Saturday May 1st 11am-3pm
MayDay Festival in the Park
Skeleton Park (Ordnance St and Clergy St), Free
Featuring a short history of MayDay presented by David Thompson (PhD Candidate, Queen’s History Department), a Really Really Free Market (give/take books, clothes, furniture, etc, no money please), BBQ, kids activities and live music!
Saturday May 1st, 7pm
Opening Reception for MayWorks Art Exhibition featuring H’art Studio documentary screening
Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, 21 Queen St, Free
Sunday May 2nd 10am-4pm
MayWorks Day of Workshops
10am-12pm: Workshop on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
presented by Annie Chau Community Educator, Sexual Assault Centre Kingston (SACK)
AKA Autonomous Social Centre, 75 Queen St, Free
In this interactive workshop sponsored by SACK for Sexual Assault Prevention Month, learn about the issues, your rights and the laws surrounding sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, and how to promote a workplace that is intolerant to this violence.
12:30pm-2pm: Kingston’s Swamp Ward in the Old Days: A Walking Tour
Guided by Laura Murray and Jamie Swift
Meeting Place: Skeleton Park plaque, Free.
Skeleton Park holds some fascination as a former cemetery. But did you ever wonder about the living people who worked and played around it in the past? Laura and Jamie will show you landmarks of Kingston’s labour, industrial, environmental, and multicultural history, featuring lively anecdotes about the lives of working people in the 1930s and reminders of tenants’ rights and neighbourhood ‘improvement’ activities of the 1960s-1980s.
2:30pm-4pm: Workshop on Consensus in Labour Organizing
Presented by Niq Gryphon
AKA Autonomous Social Centre, 75 Queen St, Free
Sunday May 2nd, 7:47pm
747 Film Series presents: Matewan (1987)
AKA Autonomous Social Centre, 75 Queen St, Free
Matewan, written and directed by John Sayles, illustrates the events of a coal mine-workers; strike and attempt to unionize in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia.
Monday May 3rd, 4-5pm
CFRC 101.9 FM presents Vincenzo Pietropaolo’s Harvest Pilgrims
Tune in at 101.9 FM, 90.9 on cogeco cable or live at www.cfrc.ca
Harvest Pilgrims tells the little-known story of Canada’s migrant workers. The photographs in the “Harvest Pilgrims” collection have been highly acclaimed internationally through many publications and exhibitions, including a travelling show curated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography that opened in Mexico City.
Tuesday May 4th, 6:30pm
Panel Discussion: The Relevancy of Unions Today with Debi Wells, Kingston and District Labour Council, Shell Sweeney, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), and Andrew Stevens, PhD Candidate in Sociology at Queen’s University.
Wilson Room, Central Branch – Kingston Frontenac Public Library, 130 Johnson St, Free
Thursday May 6th, 7pm
Organizing in a Time of Crisis: A Talk on the Work of the Immigrant Workers Centre
presented by Mostafa Henaway
AKA Autonomous Social Centre, 75 Queen St, Free
This is a talk that will focus on organizing with precarious immigrant workers, with temp agencies, day labor, temporary foreign workers, who are now becoming in a time of global capital,the norm for capitalism to further destabilize the gains of working people over the past 25 years and create an ever growing exploitable labor force of migrants, immigrants and those in precarious jobs, in order to create a third world in the first. This talk will also explore the work of the centre with these workers in order to help build the capacity of those who are now facing the brunt of global capitalism.
Friday May 7th, 7pm
The criminality of stigma: Sex work, labour and decriminalization
presented by Tuulia Law, Internal Coordinator of the Sex Professionals of Canada
Renaissance, 285 Queen St, Free
Sex workers have long been fighting for sex work to be recognized as labour. Tuulia Law considers sex work, labour, and the dangers and difficulties of stigma and criminalization, as well as the constitutional challenge by the Sex Professionals of Canada for the decriminalization of consensual adult sex work.
Friday May 7th, 9:00pm
MayWorks Variety Night
Renaissance, 285 Queen St, Suggested donation of $5. PWYC.
Featuring Christina Foster, The ToneKats, comedian Duncan Links, spoken word performances by Queen’s graduate students, and a dance party spun by DJ Sealegs!
Saturday May 8th, 2pm
Artist Talk by Karen Zalamea entitled WORK WORK WORK: Notes on Being Efficient
Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, 21 Queen St, Free
Within the context of her video exhibition at Modern Fuel, Karen Zalamea will present the ideas and methodologies that have shaped her artistic practice. Through performance-based image-making, her work enquires into the relationship between the body, gesture and labour.
Sunday May 9th, 7:47pm
747 Film Series presents: 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002)
AKA Autonomous Social Centre, 75 Queen St, Free
Directed by Robert Townsend, 10,000 Black Men Named George features union activist Asa Philip Randolph’s efforts to organize the black porters of the Pullman Rail Company in 1920s America.
MayWorks Art Exhibitions
May 1st – 30th – Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers Cooperative, 91 Princess St
May 1st – 8th – Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, 21 Queen St
