TEACH-INS
Scholar Strike Canada is pleased to present:
Defund, Demilitarize and Abolish Police, Prisons, and
All Forms of Carcerality
Join us for two days of teach-ins by scholars, activists, artists and students followed by a
Day of Action in Toronto: RECLAIM! Abolition Tour 2022
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Scholar Strike Canada teach-ins will live stream on the SSC YouTube channel and recordings will be posted on our website after the event. Closed Captioning will be provided for every teach-in and ASL will be provided where indicated below.
TEACH-INS SCHEDULE
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Monday, March 21, 2022
11:30 - 12:00 PM EST
Welcome
Monday, March 21, 2022
12:00PM - 1:45PM EST
Opening Teach-in
"This Demands an Abolitionist Reckoning: Racism, Fascism, the Convoy Protest, and the Global Expansion of White Supremacy and White Ethnonationalism"
How do we understand the recent rise in fascism, ethnonationalism, racism, and the ultra right movements that are emerging globally? What does this mean for Indigenous struggles, migrant rights, Black protests, anti-racism, anti-Islamaphobic, queer and trans rights? How should we actively be mobilizing and organizing for liberation, freedom, and abolition internationally in these times? These questions and more will be taken up by the panelists in this teach-in.
Speakers:
Rinaldo Walcott, University of Toronto
Harsha Walia, Activist and Organizer
Courtney Skye, Yellowhead Institute
Gary Kinsman, No Pride in Policing Coalition
Yasmin Jiwani, Concordia University
Moderated by Beverly Bain, Scholar Strike Canada
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ASL will be provided for this teach-in.
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Monday, March 21, 2022
1:45 - 2:00PM EST
Poetry Break 1
Poetry Reading by Erica Violet Lee, NÄ“hiyaw writer and community organizer based in Saskatoon
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Monday, March 21, 2022
2:00PM - 3:15PM EST
Teach-in 2
"Land as Classroom, Curriculum, and Kin"
This teach-in brings three leading land-based educators into conversation to discuss how meaningful and ongoing relationships with land, water, and sky are integral to knowledge production, dissemination, and acquisition that can radically remake our worlds as we know it.
Speakers:
Megan Scribe, X University
Riley Kucheran, X University
Amber Sandy, X University
Mylan Tootoosis, University of Saskatchewan
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Monday, March 21, 2022
3:30PM - 4:45PM EST
Teach-in 3
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As we struggle for a world that creates less suffering, we also deal with the harm and hurt we cause one another. How do we address these hurts and harms in accordance with our values? How do we hold one another accountable without taking on the oppressive ways of thinking we are trying to fight? In situations where forgiveness or resolution are possible, how do we get there?
We invite friends, collaborators, co-conspirators and allies in the struggle to join a conversation about creating the abolition and accountability we're working to create. We want to hear from you, not about specific conflicts, but to share sharing skills, interventions, and strategies that will keep our spaces safe and facilitate healing.
This conversation will take place on Twitter Spaces, an audio-only chat space. You do not need a Twitter account to participate. You can also join simply to listen, any sharing is optional.
Join the conversation here or hyperlinked in the title.
The conversation will be recorded. This is a space for discussing ideas and strategies, not for addressing specific grievances. We ask participants to be respectful, and to consider the impact of their words. Anyone who engages in discriminatory or harmful behaviour will be removed from the conversation.
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Monday, March 21, 2022
4:45 - 5:00PM EST
Poetry Break 2
Lama, Palestinian & Egyptian Poet
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Monday, March 21, 2022
5:00PM - 6:15PM EST
Teach-in 4
This intergenerational panel will discuss how Indigenous land defense has and will continue to be crucial to abolition.
Speakers:
Ellen Gabriel
Vanessa Gray
Quetzcala Carson
Shady Hafez
Skyler Williams
Moderated by Mikinaak Migwans (University of Toronto)
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Monday, March 21, 2022
6:30PM - 7:45PM EST
Teach-in 5
"All Prisoners are Political Prisoners"
Over the last several years, the violence that is police has come into sharp focus following the countless police killings of Black, Indigenous and Racialized peoples. These deaths fueled a very public discussion on the need to defund, disarm and dismantle the police. Often missed in these discussions is the demand to abolish prisons. To break through the silence, incarcerated people have put their bodies on the line - while in the belly of the beast - to shed light on the horrific conditions inside. During this panel, you'll hear directly from previously incarcerated people who have been leading the charge about the conditions inside and what you can do to take action. Presented by Toronto Prisoners' Rights Project.
Speakers:
Christophe Lewis, Activist and Former Prisoner
Randy Riley, Co-founder of Black Power Hour and Former Prisoner
Kyon Ferril, Activist and Former Prisoner
Glowz, Member of Prisoners' Rights Project & Supporting Loved Ones Inside
Moderated by Souheil Benslimane, Criminalization and Punishment Education Project and JAIL Hotline and Former Prisoner
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Monday, March 21, 2022
6:00PM - 7:30M EST
Teach-in 6
Please Note: This is a joint teach-in between SSC and
Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy Toronto: Register Here
"Imagining a Police-Free UofT"
This is the third session of the “Imagining a Police-Free UofT” speaker and political education series. Beverly Bain will speak on what organizing for a police-free world looks like and outline actionable ways students can organize on campus to abolish police and the mentality of policing engrained in the institution. In a continuation of the theme of the series, Bain will also address the growing movement and calls for abolition, and the importance of not only imagining, but building a police-free future ensuring freedom, justice, and liberation for all.
