Charles Roach, an exemplary drum major for justice

by the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/84655

Charley betrayed the fate of his calling by rejecting blatant complicity with forces of oppression and placing his knowledge and skills at the disposal of Afrikans and suffering humanity.

Charley betrayed the fate of his calling by rejecting blatant complicity with forces of oppression and placing his knowledge and skills at the disposal of Afrikans and suffering humanity

‘…an authentic national middle class ought to consider as its bounden duty to betray the calling that fate has marked out for it, and to put itself to school with the people….’ [1]

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) offers its condolences to the immediate members of Brother Charles (Charley) Roach’s family as well as to his fictive kin in the Afrikan Canadian community and those in social movement organizations throughout Canada and elsewhere. Brother Roach passed away on October 2, 2012 from brain cancer at the age of 79. Brother Charley was a lawyer, organic intellectual, Pan-Afrikanist, artist, police accountability advocate, community-builder and anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist. He was based in Toronto, Canada.

Hopefully, news of the dear comrade’s death will be met less with profound sadness than with joy and appreciation for our having had the chance to share time and space with him. We ought to celebrate his life, which was well-lived, and committed to the pursuit of justice. We should recognize Charles' record of service, which would have made Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral proud of this member of the intelligentsia who devoted his life to the emancipation of the oppressed.

We can assert without fear of contradiction that Brother Charley betrayed the calling that fate so often marks out for those who pursue the practice of law. Rejecting the paths that lead too many lawyers and other professionals toward blatant complicity with forces of oppression, Brother Charley placed his knowledge and skills at the disposal of Afrikans and other members of suffering humanity across the world. It would have been quite easy and is generally financially seductive for members of the Afrikan petit bourgeoisie or professional middle-class to sell their services to the highest bidder and become handmaidens for the systems of exploitation. Our dearly departed brother committed what the Guinea-Bissau revolutionary Amilcar Cabral termed ‘class suicide’ by rejecting his class identity and as such ‘completely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which [he] belong[ed]’ [2]

It is the position of NPAS that Brother Charley exemplified the best of the Afrikan intelligentsia who embrace the radical tradition of the struggle for liberation. The presence of this man in the Afrikan community was made even more glaring and self-evident due to the relative absence of other members of his class from the work of militant and oppositional activism and grassroots organizational development. Among the ranks of the professional Afrikan middle-class and their counterparts in academia as professors and students, we often find a disdain for or estrangement from genuinely transgressive work and action for social emancipation and Afrikan liberation. It is apparent that many of the Afrikan middle-class fear endangering what Bishop Desmond Tutu calls the ‘crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself [their] master.’[3]

Brother Charley rejected opportunities to receive the perks and profits that are attendant with playing compliant to oppressive systems. Having worked for the City of Toronto as a lawyer he left to better serve the people as an independent legal advocate. Later in life he turned down the opportunity to work as a provincial judge. He would have had to make an oath of allegiance to the Queen of Britain and that would have compromised his anti-colonial and anti-white supremacist commitments. According to Peter Rosenthal of the law firm Roach, Schwartz & Associates, ‘One of his most persistent projects is the abolition of the oath of allegiance to the Queen as a condition of citizenship. The monarchy, he believes, is a symbol of colonialism, an insult to both his African and Irish roots, and contravenes his belief in equality [anti-racism]’. [4] Our dear brother who has gone to the realm of the ancestors walked the talk with strength of character and humility. He was a true role model, par excellence, for younger activists and organizers!

He is a positive example for the Afrikan-Canadian middle-class, especially those in academia who celebrate in words their love of the concept praxis [5], which goes beyond writing and publishing little-read papers that call for tearing down the walls of Babylon. Praxis comes with doing the work of liberation or being politically active. Brother Charley’s body of work includes challenging state violence inflicted by the police against Afrikan people. His role in the creation of the Black Action Defence Committee and the work that it did in limiting the number of Afrikan people killed at the hands of the armed wing of the state will remain a shining tribute to his legacy as an engaged organic intellectual.

