Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 58: A Joyful Militant — with carla bergman
Speakers: Paige Smith, Am Johal, carla bergman, Fiorella Pinillos
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Paige Smith 0:05
Hello listeners. I'm Paige Smith with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, we're joined by carla bergman, co-director of Emma Talks. Our host Am Johal and guest Fiorella Pinillos chat with carla about her work with Emma Talks and the Purple Thistle Institute and ways to enact social change to community-engaged projects.
Am Johal 0:43
Welcome to Below the Radar. We have carla bergman with us and Fiorella Pinillos, who also works with me at the SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Welcome, carla.
carla bergman 0:53
Hi. Thanks for having me. [laughs]
Fiorella Pinillos 0:56
Welcome carla. It's nice to see you again after a year, more?
carla bergman 1:02
Yeah, I think we did our last Emma Talk last October, 2018.
Am Johal 1:09
Yeah, I was gonna start with a question because when I first met you carla, it was related to the Purple Thistle, which is such a marvelous organization that lives on in the memories of a lot of people but certainly influenced and inspired so many people. I'm wondering if you can share with the audience what the Purple Thistle was and some of your work there.
carla bergman 1:30
Sure. Yeah, it's definitely a good place to start in terms of community engagement and my work. It was founded in 2001 by Matt Hearn, and I think about six youth between the ages of 15 and maybe 18, to create a space that they could run with his support and mentorship. And it was based on their interests. So at the time, it was visual arts mostly and zine writing and journalism. So that's what they did and it ran for 15 years. And in 2009, I joined on as the co director with Matt, and then yeah, Matt and I approached you to do an alternative to university Summer Institute. And I was actually thinking on the way here how I don't know about you, but I get emails at least once a month from somebody from the institute, how it was like a huge moment in their life that spurred on a project or their work, or I mean, even somebody who just did a PhD, I won't out them, said that it was you know, it's kind of in the roots of the PhD. So I think it was like a really cool project and had lots of tentacles.
Am Johal 2:36
Yeah, I had a chance to actually interview a number of people who were teaching in it. So Matt has been a guest here. Geoff Mann, Astra Taylor when she came through, and Glen Coulthard, we just interviewed at the library as part of the podcast festival.
carla bergman 2:52
That was our faculty.
Am Johal 2:53
Yeah.
Fiorella Pinillos 2:56
Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit more about the institute where did you hold it and?
carla bergman 3:01
It was out of two spots. The Purple Thistle Centre, which was on Vernon drive, close to Clark and Venables, and then I always get the name wrong, but the Socialists Center on Clark drive. We did it out of those two spots. And then in the gardens. Part of, half of the day, the participants connected to organizations they were interested in to volunteer and because it was, you know, the I think our tagline was radical social change from below or something. And it was about connecting theory with practice. So the morning was classes with one of us teaching, everyone had to take Glen's class, because decolonization was at the center of the project. And then you got to choose another, I think one or two classes a day. And then the afternoon was your placement.
Am Johal 3:46
And carla in terms of your own relationship to theory and activism? Where did you begin getting involved as an activist and a writer, and getting engaged with critical theory?
carla bergman 3:59
I think it started pretty young. I did not like school. So I sought out mentors, and I spent a lot of time at libraries and in bookstores, reading books, you know, I couldn't afford to buy them. But I was just just hungry for rigor, and was frustrated that school didn't do that for me. I have a joke that I dropped out of every institution I ever went to, except for Langara. I actually graduated from Langara.
carla bergman 4:26
Which I think says a lot about how great that school was at one time, and maybe it still is. But most of my theoretical or philosophical or critical theory stuff came through relationships and through mentorship and through informal ways of reading texts together. I, you know, I did do some university and took some philosophy classes. And it's interesting, because I think I write about this in Joyful Militancy in my acknowledgments, but the one philosophy class I took, the teacher just happened to love Spinoza and so our whole class was pretty much on Spinoza and
carla bergman 5:00
then you know, fast forward 20 years and I'm writing a book about joy that's based on Spinoza and thinking on the topic. And so you know, it's interesting of like, what came first theory or practice, but it's this like, you can, you can often trace it back to like these little moments of a spark or a seed planted.
Fiorella Pinillos 5:19
Yeah, I wanted to ask you how this Institute influenced Emma Talks?
