Who Gets Heard?

Who gets heard?

Too often, our political system has reinforced biases and injustices and favours the few over the many. Elections are supposed to represent our collective voices, but some voices have been louder than others. How do we get heard at these critical moments?

As we approach the mid-point between the last federal election and the upcoming provincial election next year, we can look back while planning to move forward. What happened in the federal election? Where did we hear the voice of young people? How was it silenced? Who are the issues for? Finally, how do we prepare to be heard in the upcoming provincial election?

Yonis Hassen, CEO and co-founder (with Noah ‘40’ Shebib) of Justice Fund is upending traditional conceptions of philanthropy.

Samantha Reusch, executive director of Apathy is Boring is making political engagement cool again nation-wide, and scholarship-activist.

Sam Tecle at the university’s Department of Sociology, is bringing new focus to the ways in which resistance shapes and builds communities.

Join the Library and the Democratic Engagement Exchange at the Faculty of Arts and a group of student peers in conversation as we hear about how they are reframing politics and how all of us can make our voices heard.

Presented by the Library and the Democratic Engagement Exchange at the Faculty of Arts, join the discussion on Nov. 18 as we hear about how they are reframing politics and how all of us can make our voices heard.

Brought to you by:

Dialogues for Change: RE: Thinking Politics

A Library Series in Partnership with the Democratic Engagement Exchange at the Faculty of Arts

About the panelists:

Yonis Hassan is the CEO of Justice Fund Toronto, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting communities in conflict with the law and transforming the charitable sector to break the philanthropic sector-enabled cycle of poverty.He serves as board member of UKAI Projects, Foodshare Toronto and a handful of community committees across Toronto. He previously served as a board member for Social Planning Toronto, CP Planning, and fellow of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

Samantha Reusch is the Executive Director of Apathy is Boring. Since 2017, she has served on the leadership team at Apathy is Boring, contributing to the strategic development of programs, content, and activities through her work as the head of Impact and Development before transitioning to Executive Director in August 2020.

A passionate advocate for democracy and civic engagement, Sam is a respected commentator and educator who believes that the energy, insight, and innovative spirit of young people are critical to building a stronger and more equitable society for us all. Sam has worked with countless partners across Canada to support the development of positive engagement practices and provide insight into new understandings that young people bring to change-making, inclusion, and movement-building. She is the co-author of Together We Rise, a report which advocates for the adoption of youth-led democratic innovation as a model for expanding our current conception of democratic engagement towards a more holistic understanding of how change happens

Sam Tecle’s research and scholarly work spans across the areas of Black and Diaspora Studies, Urban Studies, and Sociology of Education. His work focuses on the analysis of diverse experiences, trajectories and expressions of Blackness, grounded in particular histories of racialization, colonialism, community formation and resistance. His forthcoming work Black Grammars: On Difference and Belonging explores the experiences and perspectives relating to blackness and Black identification of East African Diasporas across the UK, Canada and the US. More broadly, Sam is interested in questions of Black Sociality, Black cultural production and its expressions across the diaspora.

His research and teaching draws on his deep experience in community-engaged work, focussed largely on Blackness and educational settings in Toronto. This community-engaged work has been conducted in partnership with organizations to create new supports and opportunities for Black students at the secondary level and in the transition to post-secondary education, in the face of a variety of systemic barriers they encounter. He has particularly prioritized work with Success Beyond Limits, a program serving students in the Jane and Finch community.