperialist crap that has gone along with the institutions of our faiths for so many centuries, and which has built up a shit-load of mistrust, especially of Christianity because of its historic role of providing the ideological and theological justifications for Europe’s colonization and exploitation of the rest of the world. And this workshop was about exactly that – how faith communities can become aware of their histories of privilege and oppression, and how we can begin to work against them in our own traditions and beyond. It was really inspiring! The Community of Living Traditions are doing great work in that struggle!

So we talked about what decolonization meant, and how it plays/might play out in each of our traditions. We talked about the importance of recognizing the role that economic exploitation plays in driving inter-religious conflict, and, therefore, of being involved as people of faith in struggles for economic justice. We talked about traditions, not as dead continuations of history, but as living processes in the present – that it’s important to respect our traditions, but also to give them room to evolve. And we talked, which was cool, about how other things besides faiths can be living traditions! For example, we talked about how social movements, such as those of and for Black liberation, can also be living traditions, and how important it is to recognize and honour this. And we talked about the importance of having the really tough but necessary conversations, both within our own faith-communities and between them – the conversations about race, Zionism, gender, white privilege, Christian privilege, economic privilege, etc, – and of sticking with those conversations, but in a loving, respectful and supportive way. And we also talked about the importance of communities like the Community of Living Traditions as incubators for new ways of living together, which struck me as a really awesome idea!

For me, one of the most useful and powerful things to come out of the workshop was the concept, not of safe space, but of courageous space. I heard that and went “Wow!”. Because it’s true that, while we need to create spaces where people feel safe to speak their truths knowing that they will be respected, loved and supported, those spaces can’t be so safe that one is never challenged. Those spaces also have to be ones where we are able to have/find the courage to have those tough, uncomfortable conversations referenced above, and to have our comfort-zones pushed toward greater justice and inclusion. So that’s one I’m going to be thinking about a lot – how we create and nurture such courageous spaces!

#WSF2016!

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Well, this is my first time trying to post from my new iPad, LOL so we’ll have to see if it works! I hope so! Anyway, so Mom and I just got back yesterday from the World Social Forum, which was held this time around in Montreal. It was really awesome! LOL Though now we’re both totally exhausted. It was fantastic, but very intensive! Wow! But it’s the first time a WSF’s Ben held somewhere we could actually get to, so we really wanted to go!

So, as you may already know, the World Social Forum was originally conceived of as an alternative to things like the WTO, OECD, G8/10/20, etc, as a global forum for ordinary people – activists and social movements – to come together to build the future we want. And hitherto, it’s been held in the so-called “global south”, most famously in Cochabamba Bolivia. But this time, in order to challenge and start to break down the north/south divide, they decided to hold it in a country of the so-called “global north”. Thus, it came to be held in Montreal Canada. The cool thing was, though, that it really was global! We had people there from all over the world, and the issues covered truly reflected the concerns of the whole world! Obviously, the refugee crisis, the climate crisis, and global concerns around corporate grabs for land, water and seeds were in particular focus since those are so hugely urgent in so many places. But lots of more specific, regional issues were addressed too, including those from here in Canada and those specific to Quebec and Montreal.

LOL Unfortunately, because of time and energy, or rather lack of the latter, we only barely scratched the surface of all there was to do at the Forum! But we did manage to get to a bunch of really fantastic workshops and panels. And we did also manage to make the WSF Cabaret each night, which was totally awesome! They had some super-talented musicians there! Wow! 🙂 And we met a lot of really great people there too. That was one of the best parts – the networking! We met new folks there, and I also got to see colleagues I haven’t seen in years except on Facebook!

Anyway, I think I’ll post about the actual events we attended separately. LOL Otherwise, this post would get really long and I’d get really tired! But that’s at least the intro. LOL So I hope this works and that this post shows up!

York University 11th Annual CDSSA Conference!

