US inmates stage nationwide prison labor strike over 'modern s***ery'
Aug 21, 2018 06:08:35 #
US inmates stage nationwide prison labor strike over 'modern s***ery'
Ed Pilkington ~ August 21, 2018
The first part of the prisons likely to be hit will be the kitchens, where stoves will remain unlit, ready-meals unheated and thousands of breakfasts uncooked.
From there the impact will fan out. The laundry will be left unwashed, prison corridors un-mopped, and the lawns on the external grounds ring-fenced with barbed wire will go uncut.
On Tuesday, America’s vast army of incarcerated men and women – at 2.3m of them they form by far the largest imprisoned population in the world – will brace itself for what has the potential to be the largest prison strike in US history.
Nineteen days of peaceful protest are planned across the nation, organized largely by prisoners themselves.
The strike is being spearheaded by incarcerated members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of prisoners providing mutual help and legal training to other inmates. A few days ago, they released an anonymous statement setting out their reasons for calling a protest that carries the risk of substantial penal retaliation.
“Fundamentally, it’s a human rights issue,” the statement said. “Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?”
Organizers have put together a list of 10 national demands. They include improved prison conditions, an end to life without parole sentences or “death by incarceration” as the authors call them, increased funding for rehabilitation services and an end to the disenfranchisement of some 6 million Americans with felony convictions who are barred from v****g.
One of the most passionately held demands is an immediate end to imposed labor in return for paltry wages, a widespread practice in US prisons that the strike organisers call a modern form of s***ery. More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing.
The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour.
The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to s***ery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned s***ery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited.
In addition to a refusal to work, inmates engaging with the strike plan to go on hunger strikes, hold sit-in protests and stage a boycott of commissaries, collect phone calls and other payment streams where private and state-owned companies make money out of them. The boycott was the brainchild of Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun of the Free Alabama Movement under the rubric Redistribute the Pain.
He called on fellow prisoners to stop channeling either their own or their relatives’ money to what he called the “prison industrialized complex”. He urged participants to spend 25% of what they saved from the boycott on books such as Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration.
Inmates who join the action know that they face potentially serious consequences. Participants face being placed individually into isolation cells, while past prison strikes have been met with lockdowns of entire institutions.
Communications too are certain to be blocked, leading potentially to a blackout of news on the protest.
According to prison reform activists engaged in planning the strike, retaliatory measures have already started. Karen Smith, who runs the Gainesville, Florida chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee that is backing the strike, said that prison authorities have moved most of the local strike organisers into solitary confinement wings where they will be unable to communicate with others.
“Other inmates have been warned that if they continue to contact advocacy groups they will be moved to the most brutal camps.”
The strike comes two years after the last major nationwide prison strike in September 2016 that saw more than 20,000 inmates refuse to show up for work across 12 states. That strike was co-ordinated out of Holman prison in Alabama, a state notorious for its overcrowded and dilapidated penal institutions, by a group of inmates styling themselves the “Free Alabama Movement”.
The Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, was the scene of a deadly prison r**t earlier this year.
This year’s strike was triggered by the r**t at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina in April in which seven inmates died in what was the most deadly prison unrest in a quarter of a century. The bloody melee, fueled by gang rivalry over contraband, lasted for seven hours while prison guards did next to nothing to stop it.
Within days of the South Carolina carnage, and the renewed spotlight it put on the gross overcrowding, understaffing and inhumane living conditions in American prisons, the idea of a nationwide strike began to form.
As inspiration for what promises to be a tough 20 days ahead, strike organizers are leaning on history. The nationwide action begins on Tuesday on the 47th anniversary of the death of the prominent Black Panther member, George Jackson, who was shot as he tried to escape in the prison yard of San Quentin in California.
The strike is then scheduled to close on 9 September, the 47th anniversary of the Attica prison r*******n in upstate New York. In an echo of today’s protest, the 1971 Attica r**t was also framed by inmates as a push for humane conditions and basic political rights.
But after four days of negotiations it ended in a bloodbath when New York’s then governor, Nelson Rockefeller, sent in state police armed with shotguns and tear gas. Twenty nine inmates and 10 of their hostages were k**led.
Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, said that it was symbolically important that Attica was being invoked. “Attica drew a line in the sand – it was a recognition that people have a right to rebel, and will rebel, when they forced into unbelievably horrific conditions.”
Ed Pilkington ~ August 21, 2018
The first part of the prisons likely to be hit will be the kitchens, where stoves will remain unlit, ready-meals unheated and thousands of breakfasts uncooked.
From there the impact will fan out. The laundry will be left unwashed, prison corridors un-mopped, and the lawns on the external grounds ring-fenced with barbed wire will go uncut.
On Tuesday, America’s vast army of incarcerated men and women – at 2.3m of them they form by far the largest imprisoned population in the world – will brace itself for what has the potential to be the largest prison strike in US history.
Nineteen days of peaceful protest are planned across the nation, organized largely by prisoners themselves.
The strike is being spearheaded by incarcerated members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of prisoners providing mutual help and legal training to other inmates. A few days ago, they released an anonymous statement setting out their reasons for calling a protest that carries the risk of substantial penal retaliation.
“Fundamentally, it’s a human rights issue,” the statement said. “Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?”
Organizers have put together a list of 10 national demands. They include improved prison conditions, an end to life without parole sentences or “death by incarceration” as the authors call them, increased funding for rehabilitation services and an end to the disenfranchisement of some 6 million Americans with felony convictions who are barred from v****g.
One of the most passionately held demands is an immediate end to imposed labor in return for paltry wages, a widespread practice in US prisons that the strike organisers call a modern form of s***ery. More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing.
