Police, prison and abolition

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 27, 2018 5:18 pm

Large turnout for San Quentin action in support of National Prison Strike
By Jon BrittonAug 27, 2018

Large turnout for San Quentin action in support of National Prison Strike

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Solidarity rally at San Quentin, Aug. 25, 2018 | Photo: Nube Brown

A diverse crowd of around 500 mostly young activists turned out for a rally Aug. 25 at San Quentin Prison in Marin County, California. Most came from Oakland, many in two chartered buses, but sizable contingents traveled from San José, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco as well. Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a key organizer of the rally, along with Prisoners Human Rights Coalition, CA, recently formed in San José, and many other Bay Area activist groups including Party for Socialism and Liberation, helped publicize the action.

The idea for the strike originated with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (@JailLawSpeak), an incarcerated group of prisoner rights advocates.


Photo: Jon Britton

There was some confusion when we first arrived as to whether the rally would take place at the West Gate or East Gate of the prison, though the original plan was to assemble at the West Gate. A seemingly friendly cop from a large group of Highway Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies, with their patrol cars, “standing guard” outside the West Gate, approached us early on and tried to re-direct us to the East Gate, where there was little to no parking, an apparent attempt to disrupt the rally. It didn’t work, as we quickly realized this was disinformation and spread the word to later arrivals.

The turnout was considerably larger than the 50 or so that at least one of the key organizers had expected. This shows the growing knowledge of and support for the prison strike, planned to last from Aug. 21 (the anniversary of the assassination of George Jackson in 1968 and Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in August 1831) to Sept. 9. However, the fight for human rights for the caged persons in U.S. prisons, jails and immigrant detention centers – disproportionately Black and Brown – will continue, organizers emphasize, as long as it takes.

The struggle recently received a boost when a group of ICE detainees in Tacoma, Wash., joined the national strike.

Strikers are refusing to report to assigned jobs, engaging in peaceful sit-ins, boycotting concessions and phone services, and carrying out hunger strikes. They risk transfer to other prisons, solitary confinement, and additional time behind bars. In other words, they are risking a lot!

Education, inspiration and organization

Speakers at the rally both educated and inspired those in attendance. Leading off was Bilal Ali, a former Black Panther and political prisoner. In a fiery speech, he explained that the roughly 2.3 million currently incarcerated are seen by the capitalist rulers as “surplus population,” subject to super-exploitation and degrading treatment. Those who really belong in San Quentin and other U.S. prisons, he said, are the ruling rich, who have deprived people of means to make a living, caused mass evictions and homelessness, driven millions into poverty, and carried out endless wars.

Another featured speaker, Jose Villarreal, spent 10 years in the Pelican Bay SHU and was one among many thousands of prisoners joining a California-wide hunger strike in 2013 that won significant improvements. However, he said: “Many of the conditions that I [protested against] are continuing to happen today. Here in San Quentin, prisoners are still being held in solitary confinement. And solitary confinement is torture!”

Villarreal went on to say, “The reason they had this prison built up in Pelican Bay was to target leaders and organizers within the prison system … mostly Black and Brown folks. … They pluck us out of our community, they imprison us, and when we organize … the state criminalizes us.”


Nube Brown | Photo: Jon Britton

Strike support leader Nube Brown of California Prison Focus and Prisoners Human Rights Coalition, CA, led a reading of the striking prisoners’ 10 demands, asking the audience to respond to each demand with a loud, “We hear you!” Each demand was also read in Spanish, after which Spanish-speakers in the audience responded, “Te oimos.”

The organizers had also planned to have a mass “phone zap” into the prisons as part of the program. Bilal announced, however, that the phone lines had been shut down to block such calls, which he said actually showed the impact we already had made.

At the end of the rally, Bilal Ali, urged participants to take the various fliers, papers and other materials being handed out by the groups present to become better educated on the issues and, if not already a member, join an organization carrying on the struggle. Members of PSL handed out copies of Liberation newspaper, a statement of support for the strike by Palestinians held in Israeli jails, and Prop 10 palm cards with information on the important statewide campaign for a “yes” vote in November in favor of rent control and affordable housing.

We can expect support to grow as the strike for prisoner human rights goes on and spreads, and the impact to grow as a result. This struggle deserves the widest solidarity!

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:42 pm

Tucson Jail Blockaded During “Evict ICE” March
By Anonymous Contributor - August 27, 2018143

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Report from anarchists in Tucson on a recent march and blockade of an ICE building.

On Saturday, August 25th a group of over 100 people gathered in a park a few blocks away from the local jail in Tucson, Arizona, occupied Tohono O’odham land, in response to a call for a march to “evict ICE” from the Pima County Jail.

After a free meal from Food Not Bombs, the crowd took to the street, eventually marching onto busy Mission Road and blocking traffic. In front of the main entrance to the jail, the crowd split into two groups and moved to block both access roads to the jail employee parking lots. Thanks to some dedicated research and scouting, we knew the jail’s shift change occurs daily at 3 p.m., and the timing for the march was planned accordingly—by 2:45, all routes in and out of the corrections officer parking lot were blocked. The crowds held down these access roads for over an hour and half, thoroughly interfering with the normal operation of the jail.

Corrections officers trying to go home after the shift were trapped inside (except for a few who jumped a curb at high speed with their cars dangerously close to some demonstrators), and those arriving to start work had to be redirected a number of different times by Tucson Police, eventually parking in a neighborhood across a busy road from the jail and being forced to walk into work.

At around 4:30, the crowd gathered in the middle of the street in front of the jail to hear speakers explain the connections between settler-colonialism and ICE, share personal stories of how collaboration between local law enforcement and Border Patrol has ripped apart families here in Tucson, and decry the racialized violence of incarceration. The events of the day ended with a tired but triumphant return march to the park.

Things that went well:
The police showed up at the park before the march got underway and spent half an hour asking around to speak with an “event organizer.” In the past, this has been an effective tactic by the local cops to find a person they can put pressure on to control marches when they’ve gotten rowdy. On Saturday, everyone just ignored their questions, and eventually they left the park.

The timing was great and we definitely thoroughly disrupted the jail’s change of shift. The crowd was also very adaptive, so when folks noticed that Tucson Police were directing incoming guards into the visitation parking lot, people set up a soft blockade there as well: cars visiting their families could come in, jail employees could fuck off.

Things that could have gone better:
Midway through the march, some folks attempted a banner hang by throwing weighted ropes over a traffic light, but unfortunately the ropes got tangled together at the top, and it wasn’t possible to hoist the banner. It was really exciting to see this sort of clandestinely planned escalation mid-march, but it was a shame the banner didn’t end up on the traffic light.

While the messaging throughout the day was mostly really good—chants of “la policía, la migra, la misma porquería!” and “police, ICE, the same shit twice!”, jeers at the guards who eventually made it to the jail to “quit your jobs,” and a lot of connecting the short term goal of evicting ICE from the jail to broader visions of ICE, police, and prison abolition—there was an unfortunate lack of focus given to the prison strike. It was only mentioned once in passing by a speaker, but it seems like this would have been a great opportunity to talk about ongoing struggles inside of prisons throughout the country.

All said, it was a powerful march and blockade. Here’s hoping this marks the beginning of a trend towards escalation and interruption of the infrastructure of domination. The cops have been pretty hands off lately, let’s take this breathing room and run with it!

–Tucson Anarchists

https://itsgoingdown.org/tucson-jail-bl ... um=twitter

Good for Tucson Anarchists. You do the work you get the credit. If yer willing to work we'll get to the bad theory later.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 3:47 pm

Michigan’s Failed Effort to Privatize Prison Kitchens and the Future of Institutional Food
When private companies took over the state's prison kitchens, inedible and inadequate food was just the tip of the iceberg—now other institutions outsourcing foodservice are on notice.

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BY TOM PERKINS
FOOD + POLICY, Food Justice, Food Policy, Nutrition, School Food
Posted on: August 20, 2018
Editor’s note: This week, Civil Eats is publishing a series of articles on food served to incarcerated people; this week also marks the beginning of the 2018 Prison Strike, planned to run from August 21 to September 9.

What happens when an institutional kitchen transitions from being run by municipal employees to operating as part of a for-profit company? At the Michigan Department of Corrections’ (MDOC) prison kitchens, a five-year experiment in privatization led to a whole host of problems, including a dramatic decline in food quality and safety, destabilized prisons and a drop in fair-wage jobs. It also may have caused a riot, put people’s lives in danger, created an odd alliance between inmates and guards against the MDOC administration, and failed to save the state money.

“It was a human atrocity against the inmates, in my opinion,” Ronald Taylor, a now-retired Michigan corrections officer, told Civil Eats. “The rotten garbage that was being served, plus the way they were allowing it to be prepared. It was an atrocity.”

In one Michigan prison, an Aramark employee pulled discarded food out of a trashcan and served it. In others, compnay employees fed inmates cakes on which rats had nibbled. Rotten chicken tacos resulted in 250 inmates being sickened and quarantined—and a class action lawsuit. Mold began to plague state prison kitchens, and some inmates ate cold food for months when a mold infestation shut down a chow hall. Multiple reports of maggots surfaced.

Aramark reduced portion sizes and some facilities provided nothing more than flaccid bologna sandwiches for dinner. Inmates say the private companies eliminated seasoning, used low-grade food, and frequently ran out of ingredients. The food was reportedly prepared in filthy kitchens with broken appliances. Aramark employees also regularly had sexual contact with inmates, and smuggled in contraband and drugs.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder—who along with the state’s Republican-led government had turned the kitchens over to institutional food giant Aramark in December 2013, ostensibly to save money—admitted in January 2018 that the arrangement had failed.

“The benefits of continuing on that path don’t outweigh the costs and we should transition back to doing it in-house,” Snyder said during a budget speech in January. Now, the state is reinstating the 340 employees of the Michigan Corrections Organization union in what many there hope will be a return to the largely scandal-free kitchens that the state ran prior to the switch.

The fact that a staunchly conservative government concluded that kitchen privatization doesn’t work is surprising, and has important implications about the growing reliance on private companies in other institutional kitchens around the country.

Civil Eats spoke with inmates, corrections officers, and prison reform advocates to understand what happened in Michigan, and what it means for institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and universities, that have privatized their food service.

Lamont Heard, who is serving a life sentence and successfully sued the MDOC for shorting Muslim inmates on calories (2,600 daily calories are required by the state) during Ramadan, witnessed first-hand the way private companies ran the prison kitchens.

“Sanitation is a big issue,” he said. “Cleaning tables, making sure counters are clean, trays clean—they don’t really care about that. The employees make it clear they’re there for a paycheck. It’s the lowest grade food that the companies can get for the smallest amount of money.”