Speaker:
Beverly Bain, Scholar Strike Canada
Moderated by Harsh Naik, University of Toronto
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Tuesday, March 22, 2022
9:15 - 9:30 AM EST
Welcome
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Tuesday, March 22
9:30AM - 10:45AM EST
Teach-in 7
Focuses on the expansion and intensification of police powers in the pandemic. Using a broad notion of policing the panel covers police racism in enforcing public health measures: police violence against unhoused people’s, in encampments, Indigenous peoples, and Black and racialized communities like Jane and Finch; policing extended through social work and academic institutions; and how data collection and technology is used against people in the pandemic.
Speakers:
Alex McClelland, Carleton University
Idil Abdillahi, X University
LLana James, University of Toronto
Briana Olson Pitawanakwat, Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction
Sam Tecle, X University
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ASL will be provided for this teach-in.
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Tuesday, March 22
11:00AM - 12:15PM EST
Teach-in 8
"Harm Reduction Organizing and Abolition Politics"
This panel will discuss how harm reduction organizing contributes to Abolition Politics. Abolition will be taken up broadly as abolition of policing and all policing institutions, abolition of colonialism, and abolition of imperialism.
Speakers:
Jamie Magnusson, No Pride in Policing Coalition
Ellie Ade Kur, Maggie's Toronto
Briana Olson Pitawanakwat, Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction
Nanook Gordon, Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction
Zoe Dodd, Toronto Overdose Prevention
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Tuesday, March 22
11:00AM - 12:15PM EST
Teach-in 9
"Black Feminist Struggle and the Transnational Politics of Abolition"
Join Black feminist scholars and organizers from Brazil, the UK, Canada and the U.S. for a conversation about racialized gender policing and state violence, local and global movements to defund and abolish policing, and the roots of abolition in Black feminist praxis.
Speakers:
Aviah Day and Shanice McBean, Sisters Uncut (UK) & co-authors of Abolition Revolution (Pluto Press 2022)
Imani Mason Jordan, Release and Talking Drugs (UK)
Fania Noël, Mwasi Afro-Feministes and The New School (France, Haïti)
Andreia Beatriz Silvia dos Santos, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (Brazil)
Moderated by Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood Publishing) and co-author of Rehearsals for Living (Haymarket Books) and Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (Beacon Press) and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition (The New Press)
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ASL will be provided for this teach-in.
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Tuesday, March 22
12:30PM - 1:45PM EST
Teach-in 10
"Ending Extractivism"
How are battles against extractivism also battles against policing? How are abolition and Indigenous sovereignty linked? What kinds of activations, practices, and direct actions are needed to imagine, plot, and end global extractivism? This teach-in brings four activist scholars into conversation to answer these questions and more.
Speakers:
Uahikea Maile, University of Toronto
Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez, University of Alberta
Nick Estes, Author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso), coeditor with Jaskiran Dhillon of Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press), and coauthor with Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation (PM Press)
Moderated by Kristen Bos, University of Toronto Mississauga
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ASL will be provided for this teach-in.
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Tuesday, March 22
2:00PM - 3:30PM EST
Teach-in 11
"No Walls, No Cages, No Borders"
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In a time of war, climate change, and a global pandemic, border controls around the world are becoming further solidified and militarized. This panel will situate movements to dismantle detention centers and borders within the broader and interconnected struggles against white supremacy, empire, carceral containment, racial capitalism, and the neoliberal surveillance state - all of which are expanding logics of everyday criminalization and control. We see the fight to abolish borders as integral to abolitionist practices of care, safety, worldmaking, and liberation.
Speakers:
Souheil Benslimane, Criminalization and Punishment Education Project and JAIL Hotline
Robyn Maynard, University of Toronto
Petra Molnar, York University
Todd Miller, Author and Independent Journalist
Moderated by Harsha Walia, Author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Publishing) and Undoing Border Imperialism (AK Press)
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Tuesday, March 22
4:45-5:15PM EST
Poetry Break 3
Poetry reading by Erica Violet Lee, Two-Spirit and Nehiyaw Poet and Writer
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Tuesday, March 22
5:15PM - 6:30PM EST
Teach-in 12
"The Backlash to Police Defunding and Abolition"
The 2020 uprisings for Black life magnified efforts to defund and abolish police forces. Political elites have responded with a public relations offensive, and in many cases with increased police funding. This panel will feature activists from Nunavut, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island who are witnessing the backlash to police abolition movements in their cities, and are working to counteract it.
Speakers:
Desmond Cole, Author of The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power (DoubleDay Canada)
Kara Passey, Activist and Organizer
King Kxndi, Artist and Political Scientist
Skyler Williams, 1492 Landback Lane
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Scholar Strike Canada supports:
York University Faculty Associations’ (YUFA) fight to invest in education.
YUFA needs your help to avoid a strike.
Please send a letter to York University Senior Admin here:
