Beyond statements of allyship, MAKING SPACE (2020/2021) is an initiative meant to foster critical, self-reflective, and creative spaces alongside the BIPOC Community; to provide actionable (if not vital) anti-black racism work, and build an expansive hub for youth, professional development, and connection.

MAKING SPACE (2020/2021) is a series of online events, including: two creative workshops, three instagram takeovers from Windsor/Detroit creatives, and a panel discussion WHEN WE SAY IT – HOW TO TALK ABOUT ANTI-BLACK RACISM. Stay tuned!

The goal of this initiative is to amplify the voices of artists, makers, and cultural leaders as we process ongoing social justice discussions, the responsibility in allyship, and the importance of intersectional representation. The afore mentioned workshops, creative spaces and panel WHEN WE SAY IT will prioritize BIPOC voices, questions and thought. This space, above all, is a safe space: please take the time review and consider the ACWR Safe Space Policy as we approach this series of programming.

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MAKING SPACE: WORKSHOPS

MAKING SPACE: INSTAGRAM TAKEOVERS 

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PANEL: WHEN WE SAY IT – HOW TO TALK ABOUT ANTI-BLACK RACISM

 

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” – Audre Lorde

WHEN WE SAY IT is a gathering of community and cultural leaders, an opportunity to hear feedback in how we (as BIPOC individuals and allies) define, approach and continually practice anti-black racism.

 

WATCH THE PANEL DISCUSSION HERE! 

 

Moderated by Talysha Bujold-Abu

 

Panel Participants:

• Dr. Natalie Delia Deckard

  Natalie Delia Deckard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology at the University of Windsor. Dr. Deckard’s scholarship investigates the ways in which exclusion is constructed and replicated in neoliberal contexts. She draws on and extends theory in Critical Criminology, Migration, and Political Sociology to make sense of the lived realities of marginalized groups at the global level. Dr. Deckard has worked to illuminate this area of enquiry through work in a variety of cases, and has published research in The Sociological Quarterly, Citizenship Studies, and Sociology Compass. Dr. Deckard holds a PhD in Sociology from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a member of both the Canadian and American Sociological Associations, and sits on the Board of the John Howard Society.
  

• Josh Lamers

  Josh is a second-year law student and is currently a research student, and former Social Justice Fellow, at the Black Legal Action Centre, with his Master and Bachelor of Social Work from Ryerson University. In the capacity of social worker, activist, community organizer, and scholar Josh focuses on the intersections of Blackness, Disability and madness, child welfare survivorship/abolition, and Queer/Trans* identity. Josh is one of the co-founders of the Black Liberation Collective-Ryerson, a collective of Black students attached to a larger movement of Black liberation work within post-secondary institutions, where the work is challenging anti-Black racism in its many forms and to curate safer spaces for Black students, staff, and faculty.  His organizing also addressed over-policing on campus, ending Ryerson University’s attempted Toronto Police Services partnership. In November 2018, in response to the dubbed Doug Ford anti-Activist Gag Order Directive (a.k.a Freedom of Speech Policy), Josh lead students in effectively organizing, resulting in Ryerson University being the only campus to openly distance itself from the directive. As a child welfare survivor, much of Josh’s scholarly work and systemic organizing focuses on abolishing the system currently in place. His research titled From Topic and Evidence to Architect: The Development of Black Diasporic Interpretive Phenomenology and the Resistive Strategies of Black Child Welfare Survivors, received the Graduate Writers Award, and will be published in the forthcoming book “Child Welfare and the Myth of Protection”. He is also co-founder of the Collective of Child Welfare Survivors, a group that focuses on reimagining how to address families and child welfare. 

  As Josh shifts into the field of law, his goal is to truly disrupt the understanding of what the law is and can do for Black life from a rigorous and sustained stance within the Black radical tradition, Black feminisms, and decolonial paradigms.

• Camisha Sibblis

  Camisha Sibblis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Windsor in the School of Social Work.  Her research uses spatial and critical race theories  to focus on the anti-Black racism, the politics of race, gender, identity, social exclusion and systemic racism. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and pursued her BSW, MSW, and PhD degrees at York University. Camisha has extensive experience working with marginalized children, youth and their families as a school social worker in the Peel District School Board, as a child welfare worker, and as a clinician who also assessed the effects of anti-Black racism on the lives of the defenders for sentencing hearings. She counseled wards of the Children’s Aid Society as a mental health practitioner in private practice; and she is a clinical agent for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. Among her community work, she teaches for the Tabono Liberation Learning Academy – fostering activism among young adults, she was a long-standing member of the Council for Adolescent Suicide Prevention in Peel, a suicide intervention trainer, and was a member of the Peel school board’s community advisory council for the board-wide strategy to support Black student academic success and well-being.

 

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ACWR would like to thank the Government of Canada’s Emergency Community Support Fund and Community Foundations of Canada for their support of the MAKING SPACE initiative. 

L’ACWR souhaite remercier le Fonds d’urgence pour l’appui communautaire du gouvernement du Canada et Fondations communautaires du Canada pour le initiative FAIRE DE L’ESPACE. We extend a big thank-you to our sponsors:

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November 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021

Cost: FREE

ONLINE

Canada