Listen!: Knowing the World and Fighting to Change It

Scott Neigh expands our understanding of ＂listening＂ as not an individual, passive act but as inherently fundamental to constructing a socially just world. He walks us through his learning as a frontline activist, journalist and host of Talking Radical Radio and shares what he’s learned from decades of conversing with other activists and scholars.

What does it mean to find oneself centred in a world in turmoil, as news of genocide, climate change and police violence increases to quell social movements? Neigh reflects deeply on the role of listening from the moment of injustice to how we respond as individuals, through to the formation of collective social movements -- what these movements are, how they work, what they do in the world, the knowledge generated in and by them and the importance of listening to and within them. By listening effectively, we explicitly centre sensory pathways to understanding and may derive greater strategies for our collective liberation as embodied and situated knowers.

Scott Neigh got involved in social movements when he was an undergraduate in the 1990s, and over the years he has participated in many different ways in many different struggles. These days, most of his involvement centres on building movement infrastructure, particularly related to grassroots and independent media. Neigh is a writer and media-maker, and that work got him thinking about listening and how it relates to social movements. Much of his work has involved listening to and amplifying the voices of people who are part of grassroots struggles for justice and liberation. He has written and edited movement-focused grassroots journalism for 25 years. He did an oral history project in which he interviewed 50 long-time activists from across so-called Canada and published two books based on that work. For ten years, he was the host and producer of Talking Radical Radio, which broadcast on community stations across the country. In the course of his work on the show, he did more than 500 in-depth interviews with activists, organizers and other change-makers. He lives with his partner, their son, and their two cats in Hamilton, Ontario.