Fiorella Pinillos 5:23
Right. It has a direct link.
carla bergman 5:26
I did a class on... I don't even remember the name of my class. [laughs]
carla bergman 5:31
I think it was called unsettling education, and deschooling or something. And I was looking for materials to give to the participants who had signed up for my class at the institute. And I wanted a different, you know, I didn't want just written essays and other stuff. So I was looking for videos online of, of theory, and just storytelling and ideas that were thinking about the topics I was interested in. I had a really difficult time finding women and different people of color. I mean, if you look up Ted Talks, it's the first pages and pages is white men, white cis men. So I was having I think we were having a break with actually with Astor Taylor. And I said, Wouldn't it be cool if we did like a feminist radical TED talks, like maybe out of the institute or something, and it was sort of was like this moment of thinking about that and, and then you know, life goes on, you get things get busy. And then years later, Leanne Simpson and I had just decided to meet up and meet each other and talk and I told her about Emma Talk's idea and our conversation, and she just lit up and she's like, just do Emma talks. There's something about, you know, that was just enough. And then I met, I immediately came and sought out Am
carla bergman 6:43
and said that, you know, we don't want to do it in a traditional like community organizing way, in a small hall somewhere, like I want it to actually be a bit of a competition to TED talks, I want it to be a really nice space, I want the sound to be good, I want the videos to be professionally done and people to feel like they're really taken care of. So he jumped on board and really supported the launch of the project because I think the, your community, this Community Engagement Office helped pay for a lot of things to get it off the ground, if I remember correctly, like from the website to everything.
Am Johal 7:12
Can you talk about some of the guests that came in because it was quite an eclectic group of people and I really liked how you paired speakers, guests that were coming in also with emerging voices as well.
carla bergman 7:23
So that kind of practice community engagement started really early on in my work, I was really interested in how do you bring emerging I was particularly interested in youth but just emerging newer writers or artists together with well seasoned in a way that's not tokenistic. Like how can we do it so that it feels genuine? You know, like I see it as a mutual aid relationship of supporting each other. So when we decided to launch Emma Talks, I brought in a partner who I was making a film with, I should say, I want to mention Corin Browne, because she was really excited about the project and I wouldn't have done it without her because she brought in all the skills of doing the videos and doing live shoots, which are really hard. So yeah, and you can see all the videos I'm sure you'll tell people after but emmatalks.org. The first one we started with a new young emerging writer and activist. His name is Kian Cham at the time, they went by a different name, so you can find it on the same day as Leanne Simpson. So I paired him with Leanne, and that was the launch and try to think who else Julie Flett and he told me goto, which they were more even. It was a bit of a different one, but it was a good one.
Am Johal 8:38
Astra Taylor and Jackie Wong
carla bergman 8:39
Astra Taylor and Jackie Wong yeah.
Am Johal 8:40
There's a poster on my office.
carla bergman 8:41
Yeah, Mineo and Sarah Hunt.
Fiorella Pinillos 8:45
There is honorary Chief George?
carla bergman 8:49
Yeah.
Fiorella Pinillos 8:49
And Chief Jan.
carla bergman 8:51
Yeah.
Fiorella Pinillos 8:52
And Celia, Joseph
Am Johal 8:54
You also brought in a very well known writer from the States.
carla bergman 8:57
Yes, Rebecca Solnit. She, of course, was solo.
carla bergman 9:02
That was probably the one time where the project was a bit different. We usually living room style, we made art in the same room and ate in the same room and the women and gender nonconforming folks would speak in the same room. But Rebecca, of course, brought in a larger audience. So we did a different structure.
Fiorella Pinillos 9:19
And you also had an all female tech crew.
carla bergman 9:22
Yeah. So that was a big part of our project was training young women in film and tech, because it's really hard to get that. And Corin headed up that too, so that was also going on. Then on the night of the event, which is a big part. She was mentoring usually, you know, one out of the four or two out of the four on camera knew what they were doing the other she was like, pretty new. Yeah.
Am Johal 9:45
I wanted to ask you about some of your writing projects. So Joyful Militancy came out a few years ago with AK Press. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what the book is about?
carla bergman 9:55
Sure. So I co wrote that book with Nick Montgomery and it came out, yeah, November 2017, it's two years old. It's doing really well. It's really exciting. Primarily what I hear from AK Press and through the internet is that people read it together. Collectives often do book gatherings, which is, to me the best thing to hear, because, you know, the book came out of collective thinking and a little bit out of the institute, because we were having these conversations at the institute, but really came out of a project that we ran called the Social Spaces Summit, that the Thistle Institute put on, which brought people who run spaces all over North America together, like usually, it was all the organizers. So we'd get together for, we did two of them for three or four days and talk about issues that were coming up in collectives. And one of the things that people kept talking about was how the social spaces gathering was such a joyful gathering. And people were like, You should write about it. So that was kind of where you know where the seeds started. And also, during that time, people were talking about the difficulties that were happening within radical and left collectives and spaces, which were an increase of burnout, an increase a call out culture, an increase of relationships crumbling alongside an emergent, massive time of these mini kind of outbursts like from Arab Spring to BlackLivesMatter. Like two things were happening at once we were noticing, and we wanted to, we wanted to kind of go public with the other conversation that was happening quietly alongside that, to really hold up that people are thriving. People do do good work. And most of the book, while it is rooted in theory, and there's a lot of theory in it, it is an engagement with activists and scholars talking about other ways of being together that are more generative, and more joyful and more love centered.
