Monday, February 14, 2011

Prison Moratorium Action Coalition Meeting this Thursday evening

Statement from the Prison Moratorium Action Coalition:

Please join us on Thursday February 17  from  6-8 pm at the 519 Commuity Centre, 519 Church street, to contribute your ideas, thoughts and energy to organizing a rally and other demos/events directed at the federal government's proposed crime bill legislation and prison expansion.

We are a group of activists, ex-prisoners, drug users and activist scholars who believe that prisons do not make our community safer. In canada, people from Indigenous and racialized communities (Black and African diasporic people in particular) are the most targeted and over-incarcerated in the prison industrial complex (PIC). Additionally, queer and trans communities, people living with disabilities, people with mental health issues, homeless people, people who use drugs, people living with HIV/AIDS, non-status people are at greater risk of incarceration.

The canadian government is enacting legislation that will continue to incarcerate these populations but at a much faster rate. This includes Bill S-10 (mandatory minimum sentences for drug 'offences'). All evidence shows that mandatory minimum sentences do not work and only increase the repression of the War on Drugs and People Who Use Drugs (specifically Indigenous and Black communities). Furthermore, the canadian government has increased spending on the construction of new prisons to punish and control these populations despite falling crime rates and a decrease in the severity of crime.

We believe that the government knows what they are doing and despite its ineffectiveness continues to move in the direction of the united states whose tough on crime agenda is now bankrupting some u.s states.

The Prison Moratorium Action Coalition formed in resistance to the new legislation and expansion of prisons in canada. We demand that our tax payer money be spent on much needed social justice initiatives including: housing, child poverty, settling Indigenous land-claims, effective harm reduction programs, education, HIV/AIDS and HCV, programs for non-status people .....

For more information to sponsor this event please contact: PrisonMoratoriumACToronto@gmail.com

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