11 Monday Apr 2016

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So Friday I attended another really awesome conference, and I thought I’d post about it.  It was the York University Critical Disability Studies Students Association’s 11th annual conference.  And, as always, it absolutely rocked!  I’ve been going for years, and have even presented at a couple of them.  And they just keep getting better!  The organizers did a great job as they always do.  The awesome part is that, right from its inception, the conference is entirely student-driven and student run!

The theme for this year was “Cripping Canada”, so all the talks and workshops looked at disability in our Canadian context in some way.  But many also looked at Canada in its global context, and where disability is in that broader picture.  Really cool, critical, thought-provoking stuff as always!  I left with a lot to contemplate!

So it opened with a really wonderful introduction by an Indigenous elder that included a smudging ceremony – which was really awesome!  Then we went into the first session.

The first session had a panel in one room and a workshop in the other, and I opted for the workshop.  It was by an organization called Deliciously Disabled, and was on disabled inclusion, or not, in Queer communities.  It was really interesting!  Although, frankly, I wish the presenter had cut a lot of the preliminary stuff on disability, ableism and sex in general, which, honestly, every one there already knew, so we could have had a lot more time for questions and discussion.  I wish we’d had a lot more time to actually talk about disabled participation in Queer communities – what’s happening, what’s not, if and where there are safe, accessible spaces for Crip people to participate in Queer communities and how to access them, etc, because that stuff’s not so well known.  At least, not to me anyway.

So then we had a break, and went into the second session – which was just a panel this time, no workshop.  So this panel was on intersections of disability and race, both here in Canada and beyond.  The first speaker discussed transnationalizing disability studies so that it’s more attentive to the way disability is situated in its global contexts – to, for example, the role that war plays around the world in producing both disability and disabling conditions, and also to the role/s that transnational relations of power play.  It was fantastic!  Then, the second speaker talked about issues around mental health and encounters with the Toronto police, and how those issues and the people who live with them were represented in a series of articles in the Toronto Star.  Again, really interesting work!

Then we had lunch, which, blessedly, was provided by the conference, and which, blessedly, was not all vegetarian and vegan LOL!  And, over lunch, LOL I got roped into going to join the meeting of the York AODA Alliance (a York-centered group working to see the Access for Ontarians with Disabilities Act actually implemented)  that was happening then.  And, actually, it was really great!  There weren’t many of us there, but it felt very productive.  Apparently the group’s only just getting up and going, so there hasn’t been much activity yet.  So the meeting was still largely set-up.  Plus, of course, it’s the end of term, and everything’s about to really scale back over the summer.  But hopefully stuff will get going in the fall! 🙂

Then, after lunch, we had the keynote.  It was given by Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, and it was absolutely mind-blowing!  I wasn’t familiar with her or her work before then, though she came very highly recommended by my colleagues.  But her talk was absolutely amazing!  Seriously, she just wrote my manifesto as an artist for me!  Her talk, as best as I can sum it up – and this completely fails to do justice to it, was on engaging disabled imaginaries to unseat normative “man” from his privileged position as difinitive humanity.  And, when they’ve got the transcripts of the conference posted on the website, I can’t reccommend highly enough that you go and read what she said!  In fact, I hope they are, or some one is, given permission to post the recording so you can actually hear her speak it!  Because, part of what made the talk so powerful was her way of delivering it.  She is a great speaker!  She has a wonderful cadence, and a real gift for pacing, inflection and emphasis, without in the least talking down to her audience.  It absolutely rocked!

Then we had another break, and went into the first of the afternoon sessions.  There was supposed to be another workshop during this session, but, unfortunately, it apparently got cancelled.  So it was just the panel.  Bummer, as that workshop was one I was really looking forward to!  But the panel was really awesome too, and, in fact, would have been a really tough choice between it and the workshop anyway.  So it worked out!  Anyway, the first speaker gave a really interesting, delightfully informal talk on “Taking Back Self-Harm” from medical discourse, and giving voice to the actual experience of those who do it.  Really interesting, and not a topic you hear discussed often!  Then, the second speaker, again, talked about intersections of disability, race, class and gender from her experience, both as an activist/organizer, and  as some one who’s done front-line work with people with cognitive “disabilities”.  Once again, really cool!

