Prison Radio Show: Recent Episodes
Prison Radio Show
The Prison Radio Show has two time slots on CKUT 90.3 fm http://www.ckut.ca.*
The first time slot is: On the second Thursday of every month between 5-6 pm the Prison Radio Show is part of CKUT’s Off The Hour.
The second time slot is: The fourth Friday of every month between 11am and 12pm.
Occasionally the Prison Radio Show will have an additional show during the fifth Friday.
All audio on CKUT 90.3 fm is archived for a minimum of two months, so if you miss a show, you can download it at ckut.ca or here on the blog.
Prison Radio has been on the air in Montreal for more than a decade. The show seeks to confront the invisibility of prisons and prisoner struggle, by focusing on the roots of incarceration, policing, and criminalization, and by challenging ideas about what prisons are and who ends up inside.
Prison Radio is dedicated to programming that is directly collaborative with people who are currently incarcerated. This is in the interest of forging stronger ties between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people, ensuring that prisoners have direct control over their representation, and that our understandings of prisons be informed by those who live inside their walls.
This episode featured an interview with Lauren Aarons. She is one of the authors of a recently released report from Amnesty International entitled Aftermath: Injustice, Torture and Death in Detention in North-East Syria (available here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE24/7752/2024/en/ ). The report talks about the conditions in the camps and prisons where Islamic State fighters, affiliates, and anyone still living in Baghouz when it fell to the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2019 are all held. The report talks about intense conditions of torture, death, and inhumane treatment of children and while we avoid talking about most of the horrific specific instances detailed in the report, we want to put a content warning on this interview. We talk about distressing situations facing children, and some of the specifics of torture that people in the camps and prisons told the Amnesty International researchers. We also talk about the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the regions where all the camps and detention facilities are based, as well as the United States led coalition and it's role in the camps and detention facilities.
The episode features a panel discussion from the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and 18 Million Rising about their present campaign to demand a pardon for the APSC4. We hear from the APSC4: Kee, Bun, Maria and Peejay. They are four staff members with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee—and all are at risk of deportation. They talk about the work of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee as well as their personal stories of incarceration and release. As people with precarious immigration status, they face “double punishment.”
According to Solidarity Across Borders and No One is Illegal Montreal, Double Punishment is the unjust policy used against non-citizens after already being punished by the criminal justice system. The policies surrounding Double Punishment are racist and create a two-tier justice system in which immigrants face far more disastrous consequences for committing crimes than citizens.
In the cases of the APSC4, they are asking to be pardoned by the State of California Governor Gavin Newsom so they can stay with their families in community.
We also talk briefly at the end of the show about trauma, incarceration, and healing.
This is the first episode of Prison Radio Show’s new series on the mass incarceration of Palestinians by Israel into Israeli prisons.
On today’s show we feature an interview with Raed Amer, the president of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, / sometimes translated as the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club Association is an independent, national, humanitarian, social, and popular association founded on September 27, 1993 that assists Palestinian prisoners inside and their families as well as assists with reintegration into society once those inside are released. The idea of establishing it was crystallized inside Israeli occupation prisons by Palestinian prisoners and is an extension and integral part of the Palestinian prisoner movement.
The end of the show featured audio from a prisoner currently incarcerated on the island of Montreal, sharing songs he wrote and a message from the inside.
This show featured audio from a workshop given by the Termite Collective as part of the Concordia Student Union's teach-in during their three day strike in January 2024. The workshop was about prisoner justice organizing and featured a "True or False" questionnaire about the Canadian prison system. Show also features two Bob Marley song requests from a prisoner in Riviere des Prairies prison.
This show featured two audio recordings from prisonradio.org that were aired at the top of the show. We then shared audio from the annual New Years Eve Noise Demo which happened in Laval, Quebec on the evening of December 31, 2023 outside of four different carceral institutions - two federal prison for men, one co-ed provincial prison, and one migrant prison.
This show featured audio from a panel discussion that happened at UQAM in September. The panel was part of a symposium was called Penser les catégories pénales à l’aune des sciences sociales. The panel itself was called Perspective queer et luttes anti-carcérales.
