Local anti-racism events hope to provide safe spaces for BIPOC community members and educate allies

NEWS

4 | PANDEMIC ANXIETY & THE WORKPLACE 5 | STUDENT HOUSING CRISIS 8 | U OF G PLANETAIR INITIATIVE

ELENI KOPSAFTIS

“OUR STORIES. OUR HISTORY. OUR HERITAGE.” This is the theme of the 2022 #ChangeStartsNow Anti-Racism Summit that will be hosted by the Guelph Black Heritage Society (GBHS) from May 12 to 15. With a focus on wellness, there will be a number of events for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) and allies alike.

This is the summit’s second year running. In 2021, it was held as a multi-day virtual summit featuring multiple speakers and events. 200 passes were sold, but there were likely many more attendees since the remote format allowed people to listen in as groups.

Following the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent peaceful march and protest in downtown Guelph in the summer of 2020, GBHS launched the anti-racism summit in hopes of preventing and responding to racism in the Guelph-Wellington community.

This year, the summit will be held in a hybrid format with a mix of virtual and in-person events throughout the week. GBHS President Denise Francis told The Ontarion that she hopes to get as many participants involved with the 2022 summit as the GBHS did last year.

“What was good about last year’s virtual event was that we were able to get people from the GTA, some people logging in from the States, or people from eastern Canada like in Nova Scotia. We wouldn’t be able to accomplish that if it were only in person, so [the pandemic] has created these other opportunities because it does expand our reach,” said Francis.

“Some people are dying to get out, and other people are still a little bit nervous. So by offering this [hybrid] model, we hope that we can encourage people to come out and experience the events.”

There will be free events included at the summit, such as the BIPOC Community Safe Space, the Family Art Session, as well as exclusive ones including the Caribbean Tales Film Festival movie screening of Mas Man, a de-escalation workshop, and the BIPOC Mental Wellness Journey event.

The latter of these will be held on May 15 at 1 p.m. and will feature GBHS Executive Director Kween and Dr. Shara Ally.

According to the GBHS website, the BIPOC Mental Wellness Journey event “will be focused on how we can heal and work on wellness while exploring the facets of Violence, Oppression and Harm that affect our communities.”

Ally and Kween will be holding the event in representation of NEUROroyalty, a sub-package offered by the NEUROorganics mental health service that Ally founded, as well as The Kween Company, a local Black-owned company that offers a platform to support small businesses and mentorship opportunities.

The Kween Company also serves as a safe space for members of the BIPOC community, and it strives to provide education and advocacy for race-related issues, which often go unaddressed in the Guelph community.

“People often think that systemic racism doesn’t exist in Canada, especially in Guelph, and I’ll tell you that’s not the case at all,” said Francis.

Off the top of her head, she refers to one example of a racist incident that occured on Jan. 10, 2022. 51-year-old local resident Michael Campbell went to a Guelph McDonald’s restaurant on Woodlawn Road to buy lunch for his family. After he had already paid, a manager took over the transaction and made Campbell show ID and replicate his signature to prove that the credit card he had used was his.

When Campbell refused and asked for his money back, the staff member said that she would not process the refund and told Campbell that it was policy to verify any credit card used in purchases over $25. Campbell told The Wellington Advertiser that he had “received extra scrutiny because he is Black,” and that he lost $93.18 due to the incident. The GBHS promptly boycotted all four McDonald’s restaurants in Guelph.

“We need to give a voice to our community to be able to express ourselves,” said Francis. “We also need to have tools, which is why we have a session on how to deal with a hate-related incident and de-escalation training. And to deal with all that sadness, we also have what I call fun events because so much of this work and what we’re experiencing in life is very heavy, so we need to provide an outlet and a way of expressing joy for our community.”

While the BIPOC Mental Wellness Journey event is not designated as a ‘fun event,’ it is part of the toolkit that the GBHS hopes will give a voice to the community. It is with these same goals in mind that NEUROroyalty offers mental health services by BIPOC community members for BIPOC community members at an affordable rate.

Ally told The Ontarion that this system is important to provide spaces where mental health professionals have a cultural understanding of the struggles that those in the BIPOC community face. This way, the individual receiving mental health care is not doing the work to educate the professional.

For this reason, the BIPOC Wellness Journey event will also facilitate allyship.

“Young people have enough education to see [oppression] as an issue, and they want to understand ‘how do I not become a perpetrator, and if I am a perpetrator, how do I learn from that and how do I contribute wellness to this overall issue,’” Ally told The Ontarion.

As a result, she suggests that the best thing allies can do for the BIPOC community is educate themselves, practice self-awareness and mindfulness, and seek out opportunities to support vulnerable populations.

Denise Francis is director of the Guelph Black Heritage Society. She hopes the anti-racism summit will provide the tools necessary for BIPOC community members to practice wellness and joy. CREDIT: KWEEN

CREDIT: SHARA ALLY

To register for events during the anti-racism summit, individuals can either purchase a virtual or in-person pass. Both versions are priced on a sliding scale from $35 to $100 and are available on eventbrite.com. For opportunities to participate in allyship or find resources, U of G students can reach out to the Cultural Diversity Centre or the Guelph Black Students Association. Additionally, GBHS and The Kween Company offer education for allies and safe spaces for BIPOC community members.