“While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.” – Eugene Debs
CAKENPHILE is an anti-prison activist collective, currently comprised of women identifying as white, women of colour, anti-prison activists and ex-prisoners, who reside on unceded Coast Salish territories.
Inspired by The Kite, an anti-prison news journal from the 1970s and other prison press publications (including the long-running Bulldozer and Prison News Service), it is our intent to build and contribute to a long-term anti-prison movement. Currently, CAKENPHILE will be producing a regular news journal and will use social media to distribute information about current events, analysis, creative contributions and call-outs for actions and support. Taking further inspiration from existing anti-prison groups, including Joint Effort and Books 2 Prisoners, it our goal is to create a forum for critical dialogue in which we explore the politics of imprisonment through prison-related news and analysis in a manner that combines the efforts of prisoners and outside allies. Through this we seek to identify and develop a critique that sees prisons as extensions of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy which function to coercively maintain systems of power by exploiting and caging the most marginalized and oppressed. We seek to do this by foregrounding prison issues, working to open lines of communication between prisoners and outside allies, educating, agitating and offering material support to those inside. We draw no distinctions between prisoners based upon the reason they are there, CAKENPHILE sees all prisoners as political prisoners.