We also opened the show commemorating the passing of Ed Mead.
This is our Prisoner Justice Day Special. It features audio from people who would have spoken at the Montreal PJD event, which was cancelled due to weather conditions. You will hear from Wendy Bariteau and Christophe Lewis, who were both scheduled to speak at the Montreal PJD event. Christophe shares audio from a prisoner who talks about a friend of his who was recently killed by guards in a provincial prison in Ontario.
We also share audio from the Prisoner Justice Day TV Broadcast, which was livestreamed at https://www.facebook.com/CPEPgroup.
Again, we are re-posting this directly from the CKUT archives (which are here: https://ckut.ca/playlists/PS) so you will hear a little bit of the show before us at the top of the show.
This show features a long news section about a recent class-action lawsuit as well as an interview with Rasheed Stanley-Lockheart, the Reentry Director with the Ahimsa Collective. He is one of the authors of the recently released memo called "The Case for People First Reentry" and our interview focused on that memo. Heads up we downloaded the audio from CKUT's archives and so there are 2 minutes of audio from the previous show at the top of the hour.
Our first ever Tuesday show! Our schedule has now changed to every other Tuesday night from 6-7pm! As we said on the last episode, we don't normally post shows where the majority of the content is a re-broadcast, but this show also included original audio from the inside. We have been getting calls from Joshua, who is currently incarcerated at Riviere des Prairies prison on the island of Montreal. He's having a rough time and wanted some of his story shared on air. If you want to support Joshua, you can write to him! Joshua Rashid, Établissement de détention de Rivière-des-Prairies, 11900, rue Armand-Chaput, Montréal (Québec) H1C 1S7. He would appreciate the support.
This show also featured re-broadcasted audio from The Final Straw Radio's show from July 2, 2023. You can listen to the full episode here: https://thefinalstrawradio.libsyn.com/prisoner-support-dan-baker-mongoose-distro-pushing-down-the-walls We edited it for length on our show.
Finally, we read this essay to share with our inside listeners. https://scalawagmagazine.org/2023/06/mourning-prison/
We don't normally post episodes where the majority of the content is re-broadcasts from other shows, but this one includes new audio from inside correspondent Muti Ajamu-Osagboro. It is a short piece from him about experiencing the wildfire smoke from Quebec while imprisoned in Pennsylvania. The rest of the episode is a re-air from CFRC Kingston's Prison Radio episode from September 2022 about Roger Caron - you can listen to their full episode here: https://cfrcprisonradio.wordpress.com/2022/09/07/970/ We edited their episode for length.
This episode featured an interview with Tommy Bassio, who is incarcerated in Archambault prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec. He talked to us about a report he co-authored with other prisoners called The Archambault Report 2.0. We also aired an interview with someone from the Barton Prisoner Solidarity Project in Hamilton Ontario about a recent hunger strike in the Barton jail there. We ended the show with audio from an event that was put on at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture by the New York City Public Library’s Jail and Prison Services Team. The event was called Sostre at 100 and celebrated the life and work of Martin Sostre. Martin Sostre who was born in 1923 and died in 2015, advocated for prisoners’ rights to religious freedom, political expression, and due process regarding prison censorship and solitary confinement. He was also a teacher and mentor, as the owner of the radical Afro-Asian Bookshop in Buffalo, New York, and a community organizer with the Juvenile Education and Awareness Project in New Jersey.
Today’s show focuses on the demands of prisoners in Block 8, organizing against racism and ableism inside Kenora jail. The majority of those incarcerated in Kenora jail come from the surrounding Indigenous communities. We speak with Trish, who through the Prison Project has been supporting and amplifying the voices of those organizing in Block 8. Trish, is an anarchist, abolitionist, formerly incarcerated person, who is a co-lead on the Disability Justice Network of Ontario’s – Prison Project, centering and engaging racialized and disabled folks inside jails, prisons, and detention centers all across Ontario.
