NOII reLaunch Conference Schedule

 NOII-Ottawa Building Movement Conference- Full schedule up! 

Check out the amazing workshops, panels, & discussions. Just one week away!

DAY ONE - OPENING PANEL Friday November 1st, 2013 – 7:00PM to 9:00PM Desmarais Room: 1160, University of Ottawa Campus, Ottawa  Unceded Algonquin territory (55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, ON)

Building Movement: Freedom to move, freedom to stay, freedom to return!

No One is Illegal – Ottawa invites you to join us in a public conversation with indigenous and migrant justice activists, academics, and grassroots community organizers to discuss how we can build solidarity between Indigenous and non-indigenous communities, and resist ongoing colonial border controls, criminalization and marginalization of migrants through migrant justice organizing in Ottawa.

Panelists: Zhaawanongnoodin (Colleen Cardinal) is a Plains Cree woman from Saddle Lake First Nation, AB. Zhaawanongnoodin who organizes with Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS). She speaks publicly about murdered and missing Indigenous women and the impacts of the 60’s Scoop by drawing on critical connections between genocidal colonial policies and her lived experiences and those of women in her family. She believes that sharing her story is an important part of her healing journey, in addition to raising awareness and building solidarity and understanding within Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. She is also working at the grassroots level to build a network of solidarity in Ottawa among First Nations, undocumented and other migrant workers with precarious status, and allied settlers to fight for the full inclusion of migrant communities. Kristen Gilchrist self-identifies as a white-settler, survivor of violence(s), queer-femme, student and community organizer. Kristen cofounded Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS) in January 2011, along with Algonquin grandmother and activist Bridget Tolley. Kristen’s life-work centers Indigenous solidarity and settler re-education. Adrian Smith is an activist-scholar with research interests in labour migration, development and Caribbean labour history, among other areas.  He sits on the executive committee and editorial board of Studies in Political Economy and is the book review editor of Socialist Studies. He is a member of the anti-capitalist collective ‘Justicia For Migrant Workers’. Cynthia Wright teaches in the School of Women's Studies and in the Departments of History and Geography at York University in Toronto. An historian by training, her diverse research and teaching interests include nationalism and imperialism, social justice movements, migration and immigration controls.  She is active in diverse social movements, and has published widely on the production of migrant "illegality" and resistance to immigration controls. C. Monge, Mexicanos Unidos por la Regularización. Mr. Monge is a displaced indigenous person from Mexico who is in Canada as an asylum seeker since 2008. He works closely with undocumented migrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries in their fight for inclusion in Canadian society, through a process of regularization of their migratory status. His mother tongue is Nahuatl, his speech will be translated into English.

DAY TWO: CONFERENCE Saturday, November 2nd – 9:30AM to 4:00PM Jack Purcell Community Centre, 320 Jack Purcell Lane, Ottawa,  Unceded Algonquin Territory
9:30–10:15 am	Registration and Opening *Breakfast will be available  Immigrant Workers Centre: Artist Bloc Installation           *See description below (ALL DAY)
10:15–10:45 am	Introduction to No One Illegal – Ottawa
10:45-12:00 pm	Workshop 1	Immigration 101:  Immigration System, and Its Impacts at the Grassroots  *Workshop description listed below
	Workshop 2	Farmers Fields to City Streets:  Supporting Migrant Workers in their Fight for Dignity and Justice *Workshop description listed below
12:00-1:00 pm	Lunch
1:00 – 2:15 pm	Workshop 3	Casework: No Detentions! No Deportations! *Workshop description listed below
	Workshop 4	Mapping Migrations: An interactive workshop on belonging, place, home, and responsibility *Workshop description listed below
2:15 – 3:45 pm	Workshop 5	Indigenous Solidarity: Niigaan in Conversation *Workshop description listed below
	Workshop 6	Learning to Organize *Workshop description listed below
3:45 – 4:00 pm	Closing and Moving Forward

