EDITOR’S NOTE: This event has been cancelled as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

On Saturday, March 14, Professor Joan Sangster from Trent University will moderate a public conversation at Brock University with scholar/activists El Jones and Robyn Maynard about issues of labour and incarceration in Canada.

Jones, co-founder of the Black Power Hour, and Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, will also address gender, race and class in their three-hour presentation, which is the keynote address of the Labour and the Canadian Carceral State Workshop.

“Issues of work and labour are deeply intertwined with carceral institutions,” says Jordan House, an instructor in the Department of Labour Studies and co-organizer of the two-day workshop.

“Our conference is based on the idea that carcerality is not limited to jails and prisons. Presenters will discuss issues of labour in relation to a variety of institutions and practices of constrained freedom, ranging from residential schools and civilian internment camps, to youth reformatories and contemporary prisons and policing.”

Labour and the Canadian Carceral State, presented in collaboration with the L. R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, takes place March 14 to 15 at Brock and brings together researchers from many disciplines, such as labour studies, politics and geography.

“A few members of the organizing committee realized that although many of us were working on research with similar themes, the fact that we are in different academic disciplines means that we don’t have much opportunity to engage with each other,” says House. “The Department of Labour Studies at Brock has a broad perspective on what counts as ‘real’ work and a strong commitment to advancing issues of social justice, which made it an ideal home for the conference.”

House, also a presenter at the conference, will give a talk on a national prison strike that occurred in 2013 in response to pay cuts for prisoners, analyzing both the policy decisions that resulted in the pay cuts and the methods prisoners used to organize the strike. Other topics to be explored include forced labour, sex work, legal issues, art and activism.

The workshop will also feature a pre-recorded interview with the award-winning writer and current federal prisoner Greg McMaster, ensuring, as House points out, that the event incorporates “the thoughts of someone with direct lived experience of prison in Canada.”

The keynote address, which runs from 6 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, is open to the public, though an RSVP is encouraged to guarantee your spot. Anyone interested in attending the full Labour and the Canadian Carceral State Workshop can register online.