Why Michigan Went Private
The stated purpose of Michigan’s privatization plan was to save the state money on operating costs—replacing union workers earning $15-$25 per hour with low-wage Aramark workers earning $11-$13. But critics point out that disabling the union positions in prison kitchens served as an added benefit.

In 2013, the MDOC signed a three-year, $145 million contract with Aramark despite the fact that a union—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 25—offered to match that price. The union-busting point was driven home in 2015, when the department dumped Aramark and switched to Tampa-based Trinity Food Services, with which it signed a three-year, $158 million contract—a more expensive contract than what AFSCME had offered.

Even at the higher cost, the state witnessed the same problems with Trinity that it had seen with Aramark. In addition to the health and human rights issues around food, these companies face problems far beyond the chow hall, with a litany of other daily problems disrupting the prisons’ operations.

Since late 2013, the MDOC issued over 400 stop work orders against private employees, barring employees from prison grounds for misconduct, and allegedly covered up at least 60 more incidents. Corrections officers say staffing shortages, turnover, and no-shows were also common. But there was little that the corrections officers could do about the situation because they didn’t have authority over private employees, and any issues had to be reported to company management, a process that could take days.

Nearly starving inmates and feeding them tainted food is a cruel form of punishment, but it’s not the only concern, according to one MDOC prison guard who only agreed to speak with Civil Eats anonymously. As they put it, “Food is a control mechanism.”

Corrections officers say gangs in the prisons they worked in exerted control over the food supply because private employees worked with them or didn’t stand up to them, and Lamont Heard noted that many inmates view the chow hall as a dangerous place.

“If I go in there and I’m expecting to receive a certain food and I don’t get it, then I’m going to be upset,” Heard said. “Or if the food tastes horrible, or the meat’s not done, and the employee is telling [us] she can’t fix the problem, then you got a bunch of angry people.”

Indeed, problems with food were largely behind a 2016 riot in the Kinross Correctional Facility. Aramark’s decision in 2015 to substitute ketchup for spaghetti sauce led to a protest in another Michigan prison, and multiple other inmate protests have occurred in recent years. Around the country, food-related problems have been known to ignite deadly riots and unrest in prisons.

Aramark did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but it has said in the past that reported problems were “manufactured attacks” made by the unions.

Publicly, the MDOC has said that cost was the only issue that led it to cancel the contract with Trinity. An audit found Aramark overbilled Michigan by $3.4 million, and the Kinross riot cost around $900,000 in damages and overtime pay. But, in addition to falling short on the food and service aspects of their contracts, corrections officers Civil Eats spoke with say Trinity and Aramark didn’t do their own laundry, take care of security, or perform other duties that their contracts stipulated, and therefore shifted more costs to the state. Factor in expenses like legal fees to defend against lawsuits, and the $6 million that Michigan Republicans had estimated the state would save by contracting with Trinity starts to evaporate.

Neither the MDOC nor Trinity responded to requests for comment for this story, and Trinity has rarely commented publicly on problems in Michigan or in its other kitchens around the country.

Lessons from Michigan
Michigan’s experience may point to larger flaws in the private food-service model. There are two main ways private companies save on food-service costs: by cutting food and labor expenses, says Alex Friedmann, associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center and managing editor of Prison Legal News.

“[Privatization] doesn’t work because the goal … is not to provide adequate food, nutrition, or the constitutional minimum of nutrition. The goal is to make money,” Friedmann said. “There are only so many ways to generate profit. One way is to provide less food or less quality food. Another way is to pay your employees less.”

Lower wages attract less qualified and committed employees. Corrections officers don’t have authority over private company employees, Heard says, and the employees must run all issues by management. So if an inmate is shorted on food, or was served rotten food, the issue isn’t immediately resolved in the chow line. A grievance has to be filed and presented to a company boss before a meeting is held. That process can take days and, in the meantime, the inmate can go hungry.

Daniel Manville, an attorney with the Michigan State University Civil Rights Clinic, represents pro bono clients whose civil rights are violated in prison. He says he sees similar issues with private companies in all areas of prison service, and that Trinity and Aramark’s failures are not isolated events.

“It’s across the board in any type of privatization—custody, food, medical care, you name it,” Manville said. “This is what happens when they replace regular state employees with people … who are paid far less.’”

Similar problems exist in Trinity and Aramark-run kitchens around the nation. In Ohio’s prison kitchens, where the state replaced unions with Aramark in 2013, the issues didn’t receive as much media attention, and the Ohio Department of Corrections re-upped Aramark’s contract. In Georgia, the Southern Center For Human Rights stepped in after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that hungry inmates were eating toothpaste because Trinity wasn’t providing enough food.

In the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the district and Aramark fought back against students who protested their “disgusting” Aramark-prepared school lunches. But CPS ended its custodial contract with the company earlier this year after an inspection of district schools found “rodent droppings, pest infestations, filthy food-preparation equipment,” among other things. Similar issues have been reported in university kitchens run by Aramark, and the company’s treatment of minority workers at a Philadelphia stadium led to protests, while Aramark employees at the University of Southern California have also protested low wages.

Still, Trinity and Aramark remain employed by many institutions. Alex Friedmann said that if there are two things that set the Michigan prison situation apart, it’s the media coverage and the intense, sustained scrutiny. Both factors led a respected Michigan pollster to poll state residents on privatized prison kitchens. It found over 60 percent of residents wanted Aramark out of the kitchen, highlighting the public’s level of awareness.