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS
Workshop 1	Immigration 101: Immigration System and its impacts at the Grassroots Join our discussion on the colonial immigration laws and policies that control the movement of im/migrants, refugees, and undocumented people and how this impacts folks on the ground, with a focus on health and education, and the ways communities are resisting them. Mac Scott - No One Is Illegal, Toronto Dolly Lin - Concerned Students for Refugee Care, Ottawa Samir Shaheen-Hussain - Health Justice Collective, Montreal
Workshop 2	From Farmers Fields to City Streets: Supporting Migrant Workers in their Fight for Dignity and Labour Justice Community organizers and migrant workers strategize on how to resist exploitation of migrant workers with precarious status, in order to improve the working condition and attaining full inclusion of migrant workers in Canada. Finally, they will discuss the challenges that the fight for migrant justice in the workplaces face and how such challenges can be overcome. Mostafa Henaway – Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC), Montreal Eduardo/Lalo – Fuerza/Puwersa, Guelph Aimee Beboso – Philippine Migrants Society of Canada (PMSC),Ottawa
Workshop 3	Casework/Support Work: No detentions, No deportations! Migrant justice activists from Montreal and Ottawa, will discuss how to do casework, mobilize communities, provide support and fight against immigration detention and deportations, to achieve status for all. The workshop will end with a breakout groups on visioning casework in Ottawa. Leah Freedman & Carolin Huang – Solidarity Across Borders, Montreal Romina Hernandez – Mexicano Unidos por Regularization, Montreal Deepan Budlakoti & Yavar Hameed – Justice for Deepan, Ottawa
Workshop 4	Mapping Migrations: An interactive workshop on belonging, place, home, and responsibility Join us for an interactive workshop that will attempt to complicate and work through questions around migration, homeland, diaspora and responsibility to the people and land where we ended up. Through sharing our experiences and mapping our processes of "home", migration, borders, we will have the chance to create our own stories of who we are, where we have been, what we remember, who/what we love, how we cope and survive, and how we build community. We’ll be able to picture our experiences in relation to others’ and see how they interact with each other. This workshop will be a mix of story-telling, writing and sharing with each other. Aruna Boodram is a first generation settler/immigrant born and raised on the traditional land of the Three Fires Confederacy-Ganatsekwyagon Seneca village in what is now known as Scarborough. Issues currently occupying her mind focuses on organizing around prison abolition, Indigenous sovereignty-solidarity and breaking down White supremacy/anti-Black racism as it manifests within model minority communities. She is the News Editor for Indigenous Waves radio show on CIUT 89.5FM in Toronto. She enjoys reading and living science fiction, DJing parties and exploring her foodie lifestyle.
Workshop 5	Indigenous Solidarity: Niigaan in Conversation Members from Niigaan (http://niigaan.wordpress.com/) will present a workshop on treaty rights and settler responsibilities. Niigaan: In conversation is an opportunity for settler Canadians to hear and respond to what Indigenous Peoples have been saying: Canada has not committed itself to addressing the colonial relationship it still has with indigenous peoples. Canada is in denial about that relationship. It is fair to say that most Canadians believe that kind of relationship no longer exists. We are trying to tell you that that is wrong.
Workshop 6	Learning to Organize: Envisioning Migrant Justice Organizing In Ottawa Start envisioning what migrant justice organizing would like in Ottawa.  With the support from Toronto migrant justice organizers who will share stories and details from campaigns they have been involved in and seen unfold in their city, it provides an opportunity for people interested in migrant justice to learn about current and past campaign ideas. The workshop will feature hands-on activities to identify key migration issues and potential campaign strategies in Ottawa context. This workshop is meant as a way to start opening the discussion about future campaigns NOII-Ottawa, its members and allied communities may want to work on in the future. Facilitators: Organizers of Toronto Solidarity City campaign – No One is Illegal Toronto
Art Installation *all day*	Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal - Artist Bloc  Join the IWC’s - Artist Bloc for an interactive art installation. The Artist Bloc is a community activist art project, co-created by workers and for workers to share stories of resistance and dignity in struggle. The Artist Bloc offers a series of workshops to engage with arts, media and collective strategies to bring vision and voice to struggles for workplace justice. In their workshops, participants explore a variety of approaches based on Theatre of the Oppressed (Brazil/ Argentina), La Pocha Nostra (Mexico/California), El Teatro Campesino (California) and the work of invited local and international arts activists and collectives. Engaging with a variety of media, theatre, text, video, photography, visual arts, sound and performance, participants work towards a collectively-created performance for the anti-deportation resistance. They celebrate the struggle of working people through the arts. This initiative also builds upon Migrant Voices project, a grassroots radio project in which workers recorded a series of audio testimonies chronicling their experiences of exploitation, but also of courage and collective power. Facilitator/Artist: Noé Arteaga Santos Noe is active in Migrant Justice struggles in Montreal. He is a community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre, Immigrant Workers Centre's Artist Bloc and active in the Status 4 All coalition. Noe was a former temporary migrant worker, and is also a radio producer at Radio Centre-Ville.