Tag: Ontario-wide

Comparing Far Right Transphobia in so called Canada to Don Hamerquist’s Analysis On Third Position Fascism

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Anonymous Submission to North Shore Counter-Info There is a growing fascist movement in so called Canada, it first appeared from the shadows as the Freedom Convoy which led directly to Hands Off Our Kids. While fascism has been a long time problem in Canada, and there were underground sects that morphed into this current movement, the point of this article isn’t a historical analysis on how it came to be, Read More …

Zine: No More Colonial States

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Anonymous Submission to North Shore Counter-Info This zine, designed to fit on 2 printed sheets of paper, consists of 3 parts: An affirmation that the fight against colonial Israel is inseparable from the fight against other colonialisms. A version of an online article about Israel, colonialism, & fascism optimized to read on paper. A list of #BDS targets to decolonize (attack). The zine is entirely grayscale, & can be downloaded Read More …

When we leave we do not march: Anarchist thoughts on Palestine solidarity

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Today, November 1st 2023, when the veil is at its thinnest, the dead in Gaza speak to us.

We, the writers, are not Palestinian. We write this for fellow north american anarchists of a certain type. You’ll see yourself as you read. We also write this for the anarchy-adjacent, and for anyone who is interested.

The horror of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is deep, inescapable, and intricate. We, anarchists and those close to anarchy, understand the history, the context of apartheid, the numbers, the hypocrisy, the exceptionalism, the cruelty, the torture. We sob. We lose sleep, and friends, and family.

We feel helpless, so we undertake the relatively and subjectively fearsome tasks available  in the current repertoire of “resistance”. These tasks are fine, and understandable: marches, popular education, “movement-building”, “speaking out” at school or at work, petitions and declarations, non-violent direct action.

Are you truly satisfied with the fine and understandable? Is the moral righteousness of “taking a stand” all that you need to live in freedom with others? Read More …

Bailing on Justice and Rearranging the Chains: Fuck Prison

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So-called Canada’s 13 premiers recently signed a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, urging stricter bail requirements. “The time for action is now, our heroic first responders cannot wait”. Hopefully, this short analysis can shed some light on the recent preparations made by the state to strengthen their security-apparatus. Hopefully, this will help us make our own preparations. Read More …

Fall Update on new Prison Construction

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From Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages Project Updates as of October 2022 Here’s a brief round up of updates to a few of the new prison projects, both expansions and new sites. Haven’t been following all the new prison construction going on in Ontario? Get caught up: https://escapingtomorrowscages.org/texts/1summary/ Expansions in Thunder Bay Correctional Center and Kenora Jail As of September 22, 2022, Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of the Solicitor General announced Read More …

ETC — A Strategy for Stopping Prison Expansion

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Our main goal in writing this text and drawing attention to the issue of prison expansion in Ontario is to stop the projects, so in this final section we would like to offer some ideas about how that could happen. This is just our contribution to what we hope will be a larger conversation, and we certainly aren’t trying to say there is only one way of struggling against prison. That said, we hope that you will resonate with our ideas and feel inspired to push in similar directions. Read More …

ETC — Case Study: Toronto South Detention Centre

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The Northern and Eastern Strategies are not the first waves of prison expansion in Ontario (and they won’t be the last). They directly build on the previous wave, which was focused on Toronto. The Toronto strategy closed older prisons (Metro West, the Don Jail, and Mimico) and created the Toronto South Detention Centre (TSDC). Described when it opened as “the model for institutions like this for years to come,” a close look at the TSDC will help us know what to expect from the new prisons. Read More …

From Embers: Interview with Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages

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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.

Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages: Fighting Against Recuperation

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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 …

Escaping Tomorrow’s Cages: Why Oppose Ontario’s Prison Expansion?

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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 …