DePape being arrested in January 2013 opposing the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Council of Canadians youth vote campaigner Brigette DePape will be speaking at the 2015 President’s Dream Colloquium at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby on April 9. The colloquium is focused on the theme of Obedience and Disobedience: Taking Action on Climate Change.
DePape will be speaking alongside Tamo Campos, founder of Beyond Boarding which is an organization that strives to stand up against environmental and social injustices. Burnaby Now reports, “Both were arrested on Burnaby Mountain as part of the protests against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline survey work. …DePape and Campos will talk for about 15 minutes on their philosophy and approach to climate justice and how civil disobedience fits into that. SFU professors Stephen Collis and Lynne Quarmby organized the series.”
In September 2011, the Council of Canadians launched a 24-page paper by DePape on civil disobedience titled, Thinking Outside the Ballot Box: How People Power Can Stop the Harper Agenda and Create Fundamental Change. In that report, DePape wrote, “Democracy is not just about voting every four years. We have been deceived to think that our responsibility to our communities ends at casting a ballot. The notion that democracy is limited to choosing a member of Parliament who will then make decisions for us is preposterous when you think about it.”
This past February, she wrote in the Winnipeg Free Press, “I definitely understand the cynicism around voting, and I share a lot of it. In my perspective, voting alone is not the solution to a failing democracy, but it is one critical step within our means in the next few months to see some change we want.”
Beyond her arrest in November 2014 on Burnaby Mountain opposing the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, DePape was also arrested in January 2013 protesting a Joint Review Panel meeting in Vancouver for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.
For more on her upcoming talk at Simon Fraser University, please click here. For more on her work to help get out the youth vote in the next federal election, please see Toronto Star columnist Carol Goar’s recent piece Brigette DePape pushing youth to vote against Harper.
