Solidarity has nothing to do with charity in
the conventional sense and unfortunately people you know having been ideologically influenced by
the ways in which
charity unfolds, "Oh let me help these poor people who are in prison because they're in such bad shape".
And what often happens is that the hierarchies and the inequalities are reproduced
through what appears to be an effort to engage in solidarity.
So we have to be very clear about the fact that solidarity involves
an egalitarian relationship between the parties
and that when we speak about solidarity with people in prison,
we have a respect for the knowledge that's produced by people behind bars.
The epistemological role of
prisoners has been central in terms of the way in which the movement has been crafted.
Without the contributions of people inside there's no way we would be
Engaged in this kind of struggle today. There's no
way that the academic field that is called critical prison studies could have emerged.
So yeah solidarity has to involve egalitarian relationships
and a commitment to break down the hierarchies that
almost inevitably begin to assert themselves into relationships
between people on the outside and people on the inside.