Charles Roach was also a cultural worker and a supporter and practitioner of the cultural arts. Retired educator and comrade-in-arms Lennox Farrell shares with us the type of artist that Brother Charley was to our struggle:

‘An artist, Mark Twain like Charley, also believed that art is never politically inert; inane sometimes, but never inert. Art is active. Art is activating! In addition, art in its many manifestations is not only the fusing of form and function into beauty, it is also, in the jaws of injustice, that tongue speaking politics to power’. [6]

The culture of an oppressed people may be used as a weapon of struggle. According to Cabral in the text National Liberation and Culture:

‘The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated. Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of it. [7] 

Brother Charley saw in the cultures of Afrikan people the force for resisting white supremacist erasure of self, identity and community and collaboration with colonialism. He was born in Trinidad where the people used carnival arts to assert their humanity and push back against the idea of the cultural inferiority of the Afrikan during the periods of enslavement and post-emancipation.

In 1967, during the centenary celebration of the settler-colonial state of Canada’s independence Brother Charley ‘was a leading player in the creation and development of Caribana, Toronto’s annual African-Canadian celebration’. [8] The 1960s in Canada witnessed an explosion in the population of Afrikans migrating from the Caribbean as a result of changes to the explicitly white supremacist immigration system and the dire need for workers. The latter situation was the outcome of White workers staying in Europe to participate in its post-World War II reconstruction. Afrikans in Toronto used their resistance culture of carnival to send a message that they were here to stay and would not be silenced by the twin forces of economic exploitation and racist domination. Caribana was thus created to affirm the cultural integrity of Afrikan-Caribbean people and their culture as well as beat back the advance of the corrosive imposition of psychological oppression.

Brother Charley and his comrades of the time were not only preoccupied with the artistic and psychological weaponry elements of culture. At Caribana's inception, its founders envisioned the festival being used to finance the erection of a community centre [9]and community development programmes for the people. The members of the Afrikan working-class were struggling with their oppressive condition as racialized and gendered workers in the Canadian labour force. These pioneers, especially Brother Charley, saw no divide between meeting the material needs of the people and attending to the requirements of the psyche for affirmation and a healthy environment.

Using culture to educate, mobilize and organize the oppressed and their allies, our champion of a brother was an important contributor to the creation of the International Festival of Poetry of Resistance in Canada. His actions and thoughts in the area of culture boldly affirm Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that, ‘[t]he responsibility of an artist representing an oppressed people is to make revolution irresistible.’ [10] Unlike the socially useless direction of mass culture and the frivolous nature of popular culture, the cultural work of our brother significantly contributed to maintaining a culture of resistance to imperialism, white supremacy, sexism, capitalism and other structures of exploitation. Along with our professionals, intellectuals, and academics, many of our poets, painters, and other cultural workers have much to learn from people like Brother Charley.

All in all, the Afrikan Canadian writer and law school graduate Anthony Morgan sums up the essence and contribution of the organic intellectual Brother Charles Roach as a humanist and fighter for social justice:

‘He demonstrated that true love of and respect for self and community meant not disregarding one's connection to a people that suffers from disproportionately high and chronic rates of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, glorified thuggery, academic under achievement, police surveillance and brutality, and incarceration. To the contrary, Roach remained ever cognizant of and engaged by the words of the great Caribbean-American writer and activist, Audre Lorde, who once said, "Your silence will not protect you.’ [10]


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END NOTES

[i] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1963) 150.

[ii] Amilcar Cabral, “The Weapon of Theory”, Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January, 1966 http://goo.gl/tbj4I

[iii] The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, http://www.tutufoundation-usa.org/exhibitions.html

[iv] Peter Rosenthal and Vivian Pitchik, Charles Roach: Homage to a warrior, NOW, July 19-26, 2012, vol 31 no 47, http://goo.gl/9jH5B

[v] “Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, or realised. “Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas.” Retrieved from http://goo.gl/xmF3g

[vi] Lennox Farrell, “A tribute to ‘Canada’s first citizen’, Charley Roach,” Share, 3 Oct. 2012: http://goo.gl/bWZE5

[vii] Amilcar Cabral, “National Liberation and Culture,” Transition, 1974, 45: 13, http://goo.gl/KzSxP

[viii] Timothy Appleby, “Veteran civil rights lawyer dead at 79,” The Globe and Mail, 3 Oct. 2012: http://goo.gl/hfJ31

[ix] Peter Jackson, “The politics of the streets: A geography of Caribana,” Political Geography, March 1992, 11 (2): 133.

[x] Aisha Brown, “The king of pop’s progressive impact,” Examiner, 27, Jun. 2009: http://goo.gl/KseR0

[xi] Anthony Morgan, The Black Canadian activist who was never a citizen, The Huffington Post, 4, Oct. 2012: http://goo.gl/9n8ag

The Black Canadian Activist Who Was Never a Citizen

Anthony Morgan

Public and Social Affairs Commentator

 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/anthony-morgan/charles-roach_b_1939829.html

Canada has lost one of its fiercest, most uncompromising, contentious and passionate pursuers of justice and equality, Mr. Charles Roach. On October 2, 2012, Roach passed away after a hard-fought battle with cancer. He was 79 years old.

A Renaissance man, Roach was a former reservist in the Canadian Armed Forces, a distinguished lawyer, businessman, community activist, mentor, musician, painter, poet and even an occasional rapper.

He demonstrated a tireless commitment to anti-imperialism, social and economic justice for poor and oppressed peoples, and as a fervent pan-Africanist, he remained dedicated to achieving racial justice for blacks in Canada and all peoples of African descent. His legacy includes co-founding the multimillion dollar Caribbean-flavoured street festival, Caribana, and leading (alongside the late Dudley Laws) the massive community campaigns against police brutality that are directly responsible for the creation of the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian agency charged with looking into killings and serious injuries caused by police.

Of all his pursuits for a fairer and more just society, however, the most controversial and publicized of Roach's advocacy efforts was his push, since 1988, to get a Canadian court to recognize that it is a violation of individuals' constitutionally guaranteed freedom of conscience to require prospective Canadians to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, Her Heirs and Successors, as a requirement for obtaining Canadian citizenship.
As a result of his opposition to this, despite having lived in Canada since 1955, Roach remained a permanent resident. Convinced that the monarchy represents racist hereditary privilege, Roach recently explained his steadfast adherence to equality and civic republicanism by stating the following:

"I feel that we [blacks] were colonized as a people by the British throne, and we were enslaved as a people by the British throne and, to me, taking an oath to the monarch of Great Britain, without any disrespect to the Queen herself as a person, is like asking a Holocaust survivor to take an oath to a descendant of Hitler,"

Only months ago the Ontario Superior Court finally granted Roach the right to argue the constitutionality of the oath in its current form. Up until only a couple of weeks ago, he was sure that he would live to become a Canadian citizen without having to swear to the Queen. Sadly, Roach, who is predeceased by his first wife Hetty, will now never get the chance to live his final Canadian dream. He leaves behind his wife, June, his four children, several grandchildren, and what else?

Roach's life leaves this message for Canada's diffident, splintered and rudderless black Canadian community: to access the doors of justice, we must first walk the halls of sacrifice.

At a time when Canada's official immigration policy was to deny people of African descent entry into the country, Roach undertook reservist training in the Canadian army during the 1950s. Risking his chances of entering the legal profession if convicted, he was also arrested in the early 60s during a "Ban the Bomb" rally that he attended despite being in the process of taking the bar admission course. He remained undeterred in his steadfast commitment to justice through sacrifice upon entering the legal profession.

For over 40 years he chose a legal career of fighting for the poor and oppressed as opposed to setting-out on a more lucrative career path. He sacrificed the rights to vote, to travel on a Canadian passport, to run for public office, and even gave up the privilege offered to him of being appointed a judge; all this because of his unshakable resistance to swearing an oath to a monarchy in whose name blacks and Aboriginal Peoples were enslaved, colonized, maimed and murdered en mass for hundreds of years.

Though he never got to enjoy the official status himself, Roach's life provides a new model for living out black Canadian citizenship.

He did not use his distinguished education and professional privilege to distance himself from the black communities that made him who he is, but rather leveraged his privilege in service of poor and oppressed people and against racialized socio-economic injustices that, even today, make black Canadian success stories the exception rather than the rule.

Roach demonstrated that Black professional excellence and advancement in Canada need not be synonymous with the cultural suppression, self-alienation and self-censorship in the interest of ascending scales of mainstream success. Unlike the vast majority of the growing and maturing class of black Canadian professional and businesspeople of the day, Roach never feared, but rather embraced being associated with any speech, action or person engaged in transformative structural and social change for a better Canada and better world.

He demonstrated that true love of and respect for self and community meant not disregarding one's connection to a people that suffers from disproportionately high and chronic rates of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, glorified thuggery, academic under achievement, police surveillance and brutality, and incarceration. To the contrary, Roach remained ever cognizant of and engaged by the words of the great Caribbean-American writer and activist, Audre Lorde, who once said, "Your silence will not protect you."
For the principles of justice and equality, Charles Roach paid prices that most people are not prepared to pay, especially those he would call brother and sister. Some Canadians would even say that the costs were too high given that Roach never attained his dream of Canadian citizenship. This, though, is only a matter of opinion informed by subjective decisions about where to sit within the spectrum of self-interest and transformative social justice.

In the end, deciding if Roach's struggles were a success is not at all what matters most. In fact, for those who'd be quick to call his quest a failure, it is sure that he would leave them with the following words:
"The struggle is the important thing. Not how it ends. It's not whether I win or lose, but did I fight and do all I can?"

Not only do we wish that Roach rest in peace, but we also know, that for all Canadians and potential Canadians, he rests in the power of protest.

Read more:  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/anthony-morgan/charles-roach_b_1939829.html

Critical Perspectives on the New Jewel Movement, the Grenada Revolution & a Legacy of Pan-Afrikan Liberatory Struggle

Remembering Thomas Sankara and the Burkina Faso Revolutionl

Remembering Steve Biko

Remembering Steve Biko

Commemorate the life of Stephen Bantu Biko; resist internalized oppression and economic exploitation

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

2012-09-20, Issue 598

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84222

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'We will gather to engage in critical discussion and commemorate the life and work of Steve Biko, while we commit and re-commit ourselves to the ongoing work of Pan-Afrikan solidarity and liberation.'

Media Release

September 19, 2012

Toronto, ON - The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) has organized a forum to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the martyrdom of Steve Biko. This event will be on Thursday, September 20 at 7pm in Room 5-280 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (252 Bloor Street West, at St. George station).

Steve Biko was a revolutionary, educator, and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in Azania (South Afrika). He recognized that the emancipation of Afrikan people must be led by Afrikan people, and his work as a student organizer in solidarity with the Afrikan working class is especially relevant for those of us interested in or dedicated to radical organization-building strategies and community mobilization. Black Consciousness, as Gussai Sheikheldin says, "channels our emotions and intelligence towards action for social transformation, and also towards building genuine solidarity among our peoples and other oppressed peoples around the world, to fight common ideological enemies that we can only fight better together."

Central to Biko's stance on self-determined, self-sufficient, organized liberatory struggle was the recognition that Afrikan liberation in Azania could not occur unless Afrikan people develop the critical consciousness necessary to understand the social, economic, and political roots of their oppression by the former apartheid state. Biko recognized the importance of public education for liberation struggles, and this is part of the reason for this public education initiative. While Black consciousness provided an oppositional education to the normative and racist education that the majority of Afrikan people received under apartheid, it is crucial that we continue to engage in public education in our Pan-Afrikan struggles that strengthen our capacities to resist white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist oppression in our organizations and communities.

Responses to the recent massacre of mineworkers at the Marikana mine in Azania by state agents reveals state cooptation of ideas that revolutionary forces must reclaim. As Yolisa Dalamba states, "Given the condition of Afrikans in Azania and around the world the relevance of Black Consciousness is striking. At Marikana and around the country the majority of the people remain oppressed both by apartheid's brutal legacy and Afrikans who now preside over the post-apartheid state. The latter have abandoned the liberation struggle for capitalism that regards Afrikans as little more than slaves." We must work to expose political opportunists that parasitically profit from the national wealth of Azania, while claiming the legacy of genuine revolutionary struggle. Steve Biko was brutally tortured and killed by the apartheid regime because his contribution to the work of Afrikan liberation genuinely threatened the oppressive status quo. There is no space in our work for conciliation with the exploitative forces Biko and countless freedom fighters died resisting.

