Prison Strike

Reports Back From The First Week Of The National Prison Strike

August 29, 2018 Amani Sawari, Sawarimi.org Resist! Class Struggle, Prison Strike, Prisons

Many people are aware of the prison strike that began August 21 on the 47th anniversary of George Jackson’s assassination in 1971. Some of those following the strike are confused by the conflicting messages that are being sent out by states’ departments of corrections. It’s clear that prison officials are doing all that they can to suppress strike actions and prisoners’ organizing. However prisoners are rising up in institutions across the country, and now internationally, in protest of the living and working conditions in the prisons. They also call out for the rescinding of legal barriers and policies that keep inmates in a state of oppression and instability. They are demanding to have ownership over transforming the circumstances that contribute to the violent environments they forced to live in.

With US Prison Strike On Third Day, Reports Of Hunger Strikes And Work Stoppages Nationwide

August 25, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Class Struggle, Hunger Strikes, Prison Strike, Prisons

"Prisoners are boycotting commissaries, they are engaging in hunger strikes which can take days for the state to acknowledge, and they will be engaging in sit-ins and work strikes which are not always reported to the outside." Details of the nationwide prison strike, now in its third day, are gradually emerging from institutions where inmates are staging hunger strikes, refusing to work, and participating in sit-ins to protest unjust sentencing laws, poor living conditions, and the continued existence of slavery within the nation's carceral system. The strike began on Tuesday, with organizers reporting that incarcerated Americans in 17 states had pledged to join the action. According to a statement from organizers including Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), at least six direct actions had taken place at U.S. prisons in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Washington, and California.

Prison Strike Organizer Warns: Brutal Prison Conditions Risk “Another Attica”

August 23, 2018 Natasha Lennard, Theintercept.com Educate! Attica, Class Struggle, Prison Strike

LAST APRIL, A seven-hour prison riot at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional institution left seven inmates dead and dozens injured. State Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling cited the source of the riot as “likely gang-related,” but inmates say that it was provoked by overly punitive prison guards who subsequently made no effort to intervene or offer medical aid for hours. It was the deadliest incident in a U.S. prison in 25 years. Many incarcerated people and prisoner advocates attributed the riot to the structural brutality of the prison system itself. In response, prison rights advocacy groups and incarcerated organizers have called for a nationwide prison strike to last from August 21 — the 47th anniversary of revolutionary George Jackson’s death in San Quentin State Prison — to September 9, the anniversary of the Attica Prison riot.

National Prison Strike Kickoff #August21

August 22, 2018 Amani Sawari, Sawari Mi. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prison Strike, Worker Rights

On the first day of the prison strike we’ve already seen hundreds demonstrating on both sides of the wall. Particularly where I reside in the Pacific Northwest, there have been reports of over 200 individuals incarcerated in Tacoma’s Detention Center participating in the Nationwide prison strike through work stoppages. In support of those on the inside demonstrations took place throughout Washington State as supporters march through the University of Washington’s Seattle campus. The university currently has contracts with Correctional Industries in which prisoners’ labor is responsible for the construction of the furniture in their campus housing and classrooms.

Slavery Never Ended: Call For National Prison Strike #August21

July 24, 2018 Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee Resist! Prison Labor, Prison Strike

This call is for a two-week national strike beginning on Aug. 21, the anniversary of George Jackson’s assassination, and extending until Sept. 9, the anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion in 1971. The call has been taken up inside from coast to coast, and across at least 17 different states. The author of this call, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, is a national collective of incarcerated people who fight for human rights by providing other incarcerated people with access to legal education, resources and assistance.

Plea For Solidarity With Florida Prisoners On Strike

January 17, 2018 By Ryan Sullivan, Medium.com Resist! Florida, Prison Strike, Prisoner rights, Prisons

The inmates across the Florida penitentiary complex are striking to protest the inhumane conditions they are facing on a daily basis. Conditions including police/guard brutality, rape and abuse, grueling unpaid slave labor, and price gouging of personal care items and other necessities. The inmates are calling on all organizing groups, religious groups, and people who empathize with their plight to speak out and draw attention to their struggle against insufferable conditions. U.S. corporations, police, prison guard unions, and politicians are complicit in the largest system of mass oppression anywhere in the world today. Yet many of us — U.S. citizens — move through our days like millions of our family members, friends, and neighbors are not disappearing away to rapey dungeons where they perform slave labor under abysmal conditions. We tell ourselves fairy tales like, ‘they deserve it’ or ‘they’re getting help.’

The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons Behind The Palestinian Hunger Strike

May 4, 2017 Ramzy Baroud, www.ramzybaroud.net Resist! Hunger Strikes, Palestine, Prison, Prison Strike

By Ramzy Baroud for Politics for the People - Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison. The West Bank is a prison, too, segmented into various wards, known as areas A, B and C. In fact, all Palestinians are subjected to varied degrees of military restrictions. At some level, they are all prisoners. East Jerusalem is cut off from the West Bank, and those in the West Bank are separated from one another. Palestinians in Israel are treated slightly better than their brethren in the Occupied Territories, but subsist in degrading conditions compared to the first-class status given to Israeli Jews, as per the virtue of their ethnicity alone. Palestinians ‘lucky’ enough to escape the handcuffs and shackles are still trapped in different ways. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s Ein el-Hilweh, like millions of Palestinian refugees in ‘shattat’ (Diaspora), are prisoners in refugee camps, carrying precarious, meaningless identification, cannot travel and are denied access to work. They languish in refugee camps, waiting for life to move forward, however slightly – as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them for nearly seventy years.

Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike

April 24, 2017 James J. Zogby, www.lobelog.com Resist! Palestine, Prison Strike, Prisons

By James J. Zogby for Lobe Log - One thousand five hundred Palestinian prisoners have been on a hunger strike for almost a week now. They are refusing sustenance in an effort to improve the deplorable conditions faced by the nearly 6,500 Palestinians who are currently imprisoned in Israel. On the day before the strike began, the action’s leader, Marwan Barghouti, published an op-ed in the International New York Times. It was an elegantly written piece in which Barghouti laid out the conditions in Israel’s prisons and the demands of the strikers. These demands include: more regular family visits, better health care, an end to solitary confinement, and end to administrative detention (a practice in which Israel jails Palestinians for prolonged periods without charges or trial—there are currently 500 such detainees), and installing public telephones enabling prisoners to have monitored calls with their families. Barghouti began his article noting that he has been in prison for 15 years during which time “I have been both a witness to and a victim of Israel’s illegal system of mass arrests and the ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners.”

Prison Strike Having Major Financial Impact On California

October 12, 2016 Staff, www.solidarityresearch.org Educate! Prison Labor, Prison Strike

By Staff from Solidarity Research. September 9, 2016 was the start of the largest prison strike in U.S. history. Over 72,000 incarcerated workers in 22 states refused to provide their labor to profit the prison industrial complex. California forces 5,588 incarcerated workers to labor in exchange for little or no compensation.1 Another 4,000 earn $2 a day fighting Californian wildfires with inadequate training and equipment.2 The prison system in California reaped $207 million in revenue and $58 million in profit from forced labor in 2014-15.3 Each incarcerated worker in California generates $41,549 annually in revenue for the prison system, or $10,238 in profit.4 The financial losses to the California prison system were as much as $636,068 in revenue, or $156,736 in profit, for every day of the prison strike. Prison administrators have responded to nonviolent resistance by locking down facilities, cutting off access and communication to the outside world for incarcerated workers.

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