Prison Radio Show

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.