Who’s Afraid of Labour Justice?

Join us as we launch the 40th annual festival with an evening of poetry and dialogue.

The event will begin with a performace by Farah Ghafoor, an artist part of the Who’s Afraid of Labour Justice exhibition, guest curated for Mayworks Festival by Furqan Mohamed.

Following the poetry reading, a panel with Hassan Husseini, Larry Savage and Charlie Simmons will address international solidarity, conservative voting, and entry points for labour organizing. With the exhibit as a point of departure, the discussion addresses the question “Who’s Afraid of Labour Justice?” with an eye to the systems and obstacles that deter its practice. Moderated by Pamela Arancibia.

Attendees will also have an opportunity to explore 40 years of Mayworks Festival programs and pick up a Precarity Archives poster.

Light dinner served. Registration required.

Hassan Husseini is a long-time labour and social justice activist. He is a member of the National Steering Committee of Labour for Palestine-Canada, and a national negotiator at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), based in Ottawa. He has occupied several elected union positions in CUPE L. 4600, Ottawa CUPE District Council and Unifor L. 2025. In 2014, he ran for the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress on a program of renewed labour militancy and activism.

Larry Savage is a Professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. His teaching and research is focused on collective bargaining, union strategy, and labour politics. He is also a former member of the Executive Council of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Professor Savage has co-authored several books on the Canadian labour movement including his latest, with Stephanie Ross, Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics, published the University of British Columbia Press.

Charlie Simmons is an Amazon worker and organizer.

Pamela Arancibia is a labour organiser and works for an academic-sector local. She is a coordinator of the Greater Toronto Area chapter of Labour for Palestine, organises with her community through Latinx for Palestine, and sits on the Board of Directors of Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts. Pamela is an internationalist and anti-imperialist, and believes workers are best positioned to secure our collective liberation.

Farah Ghafoor is the author of Shadow Price (House of Anansi, 2025). Selections of her debut won the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry, and were finalists for the CBC Poetry Prize and the Far Horizons Award for Poetry. Her work appears in art exhibitions, magazines, anthologies, and post-secondary course curriculums. Farah resides in Tkaranto (Toronto) where she writes about the intersection of climate change, colonialism, and capitalism.

Presented with the support of Charles Street Video (CSV), a non-profit production organization dedicated to supporting media artists. CSV fosters the creation of media art, encourages experimentation, and develops an artistic community in Toronto. CSV is the city’s leading media arts production centre where emerging and established artists gather to achieve their artistic visions. CSV provides affordable access to equipment and post-production editing facilities for creating videos, films, installations and other media art forms. They also commissions artists to create new works, and sponsors a variety of youth-oriented production programs and post-secondary scholarships. CSV actively participates in local exhibitions of media art through partnerships with arts organizations and grassroots festivals