Activist Cole to appear at library

Toronto journalist, author and activist Desmond Cole will be at the Hamilton Public Library Feb. 28 for the launch in this city of his controversial new book “The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power.”

“The Skin We’re In” chronicles, month by month, a single year in the struggle against racism in Canada, including the much questioned practice of carding by police, especially in Toronto. Cole, a former Toronto Star columnist, rose to prominence in 2015 in a Toronto Life magazine cover story that detailed his experiences as a black man being confronted by the Toronto police through stops and interrogations that stemmed from carding. In the aftermath of that story’s appearance, Cole examined in depth the wider experience of daily racism in Canada on a number of fronts and the effects of such barriers as racism in policing, a flawed education system and family separation under discriminatory immigration laws. He chose the year 2017 as the focal point of his new book because of the coincidence during that period of many flashpoint events, including Indigenous refusals to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday and, in his own life, his handcuffing and arrest after refusing to leave a Toronto police board meeting until the issue of a brutal beating by police was addressed. This came after he had earlier disrupted a police board meeting and was subsequently told by the Toronto Star, for which he worked as a columnist, that his activism violated company policy and he quit. A moderated discussion with the author will be part of Cole’s appearance at the library, 55 York Blvd. in Hamilton, which runs from 6 to 8 p.m.