Prisoners Justice Day 2020 Media Round Up

We have rounded up all the media, t-shirts, merch, artwork, poetry, articles, and support guides that we could find! We have interviews and commentary from all over Canada featuring people currently and formerly in jail, their families, and prison abolitionists! We also have links to all the prison abolition groups that we know of in Canada. If you don’t see your PJD merch or media on this page and want it here, please contact us. To learn more about the history of Prisoners’ Justice Day, Click Here!

PJD T.V. coverage of events from Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax featuring El Jones and Desmond Cole as your moderators! Thanks to the Toronto Prisoners Rights Project for organizing this!

Full coverage of one of the PJD events from Vancouver Prison Justice Groups

CFRC Prison Radio from Kingston Ontario, which aired it’s annual PJD show from 4:00pm to 10:00pm featuring historical information, calls from home, interviews and messages from people inside and organizers on the outside, lots of music, requests, and more!

CKUT Prison Radio from Montreal aired there PJD special from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

“What Happened to Prisoner Justice Day?”, the wonderful podcast interview series called which chronicles the history of PJD and has interviews with former prisoners and prison organizers who were on the inside, is available to be listened to and downloaded.

The P4W Memorial Collective put together some great interviews with 3 trans women: Tami Starlight, Moka Dawkins, and Cedar. Transcriptions are available for each interview.
You can listen to Tami’s interviews below or listen to all the interviews here: https://p4wmemorialcollective.com/pjd/

The Yellowhead Institute has put together a wonderful syllabus of material. In there own words: “IN MAY 2020, the Abolition Convergence had planned to host a pre-conference to the Native American Indigenous Studies Association gathering in Toronto called Imagining and Decolonizing Abolitionist Futures. It was canceled when the pandemic hit; but the work continued.” It is available here: https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2020/08/10/an-indigenous-abolitionist-study-group-guide/

The SMAAC coaltion, which spans Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have written a wonderful article about making prison abolition international. You can also follow SMAAC on Instagram.

The Abolition Coalition has put together a wonderful educational resource, which started on August 1st and ended on PJD, called 10 Days of Abolition. They also have a list of abolitionist groups across Canada on their website here: https://www.noprisons.ca/groups.

You can buy this years PJD T-Shirts from CPEP, Vancouver Prison Justice Groups, and Randy Riley by following the links below:

• CPEP’s PJD shirt by “Slick”, a prisoner from Millhaven, can be purchased here: https://checkout.square.site/buy/SQL45EMKH65L5VGH24S6G6XJ
  
• Shirts from Vancouver can be purchased here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/prisonjusticevan/photos/?tab=album&album_id=3145306725524252
  
• Send an e-mail to theblackpowerhour@gmail.com to get a “WHO IS RANDY RILEY” shirt from El Jones and Randy Riley (learn more about Randy Riley here: https://youtu.be/GrLdOUycXGk?t=423)
  

Lifers on Life art series by El Jones and various prisoners serving life sentences in Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec.

The Ontario Prisoners Resource Guide was created by the the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project and CPEP to commemorate the lives lost from incarceration and for PJD 2020. This resource guide is designed to support Ontario based prisoners and their loved ones. We hope to continue to update and expand this guide and welcome your feedback:

The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons has created a special issue to commemorate PJD and other issues related to prisons in Canada.