QPIRG McGill and the SSMU present….
CULTURE SHOCK 2010
October 3rd – 15th
On McGill Campus and in the Community
…
http://qpirgmcgill.org/events/culture-shock
Culture Shock is an annual event series dedicated to exploring the myths surrounding immigrants, refugees, indigenous people and communities of colour, and is co-organized by the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill and the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU). Culture Shock seeks to bring together members of these communities to engage in dialogue about issues relevant to their lives, as well as to educate non-members around some of the issues faced by communities of colour in Canada.
All events are free and open to the public. The two fundraisers (the booklaunch and show during the first week, and the dance party taking place during the second week) involve suggested donations.
SCHEDULE OF EVENING EVENTS AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS:
(Workshop and daytime event schedule to come.)
Monday, October 4th 12pm
On the question of expertise: A critical reflection on “civil society” processes
A Guest Seminar on Globalization, Education and Change with Dr Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University
Rm 233, Faculty of Education, 3700 McTavish
In October 2008, the Philippine government hosted the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD). While not formally part of the UN process, the GFMD is aimed at providing a space for labor receiving and labor sending countries to trade strategies around instituting temporary labor migration programs. In addition to meetings of government officials, the GFMD instituted a series of civil-society meetings aimed putatively to represent the concerns of migrants themselves. Grassroots migrant activists, however, claimed that the GFMD was in fact, the “global forum on modern-day slavery” and countered both the government meetings, and the ‘civil-society’ meetings with their own International Assembly for Migrants and Refugees where they declared that they would “speak for themselves.” Drawing on her contribution to Learning from the ground up: Global perspectives on social movements and knowledge production (Eds. Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Dr Rodriguez examines the knowledge mobilized and deployed by migrants themselves alongside that mobilized and deployed by their so-called “advocates” in official civil society meetings. She asks how notions of “expertise” and “authority” are defined by different actors and to what political ends are particular forms of expertise, authority and knowledge used.
Dr Rodriguez is assistant professor in sociology at Rutgers University. Her book, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine state brokers labor to the world was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2010. She has been actively involved as an immigrant-rights activist and advocate in the US-Filipino community, including the New York-based Philippine Forum.
All are welcome to attend. Organized by Dr Aziz Choudry, Assistant Professor, International Education, Department of Integrated Studies in Education. Phone: 514 3982253/Email: aziz.choudry@mcgill.ca
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Monday, October 4th 6:30pm
From Arizona to Montreal: Migrants fight back!
A Panel Discussion with Professor and activist Robyn Rodriguez, and guests
Leacock Building, McGill Campus, 655 Sherbrooke St. W. Rm. 232
A roundtable discussion presenting the ways that migrant and racialized communities in Canada and the United States experience state repression and alienation. From the effects of Arizona’s new immigration law (SB 1070) to the detention of Tamils in Vancouver to the criminalization of communities of colour in Ottawa and Montreal, this panel will attempt to shed light into the ways that the state fails these communities and the how these communities struggle and fight back.
ROBYN MAGALIT RODRIGUEZ is assistant professor in sociology at Rutgers University. Her book, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine state brokers labor to the world was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2010. She has been actively involved as an immigrant-rights activist and advocate in the US-Filipino community, including the New York-based Philippine Forum.
This panel is a co-presentation with the School of Community and Public Affairs (SCPA Concordia), Sociology Department of McGill University, East Asian Studies (McGill University), QPIRG McGill and the SSMU.
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Tuesday, October 5th 6pm
Community and Resistance: Katrina, Jena Six and Prisoner Justice
A panel discussion with journalists and community organizers Jordan Flaherty, Jesse Muhammad, and Victoria Law
Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Moot Court
This panel is one stop on a book and speaking tour, COMMUNITY AND RESISTANCE, of which all three panelists are a part, and which has been organized in part to launch Jordan Flaherty’s recently published Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six (Haymarket books, on sale in Montreal at the panel and booklaunch).
The COMMUNITY AND RESISTANCE tour seeks to communicate about current struggles for justice and liberation, from nooses hung in the northern Louisiana town of Jena to women organizing inside prisons, from resistance to school privatization to post-Katrina community organizing and cultural resistance. The tour also seeks to connect communities of liberation, and to build relationships between grassroots activists and independent media.
This discussion will include contributions from local activist Scott
Weinstein (who volunteered with Common Ground Health Clinic after Katrina hit New Orleans) and will be facilitated by Professor Gada Mahrouse (Simone de Beauvoir Institute). The event will be an opportunity for community organizers to come together and have discussions around issues raised during the panel.
Co-sponsored by CKUT, Media@McGill, QPIRG McGill and the SSMU.
Bios:
Jesse Muhammad: Energetic, inspiring and effective are just some of the words audiences have used to describe the writings and messages delivered by writer, news reporter, artist, publicist and photojournalist Jesse Muhammad. Jesse, a native of Houston, has been an official staff writer for the Final Call Newspaper (FCN) the only national Black-owned newspaper. Since that time, he has gained worldwide recognition for his consistent coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the continuing struggle of its survivors. In 2007, he was credited with bringing national and international attention to the case of the “Jena Six”, and helped to mobilize the 50,000 plus attendees to the historic “Jena Six” rally in September of that year.
