Rodney Diverlus - Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada

2020 University of Regina Press

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Cover art: Photo by Paige Galette

Cover and text design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press

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Proofreader: Kristine Douaud

All Power to All People?: Black LGBTTI2QQ Activism, Remembrance, and Archiving in Toronto by Syrus Marcus Ware was originally published in TSQ : Transgender Studies Quarterly, Volume 4:2, pp. 17080. (c) 2017 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the copyright holder, Duke University Press. www.dukeupress.edu.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Until we are free : reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada / edited by Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, and Syrus Marcus Ware.

Names: Diverlus, Rodney, 1990- editor. | Hudson, Sandy, 1985- editor. | Ware, Syrus Marcus, editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190224347 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190224363 | ISBN 9780889776944 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889777361 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780889776968 ( PDF ) | ISBN 9780889776982 ( HTML )

Subjects : LCSH : Black lives matter movementCanada. | LCSH : BlacksCanadaSocial conditions. | LCSH : BlacksCivil rightsCanada. | LCSH : BlacksPolitical activityCanada. | LCSH : Race discriminationCanada. | LCSH : CanadaRace relations. | CSH : Black CanadiansSocial conditions.| CSH : Black CanadiansCivil rights. | CSH : Black CanadiansPolitical activity.

Classification: LCC FC106.B6 U58 2020 | DDC 305.896/071 d c23

University of Regina Press, University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, s4s 0a2 tel: (306) 585-4758 fax: (306) 585-4699 web : www.uofrpress.ca

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. / Nous reconnaissons lappui financier du gouvernement du Canada. This publication was made possible with support from Creative Saskatchewans Book Publishing Production Grant Program.

For our Ancestors,

whose struggle we continue

until we are free.

For our Elders,

whose fight we continue

until we are free.

For Andrew Loku, Jermaine Carby, Sumaya

Dalmar, Abdirahman Abdi, Pierre Coriolan,

Amleset Haile, Kwasi Skene-Peters, Alex Wetlauffer,

and the unnamed, whose lives we will continue

to honour until we are free and ever after.

For our children and our grandchildren,

whose futures we will defend

until we are free.

For all of us in the now,

may we all be free.

There can be no future where white

supremacy thrives at the expense of Black

humanity, and with this orientation, we will

continue to fight for true liberation until the day

that each of us experience it. All Black life.

Until we are all free.

The Editors

Contents

PART V: And Beyond: Black Futurities and Possible Ways Forward

Introduction

The Year 2055 C.E.An Imagined Future

It is summer and the heat waves of years ago are now our coldest experiences. The temperatures have climbed to highs that sound like they are lifted from science fiction novels. Except in the winters; those of course have gotten considerably cooler since the jet stream rerouted. I scan the horizon for the nearest shade and set off from my shelter. This weekly water-sourcing trek was always daunting, but summer treks seemed particularly dangerous. If it wasnt the heat, it was the violence on the roads, always worse in summer when more people were out travelling. At my current pace, I imagine Ill reach the shade in the next ten minutes, and its not a moment too soon. Heat blisters have begun to erupt on my shoulders, joining the scabs of past others.

It has been five minutes. Three minutes to go. Thirty seconds...

Im sweating profusely by the time I reach the shade under one of the few trees left in this region. Under one of the few trees left anywhere, really. I sit down for a moment, opening my water flask. I drink, aggressively at first, but soon at an even pace. I remember an earlier time in our movement, before the temperatures rose in that dramatic upswing, when the world had more people, more animals. More life. I remember life before the droughts, fires, and class wars. Before the race wars. A time before end and destruction. I remember writing about our activisms, documenting the experiences we were having as Black activists in the movement for Black lives in Canada. I remember gathering with a host of Black Canadian theorists, artists, and authors, all of whom had been writing about Black activism during this moment in this northern part of Turtle Island. I remember sharing what they wrote in a collection, an assemblage of stories that wove a complex yarn about the meaning of Blackness in Canada, about the ways that we were fighting to survive and to thrive. I keep a copy of these pages, weather-worn, torn, and crumpled from a life on the road in my shoulder bag, and I read them over and over. Its amazing to me to remember a time when there were still prisons and carceral spaces, borders and confinement. To remember a time of trepidation.