Join us next Wednesday, June 16 from 7:00pm-9:00pm EDT for an online panel featuring current and former prisoners who will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on imprisonment and community re-entry. Read below to learn more about the event.
Event Description:
Throughout the current global pandemic, the risks and impacts of COVID-19 have been felt most profoundly by people pushed to the margins, including those living and working in congregate settings in so-called Canada. Jails, prisons, and penitentiaries have not been immune to this trend with an infection rate amongst incarcerated people and institutional staff several times that of the general population. As the pandemic continues with more transmissible and virulent variants spreading across the country, this webinar draws on the insights of currently and formerly incarcerated people, their loved ones, and abolitionist organizers engaged in prisoner solidarity and mutual aid work to explore multiple facets of the on-going prison pandemic. Speakers will examine (a) the uneven use of diversion and decarceration measures that have unnecessarily exposed those behind bars to a greater risk of COVID-19 infections, (b) the suppression of rights, privileges and protections for prisoners alongside the ramping-up of torturous conditions of confinement in the name of public health, and (c) the often politicized, coercive and often ineffective roll-out of vaccinations in carceral settings. In assessing the violence of (pandemic) prisons, panellists will highlight the need to work towards their abolition in our lifetime where choosing real safety will translate into building communities, not cages.
Event Artwork:
ck nosun @ https://www.cknosun.com
Event Graphic:
Sheena Hoszko @ https://www.sheenahoszko.com
Event Speakers:
To be announced
Event Sponsors:
Prison Pandemic Partnership, Prisons and Community Health Support Partnership, and the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons
