Thursday, March 17, 2011

Torontoist: More Jail Than We Need?‏

Article in Torontoist: http://torontoist.com/2011/03/a_superjail_in_toronto.php#comments

More Jail Than We Need?
By Alex McClelland (Guest Contributor) on March 17, 2011 1:00 PM
Across the country there has been a statistical decline in crime rates since 1999. The federal government’s own data says that Toronto is the third-safest city in Canada. Both self-reported and police-reported crime rates are low in Toronto compared to other municipalities across the country.
In America, prison expansion measures and the "tough on crime" approach have met neither criminal justice nor public health goals. Instead they have led to the widespread incarceration of racial minorities, people living in poverty, people with mental health issues, non-status people, and people who use drugs, all while exacerbating the syndemic of HIV and Hepatitis C. Despite this track record and Canada's own falling crime rate, Harper’s "tough on crime" agenda is rearing its ugly head in Toronto—and it'll come with a big social and economic price tag for residents of the city.
One example: currently under construction—at a cost of $1.1 billion to Ontario taxpayers over thirty years—is the 1,650-bed Toronto South Detention Centre located near Mimico. The 67,000 square metre facility, a so-called "superjail," aims to replace the 550-bed Toronto Don Jail.
Last week on March 10, about sixty people gathered at Old City Hall on Queen Street with the Prison Moratorium Action Coalition for a rally to protest this government direction. The coalition was formed in opposition to "tough on crime" and prison-expansion measures; it aims to put pressure on the Conservative government, and any companies assisting with their prison expansion plan, until funds are diverted into social services and appropriate social housing. As Justin Piché, a renowned critic of the federal and provincial "tough on crime" agenda, has noted, the cost of this new prison is so great that “those of us in our late twenties… will still be paying for the construction of this facility well into our fifties and its operation likely until the day we die."
Piché’s research has found that these new institutions are being developed based on the argument that the “prison population is no longer a homogeneous population,” meaning: politicians and corrections bureaucrats need a way to deal with the increasing number of women, undocumented people, those with mental health issues, and drug users who are being incarcerated, not to mention the many indigenous peoples who have always been overrepresented in Canada’s prisons. (While indigenous people make up around 4% of the Canadian public, they make up 17% of the federal male prison population and 33% of the federal female prison population. )
Currently, many prisoners are double-bunked at the decrepit Don Jail, a practice that runs counter to the United Nations standards governing the treatment of prisoners, which Canada has signed onto. Although officials may have been saying that we need the new Mimico prison to replace the Don, other prisons constructed in the past ten years (e.g., Central East Correctional Centre and Central North Correctional Centre) were also supposedly built to replace the Don Jail, which has been slated for closure for decades. This brings new life to the adage “if you build it they will come.”
And why not build? After all, big prisons are big business. Following in the footsteps of the American-style prison industrial complex, the Mimico facility is credited with being Ontario’s first pre-fabricated prison. Tindall Corp., one of the leaders in the American privatized prison industry and the inventor of pre-fabricated prison cells, is bringing its invention to Toronto via Zeidler Partnership Architects. Toronto’s Zeidler Partnership Architects (whose projects include the Eaton Centre, Ontario Place, and the refurbished Gladstone Hotel) have designed the new prison as part of a $593-million contract with Toronto-based companies EllisDon Corporation and Fengate Capital.
But while big prisons will make big Toronto businesses more money, they are not economical for the taxpayer: beyond the $1.1-billion price tag for construction, the annual cost of housing a prisoner in Canada can run anywhere from around $52,000 to $250,000 per person, depending on the level of security at the facility [PDF].
On top of this, Canada’s prisons have become super-hubs of HIV and hepatitis C infection. Rates of HIV and hepatitis C are far above the general population, with HIV prevalence at least fifteen times higher in federal prisons than the general public and hepatitis C prevalence almost forty times higher. (Averting just one HIV infection saves approximately $150,000 in lifetime medical costs, not to mention the massive social cost). Building new superjails without addressing the existing health crisis among prisoners will only lead to more of the same.
When it is completed in fall of 2012, the South Toronto Detention Centre in Mimico will be a $1.1-billion super-prison, the first of its kind for our city and province and an acknowledgment that political games and big business mean more than the lives of marginalized residents of our city.
With thanks to Sandra Chu of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Giselle Dias, and Lindsay Hart for support on this piece.

