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Transforming Montreal in time of crisis

A report launch event on community organizing and collective learning during the COVID-19 pandemic


Date & time
Thursday, December 8, 2022
5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Registration is closed

Speaker(s)

Dr. Jen Gobby, Concordia Geography Department affiliate professor

Cost

This event is free

Organization

SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation

Contact

SHIFT

Where

J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation

Room LB 145

Wheel chair accessible

Yes

Transforming Montreal in time of crisis: Community organizing and collective learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • How has the COVID-19 crisis transformed Montreal?
  • How did community organizers and activists across the city respond to the crisis in ways that pushed for increased justice, equity and sustainability in how this city functions?
  • Are funding structures supporting efforts for transformative change?
  • How did responses from city government support and hinder community-led efforts?

These are some of the questions at the heart of a two-year research project led by Dr. Jen Gobby, Concordia Geography Department affiliate professor, in partnership with the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation and community organizers across Montréal. We sat down with folks involved in mutual aid efforts and those fighting for food security, housing rights, anti-racism, social inclusion, access to healthcare and more to learn about how the pandemic affected their work.

The report concludes that:
“Shining through all these insights is the profound importance of relations. We hear a loud call to take the social relations currently characterized by deep inequities and transform them to relations of accountability, solidarity, mutual aid and shared power; to attend to our relationships like our lives depend on it. Because as one organizer put it, “When there is a real collective will, a collective effort that goes in the same direction, we can do things that are gigantic.”

On December 8, 2022, we will be launching the report that shares the wealth of community reflections and insight. The event will include a presentation by Jen Gobby about the findings of the research as well as a panel discussion featuring community organizers who were involved in the project.

To join the event 
- In person: at the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation (LB 145 – 1400 Blvd de Maisonneuve, ground floor southeast corner)
- Online: via Zoom

 

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