Update! Cracks in the Concrete [May 13th - 15th]
VIPIRG Communications and Outreach
CRACKS IN THE CONCRETE
Building a movement against poverty in Victoria, Coast & Straits Salish Territories
May 13 - 15, 2011
Join us for a weekend of skill-sharing, community-building and collective empowerment!
Free Workshops! Free Food! Free inspiration!
Cracks in the Concrete is a weekend-long event of teach-in/learn-in workshops and discussions that aims to inspire, strengthen and connect people and communities interested in fighting poverty. If you're looking to gain new skills for community work or activism, learn about poverty-related issues, meet new people, organize actions or draw others into the work you're already doing, Cracks in the Concrete is the place to be!
Cracks in the Concrete will offer 20 free workshops to choose from, several group discussion periods to generate ideas for action, an art and zine-making room/workshop, and endless possibilities for collective agitation, revolt and change. Out-of-town visitors include:
- The BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre
- The Downtown Eastside (DTES) Women's Centre Power of Women Group
- The Purple Thistle
- Seattle Solidarity (Sea Sol)
- VanAct
- The Action Committee of People with Disabilities (ACPD)
- Harm Reduction Victoria
- The Society of Living Intravenous Drug Users (SOLID)
- The Together Against Poverty Society (TAPS)
- The Victoria Coalition Against Poverty (VCAP)
- ...and more!
- Alternative education
- Anti-colonial analysis and organizing
- An anti-poverty retrospective
- Copwatch
- Guerrilla Art
- Health
- Internet security
- The media
- Radical environmentalism
- Making the most of student loans
This email includes:
1) The basic schedule for this event
2) A note on accessibility
3) A note on getting involved
4) Workshop descriptions
For more information visit us online at www.cracksintheconcrete.org.
Revised program, schedule and workshop descriptions (May 6th): http://cracksintheconcrete.org/learn-inteach-in-schedule/
May 13th
Opening panel, feast and music
6:00 - 9:00 pm
The Church of St. John the Divine Hall
925 Balmoral St.
SPOKEN WORD AND PERFORMANCES by: Comrade Black, the spoken word collective, jody franklin + more
May 14th - 15th
Cracks in the Concrete: Workshop, discussions and community meals
10:00 am - 8:00 pm (doors open at 9:30 am for morning snacks both days)
BCGEU, 2994 Douglas
FREE morning snacks and lunch will be served Saturday and Sunday. A community meal will be served Saturday.
Workshop topics include colonialism, health, media, anti-poverty organizing, disability, guerrilla art, unlearning & alternative education and more. For a complete list, scroll down to the end of this message or visit http://cracksintheconcrete.org/learn-inteach-in-schedule
Groups interested in tabling throughout the event can reach us at antipov...@gmail.com
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2. ACCESSIBILITY
Cracks in the Concrete aims to be an accessible event, and will provide the following services / accommodations as needed:
• Child-minding
• Serious dietary restrictions
• Billeting (depending on availability)
To let us know about your specific accessibility needs, please email antipov...@gmail.com with ‘accessibility’ in the subject line. We will be able to best provide for your specific needs if contacted 1 week in advance.
* all events are wheelchair accessible
* child-minding will be provided on-premises
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3. GETTING INVOLVED & HELPING OUT: THE CRACKS IN THE CONCRETE WISH LIST
The Cracks in the Concrete organizing collective needs you! We're looking for people to help with:
•
• Billeting out-of-town panelists and guestsBilleting out-of-town panelists and guests
• Cooking and food serving
• Helping set up and clean up at the opening night (Friday)
• Working the door at the event (Saturday and Sunday)
• Set-up and clean-up at the event (Saturday and Sunday)
• Assisting presenters and facilitators during workshops
• Ensuring there are people present with first aid, and CPR training
If you can help with any of this, please contact us at in...@vipirg.ca or 250-472-4386.
