Human rights, water protection, and divestment in 2017
This year’s social and environmental justice symposium, “Crackdowns and Creativity: Organizing and Resistance in 2017 and Beyond,” was host to a variety of workshops, panels, and networking events from March 4 to 5.
Complete with a “Chill Room,” childcare, and free lunch, the weekend-long conference was organized by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group’s (OPIRG) Guelph chapter, which is one of 12 that exist in universities across Ontario. The result was a space for community members, academics, and activists to unite and explore justice in the context of current events.
Held in the MacKinnon building on campus, the symposium kicked off Saturday morning with a keynote address from Akio Maroon, a Toronto-based activist and single mother who identifies as a queer, gender-fluid Black Womxn. Maroon is a community organizer and human rights advocate, is affiliated with Pride Toronto, and sits on the provincial roundtable on violence against women.
Maroon’s talk “Cultivating Resilience: Organizing Resistance in an Era of Populus Fascism” focused on organizing grassroots activism and cultivating resiliency in a direct way. Maroon included six steps to successful organizing, which were highly autobiographical and demonstrated how activist strategies can be manifested.
Maroon identified some obstacles and privileges at play in an individual’s attempt to organize. They cited the general lack of childcare and the visible and invisible impediments such as impaired hearing or vision that make attending events challenging.
1. Get woke. What is the landscape? What is going on? Do your homework on the issue. Curate your knowledge to the specific area of focus and know your enemy. Who is your oppressor?
2. Stay woke. Information changes and situations change. Stay connected to the grassroots—the actual people of the movement.
3. Self-assessment. Know your personal limitations, obstacles, and challenges. Also know your privileges.
4. Find your hill. Find the hill, the crux of the issue, you’re willing to devote your entire being to. That’s where you should be in the movement
5. Re-envision public safety. Imagine what it would mean to achieve your goal and hold on to that vision. What does society look like, if you succeed? See and live that vision.
6. Build a base. In terms of actual organizing, communicate. Can you work with others based on your commonalities?
“I think it’s really important to not just talk from the end of an academic or researcher, which is still needed, but someone who has firsthand knowledge and firsthand experience on what oppressive systems and patriarchy can actually manifest in—what that feels like in the body,” Maroon, who is a survivor of domestic and sexual violence, told the audience.
Maroon cited Black Lives Matter as an example of a movement that was created by three queer Black women, though those origins are not often evoked.
“We have to realize that women have been the central figures in a lot of organizing,” said Maroon. “Women are also the bearers of a lot of the struggles we encounter.”
Panels over the weekend discussed a range of topics, though the strongest recurring themes were environmental racism, water protection, immigration and refugeeism, and the intersection of action and academics.
On Saturday afternoon, the panel “Mni Wiconi: Water Protection as an Inherent Right and Responsibility” examined personal and international instances of land defense as an act of resistance and honour. Hosted by Guelph Anti-Pipeline (GAP), the panel consisted of Jaydene Lavalie, a Michif-Cree woman living in Dish With One Spoon Territory (generally known as Hamilton), and Vanessa Gray, an Anishinaabe’kwe individual from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in the area known as “Chemical Valley” near Sarnia.
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Participants entered the room to the music of A Tribe Called Red’s song “Sisters,” which set a tone of excitement and urgency rather than sinking into the one-dimensional struggles young water protectors are facing.
Gray wore an “I Stand With Standing Rock” t-shirt and spoke about the environmental racism taking place in her community, which is located on the shore of the St. Clair River. Gray highlighted how the petrochemical industry now exists on what was once a lush hunting territory, and how ageing refineries and pipeline structures knowingly endanger communities like hers.
To give outsiders a glimpse of the actual living conditions for people residing on the river, activists created the “Toxic Tour.”
“In the last five years, we started organizing larger events, like walking tours through the Chemical Valley to help expose people who don’t know […] what environmental racism looks like, and feels like, and smells like,” explained Gray.
On Sunday, the symposium’s keynote panel discussed proto-fascist movements, Brexit, the 2018 provincial election, and trends in Canadian and international politics.
In the afternoon, the OPIRG action group Fossil Free Guelph (FFG) hosted the workshop “Corporations and the Campus” to discuss how the fossil fuel industry, the bottled water industry, and University of Guelph investments are intertwined. Panelist Amelia Meister, a local water activist, specifically evaluated the case of Nestlé Waters Canada in purchasing local wells and Guelph’s water security.
Spencer McGregor, a student and member of FFG, reported on the struggle to gain recognition and successfully pressure the University’s administration to move forward with the project of divestment.
Though many Canadian universities are facing roadblocks, Université Laval recently approved fossil fuel divestment following a three-month campaign, according to the McGill Tribune.
Fourth-year general bioscience student Nicole Altobelli shared her personal experience with how the scope and depth of research was controlled by the type of funding the project received, which in part depended on its privatized origins.
“I really appreciate those students—and I am one of those students—who take action. I think it’s amazing, and we definitely need to be part of these organizations, like Fossil Free Guelph, that keep putting pressure on the University,” said Altobelli. “We need to stand up for where our money is going, because I am one of those students that’s going to be severely in debt to something I don’t even agree with.”
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Brad Evoy, OPIRG-Guelph’s coordinator of organizational and policy development, along with other members of the organization, has been planning the symposium for the last six months.
“Being able to think of our movements creatively and being able to think of different tactics and ways to reach out to people is important,” Evoy told The Ontarion in an interview. “Some of the greatest art in the world, I think, comes from the perspective of those speaking out against oppression.”
The issues and organizational strategies voiced at the symposium challenged participants to think critically about personal involvement and broader activist strategies within the current social and political frameworks at home and abroad.
Feature image by Kylie Armishaw/The Ontarion.