Resisting Gendered State Violence Across Turtle Island: Cross-Border Solidarity Against Anti-Blackness

Robyn Maynard, author of best-selling Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present

Apr 11, 2019 | 6:30pm
Conversation
Event Oval, The Diana Center, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

Join us for an urgent conversation with Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood 2017), about similarities and differences in histories, tactics, modes, and consequences of state violence targeting Black communities in the U.S., Canada and at the border, articulating critical questions and strategies for cross-border solidarity, organizing, and resistance in the current political moment.

ATTEND

Robyn Maynard is a Toronto-based writer and the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017. The book is a CBC national bestseller, currently in its third printing, and has been widely acclaimed since it’s release, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, and the winner of the 2018 Annual Errol Morris Book Prize. The book is also a finalist for two Quebec Writers Federation awards, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction. This work received a starred review in Publishers Weekly as well as glowing coverage in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Now Toronto, Maclean’s, and the Ottawa Citizen. In the words of the Winnipeg Free Press: ““Every Canadian — black, white, Indigenous or otherwise — could benefit from reading Maynard’s frank and thorough assessment of racism in Canada.” In October 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier: NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada, translated by Catherine Ego, and it is currently a finalist for the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.”

Maynard has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, the Montreal Gazette TOPIA, Canadian Women’s Studies journal, as well as an essay for Maisonneuve Magazine which won the acclaim of “most-read essay of 2017”. Her writing on race, gender, and discrimination is taught widely in universities across Canada and the United States. Her expertise is regularly sought in local, national and international media outlets and she has spoken before Parliamentary subcommittees and the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

Maynard has a long history of involvement in community activism and advocacy. She been a part of grassroots movements against racial profiling, police violence, detention and deportation for over a decade and has an extensive work history in harm reduction-based service provision serving sex workers, drug users, incarcerated women and marginalized youth in Montreal. Recently, she helped develop the Black Indigenous Harm Reduction Alliance, a group of Black and Indigenous women and two-spirit people providing workshops to incarcerated women.

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Resisting Gendered State Violence Across Turtle Island: Cross-Border Solidarity Against Anti-Blackness

Robyn Maynard, author of best-selling Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present

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