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4. WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS
*New! All weekend long! Cracks in the Concrete will now have an art room and zine-making room with thirdspace and other folks!
thirdspace is an anti-racist feminist zine (small circulation, non-commercial publication) that aims to provide a free forum for the multiplicity of voices within Victoria communities and beyond. This year we are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Women's Centre and will be looking through past issues of thirdspace for inspiration, conversation, and reflection. In the final stages of production of the current issue, we will be holding a collaborative zine-making workshop on May 14th-15th and invite anyone who's interested in being part of the process to come help silkscreen over 500 covers and learn about processes of alternative, anti-capitalist knowledge production. This workshop will also provide a forum for people to meet, network, and share information and perspectives about a range of political and social justice issues. We're hoping to have lots of people involved, with 3 thirdspace editors, lots of volunteers and interactive zine-making workshops- it's gonna be a good one!
Workshop Descriptions
SATURDAY, May 14th 2011
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot A
Title: Getting Un-Stuck: What’s worked and what has not. An anti-poverty retrospective
Description: This workshop will focus on looking back over 15 years of local, grassroots anti-poverty organizing, as a place to start a conversation about what organizing practices work and which ones do not. We will focus on the creation of local initiatives as the place to build a sustainable community of resistance to the devastation of poverty. It is the belief of the Facilitators that the local domain is the most important portal for engaging in anti-poverty organizing, both here and abroad, and that the creation of sustainable long term projects are the most essential of our organizing efforts.
Facilitators: Shane Calder, Jacquie Ackerly and Art Farqueson
Shane, Jacquie and Art are long-time Victoria anti-poverty community organizers.
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot B
Title: The Downtown East Side Power of Women Group
Description: The
Power of Women Group is a group at the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Women's Centre,
located in the DTES of Vancouver, the poorest off-reserve postal code in
Canada.
We are a group of women (we are an inclusive group) from all walks of life who
are either on social assistance, working poor, or homeless; but we are all
living in extreme poverty. Our aim is to empower ourselves through our experiences
and to raise awareness from our own perspectives about the social issues
affecting the neighbourhood.
The Power of Women Group will screen “Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of
Women in the Downtown Eastside”, a short film that documents the 20 year
history of the annual women's memorial march for missing and murdered women in
Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. They will also talk about their
experiences.
Facilitators: The Power of Women Group
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot C
Title: Building stronger communities and radical potential through an anti-colonial analysis: Questioning assumptions about activism, environmentalism, political organizing, community and solidarity
Description: We
are coming from an understanding that poverty, as well as other forms
of oppression and destruction inherent in dominant society, are due to a
lack of real community, and real community is continually under
attack by the colonial systems and structures which serve to alienate
people from their land, cultures, and each other. The
facilitators are coming from different positions within Colonial
society, and are all invested in building a truly effective
anti-colonial movement. We are coming together to discuss and
(re)-examine:
-the colonial roots of environmental destruction, social injustices and political apathy;
-the ways that dominant forms of activism can perpetuate colonial power structures and ways of relating to each other;
-the necessity to be responsible to the land and the people of this land; and what this might look like.
Facilitators: Kelsey, Carol and Molly.
Kelsey is of European (Scottish, German and French) ancestry. Carol is Mestiza from Chile . Molly is Gitdumden (bear/wolf) clan of the Wet'suwet'en Nation
15 minute break
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot A
Title: Guerrilla art
Description: Guerilla Art is the act of creating forms of spontaneous public art that are unmediated by law, social convention or "acceptable" venues for exhibition. I will discuss the history of guerrilla art movements around the world, its various forms [happenings, performance art, graffiti, installations, Temporary Autonomous Zones, etc.] and how it is used as a form of direct action or social protest, and why it is an effective way to communicate important messages. I will share my experiences as a veteran guerrilla artist, telling about some of the projects I've participated in, how these projects impacted individuals & communities, & how the media & authorities have reacted. The talk will be followed by a series of participatory exercises designed to inspire uninhibited, spontaneous artistic expression within public spaces.