This episode features audio from a book launch that happened in Montreal on March 14, 2023. The launch was for the book 1312 raisons d'abolir la police by Gwenola Ricordeau. The event was hosted by Étienne Simard from Revue Ouvrage. Gwenola Ricordeau, Jessica Quijano from Defund the SPVM, and Malina May and Adore Goldman from the Comité Autonome du Travail du Sex also spoke. The event took place in French and thus, this episode is mostly in French.
This show featured audio from an interview that Kiteline Radio did with Jarrod Shanahan about his book called Captives: How Riker's Island Took New York City Hostage. We share this audio in part because of a news story in Montreal. In December, newspapers in Montreal announced that the province will be building a new prison for women on the island of Montreal.
We then share two interviews about the death of Nicous D’Andre Spring. Nicous died after being pepper sprayed by guards while wearing a spit mask on December 26, 2022. It later came out in the news that he had been granted bail the day before, but was not released. His family held a vigil in Notre Dame de Grace in late December with over 100 people in attendance. We talked to Alain Babineau with the Red Coalition, an organization that held a press conference on January 7th hoping to push for justice for Nicous. We also talked to Amanda from DESTA Black Youth Network about the annual New Years Eve Noise Demonstration, which went to Bordeaux jail where Nicous was killed. Nicous was an aspiring rapper and we share some of his music on the show.
This episode features Gita Madan from Education not Incarceration in Toronto talking about the school to prison pipeline. Gita is a teacher in the Toronto school system. Education Not Incarceration (ENI) is a team of youth, students, parents/ caregivers, educators, researchers, journalists, and community organizers in Toronto who have come together to address the school-to-prison pipeline. They successful campaigned to end the presence of police in TDSB schools by ending the School Resources Officer program.
Decided to put up a show from our archives on the podcast. Enjoy. It's from February 27, 2015. At the time, we would record live and download our episodes from the CKUT archives so there's a bit of the jazz show's tail end at the beginning. Our show starts at 1m16s!
This show featured two live interviews – one with Soffiyah Elijah of the Correctional Association of New York about changes to New York State youth justice legislation and one with Ralph from Head & Hands here in Montreal. Ralph talked to us about youth incarceration in Montreal and Project X, a project which helps youth in finding creative ways to survive institutional racism and racial profiling. We also played a song by Peter Collins and included an update about his health. (Peter died in August 2015).
This show features a bunch of new audio from Muti Ajamu-Osagboro that we recorded between August and October 2022. We also air a new podcast from a Montreal org called DESTA Black Community Network. The podcast is called Stories from the Inside Out and you can listen to it directly from DESTA here: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/525c3a8e-ffb5-4c28-9793-da73ea3bca57/id/24545991
Audio from August 10th, 2022 Prisoner Justice Day event in Montreal. Featuring Johanne Wendy Bariteau, Kiyha, audio from the inside, and more!
Audio from August 10th, 2022 Prisoner Justice Day event in Montreal. Featuring Johanne Wendy Bariteau, Kiyha, audio from the inside, and more!
This episode features a long interview with Ardath Whynacht. Ardath teaches at Mount Allison University and wrote the book Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide. In the interview, we took a deep dive into questions the book brings up such as what is the difference between intimate terrorism and other kinds of intimate partner violence, what role could disarmament play in the fight against both police violence and intimate terrorism, and how does Ardath commemorate Prisoner Justice Day. Content warning: the book and therefore, the interview, are about violence in intimate relationships, including murder and murder-suicide.
Today on the programme, we share with you a book launch event that took place at Ausgang Plaza earlier this month on May 3rd. The book is titled “Delivrez-nous de la prison Leclerc! un temoignage de l'interieur” and is by author Louise Henry, published by Ecosociete. It is about women provincial prisoners who were transferred in 2016 from Maison Tanguay to Leclerc, a former federal penitentiary for men that had been shuttered by the Canadian Government, deemed unfit for men, and now holds women in deplorable conditions. The book launch is a denunciation of the provincial government's shameful incarceration of women in a condemned penitentiary and the event is also a celebration.