The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour.
The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to s***ery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned s***ery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited.
In addition to a refusal to work, inmates engaging with the strike plan to go on hunger strikes, hold sit-in protests and stage a boycott of commissaries, collect phone calls and other payment streams where private and state-owned companies make money out of them. The boycott was the brainchild of Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun of the Free Alabama Movement under the rubric Redistribute the Pain.
He called on fellow prisoners to stop channeling either their own or their relatives’ money to what he called the “prison industrialized complex”. He urged participants to spend 25% of what they saved from the boycott on books such as Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration.
Inmates who join the action know that they face potentially serious consequences. Participants face being placed individually into isolation cells, while past prison strikes have been met with lockdowns of entire institutions.
Communications too are certain to be blocked, leading potentially to a blackout of news on the protest.
According to prison reform activists engaged in planning the strike, retaliatory measures have already started. Karen Smith, who runs the Gainesville, Florida chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee that is backing the strike, said that prison authorities have moved most of the local strike organisers into solitary confinement wings where they will be unable to communicate with others.
“Other inmates have been warned that if they continue to contact advocacy groups they will be moved to the most brutal camps.”
The strike comes two years after the last major nationwide prison strike in September 2016 that saw more than 20,000 inmates refuse to show up for work across 12 states. That strike was co-ordinated out of Holman prison in Alabama, a state notorious for its overcrowded and dilapidated penal institutions, by a group of inmates styling themselves the “Free Alabama Movement”.
The Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, was the scene of a deadly prison r**t earlier this year.
This year’s strike was triggered by the r**t at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina in April in which seven inmates died in what was the most deadly prison unrest in a quarter of a century. The bloody melee, fueled by gang rivalry over contraband, lasted for seven hours while prison guards did next to nothing to stop it.
Within days of the South Carolina carnage, and the renewed spotlight it put on the gross overcrowding, understaffing and inhumane living conditions in American prisons, the idea of a nationwide strike began to form.
As inspiration for what promises to be a tough 20 days ahead, strike organizers are leaning on history. The nationwide action begins on Tuesday on the 47th anniversary of the death of the prominent Black Panther member, George Jackson, who was shot as he tried to escape in the prison yard of San Quentin in California.
The strike is then scheduled to close on 9 September, the 47th anniversary of the Attica prison r*******n in upstate New York. In an echo of today’s protest, the 1971 Attica r**t was also framed by inmates as a push for humane conditions and basic political rights.
But after four days of negotiations it ended in a bloodbath when New York’s then governor, Nelson Rockefeller, sent in state police armed with shotguns and tear gas. Twenty nine inmates and 10 of their hostages were k**led.
Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, said that it was symbolically important that Attica was being invoked. “Attica drew a line in the sand – it was a recognition that people have a right to rebel, and will rebel, when they forced into unbelievably horrific conditions.”
Aug 21, 2018 07:25:38 #
About 14% of the state and federal prison population is for non-violent simple drug possession with draconian prison sentences. Of course, for the most part, the prison system is now private, for profit system run by corporations. Another privatizing of the profits paid for with public funds (tax money) system...Prison Industrial Complex. The profit-motive of private prisons influences the length and severity of sentences and availability of parole. Longer sentences and more incarcerated bodies equals higher profits.
Aug 21, 2018 08:21:45 #
buffalo wrote:
About 14% of the state and federal prison populati... (show quote)
So you're saying that the judges who hand out the sentences are part of this private prison for profit "conspiracy?"
Aug 21, 2018 09:00:52 #
mwdegutis wrote:
So you're saying that the judges who hand out the sentences are part of this private prison for profit "conspiracy?"
YES, by following the stiff and lengthy prison sentences lobbied for by the private, for profit prison industrial corporations. Do they build hotels and motels to set empty? The same with prisons.
Don't get me wrong I am for extreme sentences and even the death penalty for certain offenders, like child rapists, rapists, murderers, armed robbers, etc. But I think locking up non-violent drug offender for simple possession is insanity. Offenders like the Bernie Madoffs, instead of locking them up, should be stripped of EVERYTHING and thrown out on the streets to survive and made sure that is all they ever do.
Aug 22, 2018 13:33:05 #
Why can't we send the prisoners to nursing homes. Baths twice a week. And very little liberty. Send the nursing home people to the prisons and be furnished with what they get. Showers daily. Better food. Tv. Fans. Air conditioning. Excuse my inexperience. This is my first post reply. And yes I can't spell either.
Aug 22, 2018 16:27:24 #
danielb wrote:
Why can't we send the prisoners to nursing homes. Baths twice a week. And very little liberty. Send the nursing home people to the prisons and be furnished with what they get. Showers daily. Better food. Tv. Fans. Air conditioning. Excuse my inexperience. This is my first post reply. And yes I can't spell either.
WELCOME, danielb! Don't worry about the spelling most here, including me can't spell, nor type. That is what spell check is for. If I misspell a word it underlines it in red. I don't even know how I got that.
If you want to reply directly to what another poster wrote just click on the quote reply box below the post.
I don't know why the i***ts are r**ting the get free room and board and medical care. They damn sure ain't gonna work em too hard. Long ago in Mississippi they had them chopping and picking cotten and in many other places doing road work by hand. Guards were on horses with rifles and bullwhips to keep them in line and together.
I am not for imprisoning non-violent offenders but I am also for not treating violent offenders with kid gloves. I my opinion they lose all their rights for their heinous crimes. Child rapists and murderers should get a swift death penalty.
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