Connecting Abolitionist Struggles: Settler Colonialism, Mass Incarceration, and the “War on Terror”

Panel in commemoration of the Quebec mosque shooting

Speakers:

Shady Hafez | Algonquin and Syrian Indigenous rights advocate, and Yellowhead Institute fellow

El Jones | poet, academic, and prisoners’ justice advocate

Dr Arun Kundnani | author and critical scholar of the “war on terror”

Moderated by: Azeezah Kanji, legal academic and journalist

This panel will bring together three scholar-activists working at the intersections of intertwined abolitionist struggles, to discuss: What are the relationships between settler colonialism, mass incarceration, and the “war on terror” as projects of state violence? What connections are being forged between movements, and what are points of tension? How do we build ideas and practices of safety and security, beyond state concepts of “public safety” and “national security” premised on racial violence? What might futures of justice and liberation look like, beyond the settler colonial, mass incarceration, national security state?

Co-sponsored by: International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group; Muslim Societies, Global Perspective program at Queen’s University; Noor Cultural Centre; UNIFOR Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University; United Jewish People’s Order; World Beyond War; Yellowhead Institute.

Poster PDF