HSA Social Justice Day Workshop

Event Type

HSA Social Justice Day workshop 

DATE: Thursday, February 20, 2020
TIME:  8:30am – 4:00pm    
PLACE: HSA Head Office - 180 East Columbia St. New Westminster, BC

 The Committee on Equality and Social Action invite you to a workshop to explore different aspects of the Climate Emergency.

Our guests include, Andrew Williamson, Producer; Lilah Williamson, Sutainabiliteens/Metro Vancouver’s Climate Stikers, Peter McCarntey from the Wilderness Committee, and Seth Klein.

Andrew Williamson, Producer presents a presentation about climate change and climate action including a focus is on actions and solutions that can be taken personally and politically. Andrew will also share some footage from his new feature documentary, The Magnitude of All Things, which looks at the emotional and physiological reactions to climate change on frontlines around the world.

The world is protesting, now what? Learn things you can do locally to keep momentum going, and connect with local networks, as we take on the challenge of our time.

 Andrew is an award-winning producer and co-president of Cedar Island Films. Andrew has produced the documentary feature The Magnitude of All Things with Jennifer Abbott (The Corporation), The Whale and The Raven, a Canadian / German coproduction with the National Film Board of Canada and ARTE, The Search for CBC Doc Channel, River of Life for ZDF and Mission Canada for ARD Degeto. 

He was Executive Producer of the critically acclaimed doc-series Emergency Room: Life & Death at VGH for The Knowledge Network/Discovery and High Moon, a pilot co-venture with Universal Cable Productions and Executive Producer Bryan Fuller. He also produced Gastown Gamble for the OWN Network. Andrew has worked with all the major Canadian networks and public funding agencies. 

Andrew is on the Branch Council of the CMPA – BC Producers Branch and on the Film Advisory Board for Langara College. He is the founder of Crazy8s and volunteers with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project to help educate people about climate change. 

Lilah Williamson, Sustainabiliteen Lilah is a 15-year-old high school student and organizer with Sustainabiliteens, who organized among other the September 27th climate strike that brought over 100,000 people to the streets of Vancouver. Lilah is one of the founding members of Sustainabiliteens and has cared about climate change for years, but said that the forest fire smoke that blanketed Vancouver during the summer of 2018 motivated her to act.

The Wilderness Committee will facilitate a dialogue about a just transition for British Columbia that does not rely on the gas industry's false promise of prosperity.

Peter McCartney is the Climate Campaigner at the Wilderness Committee. With a background in journalism and political science, he works to mobilize opposition to fossil fuel exports and support for a just transition to a post-carbon economy.

Participants will receive wage replacement, accommodations (shared) and travel expenses in accordance with HSA policy.

Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency 

Seth Klein (the former BC director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) will offer a preview of his forthcoming book (due out in the fall of 2020). He argues we need to approach the climate crisis with a new mindset – as an urgent existential threat requiring a wartime-scale emergency response, a new society-wide mobilization. Seth offers lesson’s from Canada’s WWII mobilization experience, as a reminder that we have done this before – we have mobilized in common cause, across class and race and gender, to confront an existential threat. And in doing so, we have retooled our entire economy in the space of a few years. Seth will also outline numerous actions unions can undertake to support climate mobilization.

Seth Klein served for 22 years (1996-2018) as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is now a freelance researcher, writer, consultant and speaker, and an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University’s Urban Studies program. He is currently writing a book on mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency.

Seth’s research deals primarily with climate policy and climate justice, fiscal policy, taxation, welfare policy, poverty, inequality, economic security, and job creation. His research reports can be found on the CCPA’s website; and his policy commentary can be found primarily on the CCPA-BC’s blog.

Registration is through My Events Registration and you will need your HSA member ID number in order to create a login.  Please call the HSA office at 604.517.0994 or 1.800.663.2017 to receive your HSA member ID number.  Once you have created a login the event will be listed under Other Events.

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