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Inmates at some federal prisons and provincial jails on the Prairies plan to participate in a hunger strike on July 1 in memory of the children whose unmarked graves were confirmed at former residential school sites.
Several individuals incarcerated at the federal Edmonton Institution and Saskatchewan Penitentiary and at the Regina, Saskatoon and Pine Grove provincial jails have told advocate Sherri Maier, founder of Beyond Prison Walls Canada, that they plan to participate in the hunger strike on Thursday.
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Ministry officials indicated those who tested positive are now isolated in separate cells. But Cardinal says there s not much faith from those inside that the Ministry will be able to contain the virus as they feel the facility and many of its units are overcrowded. He says the pandemic has put more pressure on an already vulnerable population. During the last outbreak, there were a lot of inmates feeling helpless watching the COVID levels rise, he said.
The new cases have created an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear for those inside, he said.
Cory Charles Cardinal is a self-educated artist, writer and prisoner justice advocate incarcerated inside the Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre. He is the founder of Inmates for Human Conditions, a group of inmates advocating for better conditions inside Saskatchewan correctional centres. (Submitted by Abby Stadnyk)
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COVID and prisons: No walls, no borders in the workers’ struggle
By Johnnie Lewis posted on December 22, 2020
Texas
“It’s a nonviolent protest going on right now because the officers [in an unnamed Texas prison], in the middle of the coronavirus, have refused us electricity for several hours, no showers or anything.” The voice is that of an incarcerated human being on video taken inside a Texas prison. The grainy images show smoke wafting across the cellblock, where men shout in the dark.
Desperate to draw attention to their untenable situation, dozens on lockdown throughout the Texas prison system have started fires in their cellblocks and other living spaces, and made videos of the fires for family members, advocates, and media outside the walls. But even as COVID-19 rages 26,000 infections; 168 deaths, an undercount inside these walls, Texas prison administrators, similar to guards shown in the videos, “pay no attention.” In many of the videos, no fire alar