By Gary Kinsman, at the Imagining Abolition Virtual Conference
Session 5:
Abolish Civilizing Violence
Thursday 15 April 2021 ~ 4:20 – 5:45pm (PST).
Drawing on my work on the making and unmaking of the neoliberal queer and for the 3rd edition of The Regulation of Desire this presentation aims to:
1) Outline what neoliberalism is and the historical/social emergence of the neoliberal queer.
2) Point to the centrality of support for the police and the carceral state to this emergence of the neoliberal queer. This includes support for the Canadian Charter as the road to rights and how this is built on settler colonialism and settler homonationalism. In this context the limitations of the apology for the Canadian War on Queers and the attempt to incorporate some queers into patriotism and militarism will be addressed.
3) The historical struggles against the neoliberal queer including those against collaboration and liaison committees with the police. This will include the resistance to the bath raids in Toronto.
4) Struggles for queer refugees to get into ‘Canada.’ The contradiction between formal rights and the tightening up of borders for queer and trans BIPOC people. The need for a no one is illegal approach.
5) More recent struggles against the police and the carceral state including Black Lives Matter and Pride Toronto. The need to extend opposition to the police having an organized institutional presence within Pride events to a broader abolitionist position including opposition to all funding for the police and building alternatives to policing and carceral state relations.
6) How can we develop more active support for abolitionist approaches within queer communities?
Gary Kinsman is a queer liberation, anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti-capitalist activist in solidarity with Indigenous struggles. He was involved in the resistance to the Toronto bath raids, the We Demand an Apology Network, and is currently involved in the No Pride in Policing Coalition where he helped organize the Defund and Abolish All Police rally in Toronto on Pride Day 2020. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire (which he is currently working on a 3rd edition of), and co-author (with Patrizia Gentile) of The Canadian War on Queers. Recent book chapters include “Policing Borders and sexual/gender identities: queer refugees in the years of Canadian neoliberalism and homonationalism,” in Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (2018); “Forgetting National Security in ‘Canada’” in Choudry (ed.) Activists and the Surveillance State; “Not a Gift From Above,” in Dummit and Sethna, No Place for the State; and “Learning from AIDS Activism for Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic,” in BTL Editorial Committee, Sick of the System (ebook). He shares his time between Toronto and Sudbury, where he is Professor Emeritus at Laurentian University . His website ishttps://radicalnoise.ca/
Imagining Abolition: Beyond Prisons, Wars, and Borders
A Virtual Gathering
April 14-17, 2021
Abolition Conference: Spring 2021
https://sites.google.com/view/imagining-abolition/home?authuser=0
Please Send All Communication to: Abolition2021@gmail.com