Action Blast: August 5, 2026
💥 TAKE ACTION TODAY 💥
✨Prisoners’ Justice Day✨
Mark 51 years of organizing behind and beyond bars to end deaths in custody and other prison injustices.
Prisoners’ Justice Day events are taking place across the country to commemorate the lives lost to human caging and to stand in solidarity with imprisoned people who are demanding an end to draconian conditions of confinement.
In support of these efforts, the Abolition Coalition is again organizing PJD TV on August 10 from 7pm to 10pm EDT.
Hosted by El Jones and Desmond Cole, the online broadcast will feature demands from inside, interviews with criminalized people and community organizers, as well as live and recorded footage from local PJD events from coast-to-coast.
In Toronto, join Incarcerated Voters of Ontario for a Solidarity Gathering and Community Vigil.
📢 March for Status for All 📢
Join the rally and march for migrant justice!
Migrants make Canada work. They care for children and elders, grow food, build homes and keep communities running. But the government is pushing migrants out. Millions of permits are expiring or being refused, deportations are increasing and refugees are under attack.
Migrants did not create the housing and jobs crisis. Blaming migrants only protects the landlords, corporations and wealthy people profiting from high rents, low wages and cuts to public services.
On September 20, migrants and allies will take to the streets in Toronto at the 5th Annual Cross-Country Day of Action for Migrant Justice.
We will march for equal rights, permanent resident status for all and a future where no one is exploited or deported because of where they were born.
📅: Sunday, September 20, 2026
⏰: 2:00pm
📍: Christie Pits Park, Toronto
Bring your friends, coworkers, neighbours and family. Let’s unite for migrant justice.
📚 More Actions and Resources 💻
This is where we link to external content we found interesting, challenging, or thought-provoking this month. Our movements are stronger when we listen to, learn from, and collaborate with folks whose perspectives and approaches are different from ours. Inclusion here does not imply endorsement.
ACT:
Calling all Creatives! Migrant workers across the country are organizing for justice, dignity and status for all. Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and the Migrant Rights Network are building a roster of artists to help tell that story. If you shoot or edit video, produce audio, or design graphics - they want to hear from you. Fill out this form or reach out directly: comms@migrantworkersalliance.org
On Friday July 24, the Canadian government announced it had concluded negotiations for a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates in “record time”. By rushing to finalize this deal, Ottawa signals its refusal to acknowledge the UAE’s documented role as the principal backer of the RSF: the militia committing genocide in Sudan. Email PM Carney to demand the deal not be ratified and Canada cut ties with UAE.
Imprisoned people deserve to be safe from extreme heat, but most people warehoused in provincial-territorial jails and federal penitentiaries don’t have access to air conditioning in their cells or on their units. Call on prison authorities to ensure unrestricted access to cold drinking water and ice, regular access to air-conditioned zones or cooling stations, the distribution of free fans and other cooling devices, and increased access to health and mental health care.
Ontario’s wildfire seasons are worsening, leading to air quality warnings telling people to stay indoors, avoid strenuous activity, use clean indoor air, and protect their lungs. But what happens when you are incarcerated? Thousands of people in Ontario's provincial jails and federal prisons cannot choose where they go, improve the air they breathe, or leave when conditions become dangerous. Contact the people responsible for prisoner welfare to demand clean air protections for incarcerated people in Ontario.
Sinhue Garcia, a migrant farmworker from Mexico, was killed while riding his bicycle in rural Niagara-on-the-Lake. He leaves behind a wife, two children, and many loved ones. He is not the first. At least six other migrant farmworkers have been killed or seriously injured on Niagara roads in recent years. This is a public safety crisis and a serious gap in planning, infrastructure, and political responsibility. Demand justice for Sinhue Garcia. Safer roads and support for migrant workers now.
RSVP for The River Run hosted by Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nations. River Run 2026 will be on Wednesday, September 23 at noon. RSVP for yourself, and organize your friends, family, and work place to join in. We're also looking for volunteers to help before and during the event. If you have the capacity to lend a hand, we'd love your support.
ATTEND:
July - September: Summer Practice School - community organizing skill workshops
August 6
Security in Peace – Eliminate Nuclear Weapons - music, storytelling, lantern ceremony
Students Rights & How to Navigate the School System - webinar
Toxic Drug Crisis - From Concern to Action: Organizing to Protect Lifesaving Services Across Ontario - virtual townhall
August 7
Solidarity with Cuba - food, art, market, fundraiser
End the Blockade! Cuba Solidarity Fundraiser - speakers, dinner, fundraiser
August 8
Choke Points of Empire: Sanctions, Sovereignty, and the Strait of Hormuz - teach-in presentation & discussion
Toronto Palestine Film Festival: Thank you for banking with us - film screening & souq
Keep Water Public - community discussion
Shut Down Maple MAGA - counter-protest
Palestine Is Our Moral Compass: Hope from the Present and Past - community conversation
Crip Cinema: An Afternoon of Disability-Centred Film - film screening
August 10
August 15
Everybody to Kenmure Street - film screening, panel, fundraiser
How to Organize your Workplace - free 2-day workshop
August 16
August 18
Workers vs Tech Oligarchy Toronto Mass Call - community meeting (virtual)
READ/WATCH/LISTEN:
Prisoners’ Justice Day
The Inside Scoop is a magazine filled with poetry, stories, editorials, and artwork submitted by currently and formerly incarcerated folks across Canada.
Black prisoners in Ontario’s jails are being assigned to harsher living conditions than other prisoners, through the use of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that claims to predict their behaviour. A class action lawsuit says the province was aware its use of the software could disproportionately target Black prisoners, but went ahead with it anyway.
Indigenous women are overflowing Canada’s prison system, and hardly anyone in this country knows it. A travesty that keeps repeating itself for thirty straight years without any meaningful reversal stops being a simple failure of policy at some point. At some point it becomes a choice that this country keeps actively making.
Spring Magazine compiled a reading list that draws on the long tradition of prisoner resistance and abolitionist thought in Canada. These texts offer insight into the structures of the carceral system and the movements, both inside and outside prison walls, that seek to dismantle them.
Black August, observed each August since 1979, commemorates the deaths of Black liberation fighters who died in prison. This month of remembrance and resistance was born from the recognition that the same forces that murdered Black ancestors continue to operate within prison walls, using solitary confinement as a weapon of psychological warfare against those who dare to organize, educate, and resist.
Dean Spade explores Love and Relationships Across Prison Walls through conversations with friends inside prison, people who have been released, and people who have been doing direct support to prisoners for decades, about the barriers to connection that prisons create and the ways people stay connected despite them.
Migrant Justice
People living and working in Ontario may increasingly find themselves without status at the end of their temporary residence period. With the government’s aim to reduce temporary residents, there is real fear of increased enforcement in the years to come. Know Your Rights: Immigration Arrest, Detention and Deportation can help you understand options to regularize status and plan for border enforcement interactions.
Harsha Walia reflects on 20 years of migrant struggles and the lessons for this crucial moment; what abolish ICE does - and doesn't - mean; the seamless merging of immigration enforcement with policing and military power; and how fascism is made through bordering: How Not to Abolish ICE.
How Canada’s Muslims face ‘perfect storm’ amid rising xenophobia: As anti-immigrant rhetoric intensifies in Canada, community advocates say Muslim communities face heightened risks.
In this Letter from a Migrant Farm Worker, “Mr. Justice” shares his experience working on a vegetable farm in Ontario, his deplorable treatment by both the system and his employer when he was injured, his advocacy for himself and other migrant workers, and a call to action for us all.