Join author of More Powerful Together, Dr. Jen Gobby in conversation with environmental and social justice activists/organizers in Canada.
About this Event
Fernwood Publishing in partnership with The ENRICH Project presents the launch of More Powerful Together: Conversations With Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders. This event will feature a keynote by the author, Dr. Jen Gobby, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Alex Khasnabish. The panel discussion will focus on issues of Migrant Justice, Climate/Environmental Justice, Indigenous Sovereignty and Land Back, the Movement for Black Lives, and ways to build stronger links between these different movements and struggles. Panelists include: Michelle Paul, Darlene Gilbert, Kate MacDonald and Stacy Gomez. The evening will end with a performance by spoken word artist, Abena Amoako-Green.
***Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event.***
In More Powerful Together, Jen Gobby adds her voice to the chorus of voices calling for a convergence of struggles, for busting out of single issues silos, for a movement of movement, for joining forces to build the collective power needed to transform systems. In this event we will create space for activists from many different struggles to think together about how we do that, about what barriers stand in our way, and about how we overcome them.
Purchase a copy of More Powerful Together here. 100% of the royalties made from the sales of this book are being donated to Indigenous Climate Action www.indigenousclimateaction.com
About the speakers
Dr. Jen Gobby
Dr. Jen Gobby is a settler activist-scholar based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). She is founder of the MudGirls Natural Building Collective, and organizes with Climate Justice Montreal. She completed her Ph.D at McGill in 2019 as part of the Economics for the Anthropocene partnership and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment. She has spent the last 5 years thinking collaboratively with land defenders and environmental justice activists about how we can more powerfully push for large scale social change. She is the author of the book More Powerful Together: Conversations with Climate Activists and Land Defenders.
Dr. Alex Khasnabish
Alex Khasnabish is a writer, researcher, and teacher committed to collective liberation living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on unceded and unsurrendered Mi’kmaw territory. He is an associate professor in Sociology & Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University. His research focuses on the radical imagination, radical politics, social justice, and social movements. His recent books include What Moves Us: The Lives and Times of the Radical Imagination (co-edited with Max Haiven), The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (co-authored with Max Haiven), and Insurgent Encounters: Transnational Ethnography, Activism, and the Political (co-edited with Jeffrey Juris).
Michelle Paul
Michelle Paul is a Mi’kmaq rights holder, land defender, water protector and mother who has been resisting the Alton Natural Gas Storage project over the last several years. She is featured in the Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water.
Darlene Gilbert
Darlene Gilbert is a Mi’kmaq rights holder, land defender, water protector and mother who has been resisting the Alton Natural Gas Storage project over the last several years. She is featured in the Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water.
Kate MacDonald
Kate Macdonald was born and raised in Halifax, NS. Kate is proudly African Nova Scotian. She studied Performance Acting at Ryerson University in Toronto, ON. At the end of 2016 with the political climate swiftly changing around her (en election of a new president) she knew her reaction had to be radical. Out of this desire to make a change she Founded and Co Created The Magic Project. Which focuses on bringing marginalized brilliance to the forefront of social media using the arts. Kate is also a Community Facilitator and Youth Programmer. She hopes to continue creating workshops, holding space for community discussions and empowering youth through celebration. Her art practice has always included photography, poetry and performance theatre. But she has been long fascinated with the many avenues that art presents for self expression. Recently, Kate, Trayvone Clayton & DeRico Symonds created an African Nova Scotian community based, youth-led initiative called The Game Changers. After a year of working together in advocacy, activism, and community they decided to collaborate officially. Kate is currently the Branch Manager at the North Branch Memorial Library.
Stacy Gomez
Stacey Gomez is a community organizer engaged in struggles for migrant justice with groups like No One is Illegal – Halifax/K’jipuktuk and the Migrant Worker Rights Working Group. Since 2016, Stacey has also worked with a Maritimes-based network engaged in solidarity with human rights defenders in Guatemala.
Abena Amoako-Green
Abena is a poet, freelance writer, and dancer who seeks to relate, engage, and elevate through her artistic work. She is the author of the Way We Hold On, which is her debut book of poetry. She was a two-time member of the Halifax Slam Team, competing in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. She is also the 2016 winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize, (now Nova Writes) and 3rd place finalist in the 2017 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam (Vancouver, British Columbia). Abena is a nomadic Canadian of Ghanaian heritage, currently residing in Nova Scotia. She is passionate about sustainability, creativity, and connection between living beings.
About the book
How can social movements help bring about large-scale systems change? This is the question Jen Gobby sets out to answer in More Powerful Together. As an activist, Gobby has been actively involved with climate justice, anti-pipeline, and Indigenous land defense movements in Canada for many years. As a researcher, she has sat down with folks from these movements and asked them to reflect on their experiences with movement building. Bringing their incredibly poignant insights into dialogue with scholarly and activist literature on transformation, Gobby weaves together a powerful story about how change happens.
Purchase a copy of More Powerful Together here. 100% of the royalties made from the sales of this book are being donated to Indigenous Climate Action www.indigenousclimateaction.com
