On 22 October 2022, the Parkdale Legal Services held a symposium to commemorate its fifty-year anniversary. Osgoode students offered their time and energy to help plan and run the symposium. The “Parkdale Community Legal Services at 50: Defining Our Future” symposium brought together alumni, activists, lawyers, professors, community members, and current Osgoode students for a day of art, thought provoking presentations, and critical discussions about community and activism.
Dean Mary Condon spoke at the opening of the event commending the important work that the clinic does and highlighting the way Osgoode’s relationship with the Parkdale Legal Clinic has provided students with invaluable experiential education opportunities for years and service to the community. The three panel discussions held throughout the day were centered around building, securing, and reimagining just communities. In reimagining these communities, attendees were forced to reckon with the institutions and mentalities that allowed injustices to flourish. Panelists shared the work being done everyday to overcome different barriers to justice. Examples included community mobilization, education, and advocacy. Attendees were also treated with performances by El Jones, Martin Gomes, and Realjie. Each artists’ work is a living testament to the fact that art is or can be a form of activism and a way to bring people together and build community.
Dr. Jones’ spoken word poetry was a highlight of the symposium; she performed three spoken word poems from her book Abolitionist Intimacies. The poems were inspired by Dr. Jones’ conversations with the prisoners she met through her prison justice work, and they capture their experiences, despair, hope, and resilience. The spoken word performance was followed by a conversation with Husoni Raymond, a 2L at Osgoode, which highlighted that community members caring for each other and advocating for their needs will go a long way in bringing about these just communities and taking power away from systems of oppression that operate in Canada to this day. Dr. Jones questioned the centrality of prisons in the Canadian justice system, considering that forty-one percent of the prison population in Halifax was released during COVID-19 and no spike in the crime rate of the city ensued. Dr. Jones’ activism and extensive work in prisons and anti-black racism has allowed her to see firsthand the inherent barriers within the justice system as faced by the individuals being processed through the system.
These factors interact with the inadequate protections available to marginalized individuals resulting in unjust outcomes and societies. The fact that legal fees account for a large majority of the fundraising done by these community organizers was central in the discussion held throughout the day. Thus, a key takeaway of the symposium was that lawyers and legal clinics are tools in the creation and protection of just communities, tools that ought not to be inaccessible to those who are striving for a just world.