New contributor Yazan Khader attended Monday’s Burnside Jail info meeting. Here’s his report. “Despite being pregnant she lost weight in the first few months at Burnside,” a formerly incarcerated mother reported. “She blamed this on the food offered at Burnside, which “wasn’t nutritious” and “not fully cooked. She was often given old leftover food to accommodate her dietary needs, she said.
This weekend we feature a short 2014 talk by artist and scholar Ardath Whynacht, on the trauma that very early on puts so many on a trajectory to crime and prison, and why building ever more prisons and escalating punishment is not the answer.
Lots of great speeches at yesterday’s Women’s March rally in Halifax. I thought Ardath Whynacht made some very insightful points for the long haul. “If we admit that the structures of state violence tend to replicate themselves in the ways we treat each other, than we need to turn that backwards and treat each other better.”