Thanks to everyone for helping make this year's Inclusion Week series a success!
The Centre for Human Rights, Equity, & Inclusion (REI) Inclusion Week series ran from February 28 to March 3, 2022. It featured free talks and interactive, skills-based workshops that explored solidarity and equitable sustainability.
Full videos of the 3 Webinar events are available below:
Please note that a French version of this page is available here.
The Week at a glance
Building and Sustaining Equitable and Caring Futures
Who gets to rest during a time of crises that are disproportionately impacting systemically marginalized communities?
Main Theme Description:
In our intentional quest for equitable, just, and caring futures, we ponder how to safeguard the wellness of those who bear the brunt of inequities and harms. As we continue to work, learn and build, we aim to prioritize the sustainability of these communities, social movements, and individuals.
The Covid-19 pandemic, growing income inequality, political polarization, climate change, and ongoing struggles for racial justice, disproportionately impact specific communities. Now more than ever, the importance of cooperation amidst great divides and uncertainty highlights our global interdependence and the vital role it plays for people to collectively envision and create more equitable and caring futures.
Download a PDF copy of the Inclusion Week 2022 event descriptions flyer here. (Also available in Plain Text Version)
Day 1
An interactive session/workshop*
In recognition of Black History Month and as the kick-off event of Inclusion Week, 2022, this session offers a series of engaging activities and reflection exercises that challenge participants to:
- Contextualize their social location based on their identity.
- Deepen their understanding of allyship in a personal and institutional setting.
- Practice active allyship and develop strategies to have brave conversations.
This workshop is developed and delivered in partnership with Student Community Leadership and Development (SCLD). *This session is a pre-requisite to the March 3 session: The Ecology of Allyship, Part II
Day 2
Labour is political, and so is rest. This panel invites speakers to engage in a thoughtful conversation about the question: “Who gets to rest?” through various critical perspectives.
How does how we work today shape how we rest?
What are the harms that come from current patterns of rest?
What happens when care work gets counted/valued as productive work? What happens when it isn’t counted/valued?
What are some best practices for self-care/community care in the face of racial battle fatigue?
Ethel Tungohan is the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, and Associate Professor of Politics and Social Science at York University. She has also been appointed as a Broadbent Institute Fellow. Previously, she was the Grant Notley Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta’s Department of Political Science. She received her doctoral degree in Political Science and Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto.
Her research looks at migrant labor, specifically assessing migrant activism. Her forthcoming book, “From the Politics of Everyday Resistance to the Politics from Below,” which will be published by the University of Illinois Press, won the 2014 National Women’s Studies Association First Book Prize.
Soma Chatterjee an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work (cross appointed to Interdisciplinary Studies), York University. Soma is broadly interested in migration and mobility, sovereignty and borders, and their ideological and material implications for contemporary Western nation building. She works at the disciplinary intersections of sociology (studies of nationalism and the diaspora), education (specifically, Adult and Higher Education), social work (social policy and global justice) and geography (migration & mobility studies).
Dr. Chatterjee’s doctoral research looked at the labour market integration of skilled immigrants, and how through the practices of training and learning, a specific 'immigrant' subject distinct from Canadian 'nationals' emerged in the decades following liberalization
Alanah Broomfield is in her fourth year with the York Lions Track and Field Team, where she is one of the captains. Aside from majoring in French Studies and obtaining a certificate in law and social thought, Alanah is the current co-president of the Black and Indigenous Varsity Student Athlete Alliance.
Olamide Olatoye is a fifth year health studies student, specializing in health policy. She is on the York Varsity Women’s Soccer team and an 2019 OUA champion. She is now the co-president of the Black and Indigenous Varsity Student Athlete Alliance.
Through BIVSAA, Ola and Alanah have actively contributed to the creation of ROAR (Resisting Oppression and Advancing Rights), an online module by the Centre for Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion (REI) to promote EDI in athletics.
Day 3
Insights: A speaker series on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) presented in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President for Equity, People, and Culture
Keynote Lecture:
Solidarity has figured prominently in the wide range of responses to the many crises of recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing anti-Black racism, colonization, climate catastrophe, and vast economic inequality. Calls to solidarity appeal to our sense of moral duty, group cohesion, and social justice, yet such calls are usually vague about what solidarity entails and abstracted from the realities of doing social justice work. What are the meanings of solidarity, and how might solidarity figure as a framework for working toward just, caring, equitable, and sustainable futures?
Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández’s research and scholarship are concerned with questions of symbolic boundaries and the dynamics of cultural production and processes of identification in educational contexts. He draws on cultural studies, decolonial/postcolonial and feminist theory, and critical sociology to inform his understanding of curriculum and pedagogy as encounters with difference. He is the Director of the Youth Research Lab at the Centre for Urban Schooling of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where he oversees and supports youth-oriented and community-based research projects with a focus on school-based youth participatory action research. At OISE, Gaztambide-Fernández is Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Curriculum Inquiry. His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between creativity, decolonization, and solidarity, and he has published widely on the topics of the arts in education, the sociology of elites, and pedagogies of solidarity.
Day 4
In this interactive workshop, we deepen our exploration of concepts of allyship and solidarity. In this follow up to our session Orienting Yourself to Allyship, this workshop explores the multiple roles people can play in building solidarity across lines of difference, examples of solidarity movements, and personal reflections on how to find your own stake in movements. This is the second part of the Allyship session presented in collaboration with SCLD.
Please note, this is not an introductory or beginners’ workshop. To join this one, you must have attended an Orienting Yourself to Allyship Part 1 session (most recently offered on February 28th), or have previous organizing experience across lines of shared identities. Please email us with any questions/inquiries at chrwkshp@yorku.ca
Struggles for racial justice and liberation are made possible through the efforts of organized and dedicated people who identify overlapping interests and find common causes, even when their perspectives may differ. Beyond holding a belief that a better world is possible, struggles undertaken in solidarity involve dialogue, mutual support, and the recognition of interdependence.
This panel discussion on solidarity will include explorations of historic and current, global and local efforts toward building more equitable and caring futures.
Sabina Chatterjee, Doctoral Student, Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies, York University. Her research interests include decolonization and accountability by non-Indigenous racialized people, social justice and solidarity, and arts-based community dialogues that explore the ways in which South Asian diasporic communities are challenging anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and casteism.
Shanese Anne Steele is a writer, activist, facilitator, and equity consultant with Shaneseanne Consulting. She is also the founder of the non-profit Aazhganan Project, where she works to educate Racialized and Indigenous peoples on their shared histories.
Wazhmah Osman is a filmmaker, writer, and assistant professor at Temple University, Department of Media and Communications. Her research focuses on global and transnational media. She has written on how Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) people and African Americans can create solidarity and unified movements in the face of the US military-industrial complex and stereotypes from the media industry.
Inclusion Week 2022
Center for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion (REI)