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist and community organizer based in New Orleans. His new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six was released this summer from Haymarket Press. For more information on the book, see floodlines.org. Jordan has been a regular correspondent on both Democracy Now and News and Notes. As a white southerner who speaks honestly about race, Jordan Flaherty has been regularly published in Black progressive forums such as BlackCommentator.org and Black Agenda Report, and is a regular guest on Black radio stations and programs such as Keep Hope Alive With Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jordan is also an editor of Left Turn Magazine, a national publication dedicated to covering social movements.
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer and mother. In 1996, she helped start Books Through Bars-New York City, a group that sends free books to prisoners nationwide. Since 2002, she has worked with women incarcerated nationwide to produce Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison and has facilitated having incarcerated women’s writings published in larger publications. Her book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press 2009) is the culmination of over seven years of listening to, writing about and supporting incarcerated women nationwide and resulted in Victoria winning the 2009 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award.
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Wednesday, October 5th, Doors at 7:30pm
Fundraising concert, featuring the Fat Tuesday Jazz Band and members of
Kalmunity Vibe Collective, and the Booklaunch of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six by Jordan Flaherty.
Il Motore, 179 Jean Talon West, Metro Parc
$5-10, pay what you can
Bringing a little piece of New Orleans to Montreal, this multi-media book launch will feature musical performances by the Fat Tuesday Jazz Band and members of Kalmunity Vibe Collective. Jordan will show videos and his book will be on sale at the venue.
All proceeds will go to a Pakistani grassroots organization called Hirrak (www.hirrak.org), who have set up a camp to house and feed 3-4,000 people since the floods and underwhelming international response to the crisis in Pakistan.
This event is co-sponsored by CKUT, Media@McGill, QPIRG McGill and the SSMU.
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Tuesday, October 12th 6:30pm
Film Screening of Injustice, a documentary about police violence in the U.K.
Cultural Studies Screening Room, 3475 Peel (NOT wheelchair accessible)
This documentary depicts the relentless struggles of families who have lost loved ones at the hands of police in the U.K. Each family is met with a wall of official secrecy and the film documents how they unite and challenge this together. The documentary uses powerful exclusive footage filmed over a five-year period and witnesses the families’ pain and anger at the killings. It documents the fight to retrieve the bodies for burial, the mockery of police self-investigation and the collusion of the legal system in the deaths.
Injustice is being screened during Culture Shock 2010 in honour of the October 22nd International Day to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.
This screening is a co-presentation with the October 22nd Coalition to Commemorate Victims of Police Killings, a Working Group of QPIRG McGill.
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Wednesday, October 13th 1pm
Voices Against 377: Decriminalizing same-sex activity in India
A Presentation by Delhi-based legal rights activist Ponni Arasu
Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Rm. 200
Ponni will speak to her experiences as one of the core activists who worked on having gay sex decriminalized in India. Ponni will focus her talk on the legal aspects of queer rights struggles in India, and will reflect on how effective this approach is, both in India and internationally.
This panel is a co-presentation with Rad Law and Outlaw (two radical law groups at McGill), QPIRG McGill, the Law Faculty of McGill University, Queer McGill, Human Rights Working Group at McGill, the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) Office of McGill, and the SSMU.
Bio:
Ponni Arasu is a queer feminist activist from New Delhi, India. She has worked with the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India, as well as with the Law and Society Trust in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her work involves a range of human rights issues including gender, sexuality, labour and conflict. Since 2003, Ponni has worked with Voices Against 377, a coalition of women’s groups, child rights groups, human rights groups and sexuality groups formed to initiate discussions on sexuality and the law. Voices Against 377 filed an affidavit to strike down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the section that criminalizes gay sex.
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Wednesday, October 13th 6:00pm
Resisting the Neoliberal Gay Agenda: Queer Organizing in an International Context
KEYNOTE PANEL with Ponni Arasu, Joshua Pavan, and Natalie Kouri-Towe, moderated by Indu Vashist
Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Moot Court
This panel will look at the different ways queers organize around a variety of issues and across borders. The panelists will seek to look critically at the ways in which queers engage with or resist the corporate, mainstream gay agenda. Ponni Arasu will talk about her experience with the India specific context, having worked within various queer collectives, including the Nigah media collective that is based in Delhi. The collective has organised the annual Nigah Queer Fest in Delhi for the past three years.
Joshua Pavan, a Montreal-based community organizer who has worked for the past few years with the Prisoner Correspondence Project and is part of the Pervers/cite collective, will address some of the ways that queer organizing in Montreal has evolved over the past few years, namely through looking at Pervers/cite as an alternative to pride. Natalie Kouri-Towe will focus on her experiences with queer solidarity work, both in Montreal and Toronto.
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Friday, October 15th 10:30pm
Q-Team presents…Shades of Gay: Fundraiser Dance Party
Il Motore, 179 Jean Talon West
Get your dance on at our final Culture Shock closing party. This event is co-sponsored by qteam, Queer McGill, QPIRG McGill and the SSMU.
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Culture Shock is an annual collaborative project between the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill.
For childcare, please notify us 48 hours in advance. All venues are wheelchair accessible EXCEPT the Cultural Studies Screening Room. For full schedule, including workshops and daytime events, visit www.qpirgmcgill.org/event/culture-shock, send us an e-mail at qpirg@ssmu.mcgill.ca or call 514-398-7432.
