In this addition to the Voices from the Margins of a Crisis series, Dobijoki Emanuela reflects on the intersection of COVID-19, white supremacy, and anti-black racism.

“I wasn’t so paranoid and anxious about the potential of never seeing my family members again. It wasn’t until the events that were perpetuated onto my community – the Black community – during this pandemic made me weary and afraid of the varied angles that our lives can simply be taken from us.”

Dobijoki Emanuela, COVID 19 – It’s More Than A Virus When It Comes to Black Lives

In this video, Debbie Laliberte Rudman delivers the Muriel Driver Lecture 2020: Mobilizing occupation for social transformation: Radical resistance, disruption and reconfiguration. Debbie is a Professor and Associate Director at the School of Occupational Therapy at Western University. She is also a member of CRHESI’s governance committee.

Each year, the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists honours a member of the association “who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession through research, education and the practice of occupational therapy by presenting the individual with the Muriel Driver Memorial Lectureship Award.”

Debbie also presented at the September 16, 2019 City Symposium on Work and Employment.

Join Western faculty, staff and students for a day of virtual workshops, discussions, video presentations and more on Thursday, November 19, 2020. The keynote, The Secondary Psychological and Social Impact of COVID-19, will be delivered by Samuel Y.S. Wong (Director of the School of Public Health and Primary Care and Head of the Division of Family Medicine and Primary Healthcare at the Chinese University of Hong Kong).

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In this addition to the Voices from the Margins of a Crisis series, Gabriela Valdivieso and Maricarmen Valdivieso (Directors of Nexos Comunitarios in Urubamba, Peru) explore COVID-19’s exacerbation of existing inequalities in the region.