Facilitators: jody franklin
jody franklin is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance art, sound art/experimental music, visual art, guerrilla art, installation art & video. His work is raw, spontaneous, emotional, intuitive, honest, visceral, experiential: semi-structured, non-academic [amateur, untrained], participatory, breaking down hierarchies: anarchistic, queer, survivor. His goal is to create resonance with audiences using emotional dissonance.
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot B
Title: Health services for all! Shifting tactics in ongoing struggles for essential health services for people who use drugs in Victoria
Description: Victoria's fixed needle exchange was closed May 31st, 2008. This action heightened the criminalization of, and discrimination against, people who use drugs in Victoria. Three years later, local and provincial authorities continue to deny essential health services to people who use drugs. Harm Reduction Victoria (HRV), in partnership with the Society of Living Intravenous Drug Users (SOLID), will co-host a workshop assessing past struggles and current organizing for peer-run supervised consumption services in Victoria.
Topics to be covered include:
* Institutional barriers to essential health services for people who use drugs in Victoria
* The Beddow Centre: a long-term project for peer-run supervised consumption services in Victoria
* Reflections on the roles of allies in this type of organizing work
Facilitators: Heather Hobbs and Mark Willson
Heather Hobbs works with people who use illicit drugs in Victoria and has been organizing with Harm Reduction Victoria since 2008. Mark Willson does legal and research work with HRV, and board support for the Beddow Centre.
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot C
Title: Exploring anti-colonial strategies for community organizing
*This workshop is for self-identified People of Colour and Indigenous People.
Description: In this
workshop we hope to create an intentional space where Indigenous People and
People of Colour can come together to explore anti-colonial strategies for
anti-poverty work that can strengthen our efforts to (re)create healthy,
resilient and sustainable communities.
We seek to foster a space of dialogue and relationship building, where we can
share experiences, strategies and organizing efforts happening in our
respective communities, and explore some of the places of tension, commonality,
divergence, as well as possibilities for solidarity.
Facilitators: Khalilah Alwani and Melanie Matining
Melanie has been a visitor to Coast Salish homelands since 1990. As a queer,
young immigrant, she believes in the strengthening of her personal and allied
collectivities through a framework based on transformative justice. Her work,
play, and everyday sees resistance not just as a politic but as an act of love.
As a current undergraduate at the University of Victoria, she is interested in
amplifying the stories of Indigenous peoples and people of colour and is
working towards a future in grassroots curriculum development.
Khalilah is a queer mixed-race woman of Pakistani and European-settler descent,
who has lived her whole live on Coast Salish Territories. She is
interested in fostering relationships and collectively developing systems of
organizing that can decrease communities’ reliance on the colonial state and
capitalist system. She is currently enrolled in the Indigenous Governance
program at UVic. Khalilah is a big fan of love, dance, and revolution.
Lunch
2:00 – 3:30
Workshop Slot A
Title: Harnessing the press: Using and being the media
Description: Making change happen means spreading the word. This workshop will look at how to work with mainstream media in anti-poverty organizing and how to create our own media. A panel of independent journalists, community organizers and alternative media collectives will share tips and words of wisdom.
Facilitators: Tria
Donaldson and the B Channel
2:00 – 3:30
Workshop Slot B
Title: Copwatching: Exploring lived struggles with police brutality through forum theatre
Description: An interactive workshop including interactive theatre and popular education of your legal rights.
Facilitators: Theatre of the Oppressed, Kym Hothead, River Chandler
Workshop Slot C
Title: Radical environmentalism
Description: The workshop will start by stating an expectation for anti-oppressive behavior from all participants. Next, definitions of the words "radical" and "environment" will be advanced, and then participants will be invited to split off into discussion groups that focus on the intersection of environmentalism and topics such as patriarchy, racism and colonization, and capitalism. Each workshop will be facilitated by someone with experience organizing around that topic. At the end of the session groups will re-convene and present the highlights of their discussion to the whole.
