n light of the recent Derek Chauvin sentencing The Hoser's team would like to express our solidarity with the Black community, and everyone working for racial justice.
It is horrifying that our colonial states' genocide against Indigenous children are being further uncovered at the same time.
In keeping with the respect and sensitivity these issues deserve, we've synthesized a few key points, resources, educational opportunities, and fundraisers.
We encourage non-Black and non-Indigenous supporters: Don’t exhaust your Black or Indigenous friends. Follow the breaking news about the #ChauvinConviction and Canadian colonial violence by following critical online media. Among many outlets that have analyzed these issues in recent years are Briarpatch, The Tyee, Ricochet, Spring Magazine, Midnight Sun, Passage, and Canadian Dimension.
The Chauvin sentence comes on the heels of Black and Indigenous organizers pushing for accountability, as well as abolition. To amplify this work, see our list of fundraisers and other initiatives below.
Protecting Black and Indigenous people and their calls for abolition, reparations, and #LandBack means amplifying and contributing to these existing efforts. The Landback movement strives for abolishing prisons built on Indigenous land and developing transformative justice models, which various Indigenous communities have practiced for generations.
If you cannot attend in person demonstrations or donate money currently, there are still excellent events and opportunities to hear community leaders discuss these issues coming soon.
On Tuesday, June 27, you can attend the workshop On Reparations and Decolonization with Distinguished Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, hosted on Zoom. “Following a brief discussion of the history or reparations movements, Professor Kelley will explore how, as the reparations movement becomes legitimized, its scope may be narrowed to be consistent with neoliberal thinking and capitalism, including the logic of property rights and compensation without radical transformation. “ You can RSVP here. It is free.
You can watch Dr. Val Napoleon’s keynote speech “(Re)building citizenry: Indigenous legal resources” at BC Progress Summit. Dr. Napoleon is the Law Foundation Professor of Indigenous Justice and Governance, from northeast British Columbia (Treaty 8) and a member of Saulteau First Nation. In her speech, Dr. Napoleon discusses Indigenous law and the importance of its implementation in British Columbia and Canada.
You can listen to Ola Mohammed’s The Black Nowhere: The Social and Cultural Politics of Listening to Black Canada[s] on Soundcloud here. Mohammed is an Assistant Professor of Black Popular Culture at York University. “Ola specializes in interdisciplinary research exploring Black cultural production, Black social life and Black being as sites of possibility.” The Black Nowhere “examines the sonic dimension of Black social life and anti-Blackness in Canada.”
You can listen to an interview with Desmond Cole and Adrian Cheung for the Toronto Star, where they discuss the importance of defunding the Toronto Police Service here.
And if you haven’t read it yet, you can buy Cole’s book The Skin We’re In, here. “Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.”
You can learn about successful cases of Indigenous people reclaiming their lands by reading Briarpatch’s Four Case Studies of Landback in Action by Riley Yesno and Xicotencatl Maher Lopez. In fact, you can read Briarpatch’s whole September/October Landback issue here.
You can learn more about Canada’s prison system and its links to slavery by reading Robyn Maynard’s book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. “Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond.” You can and watch her interview with the University of Ottawa Faculty of Social Sciences titled “Against the carceral state: Making (Black) freedom in a time of crisis and revolt” here.
You can check out Is Love A Synonym for Abolition? by Isabel Okoro and Timothy Yanick Hunter at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. The show’s dates have been pushed back because of Toronto COVID-19 restrictions, but you can check the website for updates. “Conceived as a Black, feminist, collaborative process that encourages relation building and forefronts care, Is Love A Synonym for Abolition? presents the work of emerging Toronto-based artists Isabel Okoro and Timothy Yanick Hunter. Informed by the sharing of source materials and conversations with curator Liz Ikiriko and advisor Katherine McKittrick, the exhibition features photography, archival footage, poetry, sound, and sculptural installation.”
You can also check out Nowing: A Political History of the Present by Anique Jordan presented by the Patel-Brown gallery. “Nowing is an exhibition of photographs and sculptures that work across time to find, examine, and name ‘political histories of the present’ and imagine how we might contend with these histories today.” Jordan’s Mas’ at 94 Chestnut was recently added to the AGO’s permanent collection.
You can attend the Guelph Black Heritage Society Talk with novelist, journalist and speaker Cecil Foster on July 15th, where Foster will speak about his most recent book, They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada. “Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada’s Black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger—yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian.”
You can watch this two hour lecture hosted by Andrea Davis, York University associate professor of Black Studies of the Americas and Special Advisor of LA&PS' Anti-Black Racism Strategy, where she speaks to five Toronto based scholars and artists “to discuss the ways in which their scholarship interprets and engages with the historic pasts and presents of Black life in Canada and other Black diasporas.” Davis speaks to recent Griffin Poetry Prize winner Canisia Lubrin, as well as Dr. Idil Abdillahi, who is an Assistant Professor in the School of Disability Studies and author of Black Women Under State: Surveillance, Poverty & the Violence of Social Assistance, and co-author of BlackLife: Post-BLM and The Struggle For Freedom.
If you can, consider contributing to these fundraisers:
COVID-19 Prisoner’s Emergency Fund:
“The Prisoner Emergency Support Fund was started by the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project and the Toronto Prisoners Rights Project...This fund is intended for people inside prisons and jails and recently released prisoners.”
https://ca.gofundme.com/f/euz3f9-prisoner-emergency-support-fund
T-shirt fundraiser for colonial violence evidence preservation efforts at the Woodland Cultural Centre's "Save The Evidence" Campaign, by Michael Barber, grandson of residential "school" survivor:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3924392904340304&id=100003088986755
https://www.folker.ca/shop/p/black-shirt-to-support-woodland-cultural-centre
https://woodlandculturalcentre.ca/donate/
Black Creek Community Farm (Jane-Finch and York University area) donation:
“Since 2012, BCCF has operated as a start-up focused on improving food security, reducing social isolation, and improving employment and education outcomes with partners like FoodShare Toronto.”
https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/32601
Ontario Black History Society donation, towards long-term aims to build first ever Black history museum in the GTA:
“Important aspects of our work include public education in schools and organizations. We also provide speakers to educate the public about the importance of Black heritage. We write contemporary and historical profiles and record and preserve oral history through taped interviews with members of Ontario Black communities.”
https://blackhistorysociety.ca/donate/
Rename Dundas Street:
“Black and Indigenous led effort to take Transatlantic slave trade enabling British politician Henry Dundas' name off Dundas Street.”
https://www.renamedundasstreet.ca/
1492 Land Back Lane legal fundraiser:
“On July 19 2020 The Land Defenders of 1492 Land Back Lane stopped the housing development project of Mackenzie Meadows boarding the town of Caledonia and the Six Nations reserve. We have taken this peaceful direct action to call attention to the ongoing aggressive development of our lands.”
https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-1492-land-back-lane
1492 LBL Cancel Canada Day concert/event July 3
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4258714950857831&id=100001581056240&set=a.442689025793795&source=48