We will hear the voices of Maria Nengeh Mensah, a professor at UQAM, Catherine Chesnay from CASIFQ or the Coalition d'action et de surveillance sur l'incarceration des femmes du Quebec, we will hear from the book's author Louise Henry, Camille from ecosociete, soeur Marguerite a long-time activist and defender of women prisoners' rights, Nancy, Genevieve, and finally, a song performed by Claudette Plante. Le programme aujourd'hui va être presenté en français.
This show features Matthew, who is currently incarcerated at Riviere des Prairies prison on the island of Montreal. He shared news with us about the situation in RDP two years into the covid 19 pandemic. After that we heard from authors of the book Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada, which just came out with Between the Lines press. Editor Abby Stadnyk and authors of the chapter called Defund to Abolish spoke to us about what’s in the book, what it was like to write it, and why they think you should read it.
Today's interview features Jeri, the coordinator of Open Door, a program run by the Montréal-based group Communitas. Open Door is an independent community integration program, and supports people both during and after incarceration. Jeri shares all about Open Door's 20-year legacy, including about the publication of their anniversary book, and what practices they use to sustainably build community.
The interview is also part of CKUT's annual funding drive, so there are several calls for donations sprinkled throughout.
This show featured an interview with Naomi Berlyne who is a founder of the Write On! Project. The group writes letters to prisoners and has recently published data on what they have learned about the prison system from their letters. This show also featured audio from this episode of Kiteline Radio: https://www.kitelineradio.org/podcast/288-when-homes-become-prisons/. Finally, we aired an interview with Sarah from Solidarity Across Borders about a vigil the group planned for Sunday February 13th in honour of a person who died in the migrant prison in Laval.
This show featured audio from three prisoners. First up we featured audio from Muti Ajamu-Osagboro, an inside correspondent from Pennsylvania. He read a speech he gave as part of a one day conference called Freedom: Land & Abolition that happened in November 2021.
Then we spoke with Christophe Lewis, whose blog freedomisamust.net has been featured on the show before. Christophe talked to us about the release of a video earlier in the year that showed guards beating him up in 2012. The video release resulted in one of the guards being charged with assault and we talked about how Christophe felt about the situation now.
Finally, we shared more audio from Lucas who is currently incarcerated in Bordeaux prison. Lucas shares news about the situation in Bordeaux as of early January 2022.
This was a shout out show for the holidays! Featuring a range of voices from the inside and outside sharing well wishes, poetry, songs, and jokes.
Today we are featuring audio from a talk that happened in Montreal on Sunday December 5th. The talk was called Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide. The talk featured Montreal based Black feminist community organizers and researchers Marlihan Lopez and Nathalie Batraville interviewing white feminist writer and organizer Ardath Whynaught. The call-out for the event described it as follows: How do we deal with dangerous forms of intimate violence in a post-carceral future? How can abolitionist frameworks help us tackle the most dangerous forms of intimate partner and family violence that can lead to homicide? How do we engage in transformative justice in the wake of a homicide? Join Ardath Whynacht, Marlihan Lopez and Nathalie Batraville in a conversation about transformative, community-based and abolitionist approaches to domestic homicide. The prison radio show was there to record the talk. We didn’t get our best audio ever, but we hope this is listenable! Obviously a content warning that this talk features in depth conversations about violence, including sexual violence.
This show features an interview with Melissa Munn, an academic and prisoner justice activist who runs the website penalpress.com. The penal press refers to publications made inside prisons, which Munn has been digitalizing and putting online. The show also features a news update about Christophe Lewis, a Black prisoner in Quebec whose blog has been featured on the show before (freedomisamust.net) as well as a couple song requests from the inside.
This show featured the story of Lucas, a prisoner currently incarcerated at Bordeaux Prison on the island of Montreal. Lucas tells us about experiencing constant lockdowns at Bordeaux, filing grievances to figure out why the lockdowns were happening, and then getting roughed up by the guards as a result of his willingness to push back against the situation. We also interviewed Amelia, a NYC resident and volunteer at Rikers Island Prison, who told us about the situation at Rikers, where prisoners currently face ongoing food shortages, lack of medical attention, and an increase in prisoner deaths in the last year. The two stories felt connected through their relation to an ongoing "labour shortage" with the guards, which Amelia reframed as a worker slow down that is part of long standing attempts by guards unions to increase guard pay and benefits.