“They took positions away from state employees, so there was extra scrutiny to see if private companies would do a better job,” Friedmann says. “And the answer to that was a resounding ‘No.’ They couldn’t and didn’t.”

Friedmann says it’s difficult to determine what — if any — impact the situation in Michigan will have at prisons and other institutions around the country. But he isn’t optimistic that it will mean much. He pointed to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which has even experienced many of the same issues as those seen in Michigan, but still renewed Aramark’s contract in 2017.

“People do not learn from the mistakes of other people. Ironically, this is kind of the same problem that puts a lot of people in prison to begin with,” Friedmann says. “Our government is no different. [A department of corrections] figures ‘We need to save money, and yeah, they had problems there, but we won’t have problems here. We’ll keep a closer eye on them.’

“So, unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see people learning a lesson from Michigan. They’ll have to learn their own lesson.”

https://civileats.com/2018/08/20/michig ... onal-food/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 3:50 pm

THIS LABOR DAY ALL ACTIVISTS, ORGANIZERS, ADVOCATES, AND PROGRESSIVES NEED TO REMAIN COGNIZANT OF THE PLIGHT OF THE INCARCERATED, WHOSE LABOR OFTEN IS LEFT OUT OF THE DISCOURSE.
By Devyn Springer

While Labor Day has become synonymous with simply being known as the long weekend filled with barbecues, cheap cocktails, and laughs with friends, it is historically much more than that; it is meant to be a celebration of the radical trade unionists and organizers of the early Labor Movement which is responsible for many of our worker’s rights today. Moreover, it should be a celebration of the worker, the contributions to the world the laborers make, and a transgression against current abuses and exploitations workers face.

This year massive protests and demonstrations across the country have taken place to demand high minimum wages, particularly the #FightFor15 organizations call for a $15 minimum wage. In other parts of the country immigrants folks are also marching for the rights of immigrant workers, especially in relation to the recent news that Trump has declared war on DACA recipients. While these causes are important, noble, and timely, there is a population of workers whose plight and labor is overlooked each year: the incarcerated.

In our conceptualization of “labor,” “laborers,” and “workers,” we often naturally overlook the labor of incarcerated people, which is not a coincidence. Not just their labor, but their conditions and lives as well are often overlooked in most public discourse, as the prison system is this way by design. In most states, the geography of prisons alone is enough to create this erasure; state and federal prison facilities are often places on the outskirts of towns, hour-long drives away from cities. Incarcerated populations are, often quite literally, out of sight and out of mind to the general public, thus the plight of their struggles and their labor is naturally disregarded.

RELATED: A PRIMER ON THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN AMERICA

The general invisibility of incarcerated populations is what allow for such violations of human rights and exploitation of labor to occur, notes Angela Davis in a 1998 interview. “Challenging the invisibility of incarcerated populations, and especially the hyper-invisibility of women prisoners who are twice marginalized — invisible in the “free world” by virtue of their incarceration and largely overlooked even by prison activists by virtue of their gender,” Davis states, “is central to resisting the social dispossession wrought by the prison industrial complex.” This means that the invisibility of incarcerated peoples, especially the most marginalized within that population — women, the disabled, queer and trans individuals – is a form of dehumanization that is central to the creation of the shadow prison economy that has became an American economic backbone today.

When discussing Labor Day, both its history, contemporary symbolism, and importance, it is important to discuss incarcerated labor because it is the same racially skewed slave labor which built this capitalist system. Labor movements have often run parallel to various prison labor abolition/prison abolition movements, but have rarely fully intersected with each other during their highest moments. In today’s carceral state that exists, including prison labor in all of our movements is a must. Prison labor is a billion-dollar industry, with miniscule to no return to incarcerated workers. The vast majority of incarcerated laborers work for mere pennies an hour to do the work of both private corporations and public sector institutions — weaving textiles, creating road signs, basketball rims, lingerie, construction, roasting potatoes, just to name a few — and even take on dangerous tasks which law enforcement officers and first responders take credit for, like the incarcerated women in California who fight wildfires for less than $2 a day.

Through private third-party companies, several corporations, like Victoria’s Secret, Walmart, and WholeFoods, contract incarcerated labor from public and private prisons to cut production costs. In fact, set decorators from recent Hollywood film “Dunkirk” bragged about using saving money by using prison labor to build parts of the set, stating “I hope the producers know, because we saved a lot of money that way.” If even possible, the private prison industry becomes a seemingly more audacious evil against workers to combat, which new evidence suggests hold inmates longer to boost profits. The private prison industry makes $7.4 billion per year, houses around 20% of federal inmates, profits from doubling as immigrant detention centers, often forces labor upon inmates, and is responsible for much of the incentive-policing which causes militarized, brutal police presence in impoverished areas. What does this mean? It means that the slave labor of incarcerated people is exacerbated by both state-owned and private prisons, and the US government has been contracting private prisons through independent corporations; in other words, imprisoned populations, their bodies and their labor, become dehumanized capital for trade.