Monday, March 14, 2011

SUPPORT FOR ACTION NEEDED - Email to Zeidler Partnership Architects: Design us homes, not prisons!‏

Following up on our (Prison Moratorium Action Coalition) successful rally in front of their offices last week, we are putting out the wide call to help us to hold Zeidler Partnership Architects accountable for their role in Canada’s prison industrial complex. Zeidler is bringing American-style prefabricated prison cells to Ontario for the new super-jail in Mimico. This prison will be disastrous to our communities. If you would like more details please read the letter below. Also, check out their website: http://www.zeidlerpartnership.com/

We urge you to send this letter as an email to the partners of Zeidler Partnership Architects. Hearing widely from the concerned residents of Canada could help to get Zeidler to rethink their role in Harper’s disastrous ‘tough on crime’ agenda. 


STEP 1- Copy and paste the following email addresses into an email:



STEP 2 - Add this as the subject line: 

Zeidler: Design us homes, not prisons!

STEP 3 – Cut and paste the below letter into your email body. Add your name and contact at the end of the email.

STEP 4 – Send, send, send!


Dear Zeider Partnership Architects,

I am writing out of concern regarding your company’s involvement in Stephen Harper’s prison expansion agenda.  Harper is using the false political rhetoric of being “tough on crime” to waste 9 billion dollars of Canadian taxpayer’s money to support the big business of prison building. Modeled after the disastrous American prison industrial complex, Harper has been working to expand Canadian jails at a time when crime has never been lower in our country. In America, prison expansion measures and the ‘tough on crime’ approach has met neither public health nor criminal justice goals. Instead these measures have led to the widespread incarceration of racialized communities and people living in poverty, while creating greater inequality and exacerbating the HIV epidemic.

The Zeidler’s are well known in Toronto as city builders. In the past, your firm has been responsible for designing key landmarks in Toronto including Ontario Place, the Eaton Center, and the refurbished Gladstone Hotel. According to your website, you  “ believe that a building must fulfil the functional and economic requirements that the owners intend it to serve but, at the same time it must evoke a positive emotional response from its users and the public at large". However, now Ziedler Partnership Architects is responsible for bringing the American invention of prefabricated prison cells to Ontario as part of a $593 million contract with other companies including Elis Don Corporation and Fengate Capital. The new Toronto South Detention Centre designed by your firm is being built in prefabricated sections as inspired by the Tindall Corp. who are responsible for building many private American prisons. According to Alan Munn, a senior partner of your firm when interviewed for the Toronto Star: “you stack it up and the building's basically done”.

In Canada, people from Indigenous and racialized communities are the most targeted and over-incarcerated group. The growth of prisons will only see an increase in the discrimination, policing and imprisonment of members of these communities. Additionally, queer and trans communities, the poor and homeless, drug-users, non-status people, sex worker and other marginalized communities face a heightened risk of incarceration. Additionally, infectious disease rates such as those for HIV can be up-to 10 times higher in prison than they are in the community as a whole.  This public health crisis demands a response from the Harper government that is based on scientific evidence, sound public-health principles and a respect for human rights.

While Harper expands prisons and firms like Zeidler Partnership Architects profit off the imprisonment of marginalized Canadians with disastrous public health and human rights outcomes, Canada continues to be the only G-8 country to not have a national housing strategy. This is a shameful situation and firms like Zeidler should be critical of the detrimental outcomes that supporting prison expansion will lead to in Canada.