Today's show features an update from a prisoner in Bordeaux, a provincial prison on the island of Montreal. In the piece, he talks about the situation in his sector, where prisoners have been locked down the majority of the time since March 2021. He reads two responses from the administration to complaints he has made about the lockdowns and the lack of access to air conditioning during the heat waves this summer.
We also feature an interview with Prisoner Rights and Justice Advocate, Lindsay Jennings. She has a dynamic approach to the provision of support to prisoners and former prisoners who are striving towards their community integration goals. Her areas of interest include sharing knowledge with individuals who are incarcerated about harm reduction and overdose prevention, and facilitating life-skills workshops with this marginalized population. She is a committed advocate who is passionate about bringing positive changes to those who are involved with the correctional and criminal justice systems by ensuring that substance use, mental health, and basic needs are addressed as immediately as possible once they have been admitted into custody, and throughout their incarceration. She works with the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project, and in the past, she has worked with PASAN and with the John Howard Society of Toronto’s Reintegration Centre, (a trailblazing Etobicoke facility that helps recently released former inmates return to society).
This episode of the Prison Radio Show commemorates the 50 year anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion & those who died in this massacre. It opens with a short news piece about the situation in Bordeaux Prison on the island of Montreal then moves into the Attica commemoration. This show pulls texts from the Attica Prison Uprising 101: A Short Primer by Miriam Kaba, Project NIA & from The Brief Podcast, episode 18.
The show mentions the following resources:
https://project-nia.org/uploads/documents/Educational-Curricula/Attica%20Prison%20Uprising%20101.pdf
https://thebriefpodcast.com
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178182/blood-in-the-water-by-heather-ann-thompson/
https://rozsixties.unl.edu/items/show/468
This show features an interview with Daniel who is currently incarcerated in Bordeaux prison. We also share a short clip featuring Nick Dinardo who is currently incarcerated in Port Cartier. Following that we honour the 50th anniversary of the death of George Jackson with audio from him talking about fascism and audio from James Baldwin talking about Jackson. Both are from the Freedom Archives' 99 Books project (https://99books.freedomarchives.org/). Finally we shared an edited version of an interview done by the Millennials Are Killing Capitalism podcast with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak about their call to action on August 21 and September 9, 2021. You can listen to the whole episode here https://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/in-the-spirit-of-abolition-jailhouse-lawyers-speak-calls-for-shut-em-down-demonstrations
This show featured audio recorded at Montreal's Prisoner Justice Day event. Speakers included Johanne Wendy Bariteau, the event MC, Sherri Pranteau, Fallon, Guadalupe, and Donald. The speakers shared their personal stories and struggles with the prison industrial complex, including the ways it overlaps with colonialism and the border regime. There is strong language, mention of sexual violence and suicide. Learn more about Prisoner Justice Day at prisonjustice.ca or listen to the podcast archived on our site "What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day?".
This is our special live show from August 10, 2021. It featured two live interviews with Fallon and Johanne Wendy Bariteau who were both about to give speeches at Montreal's Prisoner Justice Day event. It also featured audio from the inside from Rain and Sheldon talking about Prisoner Justice Day. The audio quality is all over the place, including a serious echo on the microphone towards the end of the broadcast. Our apologies, live broadcasting from remote locations is not our specialty.
This is audio from prisoners gathered for Montreal's Prisoner Justice Day Vigil 2021. This audio is being posted for the purposes of allowing people who attend the vigil to listen to this audio. If you would like to listen to this audio in the context of our special live PJD broadcast, you are welcome to wait and listen once we post that broadcast on Thursday August 12.
