Sudbury Social Justice News - January 11, 2015

EVENTS & ACTIONS:

1) Monday, January 12: Meeting of Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty
2) Thursday, January 15: Meeting of the Sudbury Working-group of The Media Co-op
3) Thursday, January 15: Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury General Meeting
4) Monday, January 19: Mobilization for Anti-Poverty and Disability Demands at City Committees
5) Tuesday, January 20: Mobilization to Demand City Anti-Poverty Funding
6) Saturday, January 24: Celebrating Indigenous Women in Film and Television
7) Sunday, March 1: Strategy and Campaign Planning Workshop with Chris Dixon

NEWS, ANALYSIS & CALLS TO ACTION:

1) "Community, Movement and Solidarity are Crucial to Making a Better Sudbury" by Gary Kinsman
2) "Three Ways to Take Action in Sudbury" by Scott Neigh
3) Callout for Project Impact

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Monday, January 12: Meeting of Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty

Time: 6:30pm
Location: Offices of the Sudbury and District Labour Council (Suite 209 upstairs in 109 Elm Street, which is across the street from the Native Friendship Centre)

The venue is wheelchair accessible. Children are welcome to attend, or childcare support is available upon request.

S-CAP has a lot of plans but with one of our members moving away, and another going away for a few months, we really need more people to get involved to ensure we have the capacity to carry out our actions. This January we are continuing to challenge the City to expand and improve the Out of the Cold Shelter especially as temperatures during the day have plummeted, to provide CSUMB rates and policies for CHPI exceptional circumstances funding, and making sure that the SAMS computer crisis does not have a detrimental impact on people on OW and ODSP or on OW and ODSP workers.

And we are also now dealing with a Sudbury by-election on Feb. 5th where Glenn Thibeault, now running for the provincial Liberal Party, needs to be challenged on the Liberal Party record of cutting the CSUMB program; slashing the Special Diet Supplement; allowing people on social assistance to sink deeper into poverty so that now a person on OW needs an immediate 55% increase just to get back to the buying power they had in 1995; organizing unfair medical reviews of people on ODSP designed to push them off ODSP; organized the SAMS computer program crisis for people on OW and ODSP and for OW and ODSP workers; has refused to repeal the so-called ‘Safe Streets Act’ which is used against panhandlers; and has refused to increase the minimum wage to $14 an hour for low-income workers. We will also be challenging all the other candidates in the by-election to support anti-poverty action.

S-CAP is a direct-action anti-poverty organization based in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. We provide direct-action support work assisting individuals in their struggles with welfare and ODSP, housing, employers, and others who deny people what they are entitled to in order to meet their needs. In addition, we mount campaigns against and support educational work about regressive government policies as they effect working people and people living in poverty. We believe in the power of people to organize themselves. We believe in the power of resistance!

La coalition contre la pauvreté de Sudbury (S-CAP) est un organisme d’action directe luttant contre la pauvreté. Elle se trouve à Sudbury en Ontario.

Le travail de la coalition se base dans l’action directe et consiste à apporter de l’aide aux individus dans leurs luttes pour l’assistance sociale, l’invalidité, le logement, l’emploi et à les aider à faire face aux gens qui leur refusent ce à quoi ils ont droit pour rencontrer leurs besoins. De plus, la coalition fait des compagnes de  sensibilisation et de dénonciation par rapport aux politiques gouvernementales régressives quant à leurs effets sur les travailleurs et travailleuses et les personnes vivant dans la pauvreté.

La coalition croit au pouvoir des personnes de s’organiser elles-mêmes; elle croit au pouvoir de la résistance!

Please call us 249-878-7227

Email us at sudburyCAP@gmail.com

Website http://sudburycap.com/

S-CAP on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/257339454351403/

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Thursday, January 15: Meeting of the Sudbury Working-group of The Media Co-op

Time: 10am to noon
Location: Main branch of the Greater Sudbury Public Library (74 Mackenzie Street, Sudbury)

At this meeting, we'll be planning for an organizing strategy and campaign planning workshop we're co-sponsoring in March; discussing a proposed training in collaboration with the Sudbury and District Labour Council; and continuing our ongoing work to find a wide-range of interesting and original local content to publish on our site.

We encourage anyone and everyone who might be interested in making media themselves, or who recognize that a robust grassroots media infrastructure is essential for social change work being done across a broad range of issues, to come out to the meeting and share your ideas!

If you can't make it to the meeting but still think you might want to be involved somehow -- through organizing things, through participating in some of the editorial stuff, through writing or producing other content -- then be in touch with me at the email address above or send a note to grassrootssudburymedia@gmail.com.

Find our site at:
http://sudbury.mediacoop.ca/

Our callout for content, some of which we might even be able to pay for:
http://sudbury.mediacoop.ca/blog/grassrootssudburymedia/19108

Find us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/GrassrootsMediaCollective

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Thursday, January 15: Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury General Meeting

Time: 7pm
Location: Boardroom of the Social Planning Council (30 Ste. Anne Road, Sudbury)

The Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury invites you to our next general meeting. We’ll be talking about priorities for the new term of Council, handi-transit, input to the municipal budget, Project Impact, and any issue you would like to bring forward.

