[van-announce] Demo & Forum-Harm Reduction 4 Prisoners!

[Anti-Poverty Committee]

-Please post to all contacts-



                 Justice for Prisoners –Public forum-
                     Tuesday August 9th @ 6:30pm
                   50 East Hastings (VANDU Office)

We invite you to a public forum on the struggle to implement harm
reduction practices within Canadian prisons. The panel will feature many
individuals who have, from inside and outside prison walls, fought for
prisoners rights. Organizations that will be represented are:

Justice For Girls - a non-profit organization that promotes freedom from
violence, social justice and equality for teenage girls who live in
poverty. www.justiceforgirls.org

Amber Dean - The author of ‘Locking Them Up to Keep Them ‘Safe’:
Criminalized girls in British Columbia.

BC Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS- a research organization who has
issued many reports on the worsening epidemic. www.cfenet.ubc.ca

West Coast Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society - an organization of
indigenous people that advocates anti-colonial solutions to the
devastation of poverty.

Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users - A peer-run organization of current
and former illicit drug users working to improve the lives of poor drug
users. www.vandu.org

Anti-Poverty Committee - A group of poor and working poor people who fight
against the BC Liberals and capitalism by any means necessary.
http://apc.resist.ca/home

Admission is free, but we do ask you bring a book that will be donated to
'Books 4 Prisoners'.

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                     March Against Health Canada
                      Tuesday August 09 @ 2pm
                   Victory Square (Cambie & Hastings)

HARM REDUCTION FOR PRISONERS NOW!

Come and march for prisoners’ human rights!  Protest Health Canada’s
refusal to establish needle exchanges in prisons and the government’s
ongoing complacency to the crimes of Correctional Services Canada.

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For more info on these two events please visit http://apc.resist.ca/home

For more info on Prisoners Justice Day and the events organized for August
10th please visit www.prisonjustice.ca
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(A word from the organizing committee)

For too long, the Canadian prison-industrial complex has remained
peripheral to the discussions, analysis and strategizing of many on the
left.   While we sit silently, thousands of poor people suffer behind
bars.  This suffering – the violation of every imaginable human right – is
perhaps best captured by the way that the agencies responsible for the
health of prisoners seem to have made every last effort to sustain and
exacerbate what can only be described as an epidemiological crisis.  HIV
and HCV transmission rates in federal and provincial institutions are on
the rise with intravenous drug use being one of the leading means of
infection.  The lack of any meaningful harm reduction policies or
prevention plans leads us to conclude that both Health Canada (HC) and
Correctional Service Canada (CSC) have decided that the health of inmates
– by and large poor people and people of colour – does not matter.

Many inmates who are incarcerated because of drug charges continue to use
drugs with little to no access to health or addictions services.  Others,
incarcerated for poverty-driven property crimes or other petty crimes,
turn to drugs as a source of comfort or solace in an environment that is
increasingly crowded, violent and repressive.  Since clean syringes are
considered contraband in Canadian prisons, intravenous drug users (IDUs)
are forced to share dull, dirty and barbed needles with countless others
over and over again, thereby increasing the spread of diseases such as HIV
and Hep-C within the prison population.

Upon the inmates’ release from prison, often back into a life of poverty,
the diseases do not stay behind but continue on.  Currently in the DTES,
21% of IDU’s with HIV contracted the disease while in prison.  The rates
of HCV infection are likely much higher.  The diseases they contracted
while wards of CSC become population health problems when they are
released into the community with little or no harm reduction and/or
prevention education.  To make matters worse, many are released unaware of
the blood-borne pathogen they contracted while incarcerated.  And so the
partnership of silence and ignorance between Health Canada and CSC drives
what has reached epidemic proportions in ghettoes and reserves across
Canada.

We do not believe that reforming the brutal system of imprisonment will
change this system of social inequality that creates capitalism’s need for
prisons. We understand that social inequality has forced many people into
financial situations that conflict with the laws of capitalism (i.e. laws
that place property rights above human rights). It is not a coincidence
that Canadian prisons warehouse a disappropriate amount of girls, women
and aboriginal people. The Canadian state maintains this poverty and
creates an economy that forces members of marginalized populations to take
incredible risks with their physical well-being and health in order to
subsist and survive.  One of these risks is using drugs intravenously
while incarcerated.

Throughout the struggle against Imperialism, organizing with prisoners has
been crucial in every movement. In Canada it is no different. This
International Day for Prisoners Rights join the struggle of solidarity
with those who fight behind the bars!