Prison Radio Show

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 Whynacht. 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