The agenda:

Agenda
 
1.  Welcome
 
2. Top priorities for a sustainable community during the 2014-2018 term of Council:  overall, short term, & immediate
-  See http://www.liveablesudbury.org/TopActionItems2014-2018Term.pdf   (10 min)
 
(a)  Handi Transit:  advocating for service for all who need it  (30 min)
(b)  Municipal budget:  preparing for January 20 public session  (15 min)
(c)  Building a relationship with the new Council
 
3.  Project Impact:  supporting small community projects that make a big difference  (30 min)
 
4.  Volunteer engagement working group – getting started
 
5.  CLS meeting locations, times and formats – any changes needed to accommodate those interested in coming?
 
6.  Other business & open discussion  

All welcome!  Please RSVP to clsudbury@live.com if you can – it’s always nice to know who’s planning to attend. The venue is wheelchair accessible.

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Monday, January 19: Mobilization for Anti-Poverty and Disability Demands at City Committees

Time: 4pm and then 6pm
Location: Tom Davies Square (200 Brady Street, Sudbury)

The Operations Committee of Sudbury's city council will be meeting at 4pm on this day, and the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty is asking everyone who supports access for all people with disabilities who need it (including for people with disabilities without mobility problems) to attend and to support this position. At 6pm that same day the Community Services Committee meets at Tom Davies Square and we want as many people as possible to be there to support more extended hours for the Out of the Cold Shelter and making sure that it is a City Shelter and not a Salvation Army Shelter; supporting CSUMB policies and rates for CHPI exceptional circumstances funding; and that the SAMS crisis not hurt people on OW or ODSP or OW or ODSP workers.

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Tuesday, January 20: Mobilization to Demand City Anti-Poverty Funding

Time: 6pm
Location: Tom Davies Square (200 Brady Street, Sudbury)

The Finance and Administration Committee of Sudbury's city council meets at 6pm on this day to seek community input into the upcoming budget deliberations. The Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty is asking to be on the agenda to argue for funding for expanding the Out of the Cold Shelter and to ensure that CSUMB rates and policies are followed for CHPI funding – including for community start-up needs.

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Saturday, January 24: Celebrating Indigenous Women in Film and Television

Time: 2pm to 10pm
Location: Open Studio (3rd floor, 93 Cedar Street, Sudbury)

The University of Sudbury, Dept of Indigenous Studies presents this 2nd annual film festival.
2pm Featuring a SHORT FILM PROG
4pm Panel of Award-winning Filmmakers: Darlene Naponse, Michelle Latimer, Shirley Cheechoo, Jules Koostachin, Laura Milliken.
6:30pm Wine and Cheese Reception
7:30pm "Trick or Treaty" by Alanis Obomsawin

This event on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/602546913178491/

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Sunday, March 1: Strategy and Campaign Planning Workshop with Chris Dixon

Time: noon to 3pm
Location: meeting room 1, main branch, Greater Sudbury Public Library (74 Mackenzie Street, Sudbury)

Developing strategy – building effective plans of action to win what we want – is one of the biggest challenges we face in organizing for social change. This workshop will offer tools to address this challenge, laying out a strategic organizing framework based in a campaign-planning model. This model focuses on bringing more and more people together on our side while undermining adversaries. It involves collective investigation of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in our context of struggle; a deliberate process of setting goals; an orientation toward tactical escalation; and regular practices of appreciation and evaluation. In this workshop, we will go through this model together, applying it to our current organizing work.

Chris Dixon, originally from Alaska and a former resident of Sudbury, is a longtime anarchist organizer, writer, and educator with a PhD from the University of California at Santa Cruz. His writing has appeared in numerous book collections as well as periodicals such as Anarchist Studies, Clamor, Left Turn, and Social Movement Studies. He serves on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies and the advisory board for the activist journal Upping the Anti. Dixon lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Territory, where he is involved in anti-poverty organizing. His new book is Another Politics: Talking Across Today's Transformative Movements, published by University of California Press. Find him at writingwithmovements.com.

Chris will likely also be doing a talk about his book at Laurentian University during the day on Monday, March 2 -- check back for more details.

This workshop is organized by the Sudbury working-group of The Media Co-op and the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & CALLS TO ACTION:

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Community, Movement and Solidarity are Crucial to Making a Better Sudbury
by Gary Kinsman
(From RadicalNoise.ca: http://radicalnoise.ca/2015/01/09/community-movement-and-solidarity-are-...)

 
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Three Ways to Take Action in Sudbury
by Scott Neigh
[From The Media Co-op: http://sudbury.mediacoop.ca/audio/three-ways-take-action-sudbury/32792]

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Callout for Project Impact

Small projects can have a big impact!

The Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury is now accepting applications to Project Impact. This initiative is all about supporting small community projects that make a big difference.  

Project Impact will support small projects that will be completed by fall 2015.  The maximum funding that can be requested is $500.  Funds can be used for small stand-alone projects, or for aspects of larger projects for which other resources have already been secured.  Which projects receive funding will be decided by residents – so this is also a great way to get people excited about what you do.

You can download the application, and a list of project ideas at:

http://www.liveablesudbury.org/projectImpact.html

Project Impact is open to informal groups, and individuals as well, so share the link with friends and neighbours.  Let’s get people excited about making good things happen! E-mail completed applications to clsudbury@live.com.

The application deadline is January 30, 2015.