Calgary's first Racial Justice Conference hosted over 900 people discussing ways to tackle systemic racism

The message leaving the conference was how do we move forward? But your workshop, as I mentioned, was about looking back. Why was that? Thank you so much for having me. The workshop was so that we could understand the past, so we could move correctly in the future. And so the workshop was the first half we talked about the history and the historical context of Black within Alberta, Edmonton and Calgary specifically. And then the second-half, my part, we’re talking about what we’re doing to move forward. How do we use in our path to kind of pave our future and then how we’re trying to build the future that we would love to see and how are we. I personally, I think we’re doing a lot better than we did before. I’ve mentioned this, I’ve mentioned this many times to many people is we are much better today than we were several years back. If we went back even 7 years, it was very difficult to have this conversation so openly until we like with willingness from everybody to hear it. And so the fact that we’re having such a huge conference, so many people showing up and the willingness to have this conversation and reflect so we could all move forward, It’s absolutely beautiful. We’re doing great. You say 7 years, but this conference was a product of an anti racism strategy and committee developed four years ago, in particular because of the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd. So if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying there’s there’s more of an openness to understanding these issues in Calgary today than was the case back then. What was the resistance based on back then? I think a lot of it had to do with a lot of just not lack of knowledge and people not knowing and then also lack of like unwillingness to hear that there are problems. For the longest time I’ve been doing this work for years and for the longest time to convince people that we it is a problem. It is an issue. And we tend to be thinking that we’re not the United States. We’re so much better. We’re looking so much lighter. We’re so multicultural as a country, but that also comes with its issue. It creates this color blindness for us. And so with the Black Lives Matter movement and then with the City of Calgary actually taking into account hearing the community and then taking what the community said and creating the anti racism strategy and trying to push this work forward, absolutely that we definitely need to be doing this work. Can you, You know, it’s one thing to talk in in general terms, but can you give me more of a concrete example of the problems that we faced previously with systemic racism issues that maybe we’re making some progress on today? Absolutely. I think making the progress that we’re talking about. So if we’re talking about, for example, when it comes to schooling and the racism that students face within the school system, within CBE or even Edmonton school system, the willingness in order for CBE and the Edmonton school system to actually have the conversations and then put in the 0 tolerance policies that would help students, it’s, you know, it’s a step forward, a lot more work that needs to be done. Obviously there’s a lot more than needs to be put forward. The things we would love to see, also having the community be part of the conversations. For the longest time we were outside of the decision making and then in many places. Now we are actually, in some instances being centered in the conversations. Will it be with the conversations We’re having a data collection when it comes to the community and figuring out exactly what the issues are? Because before it used to be anecdotes. People will tell stories of what’s happening to them, but there isn’t data to back it up. And in some areas there is some data being collected. But then there’s this push, like a genuine push to get more data collected so that you have, you know, qualitative stories. That’s just the qualitative part. And then you get quantitative data that actually proves it’s being said. So the concrete pieces, there isn’t one thing that actually working, but the conversations being had, centering, the voicing, believing what’s being said, putting in the policies, reflecting learning and learning and relearning, these are all bits and pieces that are moving this work forward. OK, that is good to hear. But as you say, there’s still work to be done, right? It’s, it’s moving the work forward. So what’s the end point? The end point is we would love to have a society which is fair and just for everybody, right? In a society that we could all live in and not have a system that would hold people back, whether purposefully or, you know, not purposefully because it’s a lot of the times the system would be punitive to individual because it’s just old rule that never changed. And there, therefore, we all constantly need to start thinking like, well, how do we create a system that reflects everyone? And if we’re quite honest, when we talk about everything that’s happening around us, the system in Canada was not created to reflect people who are black, was not created to reflect the indigenous communities or other minorities who now flourish within Canada. And so creating a system that is reflective, responsive and representative is what we’re pushing towards. Are you confident we’ll get there? I’m hopeful and I am confident. It is the North Star. We’re constantly going there and we are going. Every single day is better. You know, today is better than tomorrow. Yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today. And one step at a time. So yeah.