This show features an interview with James. James is a prisoner, currently serving a life sentence on parole and a member of the Toronto Prisoner Rights Project. In this interview, James talks about his experiences in grassroots organizing, life on parole, surviving trauma, decades spent inside and much more. He talks about coping with the loss and isolation that comes with time inside, and the importance of relationships. James also provides ways to support the Toronto Prisoner Rights Project, so be sure to listen for those. Show also features music from an organization James mentions in the interview called "Looking at the Stars". More info about them here: https://lookingatthestars.org/ More about the Toronto Prisoners Rights Project can be found here: https://www.torontoprisonersrightsproject.org
This show features an interview with Safiyah Husein. She is a lawyer and senior policy analyst with the John Howard Society of Ontario. We discuss the work she is doing to change Canada’s record suspension system to remove obstacles to finding and securing steady employment.
We also have a new piece from Muti Ajamu-Osagboro who is currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania. Muti was sentenced to life in prison as a teenager and has been advocating for what he calls child deathers ever since. His newest piece talks about UN Declarations that pertain to his situation.
CW: Heads up our news section is about residential schools and unmarked graves. If you would like to skip this news section, start the show at the 12:05 mark.
Show features a long news section, including audio from a commemoration for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black and Indigenous woman who was killed by police in Toronto in May 2020. The feature interview was with Alessandro Stella talking about recent arrests of Italian political refugees in France, including ex-members of the armed struggle group the Red Brigades. The arrestees are facing extradition to Italy where they would likely spend the rest of their lives in prison. The interview is in French.
This episode showcases some events from the life of Dacajeweiah, also known as Splitting the Sky, who was a Kanienʼkehá꞉ka man who spent time in prison and was in Attica during the uprising in 1971. He was subsequently released and participated in a number of land defense struggles, including the struggle for Ganienkeh and prisoner support for those arrested in the Gustafsen Lake standoff. His stories intertwining prisoner struggles and Indigenous land defense struggles offer a particularly clear way to understand the connections between colonialism and the carceral system. Audio for this episode came from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVl1ww3VkTc – Burning Books Buffalo audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMmG4Vuj04g – Seattle Breaking the Chains conference audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI4ouPbT6UE – Canadian TV show Niteline footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PynWtpqgyJ8 – Submedia video about Gustafsen Lake
http://www.ganienkeh.net/33years/ - more information about Ganienkeh
Musical interludes came from the song Suite pour l'invisible by Ana Roxanne.
This show featured lots of news and music as well as audio from Cory Cardinal, who was still incarcerated at the time but has since been released. Cardinal talked to us about the hunger strikes he participated in over the winter as well as the situation more broadly facing Indigenous prisoners like himself. We also aired audio from a prisoner who Cory introduced us to -- Pablo talked to us about the situation facing Indigenous prisoners in the Prairies and about his experience of Prairie prisons from the perspective of someone from South America who had done time in prisons all over Canada.
This show features a long interview with Margrit Shiller, author of the recently translated book "Remembering the Armed Struggle" about her time in the Red Army Faction, an armed struggle group in Germany that was active between 1970 and 1998. Shiller was involved in the group between 1971 and 1977 and spent most of those years in prison in Germany. In the interview, she talks to us about the politics of the RAF, hunger strikes in prison, and much more.
This was our annual funding drive show! If you want to donate to the station that keeps us on air, all the info is in the episode! The show also featured activists from Anti-Carceral Group, Black Lives Matter, and Solidarity Across Borders speaking outside the Laval Migrant Prison on March 20th for the Free Them All National Day of Action. Last, but not least, a prisoner named Christophe shares his insightful and reflective piece entitled "How I Feel" that it explores his experiences as a Black prisoner during the pandemic and for the past 11 years.
Happy Black History Month! Every year on Prison Radio Show we celebrate black history month. Today we remember black Canadians who have been killed by police and in prison. We shine light on several incredible Black women including the Honourable Jean Augustine who did many great things and notably worked to have Black History Month officially recognized in so called Canada. Our feature interview is with Ayo Ogunremi, a McGill student who is Vice-President of External Affairs of Student Society McGill University SSMU, who worked to get an abolitionist motion passed at McGill. We discuss McGill’s newly adopted 'position on institutions of public safety' and the possibility of other campuses following suit with Ayo.
