Tag Archives: activism
On the Front Line: A Report from the Ontario Common Front Assembly
Imagine a pot of boiling water: a spark of fire begins a process by which the water temperature arises. Not all molecules are the same, and some are closer to the fire than others. But, in the end, molecules interacting with one another, the water crosses the one hundred Celsius degrees threshold. You may wonder, what does it have to do with a meeting about activism? Let me explain.
In many ways, what I witnessed in company of Kevin Godbout, SOGS President, at the last Ontario Common Front Assembly, celebrated in Toronto on August 19, was that because of the unending cuts to social programs the spark has already begun. However, as I have experienced in the past, the interaction among people necessary to agitate and elevate the temperature may be curtailed by divergent agendas. Without interaction no boiling takes place.
At the Assembly, people from many activist social groups got together to discuss ways to integrate different perspectives and strategies for social change into a comprehensive action plan. In our conversations, important points were raised about minimum wage, the crisis in post-secondary education, and labour legislation.
Meetings such as the Common Front are of much interest for SOGS because they help us to put our point of view as grad students into convergence in the larger picture. The work for social change will continue and necessitates our support. At SOGS, committees such as GSIC, IGSIC, Equity, among others, are on the front line of many of these issues. Let’s keep it up!
In Solidarity,
Jaime R. Brenes Reyes
Society of Graduate Students
VP External & Communications
Filed under Activism
MLA 2014 Program: Session 652
652. Disability Discourses in Latin America: Academy and Activism
Saturday, 11 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., Missouri, Sheraton Chicago
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Mexican Cultural and Literary Studies and the Division on Disability Studies
Presiding: Beth Ellen Jörgensen, Univ. of Rochester
Speakers: Susan Antebi, Univ. of Toronto; Jaime Brenes Reyes, Univ. of Western Ontario; Emily Hind, Univ. of Wyoming; Christopher Becker Krentz, Univ. of Virginia; Robert McRuer, George Washington Univ.; Pamela Molina, Organization of American States
Filed under Presentations
O-Week to Activists: Your Presence is Not Welcome Here
Student activism… Well done, Western Solidarity Network!
On Tuesday evening, the night marking the official opening of Western’s Orientation Week, a small group of activists (myself included) was asked by Campus Police (CCPS) to leave campus while protesting the increasingly high cost of education and student debt. Organized under the banner of the Western Solidarity Network, our group sought to raise awareness about issues which we feel are conveniently absent from O-Week, but which nonetheless constitute a grim reality for many university students: the financial realities of tuition and student debt, and the predominance of corporate interests on campus. By highlighting the ways in which these trends insidiously pervade Western’s Orientation Week, we hoped to situate them in an immediate and resonating context for first year students. In doing so, we wanted to offer to incoming students an alternative way to think about their new and unfamiliar surroundings.
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CFP: Capitalism in the Classroom: Neoliberalism, Education and Progressive Alternatives
Conference & Special Issue Call For Papers
Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research
Edited by Carlo Fanelli (Ryerson University) and Bryan Evans (Ryerson University)
Capitalism in the Classroom: Neoliberalism, Education and Progressive Alternatives
As the austerity agenda intensifies, this special issue of Alternate Routes is seeking papers that explore how education is being restructured in light of market pressures to commodify and marketize learning and teaching from pre-school to post-secondary education and beyond. The conference will be held on Friday April 4, 2014 at Ryerson University. Paper proposals may include but are not limited to: How have state policies increased pressures to corporatize and privatize public education? How have children and youth programs been affected? How has the quality of work and labour been impacted? How have intersecting axes of oppression related to class, race, ethnicity, gender and so forth been reinforced or contested in the classroom? In what ways have student curriculums and teachers’ academic freedoms been affected? Have educators and employees challenged such pressures? What role have trade union and community activists played in challenging the prerogatives of capitalism in the classroom? Are there progressive educational alternatives to neoliberalism?
Additional topics may include: ongoing theoretical debates; community outreach and education campaigns; cross-sectoral and international comparisons; new pedagogical methods and policy proposals for schooling and education; corporate influences on campus and in the classroom; new technologies and online-learning; publishing and dissemination of research; new public management and academic/non-academic labour; and social justice activism.
Conference submissions must be received no later than January 5, 2014. Please include an abstract no longer than 300-words and brief biography. Conference decisions will be made within one week. If you are interested in submitting an article but cannot attend the conference, articles must be submitted by May 15, 2014. New authors are encouraged to visit www.alternateroutes.ca for author guidelines and additional information. Conference proposals and article submissions must be sent directly to editor@alternateroutes.ca.
