I like listening to smart people say amazing things.

[bcholmes]

There's this woman who I've met a few times now through activist events in the city. Her name's Melanie, and she's a professor at University of Toronto -- specifically, a History professor specializing in slavery, gender, race and class relations in the 18th and 19th century Caribbean. I first heard her speak at an ALBA panel a few months ago, where she spoke about Haiti in the context of ALBA.

I confess that I'm totally entranced with the easy style with which she's able to put a concept out for discussion in its full complexity, and yet still make it all seem accessible and straight-forward. And my perception is that never loses the audience.

She showed up at my report event where she raised some great questions in the Q & A afterwards, and then when one activist decided to read a Bolshevik statement of solidarity (as happens, I've learned, in certain activist circles), Melanie directly shot the woman down saying, "I have a problem with what you're doing and I don't understand why you think that this is an appropriate way to engage in this discussion." It made me grin.

Tonight, she was the speaker following a film screening that THAC hosted. (Bitter Cane, a 1983 film about Baby Doc's business-friendliness politicies) She started off by saying that she didn't have much to say, but then -- oh, man. She had me at hello! She had me at hello!

One of the topics that I try to raise in some of my talks about Haiti is how Haitians are so much more politically engaged than Canadians are. I have been in conversations with Haitians in which they're just perplexed that Canadians don't really care about what our government is doing. Melanie broached the same topic from the other direction. She said that we don't feel too great a need to be engaged with our government, mostly because we mostly have pretty comfortable lives. And then she went on to say that it's as if we willingly make that trade -- that we'll be apolitical in exchange for that comfort. And everyone in the room was right there with her. People felt it. One fellow immediately used that as a launching point for his comments/questions. And he talked about being immersed in this corporate media barrage that's so obviously fictitious that he just wants to shut it all out. The whole Q and A period remained a fascinating, engaging event.

I suppose this all reduces to "I get a rush out of listening to smart, engaging speakers." Which, duh. But there it is.