Critical Community Conversations: Community Responses to Hate and Racism

Critical Community Conversations: Community Responses to Hate and Racism, Solidarity, Community Care, and Shared Knowledge 

Recent attentions to White nationalist and supremacist groups training in Hamilton, White nationalist and supremacist symbols in public spaces, and continued hate crimes broadly have again generated calls for action. Often, these incidents are treated as aberrations, anomalies, or episodic. This treatment negates the years of harmful impact, and the work advanced by community members, leaders who experience hate, and organizations that have engaged communities to name these ongoing harms and offer supports and responses. This event will begin from a respect for the work and knowledge of those who have lived the impacts of White nationalist and supremacist hatred in Hamilton to provide space to name these ongoing harms and impacts, to share knowledge from community care work, and to build solidarities for the challenges before us and ahead.

Moderator: Dr. Ameil J. Joseph, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Academic Director of Community-Engaged Research and Relationships, Office of Community Engagement, McMaster University

Panelists:

• Kojo Damptey

Kojo is a sessional instructor for the African & Black Diaspora Studies program and a PhD student in the School of Social Work at McMaster University. Kojo integrates his academic insights and artistic talents to challenge and dismantle systemic oppression and racism. His scholarly work revolves around the broad discipline of African and Black Studies, particularly governance, African Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and politics in Africa and Canada. He approaches his work using theoretical frameworks of decoloniality, Afrocentricity, and Black Radical Traditions.

Kojo is currently working on a multimodal research project that theorizes, highlights, explores, and documents how African/Black civic and political leaders in Canada address anti-Black/African racism when running for political office.

As a scholar-practitioner, Kojo has used his academic scholarship to influence local issues such as developing Hamilton’s online reporting platform for reporting hate and restructuring Hamilton’s Board of Health to include health experts and community members.

• Brad Evoy 

Brad is a muliply-disabled member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq Nation, originally from so-called Western Newfoundland. Brad is the current Executive Director of Disability Justice Network of Ontario, a provincial organization centred in so-called Hamilton, Ontario that aims to build a just and accessible Ontario, hold the powerful to account, and create a world where disabled people are free to be. Brad's graduate research work focused on the history of universities in Southern Ontario, including the rise of far right movements in response to progressive student organizing.

• Jelena Vermilion 

Jelena (she/her) is a transsexual artist, activist, and archivist based in Hamilton. As Executive Director of the Sex Workers’ Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton, she leads community-based initiatives advancing sex workers’ rights, accessibility, and dignity through art, research, and direct action. Her work - spanning participatory research, public memorials, museum exhibit curations, and stewarding one of the world’s largest sex work media archives - bridges the worlds of activism, technology, and creative resistance.

• Lyndon George 

Lyndon serves as the Executive Director of the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre (HARRC), where he leads initiatives to confront systemic racism and promotes anti-racism activism throughout the Hamilton community.
With a background in advocacy and community engagement, Lyndon is dedicated to creating inclusive environments and empowering individuals and organizations to address discrimination. His work with HARRC emphasizes building partnerships, supporting community-driven solutions, and ensuring that diverse voices shape Hamilton's future. In addition, he has over 15 years of experience working in political and community organizing.