Cops out of Care Work: a summer series

Image description: Poster is yellow with light blue and dark blue texts and illustrations, following the colour scheme of the DJNO logo. Top left of the poster lists dates of events in the series: May 27th 2021 Cops out of Care, June 30th 2021 Abolish the Psych Ward, July 29th Abolish Long Term Care, August 26 Building Cop Free Futures. Top right of the poster has a giant pair of handcuffs. The middle of the poster has an illustration of five people in community together. Two are in a wheelchair. One is standing wearing a hijab and kissing one of the people in a wheelchair on the forehead, while another person sitting down with a knee brace feeds this person with a spoon. There is one person standing, holding a pot of food. The bottom of the image has psych ward socks that are on fire, and a health card. The right of the poster on the bottom has the DJNO logo and the logo of the Crime and Punishment Education Project (CPEP).

In collaboration with the Crime and Punishment Education Project (CPEP), this workshop series brings forward demands to radically rethink our current “care system” by centering disability justice and abolition. The pandemic has foregrounded the urgent need for reimagined care for disabled people. The mass suffering & death within institutions alongside endemic police violence demands collective efforts towards abolition and deinstitutionalization. Through this series we bring together abolitionists, doctors, community organizers, artists and researchers to unpack the use of police, policing, prisons and cages in our current “care systems”. More importantly, we will draw upon the tools of disability justice to imagine futures where disabled people can flourish together. We challenge police, prisons, and institutions as “inevitable and permanent feature(s) of our social lives” (Davis, 2003, p.9) and instead demand futures built on interdependence, solidarity, and wholeness.

This series of panels, Cops out of Care Work, will explore themes of carceral ableism and our way forward.

Panels will have ASL captioning and CART captioning. Panels will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

To register for this series, click here

Panel topics include: ​ Cops out of Care Work: May 27th 2021 at 6:00 PM Triage protocol, the tragedy of long-term care, and the ongoing deaths of disabled people at the hands of state violence demonstrate the endemic role of police and policing in the lives of disabled people. Disabled people are subject to policing across the carceral, psychiatric, medical and geriatric system. The Mental Health Act positions cops as medical transit. Greeting the cops at the door are security guards, armed with policing powers. Once inside the hospital, medical personnel police who deserves access to care. Once deemed too “deviant”, or too disabled, disabled people are forcibly institutionalized, locked in long-term care institutions, group homes, prisons and psychiatric institutions. Join our first panel of our summer series to learn about the interconnection between disability, policing and prisons. ​ This panel features El Jones, Souheil Benslimane, Megan Linton, and Cyree Jarelle

​ Abolish the Psych Ward: June 2021 This panel will discuss the history of madness in Canada and the ways in which madness continues to be policed. This panel will feature Dr. Ameil Joseph and Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware from Black Lives Matter Canada. ​ Abolish Long Term Care: July 2021 This panel will discuss the history of Long Term Care in Canada and the link between carceral policies and healthcare policies such as MAiD, the Triage Protocol, and more. This panel will feature Dr. Amit Arya from the #Justice4LTC movement, journalist Nora Loretto and researcher Megan Linton. ​ Imagining Disabled, Cop Free Futures: August 2021 More information to come about this panel.

Disability Justice Network of Ontario Contributes to Hamilton Just Recovery Policy Document

Image caption: A giant boy in a red shirt and teal pants with crutches is walking in between two miniature buildings. Three miniature people, led by a black woman, are pulling two of the miniature buildings away from the boy using a yellow rope, in order to make a way for him to pass through. The boy is mid-step, an smiling.

We’re in the midst of a crisis the likes of which this city has not faced in generations: The global COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with a growing economic recession, in the middle of a climate emergency.

How we respond to, recover from, and rebuild after this crisis will define the next chapter of Hamilton History. Will the challenges of these times be met with fear and austerity? Or will we work together towards a just recovery for all Hamiltonians.

Many throughout history have often noted a cities budget is a moral document. How and what a city invests in say a great deal about who and what they value. Right now, Hamilton city council is debating its spending priorities for the 2021 budget period.

The Just Recovery Hamilton Coalition made up of Environment Hamilton, the YWCA Hamilton, the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI) the Hamilton Community Benefits Network (HCBN) the Sexual Assault Centre of the Greater Hamilton Area (SACHA), Social Policy and Research Council of Hamilton (SPRC) the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction, and the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO), has laid out core values/areas of investment the city must make starting with the 2021 budget to build a stronger, more just and inclusive city. Consideration must be given to each of these core areas, and the deeper more specific policy and spending requests and the groups involved in this policy paper have made reasoned and detailed requests our leaders can do with support and encouragement from the Hamilton Community as a whole.

We cannot afford to return to the pre-COVID-19 normal, normal wasn’t working. Times of great challenge in the past have afforded opportunities for broad reaching social change. The city bounced back and thrived after faced with the mammoth challenges of the 1918/1919 Pandemic, and the Second World War. We cannot meet the deep inequality and often hidden challenges the current pandemic has exposed with fear and austerity. We can build back better!

Section on Disability Justice in Hamilton:

Hamilton has the largest density of people with disabilities in Ontario. People with disabilities in Hamilton struggle with accessing employment, either because of discrimination or because the workforce, in general, is ableist and not built for everyone. More than that, we have constructed society to be a place where one’s value comes from their ability to produce. This has doomed many disabled people, who cannot work, to lives of poverty, and isolation in long-term care homes and residential care facilities. It is no longer enough to talk about accessibility as compliance. Policy discussions need to be centered around disability justice—the ways in which all institutions leave people behind on the basis of disability; ramps alone do not equal equality.

Read the entire policy document here:

DJNO Co-Founder speaks against Bill-C7, changes to MAiD, on Canada Today

Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO) co-founder Sarah Jama spoke on Canada Today on February 2nd 2021 on the negative impacts of Bill C-7 on working class disabled people, and Indigenous and Black disabled people.

Captions available on YouTube link above