Why people protest, and how it causes change-conference

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The Voices conference presented by the political science students' association at the University of British Columbia is still taking shape, but organizer Jackie Hoffart hopes that folks will come away from it with a sense that political protest can be more than just carrying picket signs and blockading roads.

Voices: Understanding Protest Cultures-Understanding the Culture of Protest will be held in Vancouver on March 14 and 15. Participants will debate, investigate, analyze and have opportunity to criticize the nature of protests and what conditions spur them on. Key concepts include an historical look at repression abroad, as well as here in Canada, the mobilization of people and their responsibilities in regard to protest, free speech and corporate media, and social change through cultural expression in music, film and other artistic endeavors.

Hoffart wants to make it clear that she is not an expert in this area.

"The beauty of putting on this conference from my perspective is that I'm sort of the audience that I'm appealing to, which is the audience that says 'I want to know more about the way people make change and I want to make change myself, and I feel that there's a need for that, but I'm just not sure how.'"

Hoffart is a second year History student, a Canadian who has lived on the Prairies and who says she has always been interested in activist movements and finding out more about social justice.

"[I] always felt that there was some sort of calling, but I couldn't quite identify what it was or... I just wanted to help out, always, and I've been looking for some kind of channel."

She says the discussion that will take place is incredibly important for the time we are living in. The idea for Voices came as a response to the G8 summit in Italy and the anti-globalization movement, as well as being a reflection of the way things were developing in her own life.

"I want to be more active and there are lots of channels out there and there are things going on that I want to address, and so I figured, what a great idea to have a conference that I can organize and have people that I can learn from, people that I can have talking in terms of a lot of different aspects that people don't think of in terms of protest."

She said that when people think of protest they think only in very narrow terms.

"They don't think of freedom of speech, and they don't think of freedom of association, and they don't think of civil liberties, and they don't think of the fact that being able to protest relies on the fact that there is such a thing as liberal democracy."

She says the idea of Voices is to engage people, not lecture to them.

Hoffart is hoping that people within the Aboriginal community would be interested in contributing to the discussion. Acall for papers has been announced that will deal with the concepts mentioned, but participation does not have to begin with such formality. She encourages anyone who feels they have information to share to make contact with the Voices conference. While a Web site is in the works, for now people will have to make due with an email address.

Contact Hoffart at voicesconference@hotmail.com.