Solidarity Beyond Bars and Borders

Join Fernwood Publishing, Workers’ Action Centre, the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group and Service Employees International Union for a Halifax book launch of the title:

SOLIDARITY BEYOND BARS: UNIONIZING PRISON LABOUR (Fernwood Publishing, 2022).

https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/solidarity-beyond-bars

This space is accesible by wheelchair and gender-neutral washrooms are available. The event will be livestreamed/recorded and the link shared here.

Jason Edwards, labour and employment lawyer and volunteer with the Halifax Workers’ Action Centre, will be speaking about the value of collective action in addressing workplace injustice, behind bars and beyond – because when workers win, we all win.

Jordan House is an assistant professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. His research focuses on prison labour and prisoner-worker organizing, new forms of worker organization and labour movement renewal. His work has appeared in several publications, including Labour / Le Travail, Labor Studies Journal, Rankandfile.ca, Canadian Dimension and Jacobin. He previously worked as a labour organizer and union researcher and is a long-time prison justice activist.

El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017. She was Halifax’s Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She is the author of Live from the Afrikan Resistance!, a collection of poems about resisting white colonialism. Her work focuses on social justice issues, such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism and decolonization. Since 2016, she has co-hosted a radio show called Black Power Hour, on CKDU-FM where listeners from prisons call in to rap and read their poetry, providing a voice to people who rarely get a wide audience.

Asaf Rashid went from being an aspiring scholar in environmental studies to a community agitator and campaigns coordinator of the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group. He is a lawyer, based in k’jipuktuk/Halifax and a board member of the Halifax Workers Action Centre, a member of the Canadian Prison Lawyers Association and supporter of the East Coast Prison Justice Society. Rashid has also been a union organizer and labour rights activist, among other social justice activities.

https://www.facebook.com/events/722443592594315/