A Cool Anti-Poverty Conference

In gathering information for an article (or perhaps several articles) that I wish to write, someone that I hope to interview drew my attention to a cool anti-poverty conference attempting to bridge academic and community spaces that is happening in Kingston, Ontario, on October 14-16. It is called !nstigate 2010: Anti-Poverty Rant-In. The deadline to submit papers or workshops is long past, but there is still lots of opportunity to sign up to attend. The schedule of events can be found here.

Having just found out about it today, I'm not sure whether I'll be attending or not. Still, there's a lot to recommend it. Judging by all of the links above, the commitment to making it meaningfully based in communities in struggle has been important in shaping the event. Even many of the more obviously academic elements are clearly oriented towards thinking through and promoting efforts to create social change. The lineup of presenters looks amazing. I've read or heard all five of the keynote speakers before, and think they are all very worth listening to -- Margaret Little, Pat Capponi, Francis Fox Piven, Peter Kulchyski, and John Clarke -- and lots of the workshops and presentations look pretty awesome as well.

Like I said, I have no idea if I'll be there or not, but it seems like a pretty useful place to be for people concerned with struggles against poverty and against neoliberalism in the Canadian context.