Certain Days Freedom For Political Prisoners Calendars

The 2013 Certain Days Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is now in stock at Kersplebedeb, featuring 42 pages of gorgeous artwork and writings by activists from both sides of the prison walls.

Order your calendar from leftwingbooks.net here.

FEATURING amazing artwork and writings from Amer Shomali, Kathleen Pequeño, Ricardo Levins Morales, Melanie Cervantes, Santiago Armengod, Peter Collins, Victoria Law, Ronnie Goodman, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, Tom Manning, Favianna Rodriguez, Anita Schoepp, Kristine Virsis, Amman Desai, Philly Stands Up!, Leonard Peltier, Giselle Dias, David Gilbert, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Herman Bell, Sundiata Acoli, Sara Malik and more.

Funds raised from the sale of this calendar will be divided between the New York State Task Force on Political Prisoners, the Palestinian NGO Addameer, and Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice.

 This year’s theme is “Visions of Justice” – here`s what the Certain Days collective explain in their introduction:

 As prison abolitionists, we are often asked about alternatives to the so-called “justice” system. We reject policing, surveillance and incarceration as modes of justice, calling them out as modes of repression, means used by the state to maintain white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy, and to strip oppressed communities of power and self-determination. But what do we offer in their stead? What models, principles and examples lead the way in cultivating authentic communities of justice and liberation?

Every day, in news headlines and in the countless stories that don’t make the news, we are reminded why we must seek new visions of justice. In the weeks leading up to the printing of the 2014 calendar, we closely followed the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old black youth who was stalked and killed by a white man, George Zimmerman, apparently because he “appeared suspicious.”

We reacted with anguish and rage but not particularly with surprise, that Zimmerman was acquitted on the grounds of “self-defense,” although Trayvon was unarmed when he was attacked. As writer Syreeta McFadden said, “Only in America can a dead black boy go on trial for his own murder.”

Meanwhile, attorney Lynne Stewart, a long-time defender of political prisoners, is dying in prison, guilty of the “crime” of representing her client. Aged 73 and suffering terribly from cancer, she has been denied compassionate release. These are no flukes; this is exactly how the justice system works. There are over 2.5 million prisoners in the U.S., and 150, 000 individuals under the supervision of

Correctional Service Agencies in Canada – the vast majority of them Black and Latino, increasingly women, and disproportionately Indigenous. Conditions are deplorable, and often worse for disabled, trans and queer people, and for those who attempt to organize politically.

Just as we are confronted by injustice every day, we are also inspired by incredible acts of resistance. In California, 30,000 prisoners are on hunger strike right now, protesting torturous conditions. Despite the huge barriers to organizing behind bars, they are building a movement.

The theme for the 2014 calendar, “Visions of Justice,” is inspired by people’s struggles to explore alternative visions of justice and work towards transformative ways of dealing with harm and violence in our communities. In these examples, we begin to see what a better world will really look like – and all of the important, brave, messy work it will take us to get there.

The Certain Days collective

Amy Schwartz, Helen Hudson, karen emily, Nora Butler Burke, and Sara Falconer

Order your calendar from leftwingbooks.net here.