Toronto Anarchist Fair and Affiliated Events:
for full Accessibility Information, please check here:
10AM-12PM – Performing Love Workshop
Videofag (187 Augusta Ave); ASL provided
PWYC ($10 suggested)
Presented by Natalie Amber: Too often have I seen communities (queer, radical and otherwise) torn apart by poorly handled relationships, on all levels. I’ve seen good people trample each others hearts due to lack of knowledge, emotionally articulate language, and underdeveloped empathy. Though many of us are striving for non-normative relationship structures because they are considered more “radical”, there are very little roadmaps to guide us down these new paths, and the new roads we are creating seem more paved with selfishness and power grabbing than true, authentic, sustainable relationship structures.
This workshop will help facilitate an in depth discussion about the influences of patriarchy, capitalism, neoliberalism and homonationalism that affects our concepts of desire, success and LOVE ITSELF. We’ll look at strategies for how to get more honest with yourself and your friends/partners/lovers, and for combatting many of the influences that prevent us from having more authentic connections with one another.
This workshop is for anyone interested in deeply engaging with themselves and their friends/partners in ways that look different from normative concepts of Love and Relationship structures. It is for everyone looking for new ways to articulate their desires and their needs, both to themselves and to others. Queer folks, radical folks, those interested in non-monogamy and those looking to get outside gender binaries will all find this workshop useful.
For more info about the workshop, and about Natalie Amber: www.performinglove.com
1PM-2PM – GET ON THE BUS! TEAR DOWN THE FENCE! END IMMIGRATION DETENTION!
Central East Correctional Centre in (Lindsay)
Toronto bus leaves at 11am, returns 4:30pm; demo from 1pm-2pm
Get on the bus! Confirm your spot: www.endimmigrationdetention.com/2013/11/26/dec14/ (snacks available for people that aren’t fasting)
The fences that surround these detainees are dividing them from their communities, their families and their lives. It is time for these fences to come down.
*UPDATE* Call for 24hour solidarity fast with immigration detainees: In response to our call for a demonstration on the outside, immigration detainees in Lindsay will be initiating their own 24hr fast inside on December 14th, 2013. Because of this, we are now calling for a 24hr global solidarity fast to accompany the protest at Lindsay Jail.
Most countries in the world have a limit to how long they can hold someone in order to remove them, including the United States and the entire European Union. However, Canada is a rogue nation. Despite the United Nations directive stating that every country must have such a limit, Canada continues to hold migrants in jail for as long as ten years! Detainees are separated from their families, children and communities with no release in sight.
These people are serving time on administrative grounds, namely their removal. If they have convictions, they have served their time. Deporting people after they have done their time is double punishment. Unlike people being held until a criminal trial, or serving time once sentenced, these detainees do not know when they will be released and face a bail or release process where they have to prove that they should be released.
These detainees have said enough is enough. Release us after ninety days so we can return to our families, our jobs and communities. Many of the detainees stopped hunger striking (two remained on hunger strike for more than 60 days) after Canada Immigration placed strikers in the hole and removed organizers to other jails. However, the detainees remain defiant and plan further actions in the near future. They continue to demand that those in jail past 90 days be immediately removed, that they be moved to lower security facilities (at the CCEC they have a poor diet, little access to medical or legal or cultural specific services, little outdoor time and are on lockdown much of day) and that the entire adjudication process be overhauled. Over 2,000 people have signed a petition in support and multiple media reports detail abuse of the detainees.
Join us in a show of support and solidarity on Saturday December 14th. Bring your friends. Bring your families. Bring your voices.
For more information on the strike and detention of migrants in Canada, see www.endimmigrationdetention.com
Email: nooneisillegal@riseup.net // migrantstrike@gmail.com
1PM-3PM – Sobriety as Accessibility: Interrogating Intoxication Panel Presentation & Discussion
Sally Horsfall Eaton Building (SHE), Room 560, Ryerson University (99 Gerrard St. E.)
ASL interpretation booked; building is fully accessible with gender neutral accessible washrooms
FREE – if you would like to make any financial contribution toward ASL, please email dreadhead.geoff@gmail.com
Alcoholism and addiction are primarily uncritically understood through the medical model. Intoxication culture is rarely interrogated for its role in producing the addict. Using a disability studies perspective and intersectional framework we will explore how people’s relationships to substances work to produce the addicted and non-addicted body. We will examine the construction of the addict as undesirable and disposable, the gendered construction of the addict and intoxication culture as a tool of colonization. Radical sobriety will be considered as a form of accessibility and resistance.
