Registration is open for the 6th annual Wellness Within conference on November 9, both in-person and online:
https://wellnesswithinns.org/ww-annual-conference-2022. All are welcome! As always, registration is $0 for people with lived experience of criminalization/incarceration.
Register early to secure your spot, in-person registration is limited.
Speakers are joining us from across North America, covering key issues at the intersection of reproductive justice and prison abolition.
We are excited to announce a special evening event, featuring Dr. El Jones, poet, scholar, activist and WW board member, who will be reading from her forthcoming book Abolitionist Intimacies. To celebrate and engage with this important new work, we will be inviting conference speakers to select and read a passage from Abolitionist Intimacies, with commentary from Fernwood editor Fazeela Jiwa. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the conference, as will other abolitionist titles from Fernwood.
In Abolitionist Intimacies, El Jones examines the movement to abolish prisons through the Black feminist principles of care and collectivity. Understanding the history of prisons in Canada in their relationship to settler colonialism and anti-Black racism, Jones observes how practices of intimacy become imbued with state violence at carceral sites including prisons, policing and borders, as well as through purported care institutions such as hospitals and social work. The state also polices intimacy through mechanisms such as prison visits, strip searches and managing community contact with incarcerated people. Despite this, Jones argues, intimacy is integral to the ongoing struggles of prisoners for justice and liberation through the care work of building relationships and organizing with the people inside.
