Telling Black Histories: Writing, Recuperation and Resistance | Part II
Release Date: 03/01/2023
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In the launch of our fifth season, we are pleased to welcome back author, public intellectual and director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad. Taking us through the recent economic summits of BRICS and the G20, as well as the cascade coups in West Africa, Prashad delves into the rapid and stunning changes taking place in the world today, where they came from and what this could mean for a changing world order. Is it multipolarity or is it something else? In speaking of the origins of the BRICS bloc of economically emerging nations, Prashad says: “You know, it's...
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For our season finale of Courage My Friends, we return to this year’s George Brown College Labour Fair, The other P3s: pandemic, privatization, precarity,,, and planet!! In the panel on ‘Food Industries: Feeding Ourselves on a Precarious Planet’, moderator Lori Stahlbrand is joined by guests: Joshna Maharaj, a chef, social gastronomy activist, educator and host of the Hot Plate podcast; Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer, educator and activist with Justice for Migrant Workers; and Charlotte Big Canoe, partner and membership director at The Full Plate. The four discuss food...
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In our sixth episode of the Courage My Friends podcast, series 4; Ana Guerra Marin, communities director and just transition lead, and lead Indigenous researcher, Dara Wawaite-Chabot discuss the mission of worker-founded Iron & Earth to create pathways for workers from traditional (carbon-based) energy jobs to jobs within renewable energy sectors and how green transition meets climate justice when it comes to the needs of workers, Indigenous communities and the country. According to Guerra Marin: “Iron Earth started in the oil sands in Alberta, where some workers were concerned...
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In our fifth episode of this season of Courage My Friends, we revisit the George Brown College Labour Fair. This year, the theme of the fair is: The other P3s: pandemic, privatization, precarity,,, and planet!! In this episode, we share the panel discussion on ‘Gig Workers and Precarity in the 21st Century.’ Moderator is joined by panelists Simran Dhunna and Jobanjeet Kaur of the Naujawan Support Network and Jennifer Scott from Gig Workers United. The groups discusses the tribulations faced by those working in precarious and gig jobs, increasingly exploitative employment structures...
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Our latest episode of Courage My Friends takes its inspiration from friend and guest William Woolrich as he begins his search for a living kidney donor. He and Candice Coghlan, education and outreach coordinator for the University Health Network Ajmera Transplant Centre and host of the Living Transplant podcast, discuss the search for and ultimate gift of living organ donations. Speaking to how non-related or anonymous donors can help shorten the organ transplant waiting list, Coghlan says: “So these are people who have no connection to the recipient at all. They don't know them, but they...
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In our third episode, Jaime Kirkpatrick, senior program manager of Blue Green Canada, discusses the need for a Just Transition, what it should look like for labour, and how Canada is doing in its move toward a clean energy economy. Speaking to joint climate and labour demands and the idea of a Just Transition, Kirkpatrick says: “Blue Green and a number of allies have been advocating ...the idea of buying clean..You're keeping people employed here at home. You're keeping plants up and running … It's 100 per cent about keeping jobs, reducing the carbon, building out a future together...
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The second episode of this season, features a recording of the keynote address delivered by past president of the Canadian Labour Congress, Senator Hassan Yussuff at George Brown College’s 31st annual Labour Fair. Anchoring a week of labour focused discussions and speaking to George Brown College students and faculty, the Senator focuses on this year’s theme, 'The other P3s: pandemic, privatization, precarity,,, and planet!!' Reflecting on federal workers delivery of CERB during the pandemic, the Senator says: “Those workers, six weeks it took them to create that program, to build...
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In the first episode of our fourth series, we welcome CLiFF (Canadian Labour International Film Festival board members, Lorene Oikawa and Derek Blackadder and George Brown College faculty and organizer with the Labour Fair, Kathryn Payne. We discuss the importance of bringing labour education to post-secondary and wider communities through the 31st annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College (organized by the School of Labour and the Tommy Douglas Institute) and its collaboration with the . This episode sets the stage for the re-airing of major Labour Fair events on this podcast as...
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In this two part episode of the Courage My Friends podcast, Telling Black histories: writing, recuperation and resistance, we are very pleased to welcome the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto and the 7th Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke. As we continue our conversation, Clarke reflects on past and current struggles against White western power, the meaning of decolonization and shaping effective resistance in Canada and beyond. Clarke discusses ongoing legacies of colonialism and racist imperialism in global politics,: “As Malcolm X said, ‘"you're a bunch...
info_outlineNeeds No Introduction
In this 2-part episode of the Courage My Friends podcast, Telling Black histories: writing, recuperation and resistance, we are very pleased to welcome the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto and the 7th Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke. In Part I of our conversation, Clarke takes us on a journey through Black and Africadian history in Canada, his life and work and discusses the importance of recuperating Black and colonized histories through writing and resistance. Reflecting on the history of Black communities in Nova Scotia, Clarke says: Africadia is built,...
info_outlineIn this two part episode of the Courage My Friends podcast, Telling Black histories: writing, recuperation and resistance, we are very pleased to welcome the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto and the 7th Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke.
As we continue our conversation, Clarke reflects on past and current struggles against White western power, the meaning of decolonization and shaping effective resistance in Canada and beyond.
Clarke discusses ongoing legacies of colonialism and racist imperialism in global politics,: “As Malcolm X said, ‘"you're a bunch of hypocrites’"...At the same time as you're expressing all these nostrums and parables of your supposed virtues, you are armed to the teeth. You are armed to the teeth! You are building jails to house masses of people seeking relief from the oppression that you have engineered in their home countries… And then these oppressed peoples flee for the refuge of your democracy and your attitude is to let them drown in the Mediterranean. .. let them drown in the Atlantic.”.
For Clarke, achieving real change in Canada is very much in our hands: “We want to end police killings of unarmed Black men and Indigenous men and women and youth? Oh, we can do that, but we're gonna have to vote in place governments that will put in place very strict regiments on police forces..Whatever it is that you, the people together, collectively want in a democracy, you can have it. ..You can have an end to war. You can have more distribution of income and wealth. In a democracy you can actually vote yourselves this…So what's stopping us? Well, actually nothing is stopping us, except our own blind obedience to the way things have always been.”
Speaking to the failures of “cancel culture”, Clarke says: “The woke/cancelers have power to destroy individuals, which they can do, and they've done it. ..On the other hand, as they have also proven, they cannot destroy oppressive institutions. How nice it would be if they could, but they don't have that ability. They can destroy individuals, but not institutions. I think that's a problem.Because to go after individuals, any mob can do that. But to go after institutions, a mob isn't what you need. You need a revolutionary movement”.
About today’s guest
The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has also taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. His recognitions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Fellowship (US), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the PremiulPoesis (Romania), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and International Fellow Poet of the Year, Encyclopedic Poetry School [2019] (China). His acclaimed titles include Whylah Falls (1990, translated into Chinese), Beatrice Chancy (1999, translated into Italian), Execution Poems (2001), Blues and Bliss (selected poems, 2009), I & I (2008), Illicit Sonnets (U.K., 2013), Traverse (2015), Canticles II (MMXX) (2020), and J’Accuse…! (Poem versus Silence) (2021).
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.
Image: George Elliott Clarke (Portrait by Katerina Fretwell) / Used with Permission
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (podcast announcer); Bob Luker (voice of Tommy Douglas); Kenneth Okoro, Liz Campos Rico, Tsz Wing Chau (street voices)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca
Host: Resh Budhu