As part of Toronto’s Shelter and Housing Justice Network (SHJN), Lorraine Lam is active in struggles related to housing, homelessness, and poverty.
She connects her commitment to social justice to growing up in a church setting, saying, “It was there that I learned a lot of the values around what it means to love people and pursue justice work.”
Lam was drawn into grassroots action in multiple ways. As a university student originally studying music, she started volunteering at a homeless drop-in. She got to know people who were homeless and living in deep poverty, and “very quickly learned that the things I thought I knew around poverty in the city were mostly not actually rooted in truth.” She switched her studies to social work, saying that initially her “goal was to try to support people one-on-one, but very quickly realized that we were fighting against systems that desperately needed to be changed. And that’s sort of how I got into organizing.”
Over the years, she got to know lots of people who were involved in a broad range of grassroots struggles. Occupy Toronto – part of the wave of Occupy protests that swept North America and the world in 2011 – was an important moment for her. She also had friends who were members of the iconic (and now disbanded) Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and other radical groups. Early on, she said, “I spent a lot of my time honestly just observing and going to rallies and signing petitions wherever I could – just trying to get a lay of the land before really diving in.” Gradually, she began getting more involved.
Lam went on to work as a frontline outreach and community crisis worker in downtown Toronto for over a decade, and currently co-ordinates a drop-in program. She is also on the steering committee of the SHJN, which bills itself as “Fighting in Toronto and beyond for Shelter Rights, Housing Rights, Human Rights.” The network’s campaigns help challenge the inadequacy of the city’s emergency shelter system and push for better policies around housing. Earlier in the year, the SHJN was part of broad-based efforts demanding that the city move funding from policing to social services.
The Media Co-op: What are a couple of important things that you’ve learned from struggles that you are not directly involved in, and why are those things important?
Lorraine Lam: I think one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is how interconnected everything is. Sometimes in grassroots organizing, everything feels very siloed. So, like, oh, you’re the group that does housing stuff, or you’re the group that does harm reduction stuff, or whatever. But as I learn, I’m starting to realize that all of these things are actually super intertwined and we can’t be siloed from each other. I think a lot about this in the context of climate organizing. So, I’m not super involved in a lot of direct action climate stuff. But issues around housing and homelessness are affected by climate change, and we know that climate change and the climate crisis that we’re in are going to disproportionately affect certain groups of people, including people without shelter, particularly during the extreme weather events that are becoming more and more common. So I think that’s something that I’ve learned from things that I haven’t been super involved with.
I will say, too, that one thing that I have not been able to be a part of as much as I’d like is intergenerational learning and organizing. I feel like what happens is people organize with people that they know, with established relationships, and sometimes that ends up being peers that are very similar to us. But there is something that’s kind of missing in terms of intergenerational organizing and seeing what people have done before us, and what works, and how we build bridges. I think that’s starting to happen more, but I would say that I definitely wish that were the case more often. And I know for myself, that’s definitely something I wish there was more of.
TMC: What are a couple of sources related to struggles that you aren’t involved in that you’ve found to be particularly useful or important?
LL: A really helpful thing for me is – how do I phrase this? – observing what people who are on the other end of the spectrum, in terms of how I view things, are organizing. For instance, like the convoy that happened during some of the peak COVID years. I completely thought the basis of what they were arguing for was wacky, but I did find it really interesting watching and learning from their organizing strategy. That’s something that I find useful in terms of just understanding different tactics and, like, what people seem to resonate with.
Yeah. That was a little bit of a surprising answer. I didn’t think I would say that, but here we are!
I find photojournalists also a very useful resource and source as well, in terms of organizing. I think that photos tell stories in ways that are unmatched. And I think that seeing the work of a number of these journalists has also influenced the way that I organize and the things that I prioritize as well. For instance, I find the way Chris Young (Canadian Press) documents subjects in various stories to be extremely moving. He did a piece one year on someone who got frostbite while being homeless, and he documented the person’s injuries (and the person) with such dignity, re-telling a different story around homelessness and cold-related injuries, as opposed to very stereotyped images. Ian Willams and Joshua Best are two other photographers who do this well. I will name that these are three white and male-presenting people, and would love to see more diversity in this world. My friend M is someone I think of, but I don’t think she would want me to put her name out there publicly right now – but keep your eyes open!