Am Johal 11:44
Who do you feel that the book is most influenced by or other books that it's in conversation with?
carla bergman 11:52
I mean, I have my like, my own interests. It seems that people like what I hear from professors and people who are putting books together, it seems to go alongside Adrienne Marie Brown's book Emergent Strategies, that seems to be a big connection. I'm at a loss to think what else but I'm sure AK Press would have more to say.
Fiorella Pinillos 12:16
So I wanted to ask you about your journey, and how you like motherhood, shaped your journey, and I'm so amazed by your work, and how you have been able to like, survive as an independent artist, you know, creating all these like amazing projects, and, you know, realizing all this.
carla bergman 12:38
I mean I don’t know, that's a lot. That's a big, that's a big question. Parenting, my kids are 10 years apart. So the oldest is, is really responsible for why I ended up doing a lot of what I'm doing. When he was young, I was specializing in and studying genocide studies, so it's very different than what I'm doing, and what I ended up doing. But then I noticed when he was about in grade two, that he was always one of these, like passionate learners and like just a nerd ball and loved everything and went deep, and his lights went out in school, and they just, he just lost his interest. And so we intervened and we pulled him out of school, and I met Matt Hearn’s brother, actually, who said, Why isn't your kid at Windsor house? Which is, was a, ran for over 40 years, a democratically funded school that Matt Hearn and others worked at. So we sort of went on this path of that with him. And I started hanging out there and volunteering and hanging out with a lot of the kids. It was K to 12. And my son, I started wanting, you know, older kids around for him to mentor so I started, I ran like weird classes like peace and conflict studies with the kids, the teens, and, you know, just I was always trying to radicalize it, they were already radicalized. I was always trying to cause trouble with them. Like, you know, once a teacher would be like, no more hanging out in the halls, and I'd be like, "Oh, the halls are where all the action happens." So I would be the one who would be like lets hang out in the halls with the kids. You know, I'd run my classes in the hall. So I was just started working with young people, because that's where I was. And then Zack ended up looking for more art based stuff, went to the Thistle at age 11 and then I just kind of followed him, and then did a magazine project that was called RAIN, radical art and nature. And we did seven copies. And it had the same model, putting well seasoned writers with emerging, like I think in the first issue, I have a piece from Daisy Couture, and Noam Chomsky, and I think I put them side by side, if I remember correctly, and it was just on purpose. And Daisy is Matt Hearns daughter who at the time, I think was 12.
carla bergman 14:36
And that so it just sort of I didn't plan to work with youth. I never wanted to be an educator or I still wouldn't say I'm an educator, but they definitely took me on the route. My son is my muse. He's an incredible artist and musician and writer and I, we often collaborate and my youngest is too. It's all connected.
Am Johal 14:57
You have a new book out called Radiant Voices or it's about to come out in the sense that there will be a launch soon. But wondering if you can talk a little bit about that project and where it came from?
carla bergman 15:07
Sure. Taryn Boyd, who was the publisher at Touchwood Editions and lives in Victoria, but actually it was Jackie Wong, I think Emma Talks because she knows her.
carla bergman 15:19
But I was really excited and asked for a meeting and said that she would like to just put a book out, that was all the talks. And I thought that was really a sweet idea. But also thinking about platforms and about access. I was like, "Okay, what if we just did eight of the talks, and the rest of the book is new people who maybe wouldn't ever give a talk” ie. me. [laughs]
carla bergman 15:41
and who are just for all kinds of reasons, one of the things like originally when I thought about Emma Talks, I thought it would go on the road, because a lot of women say no to doing these talks, because they can't leave their families. There's all kinds of reasons why women don't travel to do talks,at the same level as men, even with people thinking more about asking them. So the book was a perfect opportunity to invite in women who I know couldn't necessarily make a talk or make it to Vancouver. Yeah, so it followed the same thread of curation style.
