WITH ART BY
|
|
WITH WORDS ABOUT
- Released From Prison, Still Fighting For Freedom
- Medical Treatment and Neglect in Prison
- Solidarity with Palestine
- The Struggle Is Everywhere: Women Prisoners Continue to Organize Despite Isolation
- From Noose to Needle
- Communicate to Educate, Educate to Liberate
- The House that |Herman Built: The Power of Collaboration
- Learning From Our Elders: Analyzing History to Understand the Present
- Terror, Prisons and the Time to Rebuild
- "Little Guantanamo": Exposing the CMU
- Prisons, Social Control and Political Prisoners
- The Politics of Imprisonment
In the decade since this calendar was first published, a lot has changed, and yet so much has stayed the same. At the project’s inception, the organizers who became the calendar collective were building relationships with political prisoners Herman Bell, David Gilbert and Seth Hayes — corresponding, visiting, forming friendships and exchanging political ideas. To us, the interconnections were obvious: political prisoners come out of our movements — anti-racist, anti-imperial and anti-war struggles, queer and women’s liberation, and ecological justice to name a few — and as such we owe them our solidarity. Besides, many political prisoners continue to organize, both inside and beyond the prison walls. New organizers have so much to learn, both from the successes of earlier liberation movements and from their errors. And yet, political prisoners were largely isolated from the then-emerging movement against globalized capitalism. When Herman proposed that we produce a calendar, it seemed like the perfect way to make our political prisoners more visible, on a daily basis.
In the early years of the calendar, the events of September 11, 2001 transformed the political landscape in ways we were still coming to understand: new imperialist wars had begun, and here at home the state was using the post-9/11 climate as a carte-blanche to step up repression and retract hard won social gains. As we go to print, in July 2010, the dust is still settling from the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Over 1000 people were detained or arrested in connections with the protests against the G20 meeting in Toronto. Some are facing charges that potentially carry serious prison time. In certain cases the charges are based on information gathered by infiltrators at the very core of their organizations. Now more than ever, we need the insights of political prisoners to be part of our organizing.
So this year, for the calendar’s tenth issue, we’re going “back to basics,” putting the focus on the theme of political prisoners: their voices and perspectives, their contributions, the particular issues they face inside prison. Political prisoners are still in the struggle: as organizers, as mentors, and as comrades in need of our solidarity to win their freedom.
The Certain Days collective
See on site profile pages devoted toDavid Gilbert and Robert Seth Hayes
and Herman Bell's Jericho page
The Certain Days collective can be contacted at info@certaindays.org, or else at:
Certain Days c/o QPIRG Concordia
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. O.
Montreal, QC H3G 1M8
CANADA
They also have a nice web presence at http://www.certaindays.org