Power In Presence: Understanding Black-led coalitions and policy change in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Abstract

This dissertation explores the tactical and discursive means that Black activists and community organizations in Halifax, Nova Scotia use to prompt policy change in public health and policing. This dissertation argues that Black organizers in Halifax engage in “worldmaking” via a centuries-long lineage of resistance, institution-building, and advocacy connected to trans-local and diasporic understandings of Black liberation. These understandings have been translated to account for the development of distinct African Nova Scotian institutions and organizations. The concept of worldmaking facilitates a focus on self-determination: being able to decide for oneself the trajectory of one’s community. Orientation towards self-determination is a vital bulwark against erasure and state-based discourses of Black inferiority and victimhood – the mechanisms of structural and institutional violence that maintain and deepen harm within Black communities in Nova Scotia (whether historic or immigrant). The fight for self-determination can be articulated as a distinct political identity from which coalitions can be formed across heterogeneous communities of African descent as well as other racial, class, and national identities. I develop this argument using a combination of archival research, twenty-five semi-structured interviews, and autoethnographic methods. Data gathered during my fieldwork is analyzed through a theoretical framework that combines insights from Canadian Political Development literature. The theoretical framework for this dissertation centres on the development of racial institutional orders in Canada, combining a diverse set of literatures (including Black Studies, political development, and social movements literatures) with community knowledge and insights to disrupt a status-quo that erases these perspectives. The dissertation first uses a historical narrative to account for the development of Black community organizations and institutions over time, which are rooted in the concept of Black self-determination. Building from the history, I conduct an analysis of the contemporary tactics used by activists and community organizations oriented around Black self-determination. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to address the erasure of communities of African descent within the study of Canadian politics, opting instead to engage with the extensive lineage of organizing within and between communities in Nova Scotia.