Most social events uncritically include alcohol consumption. Our work explores the construction of this intoxication culture and how it intersects with oppressive systems such as ableism, sexism and colonialism. We suggest that a dialogue about normative consumption, addiction and the intersections of intoxication culture and systems of oppression can strengthen our communities and aid in anarchist organizing.
Abstract: The Construction of the Addict As Undesirable and Disposable by geoff
A person’s relationship with a particular substance, in conjunction with their identity markers and social location work to govern how this person is treated and how they treat others. Within this relationship, the drug hierarchy and intoxication culture work to produce different constructions of the addict. In addition to this relationship, it is not just the substance the person uses that affects how they are perceived but also if they use this substance in a normal or abnormal way. The abnormal addicted body is undesired and considered to be a life not worth living.
Abstract: The Gendered Construction of Addiction by clementine morrigan
I am interested in exploring the gendered construction of addiction and alcoholism. I will consider how the intersections of sex and addiction as well as other positions such as race and class, work to construct particular people in particular ways. Female addicts and alcoholics are constructed in ways that differ from our/their male counterparts and these constructions have violent consequences in our/their lives. Some of the narratives attached to the female alcoholic/addict body that I will consider are: the perpetual sexual availability of the female alcoholic/addict’s body (she is asking for it), the female alcoholic/addict’s body as a place of inherent victimization (she is the kind of person that violence happens to) and the drunk/high woman as a transgressor of gendered boundaries (she is acting like a man). I will draw upon my own experience as a woman and an alcoholic/addict as well as critically analyzing the social construction of the female alcoholic/addict.
Abstract: Sobriety as Resistance-Colonialism and Conquest In Substance Use and Abuse by Amy Saunders
I wish to explore the utilization of drugs and alcohol as a tool of colonization within a widely normalized culture of intoxication. Furthermore, my interests lie in interrogating the temporal and spatial productions of addiction in order to reposition the inherent violence of settler colonialism. The idea of Radical Sobriety as resistance to intoxication culture, as well as a form of accessibility are expanded on through this segment and the panel discussion.
Biographies:
geoff is a rad queer anarchist that believes in creating communities of love and still dreams of smashing the state. he identifies as an addict in recovery. he wishes to politicize his experiences with substance use and sobriety while unravelling the limited representation of the addicted body. more of his work can be found at livingnotexisting.org
clementine morrigan is a writer, poet, essayist and multidisciplinary artist. after publishing zines for more than ten years, her first book, rupture, came out in 2012. her work frequently explores the experiences and intersections of alcoholism and addiction, gendered violence, trauma, madness, queer-feminist femme-genderfluid sexuality, healing and hope. she is passionate about queerness, feminism, do-it-yrself culture, skill sharing, subversion, spirituality, recovery and radical sobriety. more of her work can be found at clementinemorrigan.com
Amy Saunders is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, organizer and poet. Her work investigates multidimensional relationships between sex, sexuality, gender, colonialism, addiction, familial relations, feminism and public spaces. She has a blog that consists of selfies in public spaces. She aims to investigate, deconstruct and make uncomfortable the topics with which she works. Amy has an honours bachelor of Critical Sexualities and hopes to never return to the post secondary educational institution. She is currently writing for a Toronto based women’s website for which she is a journalist of the sexual variety. She is current working on a fictional piece entitled “Meet Me At The Waverly” which explores lineages of trauma and addiction. Her selfies can be found at akingdomofself.tumblr.com
6PM – Book Launch for Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? + AFTERPARTY
Another Story Bookshop (315 Roncesvalles Ave); mainspace wheelchair accessible, washroom in basement but relationship with Alternative Grounds (333 Roncesvalles) for use of their accessible washroom
FREE
Another Story Bookshop, Between the Lines Press and The Toronto Anarchist Fair Present:
Toronto Book Launch for Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? Anarchy in Action Around the World by Francis Dupuis-Déri
Faces masked, dressed in black, and forcefully attacking the symbols of capitalism, Black Blocs have been transformed into an anti-globalization media spectacle. But the popular image of the window-smashing thug hides a complex reality.
Francis Dupuis-Déri outlines the origin of this phenomenon, its dynamics, and its goals, arguing that the use of violence always takes place in an ethical and strategic context.
Translated into English for the first time and completely revised and updated to include the most recent Black Bloc actions at protests in Brazil, Greece, Germany, Canada, and England, and the Bloc’s role in the Occupy movement and the Quebec student strike, Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? lays out a comprehensive view of the Black Bloc tactic and locates it within the anarchist tradition of direct action.