Sick in the City: The streets as disease and as cure

Our University of the Streets Café public conversations are much like any you’d have with friends or family around a dinner table, except with more people, more points of view, and slightly more structure. Conversations are hosted by a volunteer moderator who is there to welcome everyone and keep things on track. To get things started, there’s a guest, or sometimes two, who get the ball rolling by sharing their ideas, experiences and questions. After that, it's all up to the participants.

Do cities allow us to thrive or to survive? This conversation will consider the extent to which our health and well being are impacted by urban spaces, their layout, culture and politics. Is access to health services determined by one’s gender, economic stability or ethnicity? How do we maneuver through city food deserts? What examples from Montreal’s history of community organizing can we draw from? Ultimately, can we reclaim agency over our health while in turn impacting the institutions that purport to support us?

Guests:
Baijayanta Mukhopadhyay is a family doctor who works primarily in Eeyou Istchee (James Bay Cree territory) and northern Ontario. He is also a co-coordinator of the Canadian chapter of the People's Health Movement. He is a volunteer physician with Médecins du monde's Montreal projects to provide medical care to marginalised and vulnerable inner-city populations.

Robyn Maynard is a writer, activist and educator based in Montreal. She has spent years doing outreach work with Stella, Head and Hands, and will soon be working with the Black Indigenous Harm Reduction Alliance. Her first book, Policing Black Bodies: State violence and Black life will be published by Fernwood Publishing in Fall 2017.

Moderator:
Abby Lippman is a longtime feminist activist with special interests in women's health and women's health policies. Now a professor emerita, she has one foot still based in academia (specifically at McGill and Concordia Universities) and the other, the foot she favors, remains firmly planted in social justice and reproductive activism with diverse community groups in Montreal and beyond its borders.

Accessibility info: Le Y des femmes de Montréal can be entered via a ramp through the entrance at 1181 Crescent Street. The conversation takes place one floor below, which can be accessed by elevator. Washrooms with wheelchair accessible stalls are located in proximity to the conversation area.