Drop-in Art Workshop & Book Launch
Saturday, May 4th 2024, 12 to 5 PM (Drop-in Art Workshop) & 7 to 9 PM (Book Launch)
EN-FR Whispered translation & snacks provided
— Drop-in Art Workshop: Solidarity & Love Behind & Beyond Bars: 12h à 17h
Solidarity & Love Behind & Beyond Bars is an evolving popular education initiative curated by Sacha Alfonzo V., Melissa Munn, and Kevin Walby, in collaboration from Justin Piché, and with the help of prisoners and ex-prisoners.
This one-day drop-in art workshop fosters understanding and connection between incarcerated individuals and people on the outside through prison art and culture. Ten stations feature different aspects of creative practice, such as tattooing, newsletters, and phone conversations. Facilitated by members of Montreal's Termite Collective who have lived experience of incarceration, these stations animate informal discussions about the realities of prison life. Visitors are encouraged to write letters to inside artists, as well as reimagine and co-create pieces onsite, inspiring collaborations that bridge the gap between free society and incarcerated communities across so-called Canada.
Solidarity & Love Behind & Beyond Bars drop-in art workshop positions solidarity as an active verb, emphasizing the need for tangible action. In viewing solidarity as praxis, the project invites participants to interact with visual and written works created by incarcerated individuals. Rather than passive observation, the goal is to build an ongoing community with the artists and fellow participants.
— Lancement de livre: How to Abolish Prisons : Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment de Rachel Herzing et Justin Piché - 19 à 21h
Featuring authors Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché with members of Joint Effort, Termite Collective, and the Prisoner Correspondence Project
Critics of abolition sometimes castigate the movement for its utopianism, but in How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment, long-time organizers Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché reveal a movement that has made the struggle for abolition as real as the institutions they are fighting against.
Drawing on interviews with abolitionist crews all over Canada and the United States, Herzing and Piché provide a collective reconstruction of what the grassroots movement to abolish prisons actually is, what initiatives it has launched, how it organizes itself, and how its protagonists build the day-to-day practice of politics. Readers sit in on the Winnipeg rideshares of Bar None and the meetings of the Chicago Community Bail Fund as they assess the utility of politicized mutual aid. They follow the campaigns and coalitions of Critical Resistance in Oakland and San Francisco and Survived and Punished in New York City, and learn about the prisoner correspondence projects that keep activists behind bars and outside them in constant coordination.
Abolitionist campaigns are constructing on-the-ground initiatives across North America to deconstruct carceral society and build resistant communities.Through the words, deeds, and personalities of this beautifully peopled movement, How to Abolish Prisons emerges as a stunning snapshot of a movement’s thinking in motion.
Proceeds from the book and “Build Communities, Not Cages” merch sold at the event will go towards the Coalition Against the Proposed Prison’s legal fund to save farmland and stop Ford’s Kemptville prison, as well as the initiatives of Joint Effort, Termite Collective and Prisoner Correspondence Project.
Please note that with the increase in COVID 19 and flu transmissions, masks must be worn for the duration of the events.
Johanne Wendy Bariteau, of European and Mohawk descent, has a deep interest in and understanding of the carceral system, especially regarding institutions designated for women She has served on the board of West Coast Prison Legal Services, volunteered for BCCLA, and is involved with Joint Effort Collective, a grassroots prisoner support group. Additionally, she participates in organizing public education events through the Montreal Prisoner Justice Day Committee and the Vancouver Prison Justice Network. Her educational background includes a Gladue Report writing certificate, a paralegal diploma, and ongoing studies for a fundraising certificate at George Brown College. She has most recently worked for the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and is in the process of establishing an organization to provide services to individuals incarcerated at Joliette Institution.
Rachel Herzing is an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of surveillance, policing and imprisonment for over two decades. Herzing was executive director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left and progressive social movements; codirector of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex; and director of research and training at Creative Interventions a community resource that developed interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services. She lives in New York City.
Melissa Munn is an activist and criminologist who teaches at Okanagan College which is located on the traditional and unceded territories of the Syilx Nation, the Secwépemc Nation, the Sinixt Nation, and Ktunaxa Nation. For over thirty years, Melissa has walked beside prisoners and their support people as they try to survive the carceral environment and maintain their place in community. She is the co-author of Disruptive Prisoners: Resistance, Reform and The New Deal and On The Outside: From Lengthy Imprisonment to Lasting Freedom. She currently operates the only open-access, virtual library of Canadian prisoner-generated materials at penalpress.com.
Justin Piché is Full Professor in the Department of Criminology and Director of the Carceral Geography (Col)laboratory at the University of Ottawa. He is also Co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) and a founding member of the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP). As part of CPEP, Justin was involved in the #NOPE | No Ottawa Prison Expansion campaign that stopped a $1 billion jail from being built in Ottawa. CPEP is also currently involved in the Coalition Against the Proposed Prison’s fight to stop a new $500 million prison from being built on the grounds of the former Kemptville Agricultural College that includes prime agricultural land, floodplain and a Rideau River watershed creek. He lives in Ottawa, which is located on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe Territory.
Kevin Walby is Professor, Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg. He is co-author of Police Funding, Dark Money, and the Greedy Institution (Routledge, 2022). He is co-editor of Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada (BTL Press, 2022). He is co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.
Prisoner Correspondence Project is a solidarity project for gay, lesbian, transsexual, transgender, gendervariant, two-spirit, intersex, bisexual and queer prisoners in Canada and the United States, linking them with people a part of these same communities outside of prison.
Termite Collective is a group of concerned and creative folks who want to expose the increasingly repressive nature of prison through writing, workshops, political parody, and criminal cabaret. Some of us are currently incarcerated, out on parole and/or in a variety of ways, wandering in this place.
Sacha Alfonzo V. is an award-winning photographer, visual artist and student at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Her ongoing research seeks to locate and amplify silenced voices, carve out room for counter-narratives, and examine the intricate connections between creative expression and social justice. Sacha is actively engaged in public dissemination initiatives centered on prisoner-produced publications, poetry, and art, fostering avenues for expression and empowerment within and beyond carceral spaces. She is incredibly grateful to live, work and study on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Sylix (Okanagan) Peoples.