Photo courtesy of Ryerson University.

Kenneth Moffatt is the 2018 Jack Layton Chair of Social Justice. That sounds fancy, and it is. Appointed across the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Community Services, the Chair emphasizes the causes of the late NDP leader, and works “to effect progressive social change.” But to many Torontonians, especially those of us in the queer arts worlds, Moffatt is simply Kenny, the Ryerson University social work professor who curates and contributes to art exhibitions: shows (to list a few) about troublesome masculinities, punk rock graphics, the unreliability of institutions, fatherhood, and bears-and-moose Canadiana (deeply queered Canadiana). And by “curate,” I mean he actually hangs the work himself and brings a box of wine for the opening. When Moffatt finds himself in an ivory tower, he burns it down.

As the Layton Chair’s first artist-curator, Moffatt has given himself a challenging task. He plans to support artistic endeavours that highlight the lives and struggles of marginalized peoples. So far, so sociologically/Community Art standard. Except, Moffatt wants the works to be both about and—here’s the important part—driven by the subjects. As he told me recently, “I’m tired of going to social work art shows where the people actually in the photos or who made the work are invisible. Curators, people like me, we get plenty of air time.”

His first project was a sponsored screening of Hugh Gibson’s documentary The Stairs, a film about addiction harm-reduction strategies and how they are applied in marginalized communities. The talk after the screening was lead by the people portrayed, not outside experts. That’s Moffatt in a nutshell.

This Magazine spoke to Moffatt about his new role and his plans for it.

How did you become the Layton Chair, and what did you understand about it before you took the position? 

I am thrilled to be in this position! I highly respect the two previous chairs for their sharp social critique and interest in supporting others’ voices. I understood the position to be aspirational in nature—that is, to encourage students in social justice to re-imagine the interface between community and university. And of course, the Chair recognizes the legacy of Jack Layton, who taught politics at Ryerson and was a very dynamic, engaged educator.

Your focus so far has been to let people who are involved with/clients of social work to speak for themselves. Isn’t it weird that we’ve come to the point where having actual clients speak is considered unusual?

This is still very much a struggle. In the stranglehold of neoliberalism, the voice of service users is obscured. There is a move in social work to [become akin to] managerial duties, thus leading to “outcome measures” and data collection. There is a push to technologize measurements of a person’s worth, which leads to reductive measuring of the service user’s life. More than ever, we need to figure out how to free up and hear service-users voices.

You have been involved with projects that entwine art and social justice work/social work for years. What have you learned from these projects, and how will that learning inform what you do with the Layton Chair?

I’ve learned there is a lot of intelligent and interesting art made in community and in non-profit, and, at times, elusive spaces. You need to reach out, search for space that exists without a profit motive. Often people are not noticed or are silenced because of class, race, gender sexuality and ability. Avoid always looking for experts or “big names,” because, honestly, that can be stultifying.

Contemporary art is notorious for being disconnected from contemporary problems, issues, society, etc. But Community Art can sometimes feel condescending and simplistic. How can people interested in both the arts and helping others bridge this gap?

Academics and people tied to big institutions get caught up at times in ontological loops proving their worth to each other. Contemporary art is at its best when it ruptures disconnected abstract thought and politics. Rather than be preoccupied with innovation and entrepreneurship, guiding principles [in art] could be literacy, listening, humility, and confidence in the local. Mix it up. Rather than merely facilitate voice, let it queer your perceptions.

CORRECTION (03/21/2018): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Moffatt was a professor of sociology, not social work. This regrets the error.

This article has also been updated to provide more detail into the role of Jack Layton Chair at Ryerson.

“Have any of you ever felt your life slipping away from your hands?” he told the audience in Spanish (through an English interpreter). “I have.”

His name is Abelardo Javier Alba Medina, and he is one of three survivors of the February, 2012 van crash near Stratford, Ontario that killed 10 Peruvian migrant workers and one Canadian. The crash, believed to be the worst in Ontario’s history, brought migrant workers’ rights and working conditions to the forefront of the Canadian media. And eight months later, there are still many Canadians fighting for the rights of these people.

Medina spoke at Ryerson University in Toronto on Oct. 2 for a panel event titled, “Local Food, Global Labour: Food Justice Needs Migrant Justice.” He called the crash a “very quick life-changing experience,” and explained how hard it is to be in Canada when the rest of his family is back in Peru.

“Love your family a lot,” he said. “Never stop helping your brother and sister. We are all human beings. The only thing we want is the opportunity to keep living and keep surviving; to tell our families, ‘I’m here and I won’t leave you.’”

Another survivor of the crash, Juan Jose Ariza Mejia, also spoke at the event.  He told the audience he remembered looking out the window, while most of his co-workers were sleeping after a long day’s labour—then suddenly seeing a truck coming straight towards their van. Mejia locked eyes with the driver, Christopher Fulton of London, Ont. Fulton’s face, he said, was full of fear and surprise. Fulton veered to the right; if he drove head-on into the van, it’s likely there would have been no chance of survivors. “This is the vision I will keep with me for the rest of my life.”

