Local Hope and Challenges

Don Iveson, former Mayor of Edmonton
Lisa Helps, former Mayor of Victoria

After 14 years of elected public service at Edmonton City Hall, including five years as Chair of Canada’s Big City Mayors, Don Iveson founded Civic Good in 2021, providing advice on climate resilience, housing affordability, civic innovation and adaptive governance. He is primarily engaged with Co-operators as Executive Advisor to the Resilience Acceleration Lab, developing and investing in climate adaptation projects in communities across Canada. Don also serves as Co-Chair of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, and Chair of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). He remains based in Edmonton but works with governments, startups and not-for-profits across Canada in areas ranging from cleantech to modular housing.

Joshua Evans, Associate Professor, University of Alberta
Kyla Second, ACORN Calgary

Lisa Prins, Humanities 101, University of Alberta

We're Together Ending Poverty, Calgary 

It's the Same Fight

Marcia Howard, Minneapolis

Marcia Howard, steward at George Floyd Square and Teacher Chapter President of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Local 59, will speak about the legacy of resistance in Minneapolis—from the uprising after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, to solidarity built across the labor movement and grassroots organizations, to a historic educators' strike in 2022 and the subsequent fights for even better contracts, to the struggle against ICE occupation during Operation Metro Surge. Across all of these historical moments, her message is the same: all of our fights are connected.

Marcia Howard is an English teacher at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, MN, where she has taught since 1998. She has been one of the key leaders in the George Floyd Square occupation and is currently the President of the teacher chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Local 59.

Debriefing the Referendum

Bradley Lafortune, Public Interest Alberta
Jared Wesley, Professor, University of Alberta

Jared Wesley is Associate Dean (Education), Co-Director of the Peter Lougheed School of Politics and Democracy, a professor of political science, and member of the Black Faculty Collective at the University of Alberta. He studies the links between public opinion, public policy, and political culture.

No Secret Recipe

Deena Ladd (Toronto Workers Action Centre)

We are organizing in challenging times. The relentless assault on all the things we care about are under attack. The shock doctrine is having an impact on us. We are running from one issue to the next. Spinning from the world wide crisis to the personal and community crisis of the impact of the right wing vicious agenda.

There are no easy answers and no secret recipe. However, there are intentional strategies we can pursue to build power and to expose the choices that politicians are making to choose profit and war over our communities.

Deena Ladd is one of the founders and Executive Director of Toronto’s Workers’ Action Centre. The Workers’ Action Centre organizes to improve wages and working conditions with low-waged workers, women, racialized and immigrant workers in precarious jobs that face discrimination, violations of rights and no benefits in the workplace.