Presenter: Gordon O’Connor
15 minute break
3:45 – 5:15
Title: Activism on the Internet: Making friends and mastering enemies
Description: In the contemporary digital era, activists have embraced the breadth of possibilities now available to mobilize, educate and agitate using the internet.
While the internet is a powerful outreach tool, social justice activists, human rights advocates, legal observers, political dissidents, and even independent media should be aware that it also provides a wealth of information of interest to the state.
This workshop will begin by offering a quick look at how to harness the net and use social media tools, such as facebook, twitter and wordpress, in community organizing. Next, the workshop will turn to how to take back your rights to privacy and freedom of speech by learning safer-surfing practices in cyberspace. The workshop will offer the participant an introduction to best practices for secure online behaviour, and communications, including anonymization and encrypted email.
Facilitators: Kimberly Creatrix and Tamara Herman
Kimberly Creatrix is an artist and writer who conspires with the Camas Books Collective, schemes with the Victoria Anarchist Bookfair, and machinates with Forest Action Network.
Tamara Herman is an anti-poverty organizer and works at the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG). Her work with local groups has led her to (somewhat reluctantly) develop skills in web-based outreacb, which she is eager to pass on!
3:45 – 5:15
Workshop Slot B
Title: Staying Strong: The role of self care and aftercare in activist communities. An exploration into how radical movements can stay resilient and effective in times of increasing repression from the state. Community acupuncture session offered at the end.
Description: This workshop will explore what some barriers to self care are (e.g. activist martyr complex, heteronormative gender roles, pure overwhelm), what we can give to ourselves and to each other in order to stay strong and healthy while we create a new world in the shell of the old. There will be a community acupuncture session offered to end the session!
Facilitators: Lisa Baird and Laurel Irons
Lisa and Laurel are Vancouver-based community acupunkturists with a focus on working with activists and folks who are low-income/otherwise marginalized. They gave multiple free community acupuncture sessions at a collectively-run space in East Van following the police violence during the G20 protests last summer, and at the recent reConvergence in Vancouver.
3:45 – 5:15
Workshop Slot C
Title: Resistance through Legal Action
Description: Ros Salvador, lawyer at the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre, will discuss legal strategies BCPIAC has used to challenge human rights abuses by government and other organizations, including poor bashing, racism, transphobia, sexism, and ableism. Ros will give examples of cases BCPIAC has been working on.
Presenter: Ros Salvador is a lawyer, and has been working at the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Vancouver since 2006. She practices in the areas of administrative, human rights, and equality law, with a focus on social justice. Before moving to Vancouver, Ros worked at the Vancouver Island Human Rights Coalition in Victoria.
45 minute break
6:00 – 8:00
Dinner and Discussion
Workshops in the teach-in follow five tracks, or can be grouped into five themes) At tonight’s dinner each table will have a theme listed on it. Please feel free to sit at the table that has a theme that reflects the workshops you took part in today, or check out one of the “yet-to-be themed” tables and develop your own launching point for discussion.
SUNDAY, May 15th 2011
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot A
Title: Thinking outside the box: Alternative approaches to education
Description: There is much more we can learn from one another than is allowed within our current educational systems. A compulsory and one-size-fits-all approach to learning and teaching ignores the differences existing between communities, each with their own distinct circumstances and educational needs. Alternative approaches to education such as self-directed studies, home schooling, Montessori, Waldorf, free schools, and de-schooling, among others, offer divergent opportunities for learning that each come with their own rewards and challenges, solutions and problematics.
Facilitators: Wayward School, Transition Victoria, Underground Curriculum
Transition Victoria is part of a global
grassroots movement supporting citizen action toward reducing oil dependence
and building local community resilience and ecological sustainability. http://transitionvictoria.ning.com/
The Wayward School is a co-operative school of thoughts and actions that
takes shape as a series of thematically organized lectures, workshops, and
gatherings in Victoria, BC.
http://waywardschool.wordpress.com
Underground Curriculum is a student-led, grassroots education system
that runs parallel to the conventional system to explicitly enable people to
take ownership of their learning experiences. The UC does so by providing a
framework for people to network, host workshops and take on meaningful projects
in their community.
https://sites.google.com/site/undergroundcurriculum
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot B
Title: Exploring anti-colonial strategies for community organizing II
*This workshop is for self-identified People of Colour and Indigenous People.