I call on you, Zeidler Partnership Architects, to stay true your socially responsible mission and stop playing a key role in the Canadian prison industrial complex.  End your contracts to design prisons and design housing for people who need it. We need housing not jails!

Sincerely,

[Your name here]

Rally Against Police Brutality - Tuesday March 15th



Tuesday March 15th — 5PM
51 Division (Front and Parliament St.)

One week last summer the police turned the whole City into a prison. But
in poor neighbourhoods, it’s the G20 everyday. Communities are under
attack by the Police because they are poor, homeless, racialized, First
Nations and immigrants. We are further abused when we fight back. Our
communities are under attack because the police exist to maintain a social
order in this country that protects the government, the banks, and the
rich while criminalizing the rest.

Despite the trillions of dollars stolen, embezzled and extorted by banks
and finance companies that led to this recession, the police are not in
the habit of kicking down doors on Bay St. But they are kicking down
doors, ticketing, arresting, beating and killing people in poor
communities.

March 15th is the International Day Against Police Brutality. A day to
bring awareness to the violence, torture, intimidation and harassment by
our governments' Police Forces. We, the people, the victims and the
survivors will come together to raise our voices to show that we will not
stay silent!

The Toronto Star recently revealed that of the 3,400 investigations the
Special Investigations Unit has conducted into the Toronto Police in its
20-year history, only 95 have resulted in charges, only 16 of those in
convictions, and only 3 of those officers actually went to jail.

Yet we know the police are guilty. Homeless people and people with mental
health issues are routinely harassed, beaten and sometimes killed by
police in this city. Non-status women seeking a safe haven from abuse are
dragged out of shelters by Immigration enforcement officers on tips from
two regular sources: the police, and the very abusers these women are
attempting to escape. Racialized communities are targeted daily by police.

As part of this internationally observed day, a rally has been organized
for Tuesday March 15th. We will be meeting outside of 51 Division at Front
& Parliament. OCAP and other community organizations invite everyone to
come out and show support for victims of Police violence.

No more Police brutality! No more impunity!

~As organized by several community groups, call for more info!
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty ocap@tao.ca 416-925-6939

Member of TDUU's speech at the rally against Prison Expansion

Hi my name is Shawn Gibb. I’m here today as a member of the Toronto Drug Users Union and as a prisoner, currently attending drug treatment court and getting ready to serve this weekend. I have been in the program 7 and a half months. I’m just moving on to my next phase and finding it a struggle to not use drugs. The program expects you to be abstinent and to attend all drug treatment sessions which run three days a week.  I stand in front of a judge twice a week. If you happen to miss any sessions you are sanctioned with community service hours or to serve a weekend. I entered the program to try and better myself but at the same time I should have just gone in and did my time for the simple fact it’s a struggle. They have a lot of expectations. They expect you to change your lifestyle, give you strategies to cope with not using but when you leave there it’s a struggle cause you’re on the streets and every where you go drugs are there. If they catch you in a lie you automatically get thrown in. The intense part is having to go do urine screens while someone’s watching you. It’s very humiliating.

Financially I’m on welfare, it’s hard to survive. While you’re in drug treatment court you are not allowed to work. Eventually, once you get closer to graduating they expect you to go get part time work. When I’m offered work I have to turn it down because I’m in the program.
If you miss a urine. You get sent to jail. Every time you go in, it sets you back. It’s depressing.
I need help with my housing, I need help financially, when the opportunities are there you get turned away. I’ve been turned away in the past year so much. Even finding a doctor is a struggle.

What I’m asking for is for someone to look at the lifestyle a drug user lives in and don’t degrade them, find out the lifestyle a drug user is living. A lot of people don’t’ seem to understand if you’re raised on the streets you’re gonna do what you know. I grew up in poverty. My mother raised 3 children on her on, on welfare as well and we went hungry and still to this day I’ve gone to a food bank and they couldn’t help me cause they didn’t have food. I go hungry.

