Thousands of prisoners strike to ‘end slavery’

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Sept. 9 saw thousands of incarcerated men and women go on strike to take a stand against civil and environmental injustice in their respective prisons. The multi-state strike in the United States was orga­ nized both inside and outside of the prisons.

As we go to press three weeks later, organizers re­ port that at least 20 prisons in 11 states continue to protest. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Com­ mittee (IWOC) says that protesters have been pun­ ished, with several facilities in lock down, and prison­ ers kept in their cells and denied phone access.

IWOC media co-chair Azzurra Crispino told “Democ­ racy Now!” that in some areas there have been shifts to hunger strikes. In the Merced County jail in Califor­ nia, over 100 prisoners are on a hunger strike includ­ ing the wife of one of the prisoners: “They are calling for a 2000-calorie diet, an end for solitary confine­ ment for juvenile detainees, and for the firing of Lieu­ tenant Moore, who’s been particularly sadistic as a guard there. And there have been continuing hunger strikes in Michigan, as well as Ohio. In Michigan, Dy­ ing to Live, Cesar DeLeon, and others have been on a hunger strike for more than a hundred days. They are calling for an end to long-term solitary confinement past a year.”

Another advocate, Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, gives prisoners the credit for successful organizing inside the prisons: “We want to give them all the credit and all the applause we can. They have overcome religious barriers, racial barriers, geographical barriers, and also they have overcome incarceration barriers. And by overcoming those barriers, were able to organize, lead and initiate this prison strike.”

Some unions have begun addressing the twin issues of racial justice and economic justice with all their members. These discussions have moved from mere individual solutions to the need to end “institutional racism.” There is no clearer example of institutional racism than the prison system.

Michelle Alexander, in her book “The New Jim Crow,” wrote, “I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had emerged as a stunningly compre­ hensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities as the U.S.” Since the beginning of the so-called drug war in 1982, the U.S. penal population exploded from 300,000 to more than two million in less than 30 years. The 13th Amendment The National Prison Strike calls attention to the 13th Amendment of the Constitution—generally be­ lieved to have ended slavery in 1865. But there was a loophole, which says, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convict­ ed.” It was a common practice in 1865 for plantation owners to lease Black convicts out of the prisons to work their fields, and today prisons are a multi-bil­ lion-dollar industry.

Inmates in federal and state prisons run recycling plants, fight fires in California and Georgia, and run call centers for state agencies. They make uniforms for McDonalds, prepare artisanal cheeses for Whole Foods, run call centers for AT&T. Think of a major corporation, and they are getting free labor from pris­ oners. That is why the National Prisoner Strike was a “Call To End Slavery In America.”

Some states do allow prisoners to be paid, but it is always under $1 an hour, and in most states they are paid nothing. In federal prisons, half of the wages are withheld for “room and board.” The prisoners have to use whatever remains to pay for necessary items that must be purchased from the prison, such as toilet paper, deodorant, menstrual products, and laundry detergent.

Ray, who is being held in St. Clair Correctional Facil­ ity in Springville, Ala., explains why he has been or­ ganizing the strike: “The businesses involved under­ stand that this is an operation of slavery and everyone is exploiting the free labor out of the prisons.” Ray believes that every action will spread work stoppages to more prisons, incrementally slowing down the profit motive that drives the prison system. They are also striking to address conditions within the prison and publicize toxic work conditions, ex­ treme heat, insufficient access to health care, and contaminated drinking and bathing water.

For example, in Texas this summer there were an unreleased number of deaths in state prisons as internal tem­ peratures reached 140 degrees on some days. Only 30 of 109 Texas State prisons have air conditioning. There have been cases of heat stroke, extreme dehydra­ tion, and other heat related conditions. The state of Texas houses 146,000 in­ mates and is in the middle of a lawsuit charging “deadly heat” in their facilities. There are also prisoners who are work­ ing unpaid in the Texas Correctional In­ stitution (TCI) Chemical Plant without air-ventilated safety masks. Whenever an auditor or inspector is at the gate, a warning system goes off to shut down all activities that have been deemed illegal or hazardous by the fire marshal.

Alabama’s “Slaughterhouse”

Organizers currently estimate that prisoners in over 40 facilities in 28 states are participating in the actions. The ear­ liest report came from Holman State Prison in Atmore, Ala., where the Free Alabama Movement has been organizing since 2014.

Their initial strike was back in May, and the most recent strike in September was a result of continued organizing both in­ side and outside the prison.

Inmates report, “all inmates at Holman Prison re­ fused to report to their prison jobs without incident. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman [lay] on their racks reading or sleep­ ing. Officers are performing all tasks.”

Prison officials in Alabama confirmed that cor­ rectional officers refused to report for the evening shift on Sept. 24 at Holman. There are 17 officers in a prison with a thousand prisoners. Prisoners state that there are stabbings on a regular basis and call the facility “The Slaughterhouse.”

An incarcerated organizer, Kinetik Justice, described the situation: “A lot of the guards are terrified of what’s going on, and refuse to go into the dormitory. ... There’s a growing consensus in this place that if you don’t have somebody that loves you or cares about you in the dormitory, then you’re almost guaranteed to be a dead man, because the officers are not coming to save you.

“We knew the administration was not going to pro­ tect us. We took it upon ourselves to try to instill some type of discipline within our own structures to main­ tain some type of order, until we could get some help from society in the form of creating a task force to do a fact-finding mission and some reporters to actually come up in here and tell the Department of Correc­ tions to let us see your transfer logs, let us see your segregation release logs, let us see the body charts, let us see the officer sign-in logs—let us see documenta­ tion that proves that it is what you say it is, in contrast to what you say the propaganda of the Free Alabama Movement says it is.”

Currently the strike at Holman has ended, as some additional officers are being brought in and the pris­ oners are able to move around and get out of the dor­ mitories.

Prisoners in multiple Alabama prisons, at least two others in Florida, Fluvanna Women’s Prison in Vir­ ginia, and prisoners in North and South Carolina or­ (continued on page 9, in “Green Parties: The real history”)