One of the core features of authoritarian systems is the monopoly over the legitimate use of power. Only the authorities are allowed to exercise it. While prison is inherently an authoritarian institution, it is important to be able to recognize it as a microcosm of the ways that more encompassing systems function in our purportedly democratic state. The idea that power is rooted in a people’s consensus is but a fiction manufactured to elicit both complacency and complicity.

The last piece that I posted on this subject was written in this prison a couple of months ago, before I’d been thrown into “the hole” on administrative segregation. I wrote about the prison’s banning of reading material, which they have classified as “anarchist.” Security here has been removing such items from my mail. Prior to that posting I had written about a newly enforced policy at the CNCC that functionally prevents books from being sent in from the outside.

[January 26th 2013]

Originally posted on Narrative Resistance - http://alexhundert.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/no-books-for-prisoners-part-4/ reposted now as it turns out prisoners in segregation have even less access to books...

I did not want to have to write this. I have another post completed that is a call-out for support for the Oshkimaadziig Camp, an Anishinabek reclamation, decolonization, and unity camp located just over twelve kilometers, by foot or vehicle, from this prison on the other side of Penetang Harbor. As a non-native settler, I was planning to implore people to support the camp with funds, supplies, and solidarity. I would much rather have posted that piece, but it will have to wait until next week.

Update: Alex has been moved back to general population.

January 18

I am not a person Indigenous to this land. I am a settler imprisoned in a colonial institution, the Central North Correctional Centre, commonly referred to as the Penetang Prison, a provincial prison built on Anishinabek land. This superjail in Penetanguishene is located by Georgian Bay’s Penetang Harbor. Across the harbour is Awenda Provincial Park, which is the current site of the Oshkimaadziig Camp, just over 12 kilometres away by foot or vehicle. As we enter the winter season behind these walls, the camp enters its first winter in the park, reoccupying and reclaiming sacred ground. This winter too, across the country, the Idle No More movement is gaining ground.

On January 11, more than a dozen imprisoned people at Ontario’s Central North Correctional Centre were to stage a one-day hunger strike against provincial austerity measures, specifically the cutting of the Community Startup and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB), a grant provided by Ontario Works for people in immediate need of resources for housing costs and assistance re-establishing themselves in the community. This cut inherently targets imprisoned people and people getting out of other institutions as well as people who are trying to lead a peaceful household and any poor or marginalized people trying to avoid finding themselves without a home.

The Central North Correctional Centre (CNCC) is a prison where it is practically impossible to discern who is in charge. The CNCC is also a prison characterized by the arbitrary abuse of authority by various levels of staff throughout the institution. And though the abuses may often be subtle, they do seem to be pervasive.

“No Justice, No Peace”

This piece was originally intended to be released by August 1st. It was first drafted in late July. However, in accordance with the wishes of the interviewee, who, despite having used an alias to conceal his identity, fears recriminations for telling this story. It seems rather fitting to delay publication though, for this way, the release can be timed in conjunction with Prison Justice Day 2012.

***

On Prisoners’ Justice Day in every jail in Canada and in prisons around the world inmates will go on a 24-hour hunger strike. We do this to remember Eddy Nolan who died in Millhaven Penitentiary in Ontario on August 10th 1974 as a victim of the inhumane conditions in that prison at that time. We do this to remember all of the inmates who fought and the two who died in a four day riot in April of 1971 at Kingston Penitentiary. Both of those incidents led to major reforms in the Canadian prison system. We fast so that we ourselves remember. We strike to remind the institutions and the world that even behind bars we are still entitled to human rights and human dignity, and we can still fight for both.