I would like the government to get rid of poverty. Lets find a way to get rid of poverty.
People who use drugs who need help need to not be turned away. We need to create more services for those people so they can get the help when they need it. This doesn’t happen right now. Drugs should be seen as a health and social issue not a criminal issue. It is a waste of taxpayers money to send drug users to prison instead of helping people with what they need.

Protesters rally against Conservative government's planned anti-crime legislation

Protesters rally against Conservative government's planned anti-crime legislation



On Thursday, prison reformers launched an attack on the federal government's plan to implement minimum penalties for "serious drug offences" and increase the maximum penalty for cannabis production.
Bill S-10, an Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) was introduced in the Senate last May. A similar bill, Bill C-15 died in December 2009 when parliament was prorogued which is almost identical to Bill C-26, which died in December 2008 when parliament was dissolved.
The Prison Moratorium Action Coalition, organizers of Thursday's rally, formed in resistance to the new legislation and expansion of prisons in Canada. They believe that tax payer money be spent on much needed social justice initiatives like housing, child poverty and settling Indigenous land-claims rather than putting forward a "tough on crime agenda."
Sandra Chu, Senior Policy Analyst with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network predicts that based upon what happened in the United States, Bill S-10 will be "a complete disaster" because it throws drug users into prisons where there are no harm reduction measures in place.
In prison, where sufficient needle and syringe programs for addicts or tattooists don't exist, HIV is 15 times higher than in the community at large and almost four in ten people are infected with hepatitis C.
"But the government refuses to implement these (harm reduction measures) because they see it as encouraging drug use behind bars," said Chu, "and we know that it's not true."
The Conservative plan to introduce minimum penalties will also add significantly to the expenses of the criminal justice system where it already costs over $100,000 per year to house an inmate in a federal institution. Medium and minimum security inmates cost more than $70,000 a year.
 