RELATED: NEW BILL HOPES TO END THE HORRORS SUFFERED BY INCARCERATED WOMEN
Of course, this led to a creation of a dehumanized, fugitive class of people whose labor is needed to sustain state economies. As aforementioned Angela Davis details greatly in her book “Are Prisons Obsolete,” it was the labor of “convict leasing” during the 19th Century which build much of the railroads, streets, and city infrastructure we praise as the turn of industrialization. Even the busiest and most famous street in Atlanta, Peachtree Street, was built by “convicts.” What occurred was a the creation of arbitrary and petty law aimed at recently freed Black people, with the goal of creating a sustainable convict class of mostly Black people whose labor could be rented and exploited for economic development. Does that sound familiar, the creation of racially biased, targeted laws to create a convict class of Americans whose labor can sustain a state economy? It should sound familiar, because it is exactly what takes place today with incarcerated workers, and is exactly why we must bring the plight of prison labor into the discourse of the general public.

It would be a disservice to my incarcerated comrades to not mention the constant strikes, protests, writings, and demonstrations which inmates hold to challenge the conditions of their confinements. Last Labor Day prisoners staged the largest prison strike in US history, taking place for several weeks at over 30 prisons across 12 states to protest what they called “slavery” due to the forced labor they undergo. This strike intentionally took place on the 45 year anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising that saw over 1,000 prisoners take over their prison to demand better living conditions and more fair sentencing, among other demands. In fact, incarcerated people protest their conditions and slave labor often, with hunger strikes, labor strikes, protests, and other forms of resistance taking places across several prisons every year.

The mainstream media very, very rarely covers prison strikes, most obviously because that would rupture the bubble of invisibility which must be maintained to perpetuate the exploitative conditions. While last year’s prison strike spread to more and more prisons and lasted several weeks, mainstream outlets like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, including those members of the Democratic Party who claim to be the “resistance” had virtually nothing to say about the important events unfolding. Prison labor, as well as the rights of incarcerated people, is a struggle that intersects with all identities, and is at the center of capitalist exploitation in the United States. This Labor Day all activists, organizers, advocates, and progressives need to remain cognizant of the plight of the incarcerated, whose labor often is left out of the discourse. If we wish to create liberation movements, we must make sure to include our incarcerated siblings.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:01 pm

Companies that Exploit Prison Labor

Name Type

Zurich Insurance. Insurance
WYETH Pharmaceuticals
Whole Foods Grocery
Wendys Fast Food
Wausau Insurance Companies Insurance
Wal-Mart Stores Megastore
Victoria Secret Apparel
Verizon Communications Telecommunications
UST Public Affairs Telecommunications
UPS Foundation Mailing
United Parcel Service (UPS). Transportation
United Airlines Transportation
U.S. Generating Company. Utilities
Turner Construction Other
The Heritage Foundation Association
The Boeing Company Transportation
Texas Educational Foundation Association
Taxpayers Network Other
Tax Education Support Organization Association
Steel Recycling Institute Association

State Farm Insurance Companies Insurance
Starbucks Fast Food
Sprint Telecommunications
Smith Richardson Foundation Association
Smith Pharmaceuticals
Shell Oil Company Foundation Association
Service Corporation International Other
Sears Other
Schering-Plough Corporation Pharmaceuticals
Scaiffe Foundation Association
SBC Communications Telecommunications
Sara Lee Corporation. Manufacturing
Roebuck & Company Other
Roe Foundation Association
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Pharmaceuticals
Quaker Oats Other
Procter & Gamble Manufacturing
Phillips Petroleum Company. Oil
Pharmacia Corporation Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Pharmaceuticals

PG&E Corporation/PG&E National Energy Group Utilities
Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
Olin Foundation Association
Non-Bank Funds Transmitters Group Bank
Nintendo Tech
Newmont Mining Corporation Other
Natural Gas Supply Association Utilities
Nationwide Insurance/National Financial Insurance
National Rifle Association Association
National Pork Producers Association Association
National Cable and Telecommunications Association Telecommunications
National Association of Independent Insurers Insurance
Motorola Manufacturing
Mobil Oil Corporation Oil
Mid-American Energy Company Utilities
Microsoft Corporation Technology
Merck & Company Pharmaceuticals
MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company Insurance
MCI Telecommunications
McDonalds Fast Food

Mary Kay Cosmetics Other
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee Association
Liberty Mutual Insurance Group Insurance
LaSalle National Bank Bank
Koch Industries Utilities
Kline & French Pharmaceuticals
Keystone Automotive Industries Manufacturing
Kemper Insurance Companies Insurance
Johnson & Johnson Manufacturing
J.P. Morgan & Company Bank
Iowans for Tax Relief Association
International Paper Manufacturing
International Gold Corporation Other
International Game Technology Manufacturing
Inland Steel Industries Manufacturing
Independent Power Producers of New York Utilities
Inc. Telecommunications
Household International Bank
Hoffman-LaRoche Pharmaceuticals
Heartland Institute of Chicago Association

Hartford Financial Services Group Insurance
Harris Trust & Savings Bank Bank
Guarantee Trust Life Insurance Insurance
GTE Corporation Telecommunications
Grocery Manufacturers of America Association
Grocery Manufacturers of America Manufacturing
Golden Rule Insurance Company Insurance
GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals
Glaxo Wellcome Pharmaceuticals
GEICO Insurance
Fruit of the Loom Manufacturing
Fortis Health Insurance
Fireman?s Fund Insurance Company Insurance
Fidelity Inestments Bank
Federated Department Stores Other
ExxonMobil Corporation Oil
ELW Foundation Association
Eli Lilly & Company Pharmaceuticals
Edison Electric Institute Utilities
Dresser Industries Other

