How the Toronto book launch went

Velcrow Ripper, Debbie Field, Grace-Edward Galabuzzi, Annahid Dashtgard

It was so great to see so many people out last night at Judy's launch at Ryerson in Toronto!  As the person who did a lot of the logistics for the event I might not be able to give the most unbiased opinion ever of how it went last night - I was spending a lot of time being relieved that everything was going according to plan re: the catering, room set up, sound systems, etc. 

But I also got to be part of the audience from Judy's remarks forward, so here are my impressions of the evening.

I thought that it was an interesting format for a book launch.  At other events I've attended, often the author reads a long passage from the book.  But that's not really Judy's style, as she informed me when we were planning the program.  In fact, Judy's remarks were rather brief and focused on her personal journey that took her politics - or perhaps, more accurately, her process of doing her politics - from a traditional, leftist, top-down, confrontational style to a more bottom-up, collaborative, less partisan and more inclusive style.

Then she introduced four of her friends and comrades, all of whom are featured in the book, and turned the floor over to them to discuss the ways they do their activism: Debbie Field from FoodShare, Grace-Edward Galabuzi, a Ryerson professor of politics, Annahid Dashtgard from Anima Leadership, and Velcrow Ripper, a film director.  Velcrow also showed a few clips from his upcoming film, FierceLight, which featured Judy and Van Jones.

I'm not going to give a synopsis of each of their remarks, because that would be too long (and besides, I think someone took a video, which we'll post here at some point), but I will mention one that really hit home for me personally, although I really enjoyed everyone's contributions.

Annahid gave a pretty high impact account of how she was affected by the police action in Quebec City at the Summit of the Americas in 2001.  She said (I'm paraphrasing here) that she felt not only traumatized by the physical assault on her and the other protesters with tear gas and threatening batons, but also by the fact that she as an activist was not prepared for what happened nor for the feelings she experienced afterwards.  And she realized that we, as activists have to pay attention to our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and take care of ourselves, and prepare ourselves for the actions we take.

And now, Annahid runs a progressive, feminist leadership training organization, because she saw this need for us to concentrate not only on the political goals we want to achieve, but also the process we use, and our personal and spiritual capacity for the activist work we do.  Her words were powerful for me because I've taken one of her workshops through Anima before, and I think she's really contributing something important to activism: mentoring, physical and mental preparedness, and good collaborative process.

After everyone had given their remarks, there was discussion between the speakers and the audience, and socializing and book signing afterwards.

FoodShare provided some absolutely delicious canapes which were devoured quickly.  Pages Books and Magazines were completely cleaned out of the books they brought to sell to the 200-strong crowd.  And Judy tells me she had some really great conversations with friends and fellow activists while signing books. 

I'd love to hear other people's impressions of the evening and the discussions, and I'm sure Judy would, too.