If Bill S-10 became law it would surely trigger a surge in new prison construction costing taxpayers billions of dollars, since our federal and provincial prisons are already filled to capacity.
"Investing money into building prisons is not investing in our communities," said Zoe Dodd, a member of the Prison Moratorium Action Coalition. "Nine billion dollars could go to invest in our communities for education and social programs."
Kai’enne Tymerik, with the Toronto Raver Information Project, an organization that provides services to the dance community and beyond, said she sees "young people with mental health issues struggling to self medicate when they are too young and isolated to know what services there are available."
So they use drugs to connect with others in the same situation.
"Between the Valium, Ativan, Prozac, Viagra, alcohol, tobacco and coffee, we are all drug users," she said. In 1916, Ontario passed a law to prohibit the sale of alcohol because "alcohol was popularly criticized as being the cause of all the major ills of society."
But the cost of keeping the drug illegal far outweighed the benefits and in 1927 prohibition was repealed.
Over the last 10 years, prison reformers say, the number of women incarcerated has jumped 50 per cent. "That will only get worse under the Conservatives," said Dodd. "And these women are mostly poor, homeless and struggling with issues of substance abuse."
In the Netherlands, nine prisons were closed after they decriminalized drugs. "These are the strategies that we should be looking for in our communities," she said. "Instead, our prisons have become a warehouse for people living with mental health issues and substance abuse problems."
Prisons are not a place, Dodd reminded the crowd, where people should be housed. But Canada doesn't have a national housing strategy so prisons have become a convenient substitute for affordable housing and a perpetual source of income for all those involved directly or indirectly in the prison system.
Even though Bill S-10 will allow courts not to impose mandatory sentences if offenders complete a Drug Treatment Court (DTC) program, Dodd said, it's just "another way to cast the net wider and keep you engaged in their system longer."
Shawn Gibb, a member of the Toronto Drug Users Union and a prisoner, has been in the DTC program for seven and a half months. Standing on the steps of Old City Hall in Toronto before a crowd of 70 supporters, Gibb admitted he's been struggling trying to stay away from drugs because he enjoys smoking marijuana.
Three days a week, he attends drug treatment sessions and if he misses a session he'll be sanctioned with community service hours or forced to serve a weekend in prison. Although Gibb entered the program to "better himself," he now feels he may have been better off just serving his time.
The expectations are high, he said, and it's humiliating to have to do urine screens while someone is hovering over you.
Gibb gets by for now on welfare because he's not allowed to work while he's in the DTC program. He's even had to turn down job offers.
"It's depressing," said Gibb, who grew up on welfare with his two siblings. "I need help with my housing. I need help financially. Even finding a doctor is almost impossible."
Look at a drug user's life, said Gibb, and try to imagine what it's like.
And then try to imagine how close Canada was to decriminalizing marijuana back in the 70s. But when the United States began its futile war on drugs under the Reagan administration, Canada was forced to play along.
Besides minimum penalties for "serious drug offences," Bill S-10 also introduces mandatory minimum punishments for the production of cannabis depending upon the number of marijuana plants produced.
The proposed changes are due, in part, to the Canadian perception that sentencing for drug crimes "is treated as a minor cost of doing business." In a 2007 National Justice Survey, two thirds of those surveyed said that "they support the strengthening of sentencing laws and tougher penalties for serious drug offenders. Approximately one quarter of Canadians endorse minimum mandatory sentences even for relatively minor crimes."
It's no surprise that mandatory minimum sentences also have the support of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Opponents of the bill say that the measures could turn Canadian prisons into "U.S.-style inmate warehouses" with no allowance for mitigating circumstances and the increased costs to run prisons will pull much needed funds away from social programs that are designed to keep people out of prison in the first place.
An alternative approach promoted by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), who believe that existing drug policies have failed curb drug abuse, crime and addiction, is to move towards a system of regulation rather than prohibition.
"A lot of marijuana users end up in the prison system for small amounts of pot," said Dodd, "and I don't think ingesting a substance should throw anyone behind bars."
(Even former prime minister Paul Martin admitted that he and his wife Sheila tried hash brownies in Montreal during the 60s.)
Davin Christensen, a member of Toronto Hash Mob 420, a loose collection of marijuana enthusiasts who protest pot prohibition, said the proposed bill will put a lot his friends in prison for participating in "a safe activity, less harmful than alcohol or even caffeine."
In the past three years, Christensen has been through the system three times for various cannabis related crimes. Under the new laws, he'd still be serving a prison sentence.
"Even the pot bakers, those cute girls in the kitchen that are doing the baking for us, are now going to be receiving mandatory minimums," said Christensen.

Tory Bill S-10 sucks

Media from the Anti-Prison demo we were invovled in.
 
 
 
