The new mayor could push for a cut in the police budget to make up for a big budget gap, but it’s unlikely that she will. In the spirit of Toronto’s long history of communities resisting the harms of policing, however, grassroots groups are campaigning for her to make that choice. In December, the Toronto …
Ellie Ade Kur and Abby Stadnyk are grassroots organizers with abolitionist politics. They are also both involved in Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada (Between the Lines, 2022), a new book collection bringing together pieces by organizers and scholars writing in the context of the constellation of efforts to defund and abolish the police …
Tonye Aganaba and Chantelle Spicer live in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, in what is colonially known as Vancouver. They are active in the Defund 604 Network, a collective that organizes around police and prison abolition. Scott Neigh interviews them about that work. As most listeners will no doubt recall, …
Ardath Whynacht is an activist, writer, and scholar who lives in Mi’kmaq territory and teaches sociology at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. She is also the author of Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide (Fernwood Publishing, Nov 2021) which she describes as “a book about how we can think through abolition and defunding police …
Claire Bodkin and Sara Alavian are both physicians in Hamilton, Ontario. They are also part of an ad hoc group of health workers from different parts of Canada with an interest in prison abolitionist politics. Scott Neigh interviews them about what it means to think about prison abolition in the context of health care, and …
Cam Scott, Daniel Friesen, and Irene Bindi are community organizers and members of Police-Free Schools Winnipeg. Scott Neigh speaks with them about the struggle to get police out of Winnipeg schools. In general, middle-class white people tend to experience police as a source of safety. But lots of people not in that category, particularly Black and Indigenous people, …