“Save Our Prison Farms”

Carceral Labour and Civil Disobedience in Kingston

   On August 10th 2019, International Prisoners Justice Day, an organization called Evolve Our Prison Farms (EOPF) was gathered at 1225 Centennial Drive. They were protesting issues around the newly reopened prison farms at Collins Bay and Joyceville Institution.
   Almost exactly 9 years prior, on August 8-9th of 2010, a two-day blockade took place outside of Collins Bay institution to save the cows from being removed from the prison. This was organized by community stakeholders such as Save Our Prison Farms, the National Farmers Union, and OPIRG. They were protesting the closure of prison farms at Joyceville and Collins Bay institution by the Conservative government. 
   Indeed, Kingston has a rich history of activism around the issues of prison farms. While in 2019, groups such as EOPF are trying to raise awareness about how the newly reopened prison farms would be operating on an industrial, for-profit model, unlike how they operated previously.

Image above features a cow with the title of the article, and the OPIRG Kingston People’s History Project logo. 
Image to the left depicts an activist being detained by Kingston police, he is wearing a shirt that says “Save Our Prison Farms”.

Donkey with a sign on it saying “Conservative Prison Farm Consultant”.
Activist standing next to the donkey is wearing a shirt that says “Save Our Prison Farms”.

Kingston Penitentiary, with signs hung on the fence saying “Stop Super Prisons” and “Save Our Prison Farms”.

   One of the first events marking this new turn in escalation happened on June 6th, 2010 when over a thousand Kingstonians gathered at The Spire to talk about the closure of the prison farms, and then proceeded to walk to Corrections Services Canada in protest. This event featured Margaret Atwood, but what truly made this event memorable is that it was the first event where civil disobedience as a tactic in organizing was discussed. Presenting a speech at the event, Aric McBay pointed to the need for civil disobedience during this time where the government was refusing to be held accountable, and pointed to the historical use of civil disobedience in the suffragette movement, the fight for India’s independence, and the civil rights movement. All serving as proof that civil disobedience has a fruitful way of enacting change (Aric McBay’s June 6, 2010 script at Sydenham Church). 

At that rally, people indicated on a form being passed around whether they would like to take part in civil disobedience, whether they wanted to receive training in how to do it properly, and if they wanted to be contacted in an emergency where volunteers would be needed, for example, if a blockade would suddenly have to be made outside Collins Bay or Joyceville in situations such as when prison farm equipment was being removed. From that June 6th rally at The Spire, 500 people indicated that they would like to volunteer in civil disobedience. “I was shocked that we had that many signatures”, McBay recalls. “As an organizer my job is not to tell people what to do, my job is to say, ‘here’s the risks, here’s what we know, do you want to take these risks together?’… my job is to encourage and support”.
   McBay’s role, as he says, was to “build up that sense of confidence and capacity, so that people could take action and not go straight from sitting in a Church listening to people talk to facing off with riot police, because that could [have been] very intense if they weren’t ready for it ”. To prepare people and inform them of the risks, two civil disobedience training sessions were held where people could practice being in a blockade, getting dragged by police while also receiving information on what to expect if someone got arrested. The informed mobilization of Kingstonians during 2010 led to the climax of the prison farm campaign over a 2-day period in August, when hundreds of people gathered in an attempt to block the cows being removed from Collins Bay.

Image featured is of cows grazing in the Kingston Penitentiary prison farm. 

The mass mobilization of Kingstonians, and the varying groups and political beliefs present throughout the prison farm campaign, is something to reflect more on and what it inadvertently means, Sean Haberle, then OPIRG Coordinator, explains. As he says,“a  lot of people came together to fight against something, which doesn’t happen here very often. To have the town ‘feel its oats’ was important, but then again, I think it reinforced [in peoples’ heads] that you can’t win, even when everyone’s against something – and that’s not true – there are examples all over the world, the federal government doesn’t always get what it wants, it’s all about what you are willing to do to make sure the Federal government doesn’t ram shit down in your community”.
The act of rallying ‘the left’ in town leading up to August 2010 highlighted problems of how people like to organize in Kingston. When Margaret Atwood came to lead the march to CSC headquarters on that June 6th rally, Sean remembers it as being pivotal in realizing “how sheeple everyone was; once she marched there were so many people marching who probably wouldn’t have otherwise – people here are followers, and looking for charismatic leaders all the time”. 