 
Time to kill a bill enforcing mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses
There are more drug users walking along the busy Queen Street sidewalk than there are gathered on the steps of Old City Hall for a formal anti-drug law protest.
Check your pockets: aspirin, Adderall, Viagra, Ritalin, cigarettes. Even that cup of coffee warming your hands on this frigid, rainy day contains an addictive caffeine.
You get the point. “We are all drug users,” Kai’enne Turmerik from the safe drug org Trip Project, shouts into the microphone at this rally hosted by the Prison Moratorium Action Coalition, Thursday afternoon (March 10).
The group of 40 is here to protest the Tories’ tough-on-crime laws that are swelling Canada’s prison system with non-violent offenders and specifically, Bill S-10, which aims to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act so that there are mandatory-minimum sentences for drug offences. (Think one year for six pot plants).
The bill is currently in its third reading and awaiting royal assent before it passes as law likely sometime this month.
Other voices in the amped-up crowd include a sex worker from Maggie’s, reps from the Toronto Sex Workers Action Project calling for the decriminalization of sex work, an activist from Toronto Hash Mob and a young mother recalling the 12 months she spent incarcerated back in 2006.
All are demanding that the federal government direct attention to community-based response programs, like providing education and rehabilitation to inmates and the funnelling of money into building communities, not prisons.
According to the NDP public safety critic, Don Davies, whom NOW calls later, the Conservative government will spend $500 million on prison construction next year. At the same time, says Davies, rehabilitation programs like the Youth Gang Prevention Fund, which works to keep at-risk youth out of gangs and costs the federal government $6.5 million a year to maintain in penitentiaries, will be cut at the end of the month.
This, he says, is “absolutely immoral” and “stupid economics,” especially because the average annual cost of maintaining a male inmate in a maximum-security prison is $223,687 (females are $343,810 per year), according to a 2008-2009 report from the Parliamentary Budget Office.
When the Conservatives took power in 2006, there were 12,500 people in federal custody. Today, the toll is around 13,500, even though statistically speaking, crime rates have declined 17 percent since 1999, according to a Stats Can report.
“The problem with mandatory minimum sentences is that it’s a one-size-fits all approach,” Davies adds. “Everyone goes to prison, it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are.”
Dealing with the skyrocketing rate of re-offenders as well as strained budgets due to housing the influx of inmates, is why many U.S. states are back-peddling on the tough-on-crime laws that were implemented 25 years ago, he says.
“We know there’s no jurisdiction in the world that has seen its crime rate come down and recidivism lowered by locking more people up for longer periods of time. In fact it’s the opposite.’’
The increase in numbers of incarcerated Canadians, says U of T criminologist, Anthony Doob, is partly due to the fed’s passage of the Truth in Sentencing Act in 2010, which limits the credit inmates receive for time served while awaiting and facing trial, as well as imposed restrictions on conditional sentencing (delineating rules an offender must follow in order to remain out of prison.)
It’s still too early to asertain, he says, whether the Harper government’s 2008 Tackling Violent Crime Act, with its harsher mandatory minimum sentences for firearm offenses, is responsible for expanding the federal prison population.
“Increasing punishment doesn’t make communities safer,’’ says Doob. “People need to realize there is a better use of money than putting it into prisons.’’
Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland calls Bill S-10 an “outrageous piece of legislation.’’ He says that the government should instead focus in investing in a plan to deal with mental health and addictions, citing that over 80 per cent of inmates suffer from these problems that are at the root of many crimes.
Back at the rally, Ryerson social work students, Nick Carveth, a recovered addict, and Simona Babiak stick around after the speeches to explain why they’re here. Someday, they’d both like to work with youth coping with substance abuse, and find long-term realistic solutions. “Not put them though the prison system,’’ says Babiak angrily.

Interview with TotalHype

IInterview with Zoe from TDUU
conducted by Donna Feb.23, 2011

What is T.D.U.U?

TDUU is the Toronto Drug Users Union. We formed 2 years ago to advocate for our own rights. Drug users have been organizing themselves since the 60’s. It’s important for drug users to organize. Decisions, policies, laws are created every day that impact our daily lives, these decisions are more than often made without us.


Why does it exist?

Drug users are some of the most vilified, scapegoated, over incarcerated, targeted, marginalized people in our society. The war on drugs is actually a war on us. It is a failed war and one that needs to end. Billions of dollars are spent every day keeping the War alive. Instead of investing in this war, we should be using this money to invest in communities. We as drug users need to be organizing ourselves for our own self representation and self empowerment. Liberation never came to those from the oppressed groups who didn’t fight for it. We need to be fighting for our human rights! We have been hard hit by the epidemics of HIV and Hepatitis C, we have lost our family members and friends to violence, overdose and death. We are subjected to archaic drug laws all because we ingest a substance. The illegal nature of what we do puts us at risk for many things. We have a voice! There are drug users sitting on committees, involved in the creation of policies that will affect our daily lives, who are they accountable to? and who do they represent? Being part of a union means you are accountable to us and that’s how it should be.

Who is on it?

