Workshops

Here is a complete list of the workshops, along with a few details about what to expect from each one. Read on, and we hope to see you Saturday!

Solidarity Networks
With Steel City Solidarity
11:00 am – Jamesville Community Centre, Rm. 9

Boss stealing wages? Landlord not returning deposits? Want to do something about it for you and your community? Then this is the workshop for you.Called the new “food not bombs” of the anarchist movement because of their rapid spread across North America (and beyond), solidarity networks combine direct action case work and the best of the anarchist union tradition to fight back against bosses and landlords. Easy to set up and run, the solidarity network will have bosses and landlords running scared in your community in no time.

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Deepening our Strength: Radical Spirituality Discussion
11:00 am – Jamesville Community Centre, Rm. 3

Where does our strength come from? What inspires us? What could a radical spirituality look and feel like? With all the scars that patriarchal, oppressive religious traditions have left on our psyches and bodies, what could it mean for us to engage ourselves in liberatory spiritual practices? This is a workshop/discussion exploring these questions from an anarchist/anti-authoritarian perspective.

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Basic Tech Security
With ATS (Anarchist Tech Support/Anarchistes pour des technologies solidaires)
11:00 am – WAHC, Rm. 1

Tech security is important for anarchists and our allies — this workshop will be focused on why it is important, and then on how to use some of the tools that make it possible. The discussion covers issues of necessity, solidarity, counter-insurgency, and corporate data-mining. Then, ATS will explain some tools that can be used for different aspects of tech security: Online anonymization (Tor, firefox add-ons, some others); Encrypted communications (PGP email, OTR instant messaging, VOIP); Encrypted data storage (various options). Finally, participants can actually work on setting up these tools on their computers. No computer knowledge or equipment is necessary to participate, but if you can, bring a laptop or other devices.

ATS is an informal Montreal-based collective that formed in the aftermath of state repression of anarchist organizing leading up to and during the G20 summit in Toronto in June, 2010. ATS tries to make use of technology and broader networks (more secure and resistant to state surveillance and repression), by researching, distributing tools, skill sharing, and doing popular education on secure technology.

Website: www.ats-mtl.net (it forwards to a we.riseup.net site)
ATS can be reached at ats-mtl@riseup.net

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Film Screening: “CopWatch: These Streets Are Watching.”
With Hamilton Copwatch
1:30 pm – WAHC, Rm. 1

Join Hamilton CopWatch for a screening and discussion of the documentary film “CopWatch: These Streets Are Watching.” This film compiles the experiences and insights of CopWatch groups in the U.S. as of 2003. It offers us with a view of the positive role that a CopWatch group can play in fostering more safe and empowered communities as well as some of the difficulties faced in organizing our neighbourhoods. Let’s come together to discuss our ideas on how to challenge police abuse!

Hamilton CopWatch is a direct action organization dedicated to forcing greater accountability upon Hamilton police and equipping members of our community with the knowledge and skills to deal with police injustice. Through surveilling police activities and promoting awareness of all our rights when dealing with the cops, Hamilton CopWatch chooses solidarity and education as our tools of choice in the struggle against police brutality and misconduct in this city.

Hamilton Copwatch can be reached at hamiltoncopwatch@riseup.net

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Anarchist-Indigenous Solidarity
With the Six Nations Solidarity Network
1:30 pm – Jamesville Community Centre, Rm. 3

This workshop will include histories of the indigenous land that we’re on, current struggles for reclaiming the land and protecting mother earth, as well as dilemmas, strategies, and challenges for decolonizing solidarity.

The Six Nations Solidarity Network is made up of supporters of Six Nations in Brantford, Caledonia, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto. This group’s core objective is to bring attention to injustices that continue as part of colonial processes, with a perspective best described by the words of Gangulu Elder, Lila Watson: “If you have come to help me you are wasting my time. But if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine that let us struggle together.”

The Six Nations Solidarity Network can be reached at 6nsolnet@gmail.com

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Knowing The Land is Resistance
With the KLR Collective
3:15 pm – Jamesville Community Centre, Rm. 3

The first part of this workshop will be indoors, where we will be discussing how we can incorporate the ongoing stories of colonialism and capitalism into our efforts to ally with wild spaces. With this discussion in mind, we will head outside to spend time with the healing traintrack lands. Both indoor and outdoor parts of this workshop are wheelchair accessible.

The KLR Collective seeks to understand the forces that threaten wild spaces, and to explore what possibilities exist to effectively challenge and dismantle them. Knowing the Land is Resistance asks these questions, (among many others): Why is there so little forest left? Who benefits from this? What do healthy natural communities look like in this area? What roles do the various plants and animals play in these communities? How do disturbed wild spaces heal themselves? How can we, humans raised in this constrictive colonial, capitalist system, participate in that healing?

Website: knowingtheland.wordpress.com
The KLR Collective can be reached at knowingtheland@gmail.com

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Anti – Gentrification Radical Walking Tour
3:15 pm – WAHC, Rm. tba

This year’s Hamilton Economic Summit ‘unveiled’ more than a 100 stories of ‘progress’ in line with its theme of “People and Profits: Energizing our Lower City”. Attendees tell us in the local newspaper, The Spectator, that these beacons of progress mean that Hamilton is well on the way to moving forward… they just don’t tell us what we are moving towards or whose progress we are championing. Join this hour and a half walking tour around Jamesville – one of the most ‘promising’ sites of gentrification in the city – to learn about the history and lessons the buildings and people can tell us of the impacts of each new wave of progress, of how people and profits are balanced out, and of who is energized and who is removed.