Then, the last panel of the day was on disability in the education system.  So speakers looked at, for example, the construction of “behaviourally problemed students” in the Ontario public school system, and at ableism in early childhood education, both toward students and toward educators with disabilities.  And again, examinations of how race, class and gender intersect/ed with disability figured strongly.  In fact, that was very much a theme throughout the conference, which was fantastic!

So, alas, that was the end of the conference for this year.  And, as this hopefully gives a hint of, it absolutely rocked yet again!  🙂 I’m already looking hugely forward to next year’s.  I can’t wait to hear what the theme is and what folks will do with it!  And, in fact, I hope I get the call for papers in time, because I’d love to actually present again, depending on the theme and if I have a relevant topic to speak on.  As I said, I’ve presented at their conferences in the past, and it’s been super fun!  So I’d love to do it again now that I’m back in school!

The Rest of ROBAM (Finally)!

17 Thursday Mar 2016

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Yowch!  Sorry for not getting this posted sooner!  Though I had an awesome time at the conference, 🙂 and I did, it was really, really tiring!  And school’s not over yet!  So it’s taken me a while to get rested and get my shit together.

 

Anyway, the rest of the conference started at 10:30 on Saturday morning.  They provided breakfast, thank God!  😦 But the coffee-maker was broken, which didn’t start the day off auspiciously.  Though, thank God, that ill omen didn’t pan out, as the day ended up being awesome!  LOL And, thank God, I was able to get at least one large coffee so I wasn’t in withdrawal.  Huge thanks to the person who dashed over to the coffee-shop for me!  LOL You’re a life-saver!

 

Btw.  You can find fuller descriptions of all the panels/presentations here, including the ones I didn’t attend.

 

So we started off with a really interesting panel on accessibility and/in urban planning.  There were four speakers, all of whom were either practicing professionals in the field or were studying to be so.  They spoke about their research, and/or their experiences in trying to bring accessibility into the planning process.  And some of the projects were really interesting!  In particular, one of the students was doing her doctoral research on how to plan spaces so that they are accessible to people with dementia.  I should say, in fact, that the whole theme of the panel was to take accessibility in urban planning beyond simple “ramps and lifts” checklists to really think about how spaces do or do not serve those who use them.

 

After that, the sessions broke up into three separate streams – Places, Spaces and Histories, with different panels/presentations in each one.  So then you had to start deciding!

 

I was originally going to go to a different session.  But, on the spur of the moment, I ended up going to a session entitled “Putting Life Into Law”, whose focus was on getting the AODA (Access for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) actually implemented in a serious way.  I hadn’t originally planned on going to it because, as some one who’s not really that into law and policy, I’d feared it would be boring, depressing, or both.  But boy was it ever neither!  First of all, both of the speakers were fabulous.  And second of all, it turns out there’s a lot of really great and creative organizing going on around this issue!

 

In particular, I learned about two amazing campaigns.  The first was a mapping project called Access Now, which allows users to rate different spaces for their accessibility or lack thereof, and also to search locations to see how they’re rated.  It uses an interactive map, but, apparently, it does have a screen-reader friendly option.  Thank God!  I’d be pissed if it didn’t!  Though I haven’t actually had a chance to check it out yet, so stay tuned.  Then the second campaign was one called “Picture Our Barriers”, in which people can take photos or short videos whenever they face an access barrier, physical or attitudinal (like people with service dogs being refused entry by cabs or restaurants), and tweet them using the hash-tag #AODAfail (or, if you’re not comfortable taking photos or doing videos, you can just tweet a short word-description of the barrier – which should be done anyway for those of us who can’t see the pictures/vids).  Then, those tweets can be tweeted or re-tweeted ad infinitum, including to all our provincial politicians!  Can we say awesome?  Because, it’ll both make the barriers we face more visible to the general public, and, hopefully, generate pressure on our legislators to implement the law they passed.  Needless to say I’m really excited about both of those!