So, we will gather to engage in critical discussion and commemorate the life and work of Steve Biko, while we commit and re-commit ourselves to the ongoing work of Pan-Afrikan solidarity and liberation. We will show a documentary film about Biko’s life and work, and we will have a panel discussion featuring: Dr. Rozena Maart, professor at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in Durban, Azania ("Black Consciousness and the Possibility of a Gender Analysis”); Gussai Sheikheldin, organizer with NPAS and graduate student at the University of Guelph (“Racial but Not Racial: Being Black to Biko and Rodney”); and Yolisa Dalamba, community activist & educator who was active in the anti-apartheid movement in Canada and Azania (“Black Consciousness and its Relevance for Afrikan Activism in Canada”).

For information please contact: network4panafrikansolidarity@gmail.com

Forward to emancipation-from-below in the Caribbean

Forward to emancipation-from-below in the Caribbean

by the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

2012-09-27, Issue 599

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84368

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‘In our struggle to give concrete form to Pan-Afrikanism, it is clear that we must continue and advance our anti-oppressive struggles with an understanding that the union of Afrikan people worldwide is an emancipation-from-below project.’

Today we gather to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of Jamaica's and Trinidad and Tobago's independence. In our commemorations of the work of countless revolutionary ancestors whose active resistance to the British colonial regime led to national independence for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in August 1962, we insist that we must have absolutely no illusions that the struggle of Afrikan people for liberation from all forms of oppression ends with national independence.

National independence is not liberation, and we will not promote narrow nationalistic perspectives on what liberation means for Afrikan people. While we have called this gathering in the name of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, our promotion of a Pan-Afrikan outlook necessarily entails that our discussions about national independence involve consideration of the connections among Afrikan people's liberation struggles in the Caribbean, the whole of the Afrikan Diaspora and on the Afrikan continent.

As Kwame Ture wrote in his 1992 reflections on Black Power, ‘Africans have known slavery and colonialism for centuries. These struggles are one and the same for the African Revolution and cannot be separated although they are geographically dispersed. The task of imperialism is to divide and rule, isolate and dominate. The aim of capitalism is not only to isolate the African Revolution to its divided ‘countries’ on our motherland and to the ‘countries’ of our dispersion, but also to destroy the continuity of struggle in these areas.’

Indeed, at no time during enslavement, colonialism and post-independence has any empire or state facilitated sustained self-determination of the masses of Afrikans and other oppressed peoples. Their objective condition in the areas of economics, social development, politics and cultural assertion and expression has been defined by oppression. It should be noted that as dominated peoples, we have also consistently resisted exploitation. In our struggle to give concrete form to Pan-Afrikanism, it is clear that we must continue and advance our anti-oppressive struggles with an understanding that the union of Afrikan people worldwide is an emancipation-from-below project.

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) would like to share a number of points regarding this emancipatory project:

1. Recognizing that we seek emancipation of the masses by the masses, we also recognize that the progressive Caribbean Diaspora is a source of resources and allyship for emancipation-from-below with respect to civil society and progressive social movement organizations. We ought to prioritize work among the people that deals with immediate concerns while ideologically preparing them for the long-term task of social emancipation. As Amilcar Cabral famously said, ‘Keep always in mind that the people are not [merely] fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children....’

2. While basing our visions, goals, plans and strategies on our material needs and realities, we ought to be uncompromising in our struggles against all forms of oppression - narrow nationalisms and chauvinisms are not compatible with an inclusive understanding and practice of anti-oppression. We need to understand and fight patriarchy and to ensure that women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender/transsexual, Queer (LGBTQ) members of society, people with disabilities, and young people access all roles in the Caribbean movement for emancipation.

