Submitted by From Embers Click here to listen or download episode Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages is a six-part essay being published throughout the month of May that lays out the coming wave of provincial jail expansions in Ontario and propose a strategy for how they might be opposed. We spoke with 3 anarchists involved with the project.
From the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund When local chuds in Peterborough, Canada decided to hold their very own #FluTruxKlan convoy, one brave soul literally stood in their way, by blocking their progression down city streets. The anti-health chuds very aggressively went after him, while the cops looked on and did nothing. When that altercation was done, the cops did weigh in and press intimidation charges against our guy! We heard Read More …
Although we have many reasons to be against prisons and against this prison expansion project in particular, our motivations are profoundly anti-capitalist, since prison is an important part of how capitalism functions. However, we understand that not everyone will share this motivation, even if we have a shared goal of keeping this prison expansion project from happening. Therefore, while our primary goal is abolition, our secondary goal is to stop these prisons from being built, so we will need to find and reinforce common ground with others. Perhaps the best foundation from which to work is to identify the state, in the form of the provincial government, as a common adversary in this fight.
The state will try to undermine any anti-expansion organizing taking place, and the best way for it to do that is to take up a version of our demands and use them to justify expansion and reform; in a word, recuperation. Read More …
We take as our starting point that the world would be better without prisons. Prisons don’t solve social problems, they exacerbate existing inequalities and play a crucial role in a violent capitalist system. The lie told about prisons is that by disappearing people who have been convicted of criminalized activities, our communities will be “safer”. In reality, breaking up communities, only to later release people with more trauma and fewer resources, does far more harm. …
Over the years, through moments of crisis/tension, the government has responded to crises in prison management by directing resources towards expanding the prison system in Ontario. Looking at public discourse around prisons over approximately the last decade, we can see a narrative that the provincial government has built up around their current prison expansion program. Read More …
Prison is being restructured across the province, and at this time the process is focused on northern and eastern Ontario. These two strategies follow on a previous wave of prison expansion, heavily focused on Toronto but that also included a new prison in Windsor. There will be other waves after this one, probably aimed at south-western Ontario.
Both of these strategies double the prison capacity in the areas they affect. Although some of the projects involve replacing older prisons with new ones, the older ones are also being renovated. Because they are very likely to continue being used in some form, until they are demolished, they still represent capacity that the provincial prison system has at its disposal. Read More …
From Vanessa Gray on Facebook My name is Vanessa Gray. I am an Anishinaabe Kwe organizer, community researcher, and Land defender from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. On November 21st 2021, Canadian Pacific Railway Police Service issued charges against me in connection to an action that was organized in Toronto, in response to the violent raids in Wet’suwet’en territories. This event was attended by hundreds of people. The charges included three Read More …
From Punch Up Collective Getting It Together: An Online Workshop for Organizing Collectives for the Real World Saturday, April 23rd, 2022 1-3PM Online – Zoom Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin territory Facilitated by the Punch Up Collective, this workshop is for anyone interested in starting a collective, or those keen to discuss how to make a collective they’re already a part of more effective and sustainable. We live in a frightening Read More …
This week we look at a student organizing in Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario, a labour action in Subdury, a housing justice rally in Toronto, and migrant rights actions across the country. Read More …
From Operation Solidarity Greetings, comrades! We are the Ukrainian anti-authoritarian volunteer network, “Operation Solidarity”. Since the first days of escalation by Russia, we have taken part in the resistance against the invasion, as have the majority of Ukrainian anarchists and anti-authoritarian left activists because we believe that this war is imperialist and usurping. This is not a war of “de-nazification”, as the Kremlin claims. The problems of the far-right in Read More …
Shortly after the first bombs started falling on Ukrainian cities in the invasion by Russian forces, anti-authoritarian musicians around the world began collaborating with members of Anarchist Black Cross collectives to respond. Now, two compilation albums have been released to raise money for anarchists fighting the invasion on the front lines in Ukraine, and behind the lines in Russia. Read More …
