Decolonizing activism and creating mass movements with El Jones

This week on the show, rabble labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga speaks to poet and activist El Jones.

Based on Halifax Nova Scotia, Jones is a powerhouse in social movements focused on anti-racism, human rights, and decarceration.

In September 2020, she was appointed chair of a 15-person subcommittee which was tasked with defining "Defund the Police" in Halifax. Jones and the subcommittee compiled a 218-page report which featured 36 recommendations to reallocate resources away from the police to more appropriate service providers.

Jones has also appeared on past Off the Hill political panels, including Off the Hill: Whose budget is it anyway? and Off the Hill: Games of the Throne. You can listen to segments from both of those panels on previous rabble radio episodes, or find the full versions of the panels on rabbleTV.

Today, Jones joins Calugay-Casuga to talk about how we 'value' work and how to move past capitalist ideas of labour. The two also talk about how to create inclusive spaces in activist movements.

Jones, on how anyone can support transformative justice:

"There's this idea that there's a class of people that 'do activism,' but that's not a mass movement. A mass movement is when everybody has the skills and capacity, everybody is called upon to do what they can, everybody gives what they can, everybody is empowered and given the ability and resources to do that."

Read Calugay-Casuga's full article on this subject here.

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Photo credit: Koshu Kunii https://unsplash.com/photos/ILpe0MpOYww