Public Presentation - "Rights For Real: Law and Social Justice"

a talk by Margot Young

Responses from Deborah Campbell and Sean Condon

Moderated by Am Johal, Vancouver Flying University

Tuesday, March 24th - 7:30-9:00 pm
1202 East Pender

A number of key human rights are protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and under the various international human rights treaties to which Canadian governments are bound. Yet, Canada continues to be a country in which poverty is persistent and too many individuals face homelessness, food insecurity, and social exclusion. This talk looks at what the challenges are to realizing rights and to making promises of equality and material well-being meaningful to those most marginalized in our society.

Professor Young began her teaching career at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria in 1992 after doing graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley in the fields of feminist legal theory and reproductive technologies. Her focus quickly shifted to the areas of constitutional law, in particular, equality law and theory, and social welfare law. She has continued to teach and research widely in these areas. Professor Young has worked with a number of non-governmental groups on issues of women's economic equality and justice. She has authored alternative NGO reports for Canada's periodic reviews under the United Nations ICESCR, ICCPR and CEDAW Committees. Recently she is co-author of the collection Poverty: Human Rights, Social Citizenship and Legal Activism, published by UBC Press.

Deborah Campbell is an award-winning writer whose work has taken her to Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Dubai, Cuba, Russia and Israel-Palestine. Deborah’s book, This Heated Place: Encounters in the Promised Land (Douglas and McIntyre, 2002) is a literary journey inside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines a few of which include Harper’s, The Walrus, The Economist, New Scientist, Ms., the Guardian, Adbusters, Vancouver Magazine, Vancouver Review, and in anthologies, essay collections and scholarly journals in Europe, Asia and North America. Her radio documentaries have aired on CBC radio and NPR. Deborah has guest lectured widely on social justice issues and the state of media democracy.

Sean Condon is the Editor of Megaphone Magazine

Vancouver Flying University

Initiated by independent journalist Am Johal in collaboration with writer Jeff Derksen and Urban Subjects(US).

Based on the concept of mobile seminars and talks that Hungarian and Polish dissidents used to skirt authoritarian state institutions, Vancouver Flying University considers the current context of gentrification and economic distortion of Vancouver’s inner city in the lead up to the 2010 Olympics.

An active reframing of the political and social dimension of the civic dialogue has taken place to prepare the public for the coming of the spectacle. Vancouver Flying University is looking to take a critical view of displacement, private security expansion, changes in policing policies and the development of concepts and positions which limit the right to the city and the processes by which they have become normalized in the civic imagination.