Events

Registration Required, Spots Reserved for Black and Indigenous community members: https://actionnetwork.org/events/policing-black-lives

🗓Tuesday, Aug 11
🍉 Doors, Food, Books & Tabling 5:15 pm
🔥 Event 6:00 pm
📍Russian Hall, 600 Campbell Avenue
🌿 xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh & səlilwətaɬ lands

Weaving Our Worlds and Vancouver Black Library are excited to announce an evening with Robyn Maynard!

Robyn Maynard is the author of Policing Black Lives - a comprehensive account of the state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. Robyn traces the afterlives of slavery through colonial dispossession, racial profiling, police killings, incarceration, deportation, migrant labour practices, child removal, and the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as the ubiquity of Black resistance for building new forms of safety.

After a talk, Robyn will be joined by local speakers for a conversation highlighting projects on these unceded lands for building community and futures.

This event is being held during Black August, an annual honouring of Black political prisoners and the Black radical tradition that originated in California prisons by the Black Guerilla Family to commemorate the lives of the Jackson brothers through Love, Study & Struggle. And don't forget to show up for annual Prisoners Justice Day, observed annually in Canadian prisons since 1974 to commemorate those who have died inside.

This event is jointly hosted by Weaving Our Worlds and Vancouver Black Library.

Please read closely for Accessibility + Housekeeping:

Event starts with a reading area, books & zines, and light meal at 5:15 pm. Food will be put away by 5:50 pm so people remain masked. Event starts at 6:00 pm

We will be collecting books for a book drive for Books 2 Prisoners as well as Vancouver Black Library. Please see here for a book list.

Venue accessibility: There is a ramp to the front entrance. There is an elevator to get down to the lower level, where the accessible washroom is located. See here for a visual story and accessibility details.

ASL-English interpretation is confirmed.

We are in the process of confirming childminding. If you would like childminding at the event for children under 10 years of age, please indicate it on the registration form at least 1 week before the event, along with the number and ages of the children. We will follow up.

Masks required to ensure that the day is accessible to immunocompromised comrades and protects all of us from Covid-19 transmission. If you are not someone who typically opts to wear a mask, we thank you for respecting this and helping us to enact a collectivist approach to wellbeing. Presenters may remove masks while presenting. Masks will be available on-site.

We never collaborate with any policing agency. This includes never allowing entry to cops, cbsa etc, nor ever providing information or immigration status of people.

We welcome curiosity and conversation! This does not extend to harassing, discriminatory, oppressive speech or actions, especially related to marginalized genders, sexualities, race, anti-Blackness, religion, disability, age, appearance, etc. Everyone commits to a welcoming and dignified environment for all.