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:
arichardson@zeidlerpartnership.com, dventere@zeidlerpartnership.com, gstein@zeidlerpartnership.com, jhenze@zeidlerpartnership.com, pzhang@zeidlerpartnership.com, reley@zeidlerpartnership.com, rnemeth@zeidlerpartnership.com, scarruthers@zeidlerpartnership.com, amunn@zeidlerpartnership.com, ezeidler@zeidlerpartnership.com, vbanelis@zeidlerpartnership.com, telkhatib@zeidlerpartnership.com, Acheung@zeidlerpartnership.com, avafa@zeidlerpartnership.com, ifarlie@zeidlerpartnership.com, llokk@zeidlerpartnership.com, mnelson@zeidlerpartnership.com, tfairlie@zeidlerpartnership.com, tli@zeidlerpartnership.com, thuebener@zeidlerpartnership.com , vliu@zeidlerpartnership.com, fkwok@zeidlerpartnership.com, mpalmer@zeidlerpartnership.com, scarroll@zeidlerpartnership.com, smussells@zeidlerpartnership.com, acaspi@zeidlerpartnership.com, jastrug@zeidlerpartnership.com, msmith@zeidlerpartnership.com, alitovitz@zeidlerpartnership.com, dcollins@zeidlerpartnership.com, ewong@zeidlerpartnership.com, gwunsch@zeidlerpartnership.com, jchalklin@zeidlerpartnership.com, krobinson@zeidlerpartnership.com, lchow@zeidlerpartnership.com, lwright@zeidlerpartnership.com, mmadsen@zeidlerpartnership.com, rjohnson@zeidlerpartnership.com, zspodek@zeidlerpartnership.com
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,
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