It's been quite the celebratory month here on unit 2F at Vanier institute for women. First was Easter, which we observed by eating huge hot breakfasts on Friday and Sunday. Some guards were perhaps a little too into it: I counted three of them wearing pink bunny ears. That's right, bunny ears. This got mixed reviews from the inmates but my favourite comment came from a woman sitting at my table who said, "They'd better be shitting out chocolate eggs or they can take those fucking things off." Indeed.

All out for Byron!
May 15, 2012
361 University Avenue
Toronto.

Hi everyone,

First of all, thank you so much for all the birthday wishes! I had a great day and I am going to tell you all about it in my next post.

Today, though, I want to talk about Byron Sonne. Byron was arrested on all kinds of serious (not to mention seriously trumped up) charges related to the 2010 G20 summit. for background information on the case, check out the excellent website http://www.freebyron.org.

Leah Henderson wrote these words and requested that they be posted here on Mandy's blog:

March 29, 2012

Why Me?

So, this can't normally be said in jail: everything has changed.
For those of you who don't know me, I am Mandy's co-accused and I've been on a maximum security range at Vanier for the last 100 days. I've been approximately 50 feet from Mandy (though not allowed to nor able to communicate with her) and the day-to-day that you've read about on this blog is very similar to what my experience has been.

Saturday, March 17

The past few days have been the worst yet. Since I got here, I've been putting a lot of effort into a few specific things: my health, a daily routine, responding to mail, working on the blog and other projects. Those things have been keeping me pretty grounded and okay. And now, one by one, they have all been dealt some pretty serious blows.

First, I got sick. I probably brought this upon myself by writing in a couple of letters how crappy it would be to get sick in here. "Knock on cardboard," I joked, "Knock on paper bag, that hasn't happened yet." Hah hah. A few days later I come down with the unit 2F cold, waking up in the middle of the night with a headache I could feel behind my eyes, in my ears and into my teeth.

I go south to stay with M and his family, and over the next week see a number of Lebanon's significant sites of resistance and victory over the Zionist occupation of southern Lebanon, including a former prison known for its torturing of prisoners, and various villages where Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance party, waged a resistance that eventually, in May 2000, drove the Zionists out of Lebanon. The sites and scars of the 34 day 2006 Israeli bombardment of Lebanon are remembered throughout the south and much of Lebanon.

Ok, I've re-sent this blog post twice through the mail and have waited over three weeks for it to arrive. It still hasn't arrived. here it is, dictated over the phone.