Deere & Company Manufacturing
Credit Union National Association Inc. Bank
Credit Card Coalition Bank
Corrections Corporation of America Other
Consolidated Edison Company of New York Utilities
Community Financial Services Corporation Bank
Commonwealth Edison Company Utilities
Coalition for Asbestos Justice Insurance
CNA service mark companies Insurance
Chubb & Son Insurance
Chlorine Chemistry Council Manufacturing
Chevron Corporation Oil
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation Association
Center for Energy and Economic Development Utilities
Cendant Corporation Other
Caterpillar Manufacturing
Carthage Foundation Association
Cargill Manufacturing
Caltex Petroleum Oil
Cabot Sedgewick Other

BP America Oil
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Corporation Insurance
BellSouth Telecommunications Telecommunications
Bell & Howell Foundation Association
Bayer Corporation Pharmaceuticals
Bank of America Bank
Aventis Pharmaceuticals Pharmaceuticals
AutoZone Manufacturing
AT&T Telecommunications
ARCO Oil
Archer Daniels Midland Corporation Manufacturing
Amway Corporation Other
Amoco Corporation Oil
Ameritech Foundation Association
Ameritech Telecommunications
American Trucking Association Transportation
American Plastics Council Manufacturing
American Petroleum Institute Oil
American Insurance Association Insurance
American Gas Association Utilities

American Express Company Bank
American Electric Power Association Utilities
American Council of Life Insurance Insurance
American Airlines Transportation
Allstate Insurance Company Insurance
Alliance of American Insurers Insurance
Air Transport Association of America Transportation
Adolph Coors Foundation Association
Abbott Laboratories Pharmaceuticals
?American General Financial Group Bank


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Capitalist society makes us all complicit, only one thing to do....
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:01 pm

WHEN INCARCERATED PEOPLE STRIKE, THE WORLD SHOULD LISTEN AND RESPOND
DEVYN SPRINGERAUG 28, 2018SOCIAL JUSTICE

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Art by @melaniecervantes & @dignidadrebeldeart

WITHOUT MASS ACTIONS LIKE THE CURRENT NATIONWIDE PRISON STRIKE, WHICH BRING DIRECT AWARENESS TO THE ISSUE, THESE STORIES GO LARGELY UNDERREPORTED.
Note: Due to the safety of the incarcerated individuals, some names were changed to allow anonymity.

We speak carefully on the phone, fully aware that anything said can become grounds to get him sent to ‘segregation’, so we talk in non-absolutes and coded language. The phone line is fuzzy, distant, and unstable today—sometimes it sounds crystal clear, other times I think he may be underwater—but still, we speak with covert passion.

“I’m sure you heard the news of what’s happening all around, yeah?” he asks me, not saying the words but still conveying the conversation to me. “It’s really fuckin’ courageous for people, what [they’re] doing,” Charlie, an immigrant who has been incarcerated in Georgia for almost six years and is now at Stewart Detention Center, the fifth facility he’s been transferred to, tells me.

“I keep my faith, but niggas go crazy in here,” Charlie says with a voice that’s increasingly shaky. We quickly change the subject. The topic of resistance can be fleeting and constricted for incarcerated people like Charlie, but it’s often present nonetheless. The “news” that Charlie was referring to is the nationwide prison strike, which was announced in April and began last week.

Earlier this year, incarcerated people across the U.S. announced plans to hold a nationwide prison strike from August 21st to September 9th. The dates are not random: August 21st invokes the day that comrade George Jackson was murdered by prison guards in San Quentin State Prison, and September 9th marks the day incarcerated people began the Attica Prison Uprising, one of the most notorious prison uprisings in history. Lead by an abolitionist collective including groups like Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and others which culminate incarcerated and non-incarcerated organizers, this strike, now several days underway with many reports of involvement across the country and over 300 organizations endorsing it, could be the largest prison strike in U.S. history.

The Demands
The strike is in response to an uprising at Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in South Carolina where seven incarcerated people died on April 15, 2018. Based on multiple reports, the violence and subsequent deaths at Lee Correctional Institution was provoked by prison guards and then sustained by prison officials who turned their backs on the incarcerated people as the violence increased, not attempting to break up the fighting or give medical aid.

“The demands were issued in direct response to the violence at Lee Correctional Institution,” said journalist and prisoner advocate Jared Ware. “Jailhouse Lawyers Speak is a human rights organization inside prisons, and the language and the choice of their demands in many ways reflects the way they work, they deal in policies, they examine laws, they write writs, they help with appeals, they file grievances against abuses in prisons.”

The strikers’ demands are both straightforward and complex, with the crux of them calling attention to the need for “humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.” While organizers have noted that their demands don’t illustrate or tackle the totality of problems they face as incarcerated people, they do cover much important ground that we on the outside should pay close attention to and appreciate.

The demands are crafted as calls to uphold human rights standards, and intentionally so.

In a recent interview with Ware for ShadowProof, a representative from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak said the creation of the demands came from “talking to a number of prisoners in a number of different locations”, narrowing them down from over 30 demands to the ten we see today. They wanted the demands to be specific in their aims, but speak to as much of the incarceration as possible, from women’s prisons to immigrant detention centers.