This show features an interview with our inside correspondent Muti Ajamu Osagboro and his fiancée Raqueeb Bey. They talked to us about their relationship across prison walls, including how they met and the challenges they have faced in the pandemic. They also talked to us about their activism and how it brought them together.
In this interview, we talked to Abby Stadnyk, a journalist with the Perilous Chronicle. She talked to us about resistance in Saskachewan jails in a context where there were mounting cases of Covid19 in the prisons. From late November 2020 until the last week of January 2021, prisoners wrote letters, went on hunger strike, and rioted against the lockdown conditions imposed by jail administrations. Solidarity actions on the outside supported the prisoners' actions, but in the end, the government did nothing. Here's the whole story.
This show features an interview with Cedar, about their recently published article "After a winter of blockades: updates on criminal charges from #ShutDownCanada" as well as a new piece from Muti Ajamu Osagboro about COVID-19 in Pennsylvania State prisons, and part of an interview with Sherri Maier of Beyond Prison Walls Canada about what's been going on in the prisons in Saskatchewan (re-broadcast from CFRC prison radio in so-called Kingston).
This show features audio from inside correspondent Muti Ajamu-Osagboro, who is incarcerated in Frackville State Prison in Pennsylvania. Muti talks about experiencing the pandemic in prison. We also caught up with two members of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement's New York City chapter. They talked to us about the George Floyd Uprising, the pandemic, and their resolutions for 2021.
Join PRS in imagining abolition by creating communities where we care for and keep one another safe in a world liberated from cages, police, and institutional state violence in part-two of our Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project interview pre-recorded and aired on Thursday, December 10, 2020 on ckut.ca, 90.3 fm. TPRP organizers, Rajean and Rosa get to the heart of their critical work supporting those on the inside with a jail hotline, a prisoner support fund and about the hard collective work of fostering real and practical ways to fight against the prison industrial complex and police by creating networks of self and community care and reflecting on black and Indigenous freedom and liberation movements like the Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter TO, the Bear Clan Patrol, as well as the racist white supremacist settler-colonial roots of policing in so called Canada, and the growing solidarity between black and Indigenous abolition movements regionally and across the continent.
TPRP is a coalition of researchers, law students, front-line workers and people with lived experience engaged in public education and mutual aid work to shed light on the harms caused by incarceration, and connect incarcerated and recently released populations with legal, community, financial, and health supports.
Pre-recorded and aired on ckut.ca on Friday, November 27, 2020. Part-one of a two part interview the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project. PRS collective member Yasmeen speaks with TPRP organizers, Rajean and Rosa getting to the heart of TPRP’s critical work to support those on the inside with a jail and info hotline to a prisoner support fund and of the hard collective work of imagining abolition real and practical ways and to fight against the prison industrial complex and police by creating networks of self and community care. TPRP is a coalition of researchers, law students, front-line workers and people with lived experience engaged in public education and mutual aid work to shed light on the harms caused by incarceration, and connect incarcerated and recently released populations with legal, community, financial, and health supports. News featured on this episode includes: defund the police campaign updates in Hamilton and Ottawa, increases to Ottawa police budget after violent crackdown on protestors, 337 confirmed covid-19 cases in October 2020 linked to Canadian carceral institutions, top ten reasons why the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project CPEP and #NOPE | No On Prison Expansion stands in solidarity with local residents fighting to stop the construction of a new provincial prison in Kemptville. Join PRS in imagining abolition by creating communities where we care for and keep one another safe in a world liberated from cages, police, and institutional state violence in part-two of our TPRP interview set to air on Thursday, December 10, 2020.
This special live show was a collaborative effort between us and the Prison Radio show in Kingston, Ontario on CFRC. We interviewed Sheena about the second wave of Covid19 in canadian prisons. We shared some news, including news about Jalil Muntaqim who has been interviewed on CKUT's PRS and is now out of prison. To find out more about him and to support him, check out freejalil.com.
This pre-recorded show aired on Sept 25, 2020. It featured an interview with Jonathan Marchand, a disability rights activist who has been fighting for the closure of long term care homes (CHSLDs) in QC. We talked to Jonathan about abolition of long term care institutions, self determination for people with disabilities, direct action, and the project Coop Assist. To learn more about Jonathan, you can follow him on twitter @jmarchand or visit Coop Assist's site at coopassist.ca.