We have over 90 registered members. We come from all different backgrounds. Some of us are current users, some of us are former users, we are different ages, genders, ethnicities, some of us smoke crack, some of us inject, etc etc. We are all different but we all have one common thread… we are current and former drug users who want to be treated with dignity, with humanity and we want the war on people who use drugs to end.

Why are you involved?

I started using drugs really early on in my life. I experimented a lot as a teenager but when I was 15 I had a lot of really intense things happen to me. They were really hard to cope with and I used drugs more heavily to help me through those years. I always enjoyed doing drugs, the experience, the pleasure and they worked as an amazing escape. In my early twenties I decided I couldn’t handle my life as it was any more and I wanted to do something different. I came to Toronto with a few months of sobriety under my belt. I felt extremely guilty, self loathing, isolated, depressed. I knew I was young and I knew I didn’t want to stay “sober” for ever. I felt ashamed of shit that I had done and shit that had happened to me. I was living a big secret when I came here, no one knew the secrets I was keeping. In 2004, I decided to go to college. I never thought for a moment that I would ever go to college. I was really poor, had little direction and felt pretty lost. Going back to school changed my life. It was while I was in school challenging someone about drug use that I first admitted publically about being a drug user and I blurted out in class “drugs saved my fucking life!”. I believe that. I know that using drugs through some pretty traumatic stuff helped keep me alive. In 2005 I started publically talking about my own personal drug use. I started talking to Raffi about drug user activism and he encouraged me to get involved. I was doing lots of coalition work and activism in the community, needle exchange, the safer crack use coalition, hepatitis C advocacy and education, the crack users project.  I joined the International Network of People Who Use Drugs and felt super empowered. It’s empowering being around like minded people who are fighting for their own liberation from this war.
The illegal nature of drugs has also taken many of my friends away. The first overdose I witnessed was when I was 13. I lost my first love to an overdose when I first moved here, his name was Darryl. I have lost so many important people in my life from overdose, violence and incarceration. It fuels me to want to fight this war on us and end it. I want to see a day where we aren’t casualties in this war but where we are all thriving, not just surviving. This is why I am involved with the Drug Users Union. To fight for OUR human rights! For all people who use drugs.

What are the main things that T.D.U.U are working on?

We are on the city of Toronto’s drug strategy implementation panel. We are involved in an anti-stigma campaign. We have been asked to speak at conferences, consult on projects. We are involved with AIDS ACTION NOW!, opposing prison expansion, involved in the methadone project being carried out with CounterFIT, our members are  harm reduction workers, our members are working on other projects with awesome organizations like the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force, Queen West Community Health Centre, TRIP to name a few. We are involved with organizing a demo being held March 10 at Old City Hall courts at noon to oppose the prison expansion, we are also involved with organizing a demo for March 15, International Anti- Police Brutality Day. We are building a movement!

What is a typical meeting like?

 A typical meeting involves about 30 people, we have food and shoot the shit for a few minutes and then we get to business. We discuss issues in the community and then move on to our agenda. We sometimes have guest speakers, to educate us on certain topics. We discuss our priorities, and give report backs on the work we are involved in. They are pretty lively discussions. We try and share roles, taking turns chairing, taking minutes etc. We offer TTC for those who need it. We also attend other meetings, demos and events on a regular basis as union representatives.  

When is it and where (time of meeting and location)?

We meet the second Thursday of the month from 2-4pm at South Riverdale Community Health centre in the A/B room. If you are a current or former drug user, are committed to the principles of harm reduction and want to fight for the health and human rights for people who use drugs, please join us!!!

Last thoughts?

 Thanks for the interview Donna!! We want to build our union stronger and bigger. We have just applied for some more money which will help us in our organizing efforts. One day we’d love to be able to hire a community organizer to assist with all the amazing work we are involved in. Nothing about us with out us!!!!


Sunday, March 6, 2011

Build Homes! Not Prisons!

