Aziz Choudry: Vancouver Book Launch & Panel: Activists and the Surveillance State
To celebrate the launch of Dr. Aziz Choudry’s latest book “Activists and the Surveillance State: Learning from Repression”, Spartacus Books is hosting a panel featuring three speakers. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Speaker Bios:
Irina Ceric, Criminology Instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC (unceded Coast Salish Territories), is a longtime grassroots activist and movement lawyer.
Evert Hoogers served 3 terms as President of the Vancouver local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) in the 1980s, and was elected CUPW National Union Representative from 1990 to 2008. His position included work as coordinator of the CUPW International Solidarity file and Representative assigned to the CUPW National Human Rights Committee.
Dr. Aziz Choudry is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg. He has been involved in a range of social, political and environmental justice movements and organizations since the 1980s.
Book description:
The use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on, disrupt and undermine opposition to the dominant political and economic order has a long history. This book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organizations and movements that are labelled as ‘threats to national security’.
Activists and scholars from the UK, South Africa, Canada, the US, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand expose disturbing stories of political policing to question what lies beneath state surveillance.
Problematizing the social amnesia that exists within progressive political networks and supposed liberal democracies, Activists and the Surveillance State shows that ultimately, movements can learn from their own repression, developing a critical and complex understanding of the nature of states, capital and democracy today that can inform the struggles of tomorrow.
More info: https://btlbooks.com/book/activists-and-the-surveillance-state
Spartacus Books is a collectively run infoshop located on the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and sel̓ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
Accessibility information:
If you require ASL interpretation to attend this event, please message Spartacus Books or leave a comment on the event page.
Additional accessibility information is available on the website: http://spartacusbooks.net/accessibility/. This event is a scent-reduced space, but we cannot promise that Spartacus is fragrance-free. We request that participants refrain from the following before or during the event: Smoking; Wearing colognes, perfumes or scented oils; and using chemical based laundry detergents or fabric softeners. We ask participants to wear something that has had limited exposure to the items above.
If you have any questions about the space, please contact [email protected] or 604-688-6138.