This special live show was recorded for Prisoner Justice Day. It featured audio from an event that was happening simultaneously in so-called Montreal, from Sheri Pranteau, an indigenous woman who has served time in prison. It also featured pre-recorded audio from a prisoner with suggestions for new tactics to try for PJD next year. We rounded out the show with a live interview with someone who was at the Montreal event and music from Pete Collins, a prisoner and organizer who died inside in 2015.
Featuring Ann, an anarchist who was arrested in the 1980s for participating in an underground guerilla group called Direct Action. She ended up getting a life sentence and doing 7 years in Kingston’s Prison for Women (P4W), which is now closed. She also got her parole revoked on two separate occasions, once in 2006 and once in 2012. Ann talked to us about the differences between doing time in the Prison for Women in Kingston versus GVI – the Grand Valley Institute (in southern Ontario), one of the regional federal prisons for women that was built after P4W was closed. She also mentions Quinte – which is a provincial prison, where she also did a bit of time.
Marie Beemans, an outside activist and organizer who has been supporting prisoners since she was a teenager. Marie was particularly active with a group called the Office des Droits des Detenues (or ODD), which was affiliated with the Ligue des Droits in Quebec until they were kicked out of the Ligue des Droits for supporting prisoners in the aftermath of the 1982 riot in Archambault Penitentiary. In the interview, Marie talks about what drew her to prisoner support and prison abolition organizing, what that organizing looked like, and the underlying values that drive her organizing.
Interview with Gene, who started doing time in canadian prisons in 1972. Gene talks to us about the early days of PJD on the inside and the role that inmates committees and outside support played in prisoner resistance in the 70s and 80s. He talks a bit about protective custody or PC, and how changes to protective custody policies in federal prisons undermined solidarity.
This episode is a long interview with Mariam Gafforio, an anarchist and conflict facilitator and conflict system builder in the so-called US. Mariam talked to us about her theories of conflict, what conflict systems are, and much else! This is the third interview in our series on conflict, so check out past episodes with Kira and Miatta for more information on conflict mediation, facilitation etc.
This podcast was a mini series that was published last summer about the history of Prisoner Justice Day. This is the second episode of that mini series, which no longer exists anywhere else on the internet and so we are republishing it here. This episode is an interview with Papi, who spent 29 years in prison in canada. He talks about conditions on the inside in the 1970s and 1980s, including what it was like to be in prison for Prisoner Justice Day back then. He also talks about prisoner resistance and changes implemented by the federal prison system and how they impacted prisoners.
This is the first episode in a mini series that was published in Summer 2019. It is about the history of Prisoner Justice Day and the evolution of this day of remembrance and protest since it was started inside prisons in so-called Canada in the 1970s. This mini series had its own podcast feed which has now expired, so we are posting their stuff here. This episode features an interview with Bob Gaucher, who served time in the Prairies as a young adult before becoming an academic in Ottawa.
This episode of the Prison Radio Show featured live interviews with Jean-Louis Nguyen about the situation facing prisoners in Bordeaux Provincial prison in Montreal and Molly Swain about the new group Free Lands Free Peoples - an anti-colonial and penal abolitionist group in the Prairies about a fundraiser they are currently doing. Check out noprisons.ca and https://www.gofundme.com/f/prairie-province-prisoner-support-fund.
Interview with Duncan from the Perilous Chronicle, a site that documents resistance in prisons in the United States and Canada. Interview took place in March 2019 and was aired in March 2019 on CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal.
This wholly pre-recorded show featured a lot of prison related covid-19 news. We then aired an interview (recorded pre-covid hitting canada) with Miatta Gorvie, a conflict mediator and facilitator associated with COCo (coco-net.org) in Montreal. We ended the show with audio from one of the hunger strikers at the Laval migrant prison – people there are on hunger strike demanding their own release from prison in the context of the covid pandemic. For more information about their struggle, visit solidarityacrossborders.org.