From Jody Chan’s Boycott Giller Speech

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"We learn commitment and discipline not from the soulless neoliberal conditioning that turns radicalism into a brand rather than a practice, that tells us the only way we can make change as writers is to “witness” or to “speak out” as individuals, but from the examples of revolutionary writers, who are also some of our greatest organization-builders, who have sacrificed everything for their people.

We learn from Ghassan Kanafani, who said to his niece Lamees the day before they were both martyred by Zionist forces in 1972, when she asked him if he would ever focus more on his writing than his revolutionary activities, “I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty.”

We learn from George Jackson, who wrote more than fifty years ago from prison, “Understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved… Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

As writers we are trained in description and critique, in imagination. But what we need more of is practice. Practice withholding our labour, practice talking to each other, practice organizing our own alternative spaces that aren’t beholden to corporate sponsors who profit from producing death, practice giving something up to help each other survive.

Every campaign we wage together is practice. It goes beyond any one prize, any one sponsor.

We’ve fielded a lot of critiques since this campaign started, some genuine, many in bad faith from elites now attending the Giller gala across the street—for expanding our targets to include Indigo Books and the Azrieli Foundation, for not trying to make slow institutional change from the inside, for not trying to find a third way, a more “pragmatic” way.

To that, I want to share the words of the political theorist Joy James, who writes, “If you’re going to use the term ‘pragmatic’ to discipline radicals, my preference is that you say nothing…If you want to discipline rebels then pony up something tangible: raise bail funds, pay for their attorneys, feed their kids while they are inside, or try to get them out. You cannot lecture risk-taking people about being politically ‘infantile’ out of your fear or out of your accumulations…There’s nobody we admire who is pragmatic… Everybody could have been ‘pragmatic.’ But if they were, we would not have any ancestors.”

I want to do away with this false binary between writers and organizers. Culture alone, the work we do on the page, will not be enough. Reasoning with or trying to reform the cultural institutions that prop up this settler colonial state will not be enough. We have to be willing, at the very least, to take risks for each other, to relinquish the false accolades, the fancy galas, all of them the oppressor’s incentives to keep us from actively building solidarity with each other."

- from Jody Chan’s Boycott Giller Speech



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