In the wake of police crackdowns on civil liberties across Europe, a critical look at the role of police and state in civil society is more important than ever. Featuring OISE professor and activist Dr. Rinaldo Walcott, documentary filmmaker Amar Wala, new media artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and photographer Abdi Osman, this event invites artists and thinkers to discuss how they address state and police violence in their own practice, followed by a moderated question and answer period.

Dr. Rinaldo Walcott is a professor in Social Justice Education at OISE, author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada and the editor of Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. Amar Wala is the winner of the Hot Docs Emerging Filmmaker Award for “Secret Trial 5”, a sobering examination of the Canada’s use of security certificates.

New media artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle is the past recipient of two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards, was a curator for imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and is a member of OCADU’s Indigenous Education Advisory Council.

Abdi Osman is a Somali-Canadian multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on questions of black masculinity as it intersects with Muslim and queer identities.