 

So after that was lunch.  And I have to say that I liked the food much better than last year!  LOL Mostly because they had non-Vegan options this time so I could actually eat meat.  LOL Thanks hugely for that people!  Much appreciated!

 

Then, after lunch, I went to a really interesting presentation and discussion on intergenerational trauma.  The speaker used her own family history to analyze how recent trauma (her grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust) had lead to the adoption of dominant ideologies – of race, class, ableism, and what she called “sanism” – as a coping strategy to create a sense of security.  She then explored how this coping strategy had lead to further violence within the family as members who deviated from this adoption of dominant ideologies and values were  punished and repressed for “allowing” the effects of intergenerational trauma to manifest as madness/disability.  And that presentation lead to a really interesting and fruitful discussion around how to heal from intergenerational trauma, both individually, but also collectively and culturally, and the importance of coming to understand how individual family histories fit into larger structures of oppression.  Many of us are hoping to be able to keep those discussions going beyond the conference, as we all felt there was a lot more to say and to work on!

 

So then, the last session I went to was called “Self-Care for Skeptics”, and, again, it was as much discussion as presentation.  Basically, the presenter had created a zine in order to explore, in a Feminist participatory research way, the issue of self-care.  Because, although she recognized the necessity of taking care of oneself to avoid activist burn-out, she was also becoming significantly uncomfortable with the way self-care culture was becoming individualized and commercialized, and was playing into really problematic discourses that glorify the young, fit, able body/mind.  So she showed us some of the pieces – essays, poems and artwork – that ended up in the zine, and we all had a really interesting discussion of the issues around self-care and collective care.

 

After that we had dinner (which I didn’t like nearly as much as the lunch because the chicken was way to spicy for my admittedly wimpy comfort-level), followed by a really interesting performance!  It’s become customary in the past couple of years to have a guest-performance, either on the Friday night, the Saturday night or both, and this year’s was by an artist named Lana K.  I’d love to hear her entire show!  She performed excerpts of a monodrama she’s working on all about challenging ableism and industrialized education by rediscovering alternatives buried in ancestral memory.  It was really cool!  And it gave me some really interesting ideas for some of my own future performances.

 

Then, sadly, we closed out the conference on Sunday afternoon, though, we did so in a really delightful way.  Just as on Friday when it opened, the conference closed off with a potluck and community fair so we could all connect and hang out one more time.  It was really nice!  And I got to hang out with a friend whom I haven’t seen in years except on Facebook!  In fact, that was one of the best parts of the whole conference – reconnecting with current friends whom I haven’t seen in ages and meeting new people.  I made a lot of really great contacts!

 

🙂 And, I’m happy to say, I did have more people come up to me and tell me they liked my performance on Friday night.  So that was a delightful little ego-boost too!

 

Anyway, LOL I already can’t wait for next year.  I had a fabulous time, and I know the next one will be just as awesome!

ROBAM day 1.

12 Saturday Mar 2016

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So tonight was the opening of the 2016 Reclaiming Our Bodies And Minds conference, to which I’ve been looking forward all year!  It’s an inter-university Disability conference jointly put on by York (my university), Ryerson, the University of Toronto, and one other.  I want to say Humber College, but I’m not sure that’s correct.  Anyway, ROBAM’s always one of the highlights of my year, because you always get to hear about awesome and inspiring intersectional resistance to heteropatriarchal Capitalist White ableism.  So it’s one of the places I go to get re-energized!

 

Anyway, this year’s conference opened tonight with a community fair, in which various groups and organizations made themselves available for folks to come learn about who they are and what they do.  🙂 The coolest of these (at least that I know about, as, sadly, I didn’t get to check them all out as I was a bit late) was a group presenting a DIY alternative communications device called the Talk Box!  It’s aimed at making access-technology both affordable and easy to repair without specialized knowledge.  So, really trying to put it  in the hands of those who use it, rather than those of funding gate-keepers and other “experts”.

