Building Solidarity with Queer and Trans Prisoners

This list is a follow up to YouthLine’s recent advocacy teach-in with the Prisoner Correspondence Project, Building Solidarity with Queer and Trans Prisoners. 

Introduction to prisons and the prison industrial complex: 

• Canada’s prison system is still vastly transphobic (Charlotte Dalwood, Xtra, January 4, 2024) 

• What It’s Like To Be A Trans Woman In A Men’s Prison Ft. Moka Dawkins (Queer Collective podcast, May 23, 2024) 

• Prisons are built on our backs (Cory Charles Cardinal, Briarpatch Magazine, September 2, 2021) 

• Prison Justice Activists in Ontario Shed Light on What Authorities Refuse to Disclose – Danielle Hurd and Heather McKeown (Abolition Journal, April 22, 2020) 

• Carceral Redlining: White Supremacy is a Weapon of Mass Incarceration for Indigenous and Black Peoples in Canada (Rai Reece, Yellowhead Institute, June 25, 2020) 

• Disability and the Prison System (Trish Mills, Briarpatch Magazine, September , 2023) 

• What is prison like? Prisoner’s HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (YouTube, January 30, 2012) 

• COMMONS WORK #10 – Prison Labour Industrial Complex (CanadaLand, May 22, 2024) 

Thinking deeper about prison justice and abolition: 

• Police Abolition 101 zine (Interrupting Criminalization and Project NIA, 2021) 

• What if there were no prisons or police? – El Jones for The Breach (December 2022) 

• Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba (Elias Rodriques, The Nation, March 29, 2021) 

• Prison Abolition in Canada Roundtable (Upping the Anti, Issue 4, October 26, 2009)  

• Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Robyn Maynard, 2017) 

Organizing for prison justice: 

• Penpal Solidarity (Madi Haslam, Briarpatch Magazine, February 26, 2018) 

• Organizing for Prison Abolition and Racial Justice on the Canadian Prairies (Jake Pesaruk, Canadian Dimension, October 13, 2021) 

• Building an Abolitionist Ethic: A Roundtable with the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project (Karl Gardner, Upping the Anti, Issue 23, January 23, 2023) 

• Prisoners’ Justice Day (From Embers podcast, August 10, 2019) 

• Report from Montreal’s NYE Noise Demo (From Embers podcast, January 18, 2025) 

Resistance and organizing in prisons: 

• Our neighbors to the north: A brief history of prisons and resistance to them in so-called Canada (It’s Going Down, February 21, 2018) 

• The case for a prisoners’ union (Jordan House and Asaf Rashid, Briarpatch Magazine, February 27, 2023) 

• “Chip away at it”: A year of COVID-era hunger strikes in Canadian prisons (MJ Adams, Briarpatch Magazine, July 5, 2021) 

Words and art from prisoners in Canada: 

• Ear Hustle Extra: Pride Month Special (June 21, 2023) 

• Female Keep Separate: Prisons, Gender, and the Violence of Inclusion (anonymous, 2020)  

• The Prison Abolition Issue – Briarpatch Magazine (September/October 2021) 

• Women’s Prison Network zine archive 

• The Penal Press — A History of Prison from Within 

• ABO Comix 

Further reading: 

• Critical Resistance: Resource Guide for Teaching and Learning Abolition (August 2021) 

• Against Punishment Curriculum: Building Your Abolitionist Toolbox with Mariame Kaba (Interrupting Criminalization, 2021)