Description:
This workshop will build on the prior day’s
discussion. In this workshop we hope to create an intentional space where
Indigenous People and People of Colour can come together to explore
anti-colonial strategies for anti-poverty work that can strengthen our efforts
to (re)create healthy, resilient and sustainable communities. We seek to
foster a space of dialogue and relationship building, where we can share
experiences, strategies and organizing efforts happening in our respective
communities, and explore some of the places of tension, commonality,
divergence, as well as possibilities for solidarity.
Facilitators: Khalilah Alwani and Melanie Matining
Melanie has been a visitor to Coast Salish homelands since 1990. As a
queer, young immigrant, she believes in the strengthening of her personal and
allied collectivities through a framework based on transformative justice. Her
work, play, and everyday sees resistance not just as a politic but as an act of
love. As a current undergraduate at the University of Victoria, she is
interested in amplifying the stories of Indigenous peoples and people of colour
and is working towards a future in grassroots curriculum development.
Khalilah is a queer mixed-race woman of Pakistani and European-settler descent,
who has lived her whole live on Coast Salish Territories. She is
interested in fostering relationships and collectively developing systems of
organizing that can decrease communities’ reliance on the colonial state and
capitalist system. She is currently enrolled in the Indigenous Governance
program at UVic. Khalilah is a big fan of love, dance, and revolution.
10:00 – 11:30
Workshop Slot C
Title: Building a bridge between advocacy and activism
Description: TAPS advocates will host a workshop focused on two areas. The first section of the workshop will focus on some of the key skills involved in effective advocacy. This will lead into a discussion about how individual advocacy can influence the broader goals involved in activism. There will be member of both the board and staff involved in the facilitation of the workshop.
Facilitators: Kelly, Executive Director of TAPS and other TAPS advocates
15 minute break
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot A
Title: Student loans for community organizing: Or, how to use students loans to subsidize your art/activism and get away with it
Description: Shifts in state spending over the past two decades have severely limited spaces for creative work and activism. Massive cuts to welfare, cuts to grants for students (combined with increased university tuition), cuts to arts funding, and cuts to NGOs focused on advocacy work mean there are less and less spaces for experiencing, developing and sharing lifestyles and practices based in creative commitments to social justice.
Student loans are possibly the last remaining source of non-market funds for youth committed to social change. Unfortunately, misinformation about student loans and a puritan fear of debt discourages the full use of student loans as a resource for social change. The effects are broad: interesting people are too busy getting by at crappy jobs to fully commit to social justice work; the university (and its resources) are abandoned to busier, wealthier and more conservative students.
This workshop will be a space for knowledge-sharing about ongoing changes in student loans rules and additional funds available to students on loans, and for discussing practical strategies to prevent the use of student loans now from ruining your life later. The overall aim is formulate long-term strategies for the most effective uses of student loans as part of a lifelong commitment to social justice work.
Facilitators: University Research Lab
Speakers/facilitators include a musician and former undergraduate student whose loans were defaulted due to statute of limitations restrictions, and a current PhD student who anticipates defaulting on significant student loans through bankruptcy and consumer proposals.
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot B
Title: Food security and seed saving
Description: This workshop will teach participants everything they need to know to become seed-savers. The workshop will also frame the necessity of learning this skill around a discussion of food security on Vancouver Island.
Facilitators: Jessy Rucker
Jesse has worked with the Growing Schools program with LifeCycles, completed an organic farming course through Camosun, and avidly saves seeds!
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot C
Title: The Disability application process: The ins and outs
Description: In this workshop, disability advocates will go through the sections of the application process and discuss its requirements. They will also cover legal decisions that affect the application positively, and present on significant findings of the ombudsman's report that could be helpful to people who are in the system.