TMC: What are a couple of key things about struggles that you are involved in or about your approach to activism and organizing that you would like other people to know more about?
LL: That sometimes in organizing work, everything feels urgent. And in a lot of ways, yeah, everything is urgent because people are literally dying. But I think I want us all to reflect on the reality that the way that we respond to urgency is sometimes rooted in white supremacy culture that actually counters the work that we’re trying to do. So I think a lot about how we can collectively engage urgency that doesn’t replicate these systems of whiteness.
I think another thing that I would hope people know about organizing is that it is okay to tap out sometimes. I think the idea of organizing collectively is so important because, like, sometimes if we need a break, there are other people that can step in. I think that’s what keeps a movement sustainable for the long term. Sometimes, I think in organizing work, we approach it more as a sprint rather than a marathon. This is not sustainable. That’s something that I think a lot about.
I also think a lot of organizing work starts personally. I think a lot of the stuff we want to dismantle societally requires us to do the work in ourselves first. And sometimes I think, again, with the best intentions, we can neglect taking care of ourselves and neglect the things that we need to do for ourselves, and then actually cause more harm in the larger movement.
TMC: Explain a little bit more about the connection you see between urgency and white supremacy culture.
LL: Oh, that’s a hard one to explain quickly. I think that sometimes when we respond from a place of urgency, we neglect things that are actually really important in community. We default to patterns that are like, “Oh, I have to do a certain thing right now.” And so sometimes we end up allowing power imbalances to happen for the sake of making a quick decision. Or, like, a sense of urgency sometimes makes it difficult to actually be inclusive and encourage thoughtful decision making, and even to think long term. I think sometimes a sense of urgency can also mean that we sacrifice the interests of people who are most vulnerable in order to just get a “win.” And sometimes we lose potential allies because we’re so insistent on quick, visible results. So I think this is also a conversation around process versus the results. And that’s sort of what I’m alluding to in terms of that kind of urgency sometimes contributing to white supremacy culture and patterns.
TMC: What are a couple of sources related to either specific struggles that you’re involved in or to your approach to activism and organizing that you would want other people to read or watch or listen to or learn from?
LL: Oh my gosh, there’s so many. There are the classics – you know, like Angela Davis‘s work, Audre Lorde‘s work. I think there’s also work around abolition that I think is really important. Mariame Kaba is one, in terms of organizing work, that I have found really helpful to think through. Those are definitely resources and writers that I really value, in terms of some of the organizing work. There’s also a woman named Kaitlin Curtice. She’s an Indigenous woman in the States. She’s a Potawatomi person. I also really value her work. I think locally for people in Toronto, Rania El Mugammar does a lot of workshops and facilitations. I have learned so much from her as well.
TMC: In the context of your own learning about struggles that you’re involved in and struggles that you aren’t, how important has that sort of training-based or workshop-based or other in-person, person-to-person-based learning been?
LL: I have found it super helpful. We’re talking about building community, but ironically sometimes this work can feel really isolating. But I actually think that being around other people is really helpful and encouraging, just to know that, like, hey, we’re not alone, or, hey, I’ve seen you in other spaces, too. So it’s nice to know that we have just shared a learning experience, that we’re learning together. It’s also great in terms of building networks and more collaborations. I think that’s a really big piece as well. So, yeah, I think it’s been really huge in terms of my own journey in learning.
TMC: Is there anything else you’d like to share about either your own journey with learning about movements or learning that you wish other people would do about movements?
LL: Rania – I mentioned her name earlier – says this thing about, you know, just because you’re new to the work doesn’t mean that the work is new. And I think that’s a big piece of what it means to organize and build. Like, I think sometimes we show up and want to do all the things and forget that people have been working on some of these issues for many years. And so what we can do is join into their work as opposed to trying to start something new. And, again, we’re doing this as a marathon and none of this can happen overnight, in terms of the change that we’re hoping for — even though we want it to happen overnight. So my hope in these conversations is that we can think about what it means to do this work sustainably. And sometimes it does mean taking breaks and stuff like that, which is really important.
Talking Radical: Resources is a collaboration between The Media Co-op and the Talking Radical project. In these interviews, activists and organizers from across so-called Canada connect you with ideas and with tools for learning related to struggles for justice and collective liberation. They talk about how they have learned, and about ways that you can learn.
Scott Neigh is a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