The room was quiet as Mejia fought back tears, continuing to describe the terror of the crash (“the screeching of brakes”), the immediate aftereffect (“I started to realize I was in pain”), and the heartbreaking aftermath (“we saw the carnage all around us in the van”). He said that his liver bled so much it affected his gall bladder, and that the pain was so intense that doctors had to use medication stronger than morphine.

It was emotional, but it was also important to hear. One of the major issues surrounding migrant workers in Canada is that of deportation. Often when they get injured on the job—if they gather up the courage to speak up to demand compensation and health care, which many don’t—they are sent back to their home country. It’s one of the things that Justicia for Migrant Workers (a presenter at the event) hopes to change. Representatives from Toronto Food Policy Council, Food Secure Canada, and United Food & Commercial Workers Union also made presentations.

A small memorial for the victims of the crash was set up to one side, a silent testament to their sacrifices and a vow to change the fate of migrant workers in the future. It’s easy, as born-and-bred Canadians, to forget about what those who come here seeking a better life have given up; they leave behind family, comfort and familiarity, even language. And as proud as we are of our country, it’s about time we stopped to think: is the Canada that we see the one that they see, too? And if not, is the Canada they see really one we want to represent our country and all it has to offer? If we claim multiculturalism as one of our nation’s strongest qualities, perhaps it’s time we made those other cultures feel a little more welcome. For Medina, Mejia (and many others like them), a crash like the one in February isn’t all that rare—in fact, accidents like this happen often. How we deal with them is perhaps most important.

“This is the biggest obstacle I’ve ever endured but I take it with dignity and with strength,” said Mejia. “Life is a constant battle. You have to fight.”

When Canadians read or heard disclosures about how Nike footwear was being produced in Vietnamese sweatshops by people who work for next to nothing in appalling conditions and at an inhuman pace, we were outraged enough to join an international clamour to force the company to deal only with responsible and ethical contractors.

And when news reports reached Canada about how Wal-Mart sourced much of its cheap merchandise from China, where it is often produced under even worse conditions than Nike footwear used to be in Vietnam, we also demanded that the world’s largest retailer be more scrupulous in choosing suppliers.

But go to any newsstand in Canada and choose a Canadian magazine at random, and chances are excellent that you will have fresh evidence of a cynical, widespread scheme to apply the methods of the sweatshop to young, vulnerable people who are so desperate to join the ranks of the employed that they will actually compete with one another for the opportunity to work for free.

What’s especially repugnant about this to me, a journalist, is that magazines, which should be exposing such ugly, shoddy practices, are gleefully embracing unpaid internships to cut costs and increase profits, and are proud of it.

Lynn Cunningham, a professor of journalism at Ryerson University who has tracked the spread of unpaid internships since the early 1990s, says that most magazines across Canada have such programs, and that not paying people to work has spread to broadcasting and to some community newspapers which do not have labour unions and collective agreements.

These unpaid arrangements began in magazines in the United States during the last recession and, like a plague (think of it as “Cash Cow Disease”), soon spread to Canada. In no time, some of the most successful magazines in Canada, including Toronto Life, Saturday Night, Flare, Vancouver and many others were generously offering to let young, unemployed would-be journalists hang out, fetch coffee, check facts, suck up to editors and, if they were very, very lucky, maybe even write a story or two which would be published under their byline.

(Many small magazines, like this one, offer unpaid internships not to generate large profits, but because they genuinely have no money. Such magazines are often a labour of love, and many have no paid staff at all.)

It’s probably not surprising that other magazine departments have been inspired to emulate some of Canada’s most celebrated editors. Cunningham observes that at some places, it’s now possible for the truly gullible or desperate to serve as unpaid “circulation interns.”

I think we condone the sleazy practices of large magazines in the mistaken belief that they are, at worst, akin to being victimless crimes (hey, it’s kids from affluent families who are willingly working for free, after all).

But that, of course, means that less affluent kids are more at risk than ever of being squeezed entirely out of a vast and important segment of our mass media.

Cunningham also notes that by embracing unpaid internships, editors are training publishers “to believe that editorial people will work for free.” It’s a notion that many publishers are all too willing to believe, and to act upon.

I don’t think you, the reader, should have to put up with this. Magazines, remember, are extraordinarily sensitive and vulnerable to pressure, properly applied.

Let me suggest that you make inquiries immediately about whether magazines you read employ unpaid interns. If they do, make note of advertisers in these magazines and inform the advertisers that you intend to boycott their products if they insist on doing business with publishers who engage in practices that would not be condoned, even in most parts of the Third World.

And find out whether your favourite magazines are receiving money from the federal slush fund supposedly set up to help publishers weather the onslaught of competition from the south, which never happened. Write to the feds, and demand that they withdraw such support from any magazines that don’t pay their people.

Finally, get in touch with the editors and publishers themselves. I doubt that it would make a damn bit of difference, but it’s the right thing to do.