Facilitators: Joanne Neubauer and Renee Ahmadi
11:45 – 12:45
Workshop Slot D
Title: Anti-poverty action and community organizing: Strategies and tactics from Victoria and Vancouver
Description: What tactics and strategies work best in anti-poverty organizing? What community organizing practices work? How effective is direct action? Members from VanAct and the Victoria Coalition Against Poverty will host a discussion on building a stronger anti-poverty movement on Coast and Straits Salish Territories.
Facilitators: TBA
Lunch
2:00 pm – 3:30
Workshop Slot A
Title: The Purple Thistle: Radical deschooling
Description: The Purple Thistle is a cost-free
youth-collective-run resource centre
for arts and activism in East-Vancouver. Come meet us, learn about the Purple Thistle and what we do. Share ideas on deschooling and building
radical spaces. We welcome questions and participation.
Facilitators: Purple Thistle Collective
2:00 pm – 3:30
Workshop Slot B
Title: Resistance through solidarity
Description: Capitalism has evolved and so must the tactics we use to fight against it. Capitalism is very real and alive in all of our lives, acting to reduce the common person to a human resource without a name or a face. Together we have a chance to take a stand, fight back and win. This presentation will talk about the work that the Seattle Solidarity Network has done to work with community members in Seattle so they can have very real and personal victories in their own lives. We will also discuss the movement that the solidarity network model has the potential to build.
Facilitators: Joel Chavez, Seattle Solidarity
2:00 pm – 3:30
Workshop Slot C
Title: Rewriting the ending of Our Histories
Description: Have you experienced recurring systems of oppression in community organizing where you wish you could pause, rewind, and change the outcome of the moment? This 90- minute workshop will use forum theatre to provide tools to help address the systems of oppression that may arise when we act without reflection.
By inviting people to reflect upon their experiences within community organizing and engage with one another through forum theatre, we hope to create experience-based conversations that address realities that exist for participants.
We will begin by creating community agreements to help prevent the replication of systems of oppression in the workshop itself, and then move to addressing examples of how systems of oppression can and do manifest in community organizing. After, we will introduce the form theatre exercise, and solidify our learnings through a debrief and group check out.
Facilitators: Annie Banks, Ruby Diaz
Annie Banks is a white settler woman who is a visitor on unceded Lekwungen and WSANEC homelands. Annie has been active in community organizing for a number of years and has experience in creative arts, violence prevention, facilitation, advocacy and program coordination. Annie is committed to the process of unlearning oppressive behaviour and working with people to collaboratively challenge oppressive systems.
Ruby has been a visitor on unceded Lekwgeun and WSANEC homelands since the Summer of 2010. She was born to Chilean and Jamaican immigrant parents on Plains Cree Territory, and is passionate about community building, decolonization and youth work. Her previous experience has mainly been being involved in Indigenous solidarity groups organizing against the Oil Sands in Alberta, and working with youth in schools to introduce multiple perspectives on "history".
15 minute break
3:45 – 4:45
Title: Building an Anti-Poverty Movement: Small group discussions
Discussion: Here we will re-gather in small groups. Rooms are labeled by teach-in track/theme. This is an opportunity to bring together people from different workshops to have discussion and take part in future visioning relating to a particular question or theme of the teach-in.
Facilitators: YOU!!!
4:45-5:15
Next Steps: Re-convergence and Conference Wrap Up (main room)
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Tamara Herman
Research Coordinator
Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG)
Phone: (250) 472-4386
Email: rese...@vipirg.ca
Web: www.vipirg.ca
Office: UVic student union building room B122
Mail: PO Box 3035 Stn CSC, Victoria, BC, Lekwungen & WSANEC Territories, V8W 3P3
--
Tamara Herman
Research Coordinator
Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG)
Phone: (250) 472-4386
Email: rese...@vipirg.ca
Web: www.vipirg.ca
Office: UVic student union building room B122
Mail: PO Box 3035 Stn CSC, Victoria, BC, Lekwungen & WSANEC Territories, V8W 3P3