The Write ON! salon is a Toronto-based reading and discussion circle, loosely affiliated with Write ON!: Supporting Prisoners Through Correspondence but welcoming anyyone interested in prison abolition and prisoner justice.
Our next meeting is Saturday August 10 at 1:30 pm. RSVP by private message for location details.
Our conversation coincides with International Prisoners' Justice Day, a global day of prisoner resistance remembering Edward Nalon, who died in segregation at Millhaven in 1974. Our topic will be solitary confinement: the histories of its use and restriction/abolition in Canada and elsewhere. We'll ground our discussion in these readings:
Martin, Karim. 2016. “Prisoners' Justice Day: The Unwritten Holiday of Canadian Inmates” Vice https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn3bw8/prisoner-justice-day-the-unwritten-holiday-of-canadian-inmates
West Coast Prison Justice Society. 2016. “Solitary: A Case for Abolition” (excerpts, pp 11-40) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SGVZdAqlohk5dEcdMU2yFKxZjJLKFKEd
Bauer, Shane. 2012. “Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons” Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer/
Dowker, Fay and Glenn Good. 1993. “The Proliferation of Control Unit Prisons in the United States” Journal of Prisoners on Prisons 4(2): 95-110. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1y5wPYVTq4wHoWx6qA66y6M8_AfkD6WEs
If there's a prison-related topic you'd like to learn more about, or books/articles you need extra motivation to read, please feel welcome to suggest them at the meeting. The salon is meant to be a collaborative learning space where we're enriched from each others' perspectives, interests and backgrounds.