The rallying of the Kingston community was instrumental during August 8th and 9th, 2010 when civil disobedience was used by participants in the final stretch of the campaign, where organizers and participants gathered to block the cows from being taken away from the Frontenac institution. “People were angry and wanted to do something”, Dianne recalls.  They were blockaded for a while, but “we allowed the trucks to go in – I guess that was the beginning of the end – they loaded [the cows] the next morning, and when the trucks came out they were not really impeded by the demonstrators”. The final attempt in the prison farm campaign was to buy the cows taken out of Frontenac to be auctioned off. The Penn Farm Coop was set up by Save Our Prison Farms, with the help of OPIRG, to keep the money accountable that was used to buy the cows from the prison farms.

   The cows were to be auctioned close to Waterloo, “most of the cows went to that auction, but there were [some cows] that couldn’t be transported as far as Waterloo, so there was a second small sale of cattle at Selby, north of Napanee. Within days of the cattle being trucked out, we raised $30,000 to buy some of the cattle back. People were really shocked and angry at the cows being gone, and they wanted to do something”. She continues, “we sold shares in the Penn Farm Herd Coop for $300 per share; we sold 100 shares within a week, so we used that $30,0000 to buy around 24 cattle”. As McBay discusses, the focus on the cows but it wasn’t a focus of his that cows became the central focus during and after this blockade, “the status and rights of prisoners, the protection of land was all so important. But the prisoners, at that point, didn’t feature in the public dialogue because of that focus on the cows and because a lot of [the prisoners] had been banned from showing up, so I wish that had turned out differently”.

Image featured is a group of protestors standing outside the Feihe Milking Plant, holding protest signs. Signs include slogans such as “Evolve our Prison Farms”, “No Prison Goat Dairy”, “Rehabilitation Not Exploitation”, “Prisoners Justice Day”, “Prisoner Justice, Animal Justice, Environmental Justice”, and so on.

During the 2 days, 24 people were arrested for attempted mischief while participating in civil disobedience. But, not everyone had equal opportunity in engaging in civil disobedience during this 2-day protest. As McBay explains, “we wanted to make sure that this wasn’t a group of people who were acting upon the behalf of someone else without engaging with them. We had former prisoners at our meetings… but these people, some of them are on parole for life, so their parole officers were like ‘we better not see you out with these protesters or at these meetings, or you’re going to go back to jail… and that made it really hard to do that, especially in a public way, because of the fact that someone going to jail, that’s a big risk – it’s not like just sending someone from the night .”

   While prisoners were unable to participate in the final stretch of the campaign during August 8th-9th, it’s also important to note the absence of more explicitly radical groups from the prison farm campaign. As Haberle recalls, “a lot of radical people were super against it, radical vegans were against it, it was a difficult campaign to get ‘the radical left’ on board with; most of them didn’t give a shit because it was too reformist about a terrible system”. Looking back, Haberle says that the campaign was brought together a “lowest common denominator” [of varying political beliefs], but that was also its strength”. 

   There needs to be a “much larger populist conversation about what prison is,” says  Haberle. “Having empathy for people in prison… there’s some really fucked up questions about prison, no doubt about that…but there’s lots of people who are just rotting in prison for a mistake they made a long time ago. Nobody likes to talk about that, it’s taboo, but if you speak in a way that is empathetic towards prisoners, they throw examples of pedophiles and rapists at you to make you stop talking. It’s about having a larger societal conversation about what it means when someone does something bad in their community, and how we deal with that. There’s not a social space to have those conversations publicly. It’s about having the space to have grown-up, logical conversations about people who do things that are fucked up”.

Poster featured says “Save Our Prison Farms For The Common Good”.