Celebrating Black History Month – RPNA Monthly Community Meeting

By Dimitrije Martinovic
(Dimitrije is a staff journalist with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE,  funded by the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative)

The Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) was formed in early 2015 by an equal parts  small group of both Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) resident & Market resident living in Regent Park. The Association looks to represent the interests of all resident of Regent Park by providing a broad range of advocacy services, as well as building community through events and meetings.

Mission: “The RPNA seeks to create a safe space where where resident voices are amplified on issues that are important to our neighbourhood & take action.” - RPNA

In the first of a series of monthly meetings, the RPNA hosted a virtual community meeting to celebrate Black History Month. The featured guest was Joy Henderson, a former Regent Park resident, and Afro-Lakota Child and Youth Care Practitioner/Professor, and writer.

Joy Henderson's has deep roots in Regent Park that stretch back to her childhood, her mother who still lives in the area.  As a young person, in the 90’s, Joy became involved in a community based project called Catch da Flava - a youth newsletter publication produced by Focus Media Arts Centre (formerly known as the Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre). The publication still continues today http://catchdaflava.blogspot.com/.  And so, from these early engagements with the world at large, Joy has built a career that incorporates both her Black and Indigenous backgrounds to address the social inequities faced by racialized communities.

Joy Henderson's presentation to RPNA's community meeting, centers on the importance and practice of “allyship”, a term that defines the act of allyship as “when a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalized group of people to help take down the systems that challenge that group's basic rights, equal access, and ability to thrive in our society." (quote from Samantha Rae-Dickenson)  Allyship, seeks to minimize power differentials and enhance the diversity of inclusion.

Allyship, counters such structural and systemic power imbalances as: “in Canada and western states, we are governed by a Christian-Judeo, cis, white, male hetero, abled framework and that has determined our laws, beliefs, social practices and educational practices, work schedules, what we consider manners, our media, what we eat, how we eat, what is professional, what we consider lazy, how we dress.”

For Black people in Canada this means that for example, Black children are more likely to be suspended, put in behavioural programs, arrested for acting out, and more likely to be streamed into applied learning streams.

Promoting Allyship with the celebration of Black History month serves to highlight the need for collaboration across privilege and power.