The following statement was written by Samidoun Toronto:
As we enter a new month, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network would like to commemorate Black August. Samidoun’s Toronto chapter honoured the decades-long tradition of calling for the release of all political prisoners and uplifting the Black Liberation struggle through our August 10th Prisoners’ Justice Day event and in attending a Black August art build with our comrades at A Dutty Boukman Book Club.
The first Black August was held in 1979 by the Black Guerrilla Family to commemorate the martyrdoms of revolutionary bothers Jonathan and George Jackson. Both of their lives were taken by the criminal injustice system in the United States. 45 years later, Samidoun honours their legacies by demanding: Free Them All, From Palestine to “Canada”.
Prisons in “Canada” and “Israel” function as an arm of imperialist white supremacy. They quell the people’s dissent against their oppressor and maintain status quo settler-colonial rule. Just like Canadian prisons are designed to capture Black and Indigenous peoples, in “Israel” the Zionist prison system is designed to detain, torture, and martyr Palestinians. In December 2023 in Milton, ON’s Maplehurst Correctional Complex, prisoners were, too, tortured by guards and Canada also has a decades-long history of deaths in custody that is on the rise.
The Palestinian Resistance’s commencement of Al-Aqsa Flood Battle on October 7th was not only a prison break out of besieged Gaza, but also an act to liberate Palestinian prisoners from the clutches of Zionism through a prisoner exchange. We must continue to learn from the Resistance’s steadfastness both within and outside of prison walls and how we can apply these learnings here to join hands with the Black Liberation struggle and beyond.
As September begins, we will continue to uphold and honour the legacies of Black revolutionaries– both past and living. From our solidarity with Stop Cop City in Atlanta to demanding justice for Tylor Coore in Tkaronto to paying tribute to the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising. All prison walls have got to fall! In the words of Black revolutionary Assata Shakur: “And, If I know anything at all/Its that a wall is just a wall/And nothing more at all/It can be broken down”
