Beyond the Police state: a conversation with Desmond Cole and Robyn Maynard

This event took place March 12, 2021

Presented in partnership with UBC Okanagan

Visit the UBC Bookstore to purchase the speakers’ books

This series is made possible with the generous support of alumni UBC

Media Partner: The Georgia Straight

SOCIAL JUSTICE

About the Speakers:
Desmond Cole
Desmond Cole is a journalist, activist and author. He has spent the last 10 years reporting and commentating on politics and social justice. He is especially interested in the struggle for Black liberation within Canada. Cole’s work includes 10 years of local and national news coverage, five years of radio broadcasting at Newstalk 1010, a disruptive opinion column with the Toronto Star and an award-winning magazine feature. His first book is the national #1 bestseller The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power.

Robyn Maynard
Robyn Maynard is a Toronto-based writer and the author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Her writing on policing, criminalization, gender and anti-Black racism is taught widely in universities across North America.

Maynard has a long history of activism toward the abolition of policing, prisons, and borders. Most recently she is the author of toolkit called “Building the World We Want: A Roadmap to police-free futures in Canada”, and the forthcoming Rehearsals for Living, an epistolary collection co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Knopf Canada, 2022).

About the Talk:
Grounded firmly in the urgencies of the present, Desmond Cole and Robyn Maynard will discuss the limitation of reform and the necessity of creating abolitionist futures.