What Could we be Building Instead??
The Prison Moratorium Action Coalition calls for the defeat of Bill S-10 and for a halt to the planned prison expansion!


Please Join us on March 10th to confront the Government's planned prison expansion and their 'anti-crime' legislation! We will be marching from Old City Hall to other locations in Toronto central to the prison expansion plans to voice our anger about the further criminalization of communities in Toronto!

RALLY AND MARCH
Thursday, March 10th
Meet at Noon
Old City Hall Courthouse
60 Queen Street West, Toronto.


     We are speaking out at this particular moment to oppose the Conservative government’s push to enact legislation that will put their prison expansion to use. Bill S-10 is currently being debated in the House of Commons and, if passed, would implement mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences. Mandatory Minimums were also put in place in the U.S, where they proved to be unsuccessful in combating the War on Drugs. The construction of new prisons, while crime, and specifically violent crime, has been steadily decreasing over the past ten years, is a ludicrous idea. The severity of the majority of crimes has lessened. Both the property crime rate and the youth crime rate have also dropped. We know that this is a waste of taxpayer’s money and a waste of financial resources that could be allocated to more important needs. Opposing MPS are also beginning to realize, and a serious debate over Bill S-10, and the Conservative approach to Crime and Punishment, has begun.

We demand that all members of Parliament defeat all the new ‘anti-crime’ bills proposed by the Conservatives, conscious of the fact that this tactic of fighting crime has proven unsuccessful in America. We demand that the government scrap Bill S-10, focus on harm reduction programs, and begin treating drug use as a health matter, not a criminal matter. We further demand an increase in harm reduction services, and adequate health service, in prisons. We demand the decriminalization of sex work. We wish to see policy alternatives proposed; to see an end to overcrowding in prisons by decreasing incarceration as a strategy; to see the development of education and training programs for those incarcerated to develop tools and strategies for living post-incarceration.

Though the numbers continue to fluctuate, this expansion has an estimated 5 billion dollar price tag per year, and will total a 9 billion dollar expenditure before it’s finished. The Conservative government refuses to listen to reason and look at the facts laid out before them.  Community organizers like us, who witness the over-incarceration and criminalization of many communities in this city, are vehemently opposed to increasing prisons and the continuation of the prison industrial complex. Instead of developing programs that work through a restorative justice model, that consider alternatives in incarceration (which are also less costly), the Conservative government wants to put more and more people in prisons, at a cost of anywhere from $88,000- $250,000 per prisoner every year.

This tougher approach to crime adopted by the Conservatives is akin to that taken up by America in recent years, which led to overcrowding in prisons and a recent repealing of this approach, due to its obvious failure. Their planned prison expansion will be met by our anger and protest over an obvious misuse of public funds and a continuation of the historical and institutional oppression of marginalized communities through police violence, criminalization and over-incarceration. In Canada, people from Indigenous and racialized communities are the most targeted and over-incarcerated group in the prison industrial complex. The growth of prisons will only see an increase in the discrimination, policing and imprisonment of members of these communities. Additionally, queer and trans communities, the poor and homeless, drug-users, non-status people, sex workers, people living with HIV/AIDS and those with disabilities and mental health issues are targets for police violence, mistreatment and repression. They face a heightened risk of incarceration as well. The planned prison expansion will have serious consequences for many communities and people in our city.

As the Conservative government continues to push their ‘tough on crime’ agenda and while the debate continues over Bill S-10 in Parliament, the communities of Toronto, in conjunction with other cities, will not remain silent. We are here to voice our outrage and disgust at the Conservative agenda! We will not accept an agenda that will spend billions of dollars over the next few years on the expansion of prisons, diverting these funds from services like health care, education and social assistance, which are facing drastic and devastating cuts in the wake of a recession and brutal austerity measures.

BUILD HOMES, NOT PRISONS! FUND SOCIAL SERVICES, NOT PRISONS!