 

Then, after that, we had the keynote address.  It was given jointly by Vanessa and Lindsay Grey, the pair of awesome sisters  who’ve spearheaded resistance to massive industrial pollution and, thus, environmental racism in their community of Aamjinwaang – a First Nations community in south-western Ontario affectionately known as Chemical Valley.  So they talked about the effects on their community of being literally surrounded by petrochemical plants – polluted air and water, and, of course, all kinds of health problems.  It’s really appalling!  And, of course, and this is where the environmental racism part comes in, this has been allowed to happen because it’s an Indigenous  community.  The powers that be – municipal, provincial and federal governments and general society – would never tolerate that kind of pollution being inflicted on White settlers!  So, given that the ROBAM theme this year is “navigating our places, spaces and histories”, their talk really started us all off powerfully thinking about those navigations and their problems.  You can check out their website – Aamjinwaang Solidarity – to find out more about the situation and the community’s resistance to it.

 

🙂 Then, to close out the evening, they had an open-mike!  LOL Though, things were running late by then, so there was only half an hour left for it.  But it worked out, as it turned out only two of us had signed up!  LOL They sent the call out a bit at the last minute.  Though, 🙂 having been guilty of that myself on more than one occasion, I can hardly criticize!  So the first performer was a stand-up comedian.  And she was fantastic!  LOL Great dark humour!  Then, yours truly got up and did my version of the old protest-song Bread And Roses, which has been one of my favourites since the first time I heard it.  But I try to give it a bit more teeth than is usually done!  So my version’s closer to metal.  😦 Not sure it went over as well as I’d have liked.  Maybe my spoken intro was too long?  🙂 I did have at least one person tell me it was awesome, though. So that was great!

 

Anyway, tomorrow’s the full day with all the panels and presentations.  So I’d better go check the schedule and decide which ones I want to hear!  But hopefully I’ll have a chance to post about it afterwards too, either that or after the whole conference ends.  LOL What can I say?  I love these things, but they can be a bit tiring!  But I’ll definitely post about the rest as soon as I can!

The Afronaughts Have Landed!

28 Sunday Feb 2016

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So a couple of weeks ago, I went to my friend Camille Turner’s new art-installation/happening. It was really cool!  Her work, both artistically and academically (:-) she’s also one of my colleagues in Ph.D Land),  is all about trying to unearth Black histories that have been buried by the White settler enterprise, and reinsert them into our narratives of what Canada is.  Her stuff’s very much part of what inspired me to get started!

 

Anyway, this piece, called “The Afronaughts Have Landed”, explores slavery in Canada.  It imagines that the Afronaughts – the people/beings who, in ancient times, shared wisdom from the Sirius star-system with the Dogon people (of what is now Mali) – have come back to help because they’ve seen the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into here.  And they’ve unearthed evidence of slavery.  So the Afronaughts (Camille and her fellow performers) stood silently around us while we, the audience, sat at a table and looked at their discoveries – old adds for or about slaves from newspapers from what was then Upper and Lower Canada (present-day Ontario and Quebec), as well as from the Maritimes (especially present-day Nova Scotia).  And while we did this, a recording played of a voice (it sounded like text-to-speech) reading out these adds along with other information about Canadian slavery.  It was really fascinating!  Though, also, pretty dreadful.  I didn’t even know we’d had slavery in Canada!  😦 They tend to neglect that part in our history classes, focussing instead on our heroic role as destination of the Underground Railroad.  But we were slave-owners too, of both Black/African and Aboriginal slaves according to Camille’s research!  And this was so for both English and French Canada.

 

Anyway, it was a really cool piece!  I can’t wait to experience her next work!  As I said, Camille’s stuff’s been a huge inspiration for my own.  I love the way she uses art to address politics, and to open up issues people would like not to talk about!  You can check out more of her awesome work at her website.  🙂 Very awesome!