Fiorella Pinillos 16:14
Is there anything next that is coming up for Emma Talks? Do you have any new projects or?
carla bergman 16:21
Nothing right away, we're going to launch the book. Emma Talks, we, um,
carla bergman 16:28
it was hard to get funding for it, we did get a lot of funding for the first year. But then a lot of funders, they like to just do like a, like funding pilots, but then they want you to do your own scaling up and I didn't want to start charging, because it was always free. And yeah, we just had to do work that makes, brings in making a living for both of us. So we have a pact with each other, Corin and I, that if we'll be emergent with it. Like if a certain somebody said that they want to do a talk out of the blue or an opportunity came and you guys were available or something like we would do it. Yeah.
Am Johal 17:00
You're working on a film project, right?
carla bergman 17:03
Yes.
Am Johal 17:04
What's going on with that? What's the film about?
carla bergman 17:08
It's a, it's still in process, we are in production. And we got funded from Canada Council and NFB took us on further one of their projects, which is, which is really nice to have their support. It's a film about language and colonization essentially, and it follows three women's journey in finding belonging in their communities through language learning. One is a Squamish woman, and one is Māori and one is Irish. Kind of like pathways to belonging. We're going to New Zealand in January to film and Ireland in April. And yeah. I just like, I don't want to be that person like, I do 20 things.
[all laugh]
Fiorella Pinillos 17:48
But you do 20 things and, and it is amazing. And I find it so inspiring. And like so that was I guess my question is like, how do you do 20 things and get funded for 20 things and, and you know, survive doing this amazing work?
carla bergman 18:02
I mean, collaboration is at the heart of I always joke that I'm a chronic collaborator, I try to learn from my son how to be more of a solo artist, because I do get a lot of pleasure out of working solo, creatively, like writing poetry or thinking about it like I have a couple of animation ideas. But yeah, it's collaboration. I really like supporting young women who are emerging and like I love collaborating with them and helping and it's always it's always co mentorship. Like I always learn just as much or more. I also, it's the way I do things like I didn't go to school to be a filmmaker. So I tend to have to work with filmmakers to do you know I have an idea, like this big, huge idea. I'm like, so “how do I write a treatment? Can you edit it for me?”
carla bergman 18:46
Yeah, so collaboration. And it has really, I do way less than I used to, I would say I the projects are a little bit bigger in scope, I guess, in size, but less people involved. It used to be like way more people. [laughs] Yeah.
Am Johal 19:03
And when you look at the kind of long arc of activism you've been involved with, and the different types of projects you've been involved with, how do you read the city now in terms of kind of what's needed? What are new projects that would make a contribution to the city in terms of, you know, the gaps that are out there? Because the city changes? Right? And...
carla bergman 19:23
Yeah. Housing. I mean, it's just... When the Thistle closed people were pretty sad. And we wrote a letter, we worked really hard to have a different narrative when it closed. Yeah, gentrification is part of it. Yeah, being priced out is part of it. Yeah losing funding is part of it, but really, some projects should just end and what was coming up for me as an organizer and thinking about spaces was that like, we can have all the cultural spaces in the world, but if people can't afford to live here, then I mean, what are we doing? And so I actually got less interested in cultural art spaces and more interested in housing and my you know,
carla bergman 20:00
if I have like an activist hat, that's less art. It's around housing right now. And I have a project that me and Nick Montgomery and Michelle Nahanee are working on called Solidarity Housing Society and it's in a feasibility study stage. But the idea basically, is reparations. And it's working with homeowners actually about transferring their homes, people who are maybe empty nesters who maybe have a lot of wealth tied up into their home but don't have any income, are cash poor, and there's all different models that we're working on. It's actually asking activists who say that they're in solidarity or with Indigenous peoples sovereignty here, but then like, we're saying, "Okay, well, here's this tool that you can give your house back to the Squamish nation, for instance, but you will get paid for it. And you will be..." it's a win-win situation. That's why it's called solidarity and it's that everyone wins in this situation. It's quite nuanced. And I'm probably not doing it justice, but we are in the research phase, but that's where my heart and activism is in terms of the city is around making it affordable. I mean, I know you probably know Am. And both of you know, all of us know that so many of our friends and colleagues and fellow comrades have had to leave the city and we're one foot out as well, like we barely can afford to live here as well.
Am Johal 21:18
carla, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
carla bergman 21:22
Thank you for having me.
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Paige Smith 21:26
Thank you again to carla bergman for joining us on Below the Radar.
Stay in the loop with Below the Radar by following us on Twitter and Facebook and be sure to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts. As always, thanks to the team that puts this podcast together, including myself, Paige Smith, Rachel Wong, Fiorella Pinillos Kathy Feng, and Jackie O Bonga. David Steele is the composer of our theme music and thank you for listening. Tune in next time for a brand new episode of Below the Radar.
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