What: Book Launch of Policing Black Lives with author Robyn Maynard and guests
When: March 1, 2018 at 6 pm
Where: Room 1900, SFU Harbour Center, 515 West Hastings
Full event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/399026460520621/
FEBRAURY 21, 2018 VANCOUVER – The Vancouver book launch of best-selling book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood Publishing) will take place on March 1 st at 6 pm at SFU Harbour Center.
Black feminist author Robyn Maynard will launch her book with Cecilia Pointfrom Musqueam, Black Lives Matter-Vancouver cofounder Cicely Blain, Artistic Director Jillian Christmas, musician Khari Wendall McClelland, Downtown Eastside and Hogan’s Alley community organizer Lama Mugabo, and youth facilitator Ruby Smith Diaz.
Policing Black Lives is a national bestseller, already in its second printing, and has received praise in the CBC, Toronto Star, the Montreal Review of Books, Now Toronto, MacLean’s, Publishers Weekly, and Ottawa Citizen. Helping to create a national conversation on anti-Black racism in Canada, author
Robyn Maynard has been touring the book across Canada to sold-out venues since its release.
Says author Robyn Maynard “I am thrilled to be launching this book with communities in Vancouver. I felt urgency in writing this book as we are surrounded by news stories that show so much happening to Black people in the United States. But many people in Canada don’t know our own history — the disproportionate rates of Black people behind bars, killed by police or in child welfare agencies. It was very important to talk specifically about anti-Black racism in Canada.”
Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-
sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black life in Canada.
According to community organizer Lama Mugabo “It is an honour to host Robyn Maynard as we trace the still-living legacy of anti-Black racism in Vancouver, including through urban planning that destroyed Hogan’s Alley, ongoing police violence, and the impacts of an acute housing crises.”
The event is hosted by Black Lives Matter, No One Is Illegal, Carnegie African Descent Group and Alliance Against Displacement with the sponsorship of Amnesty International, Battered Women Support Services, BC Civil Liberties Association, Capilano College, Carceral Cultures, Council of Canadians, Gallery Gachet, Killjoy, Pivot Legal Society, SFU Institute for the Humanities, SFU Libraries, Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group, Streams of Justice, UBC Social Justice Center.