Kingston prison farm blockade

On August 12, 2010, The Train phone interviewed two Kingston-based organizers of the resistance against the Harper government's closures of all six Canadian prison farms. These farms have been providing food and meaningful work to prisoners for 100 years.


Both our guests, biochemistry technologist Patrick Thompson and RMC university professor Michael Hurley, were arrested on Monday along with dozens of others practicing a weekend blockade to stop the sale of the Kingston (Ontario) prison farm dairy cows. Also arrested were a grandmother in her eighties and a youth in her early teens.

After his arrest, Professor Hurley (aged 60) refused to sign an undertaking that would have removed his constitutional right to protest and was therefore forced to spend a sleepless night in holding conditions that can only be described as inhuman.

Both activists were upbeat and felt empowered by their recent discovery of solidarity via direct action dissent, following a long road of all the usual government subversions of democracy.