3. The current and conventional models and conceptualizations of development imposed on and employed in the Caribbean are unworkable. They perpetuate dependency on Europe, North America (former enslavers and colonizers) and other imperialist states. We would do well to reject development discourses or ideas, based on Eurocentric, capitalist and sexist notions of progress, modernity, and technology. We encourage Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” to favour and continue to develop models of development based on criteria of truth, reciprocity, participation, beauty, justice, and so on, that advance the health and wellbeing of Afrikan people.

4. The question of reparations for Europe's exploitation of the land, resources and labour of Afrikans in the Caribbean must be on the table. While reparations in the amount of £20 million was given to the enslavers of Afrikan labour by the British imperial state following emancipation, the debt owed to the descendents of enslaved Afrikans in the Caribbean has not been paid. This is a mockery of our ancestors, and as we and our parents and our children struggle with the ongoing legacy of 500 years of exploitation in the Afrikan Diaspora, we must fight for redress.

5. It is clear that Afrikans in the Caribbean excel when we have the opportunity. If we survey the recently-concluded London Olympic Games and the performance of our athletes as well as our contributions in the culinary arts, culture, and scholarship, it is clear that the only barrier facing us is the limited opportunities available for the full realization of our potentiality. We will continue to fight for equality of outcome or condition, and we reject the liberal idea of equality of opportunity, which is a recipe for maintaining the status quo.

As always, today is a day to honour our revolutionary ancestors and their struggles, to celebrate our victories, and to strengthen our commitments and re-commitments to the struggle for liberation from all forms of oppression and toward a world based on peace and justice. We stand in solidarity with the late Toni Cade Bambara and her assertion, ‘The responsibility of an artist [progressive organizers] representing an oppressed people is to make revolution irresistible.’

Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to our work, together in solidarity, for Afrikan liberation.

* Presented at an August 17th public education forum on Caribbean independence at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Film Screenign: Sisters in the Struggle (1991) and Pannel Discussion

During the month of February 2012, the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) has organized a month of film screenings and intergenerational panel discussions with the goal of reflecting on, and providing space for further strategizing towards African liberation. As we recognize that our struggles as Afrikan peoples are incontrovertibly similar, these events organized by Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidaity (NPAS) will focus on Afrikan mobilizing, educating and organizing for justice and will highlight the local and international actions that make them possible. Essentially we will focus on issues that relate directly to the material conditions and liberation struggles of Afrikans on the continent and in the diaspora.

On March 2nd, we will screen: Sisters in the Struggle (1991) which "features Afrikan womyn who are active in community organizing, electoral politics, and labor and feminist organizing.” Panel Discussion: Toward a Resurgent Afrikan Womyn’s Activism in Toronto Panelists: Anglea Robertson, Director of Equity and Community Engagement, Women's College: "The recent history of Afrikan womyn organizing and mobilizing for gender, queer & racial justice" - Yolisa Dalamba from the Association for Part-Time Undergraduate students at UofT (APUS): "Holistic practices and frameworks to challenge and resist white supremacist values (for Afrikan womyn)" - Kim Crosby, a multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of The People project: "The prospects and challenges of inclusive activism (queer, trans, racial and indigenous justice): From a youth perspective" - Wariri Muhungi a community organizer and member of the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS): "Building sustainable organizations and mobilizing resources" We will focus on issues that deal with the material realities of the community and open a space for dialogue and commitment to year-long and ongoing organizing, mobilizing and education around the subjects raised in the films and the panel discussions. We will use this gathering to reach out to Toronto's Pan Afrikan community with the goal of advancing a more progressive political agenda for the material and socio-economic emancipation of all Afrikan peoples. We look forward to seeing you at the Afrikan Liberation Month Film Series! Free public event - donation will be accepted. There will also be a sale of drinks and snacks. We will sell t-shirts with African liberation thems. Purchases can only be made in cash, and all the proceeds will go to support the various activities organized by NPAS. Event is wheelchair accessible. Childcare will be provided. Sponsored by the Pan-African Solidarity Network (University of Toronto) Co-Sponsored by CUPE Local 3907 For further information, please contact the Pan-African Solidarity Network (U of T) at network4panafrikansolidari.ty@gmail.com