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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.
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.