Of the demands, the first two may be the most general: immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons and prison policies that recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women, and an immediate end to prison slavery by paying incarcerated workers ‘the prevailing wage’ in their state for their labor. The demands are crafted as calls to uphold human rights standards, and intentionally so.

Utterly inhumane conditions are a permanent fixture in most jails and prisons across the country, and have been the catalyst for many prison uprisings. In the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC), incarcerated people have reported the spreading staph infections and other diseases due to the unsanitary, dirty environment. In other cases, incarcerated people have died from heat exhaustion due to lack of air conditioning, have been denied access to clean drinking water, or have had minor health problems become life-ending occasions due to medical neglect. Following Hurricane Harvey last year, reports piled in that incarcerated people in Texas were left with no electricity, no running water or working toilets, and no ventilation for several days.

And while these are only a small handful of stories revealing the conditions our incarcerated siblings, they do signify the larger discrepancies in humanity plaguing our society. Without mass actions like the current nationwide prison strike, which bring direct awareness to the issue, these stories go largely underreported.

Other aspects of the demands target specific specific laws and policies which they demand be rescinded, namely The Prison Litigation Reform Act, The Truth in Sentencing Act, and The Sentencing Reform Act. These three federal laws (put in place by the fervor of Clinton-era ‘superpredator’ racialized paranoia) sustain mass incarceration by making it ridiculously difficult for incarcerated people to file lawsuits in federal court, drastically reduce the possibility of early release, and remove possibilities of parole, respectively.

When almost the entire incarcerated population in the U.S. is denied or otherwise made distant from these ideals and opportunities, human rights abuses are present, and strikes and other forms of protest must ensue.

In their specific targeting of these federal laws, including the following two demands which indict racist sentencing and policing, their intentions are clear: these are not just demands of self-interest, they are an indictment of the entire prison-industrial-complex. As Jared Ware noted in one of our conversations, these demands are twofold, meant to target the prison system while simultaneously meant to serve as a struggle for incarcerated people to unite around.

“The reality is the prison system in the United States has reached a breaking point of sorts,” Says Ware. “It is an environment that dehumanizes those who are imprisoned, pushes people into reactionary divisions which are facilitated intentionally by the state and the guards and prison administrations in order to maintain a violent prison ‘order’ that has no resemblance to how we might construct order.”

This “order” which the prison system seeks to sustain, essentially, is the order of racial and class division, a hierarchy built on dehumanization and violence. “Prisoners need access to education, mental and physical healthcare, they need to be paid when they work, they need the opportunity to address human rights concerns through the courts, they need to be given a shot to work towards parole no matter their crime, and they need drug rehabilitation programs,” Ware says.

By universal standards of human rights, access to methods of education, healthcare, and rehabilitation, as well as unbiased courts and opportunities for parole, are the basis for a just society. When almost the entire incarcerated population in the U.S. is denied or otherwise made distant from these ideals and opportunities, human rights abuses are present, and strikes and other forms of protest must ensue.

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These conditions and denials of basic human rights, as well as the denial of voting rights to both current and previously incarcerated individuals, are all presented as ultimate tensions within these beautifully crafted demands. And beyond this existence of tension, an intense light is placed on the hypocrisy of the U.S. Where these conditions exist in prisons outside the U.S., it is portrayed as the ultimate infringement upon humanity. Moreover, for countries which we are antagonistic towards, it is grounds for rallying cries of military intervention. However as these horrible conditions and treatments exist within our own borders, we’re told to believe it is simply business as usual.

Rightfully, much talk has occurred in recent months over the use of prison labor in an endless list of jobs and tasks following the headlines detailing that, in fact, thousands of incarcerated workers helping to put out the wildfires plaguing California. In other instances, incarcerated people are working for private companies like Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart, or Whole Foods for pennies per hour to create products. Often times, they’re working within the very jails and prisons they inhabit as cooks, janitors, servers, and other tasks which are delegated to them by prison guards. Behind it all, however, is the ugly, brutal, capitalist legacy of slavery constantly imposing its influence.

I spoke with Priyanka Bhatt, the staff attorney for Atlanta social justice organization Project South who works with detained immigrants, about incarcerated labor.

“In the immigration detention center context, we are seeing that detained immigrants are being forced into working,” Bhatt says. “There are several class action lawsuits pending right now on the forced labor issue as a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.”

According to one lawsuit filed against CoreCivic, the private-prison corporation that owns and manages the infamous Stewart Detention Center, CoreCivic “deprives detained immigrants of basic necessities like food, toothpaste, toilet paper, and soap and contact with loved ones,” making them perform forced labor in order to purchase those items and other expensive necessities, like costly phone cards at CoreCivic’s commissary. The suit also illuminates that threats of retaliation are often weaponized against the incarcerated people who refuse to work, including “the deprivation of privacy and safety in open living quarters, referral for criminal prosecution,” and solitary confinement.

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In sharp and poignant words, the suit echoes the words of many generation of demands from incarcerated organizers: “Under these circumstances, no labor is voluntary – it is forced.”

Certainly, as it pertains to incarcerated labor, this is a space for critical intervention to be made by non-incarcerated people. With the erosion of the #MeToo Movement and mainstream feminist discourse calling the concepts of consent and coercion into possibly their most public, widespread moments yet, we have to be precisely conscious to apply our lessons and understanding of what is and isn’t consensual to aspects beyond the realm of romantic, physical or sexual interactions. In the case of incarcerated workers, who traverse all identities of race and gender, consent and coercion remain incredibly important.

