August 12, 2025

Tonight, we're going to take gender diversity for granted. We're going to say that trans people are real, and we're going to talk about the facts that are behind linear stories. We'll be speaking to transactivists, legal scholars, as well as lawyers who work on this topic, to provide a different perspective than what's being discussed in corporate media. 

On the two-year anniversary of the latest escalation of violence in Gaza, this episode turns its focus to solidarity with the Palestinian people. We open with major breaking news: Israel's naval forces have intercepted a large international humanitarian flotilla — the largest of its kind yet — detaining approximately 3,500 activists from over 40 countries, including high-profile figures like Greta Thunberg and MEP Rima Hassan, as well as two Canadian citizens. A released American activist describes harrowing conditions in Israeli detention. We then move into our feature segment: a roundtable discussion marking the 50th anniversary of the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners.

Today, we'll be airing a radio documentary we made back in May 2019. 
Somehow, the documentary never made it into our archives, and so we wanted to share it here again. The documentary talks about the new prison for migrants that was being built at the time, and the alternatives, the detention program that was being rolled out alongside the prison construction project. It also talks about the resistance to the prison construction that happened in Montreal in Laval in 2018 and 2019. 

Today is the prisoner's justice state episode on prison radio show.  This year we are celebrating 50 years of prisoners Justice Day. We will be airing audio from the prisoners justice day events that took place in Montreal on Prisoners Justice Day on Sunday, August 10th. 

This inaugural episode of a very special series called Prison Radio Internationale. From those of you who may be new listeners, Prison Radio is a bi-weekly show at CKUT that brings you news and stories about people who are incarcerated in prisons and struggling against the greater prison industrial complex. Usually our show focusses on issues based in where our listeners live. 
In Canada and the United States. But this summer, 2 of our members were lucky enough to travel throughout Europe and do some deep dive reporting into the conditions of people facing the violence of prisons, policing, and borders there. We got to interview some amazing people and organizations who are on the front line of resistance against these car social systems in their local communities. 
There is a lot we can learn from their work that can be applied to our situation in Canada. Welcome to Prison Radio International.

This episode is focussing on prisoners justice day. It's the 50th prisoners justice day that just went by on Sunday, August 10th, and we are focussing this episode and highlighting what prisoners justice day is. 

This episode covers a panel discussion on prison labour in Canada. Key points include that prisoner pay has been frozen at a maximum of $6.90/day since 1981, that the work prisoners do is effectively forced labour with real economic value, and that there is an ongoing legal effort to have prisoners recognized as employees with the right to unionize. Panellists include a government investigator, academics, a formerly incarcerated activist, and a labour lawyer, all arguing that the current treatment of prisoner workers is exploitative and in need of reform.

This episode covers the criminalization of Indigenous land defense, provides a news update on Ontario provincial prison conditions, and discusses policies and realities faced by incarcerated trans persons, hearing from lawyers, activists, and scholars working and advocating in this area.

Today we're airing audio from the Final Straw Radio which airs on Asheville FM in North Carolina.  Their show on June 23rd featured 2 interviews one talking about the annual "Shut'em Down Week of Action", called by jailhouse lawyer speak for December of this year and one talking with Monsour Owolabi sharing some perspectives on inside outside collaboration, the role of isolation in prisons as counterinsurgency, and the importance of transitional housing projects.  We will start with the interview about JLS Jailhouse Lawyer Speak's Week of Action this interview features Courtney from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee as well as Rock a communications bridge for JLS and residential manager at the JLS transition house.  Rock talks about that transition house project in the interview as well.   As always the audio from the previous show bleeds into the start of this one! We are trying to catch up with a year of shows that have been absent in our podcast feed and so we have been downloading directly from the CKUT archives and posting here. The way the archives work, there is often a minute or two of the previous show at the start of the hour.

 Today's episode features a book launch event that took place on April 11th at the Shift Centre.  The book is titled "Defund: Conversations towards abolition" published by Haymarket Books.  The book features the collection of interviews with prison abolitionist organizers and thinkers on how to bridge the divide between reform and abolition.  Calvin John Smiley is the books author; he's also a professor of Sociology at City University in New York.  We will hear today on the show from Calvin John smiley in conversation with Freeman of the Termite Collective you will also hear Kelly Struthers Montford introduced the speakers, but first here's the present radio show news compiled by one of our collective members.   As always the audio from the previous show bleeds into the start of this one! We are trying to catch up with a year of shows that have been absent in our podcast feed and so we have been downloading directly from the CKUT archives and posting here. The way the archives work, there is often a minute or two of the previous show at the start of the hour.