September 24, 2024

This episode featured audio from a conference called Abolitionist Initimicies that happened from June 29-July 1, 2024 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Information on the conference can be found here: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/events/view/abolitionist-intimacies-symposium

The panel we aired is the following:

Incarcerated Workers and the Labour Movement: Asserting the Fundamental Rights of Prisoners by Asaf Rashid

Unionization can alter the power imbalance between prisoners and the administration. As part of a larger push to support captive and precarious worker organizing, the labour movement's involvement in prisoner struggles for labour rights and freedom is crucial. Any such organizing by prisoners can only be achieved with outside support, including from the labour movement. Prisoners' labour conditions are inseparable from their conditions of incarceration, so when prisoners organize as workers, they can address fundamental issues of liberty and decarceration as well. The workshop will discuss strategies for getting incarcerated workers on the labour movement's agenda and supporting ongoing efforts by prisoners to unionize.