For all other inquiries, please visit www.alternateroutes.ca or send an email to editor@alternateroutes.ca
IN THE CHIKAB’AL LAGOON / EN LA LAGUNA DE CHIKAB’AL
(Lee la version en español abajo)
IN THE SORROUNDINGS OF THE XELAJUJNOJ (place of the ten knowledges, Quetzaltenango), there is a circular lagoon which had before been the eye of a volcano. It is on Maya Mam territory. Even today it is an instrument for visions (ilbal in Maya k’iche’), gateway between worlds, place of pilgrimage for the ajq’ij (the shamans knowledgeable of the cholq’ij – lunar calendar of 260 days- and of the mysteries of fire). The people from the region say that Chikab’al has gone hidden herself, that a long time ago he used to rest in what is today the village of Chile Verde. The waters there are sacred; nobody bathes in them. Their nawaleskan (the serpent) and I’x (the jaguar) protect them with a veil of fog.
In this the fifth sneak-peek from our INDIGENOUS MESSAGE ON WATER, precisely on this the day of…
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This week
– Last Thursday: elected as Society of Graduate Students’ VP External and Communications
– Working on a paper on Borges’s “Funes el memorioso” and Melville’s “Bartleby, the scrivener”
– Got in contact with a journal to write a book review of A.J. Withers Disability Politics and Theory
– Trying to come up with ideas about speakers and events for Public Humanities @ Western
– Enjoying life!
Candidate’s Statement – SOGS’ VP External Affairs and Communications
Society of Graduate Students, University of Western Ontario
Dear colleagues:
I am a first year Ph.D. student in Hispanic Studies, a grad program within the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Studying at Western has been an enriching experience mainly because of the high involvement of grad students within organizations such as SOGS and PSAC610. The debates that take place during each of the SOGS’ Council meetings are unique and exemplary of the idea that I have of a university: the place to establish dialogue across disciplines in a respectful manner. As VP External Affairs and Communications, I aim to foster the dialogue that I have witnessed within SOGS. For this reason – and also for the D not to be left out between the C for Communications and the E for External – I have decided to centre my platform on the issue of…
…D for Debate…
Three “d words” come to my mind when I think of a grad student organization: dissemination, distribution, and dialogue. Call it 3D, the relevance of projecting the ideas and research we discuss at the university into the wider spectrum of the community within and outside campus. It is my objective to take these three pillars to build a solid image of who we are and what we do. By dissemination, I propose to keep on developing the SOGS newsletter into a web-publishing magazine that portrays the engaging discussions that take place at SOGS as well as to give an opportunity for grad students to present their research or other interests. With distribution, I aim to open the doors between campus and the community at large by representing SOGS at diverse forums and to continue the work of previous SOGS leaders to nurture student engagement through symposia in relation to academic policies that may affect the student population. But, as I have learned through my experience in student and labour activism, it is very important for us to turn the current crisis in post-secondary education into an avenue for dialogue with the university administration as well as with provincial and federal authorities. For instance, as a member of the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario Executive Board, I would like to advocate for CFS to focus more directly on graduate and international student issues.
We are here not to be timid in front of others: we are serious scholars with full potential to excel within our own field. And believe me, I am not being a demagogue – I have seen it with my own eyes at every SOGS’ Council meeting. Shyness is the last thing that would come to my mind when I recall these meetings. It is our duty to show others our brave tactics to represent ourselves and communicate our ideas.
Certainly, there are “d words” that we should watch out for, such as disempowerment and disengagement. But, these are words in company of prefixes, which means that we can reverse social tendencies by diversifying the doors for communication within our organization. In other words, I will do my best to ensure that student departmental meetings are taking place and to attend as many of them as time allows. Also, in case delegates are not attending the Council meetings, I will contact them to discuss ways that would allow them to work more actively within our organization. The power is on our hands to include more people in the debates that we like to engage in at the Council.
I am open to discuss these ideas in a regular time basis with the Council delegates. I aim to develop and design a cohesive communication model that would be useful and practical for all SOGS’ members and the community at large. I am here to debate – no doubts about it!
Jaime R. Brenes Reyes
Candidate to VP External Affairs and Communications
Filed under Activism
Academia’s indentured servants – Opinion – Al Jazeera English
“Last week, a corporation proudly announced that it had created a digital textbook that monitors whether students had done the reading. This followed the announcement of the software that grades essays, which followed months of hype over MOOCs – massive online open courses – replacing classroom interaction. Professors who can gauge student engagement through class discussion are unneeded. Professors who can offer thoughtful feedback on student writing are unneeded. Professors who interact with students, who care about students, are unneeded.”
Academia’s indentured servants – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.
Candidato a “Representante de los miembros estudiantes (2013-16)” de la Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas
He recibido con mucho agrado la nominación al cargo de “Representante de los miembros estudiantes” para el período 2013-16 de la Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas. Para más informacón sobre las elecciones, visiten el sitio web de la asociación. A partir del primero de abril de 2013, las declaraciones de intenciones y CVs de los candidatos estarán disponibles en el sitio web.
Muchas gracias a todos, y prometo mantenerlos al tanto de los resultados de la votación.
Filed under Academia
Jaime Román Brenes Reyes 