“In jails and prisons across the country, incarcerated people are subject to sexual harassment, abuse and assault, frequently at the hands of staff. […] As the #MeToo movement outside of prison walls continues to gather momentum, what about survivors who are locked away?” asks journalist Victoria Law, in a piece for Truth-Out which discusses the ways the #MeToo movement has ignored incarcerated people. And while the questions she raises regarding the sexual assault of incarcerated people are magnificently important, the overall coercive and nonconsensual nature of what occurs behind bars in US must be interrogated, particularly prison labor, plea deals, and clinical trials incarcerated people endure.

At face value, the dominant narrative invites us to believe something like this: prisoners who have done wrong are allowed to choose to work medial jobs while incarcerated, like cafeteria duty or janitorial work, which in turn builds the prisoners job skills and funds to help them re-integrate into society once released. This is what a large portion of people believe about the labor that takes place behind bars. But, ignoring all that is extremely problematic even in that simplified and imaginary narrative, it’s far from the truth, and far from how we should view this labor.

Amadu is a Muslim man from Ghana with a wide smile and humble voice, a friend I met last year while he was detained at the Atlanta City Detention Center. He spent three years behind bars, transferred to various detention centers, awaiting deportation. Last month he was finally allowed to return home, and I spoke with him on the phone to get his thoughts on the prison strike and incarcerated labor.

“Where I was last, at ACDC, many of us worked for small pieces of freedom,” he says, referring to the medial tasks they were relegated nightly. “We’d ask the guards if we could help serve the food, or cleanup after our meal, or clean the bathrooms in exchange for an extra 30 minutes after lockdown.”

Although no longer formally referred to as convict leasing, mostly because there’s an illusion of choice laden in its phrasing, the structure of convict leasing is alive and well.

At ACDC, many of the vital food, cleaning, and sanitation tasks are completed this way, Amadu says. “We’d do these things without compensation and in return the guards, if they were the nice guards, would allow us to heat our food from the commissary up in the microwave, take a few minutes to watch TV, or make phone calls. While everyone else is on lockdown for the night, you’re allowed these privileges in exchange for your labor.”

“At some places I’ve been, they at least give you the option to sign up for jobs and be paid a few cents an hour,” Amadu tells me, noting that he always performed jobs whenever available, both to pass time and to feel ‘valuable’.

The roots of prison labor, as well as much of the US infrastructure, can be traced back to the act of convict leasing. A practice that dates back to the US South c. 1844 and spread rapidly following the end of the Civil War in 1865, convict leasing was a structure of penal labor in which [Black] convicts, and thus their labor, were leased to businesses, corporations, plantation owners, local governments, and even used for special projects; as Angela Davis illuminates in Are Prisons Obsolete, the entire “Peachtree” road system in Atlanta, Georgia was built by freed slaves who’d fallen into the trap of convict leasing. This was utterly non-consensual, racist, and hyper-exploitative labor which laid the groundwork for our current penal labor system.

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Although no longer formally referred to as convict leasing, mostly because there’s an illusion of choice laden in its phrasing, the structure of convict leasing is alive and well. In California, where wildfires are sweeping their way across great swaths of the state, thousands of incarcerated people are fighting wildfires as “volunteer” firefighters for $1-2 an hour. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) recently tweeted praising the “more than 2,000 volunteer inmate firefighters, including 58 youth offenders,” who are “battling wildfire flames throughout CA.” According to the CDCR, the incarcerated firefighters “serve a vital role, clearing thick brush down to bare soil to stop the fire’s spread.”

If someone consents to give their labor to you under the circumstances of abuse, violence, or for the sake of even just temporarily leaving a deathly environment which they’re forced into, was that agreement free of coercion?

There’s much to interrogate here. First is the notion of them—incarcerated people—volunteering for this labor, which is specifically dangerous by nature. Surely, many of these brave individuals sign up to be on the inmate firefighting squadron, and enjoy the fire safety and emergency response training which accompanies it. However, we have to question the notion of “volunteering” for hyper-exploited labor (while they make roughly $1 an hour, non-incarcerated firefighters in California make an average of $34.87 an hour) while incarcerated, when the alternative of performing very dangerous labor for little pay is to sit in a grim jail cell all day. Is the choice truly free of pressure or coercion when the ultimatum is so clear? If someone consents to give their labor to you under the circumstances of abuse, violence, or for the sake of even just temporarily leaving a deathly environment which they’re forced into, was that agreement free of coercion?

“Let me be honest. Right now, if you were to work at a work release versus a maximum security prison, I don’t think there’s many prisoners who would give up the chance to go to a work release facility,” said a Jailhouse Lawyer Speak representative in conversation with Jared Ware.

“No matter how bad the work is, no matter how dangerous the work was, no matter how much the work may impact their future health. We have jobs back here that I’m sure are causing prisoners tumors, or will have tumors in the future, lung problems, cancerous agents are being dispersed through some of these plants, and they’re doing all of this for free. But they’re doing it because they want to get out of these cells. It’s much better than being in these cells all day and banging your head against the wall. That’s the consequences of not working.”

In reality, we know that their labor doesn’t just haphazardly or coincidentally save the state millions, rather their exploitation is sought after and sustained in order to save the state millions.

Another point we must interrogate, this time because of its truth, is that they serve a “vital role.” According to one CDCR spokesperson, the inmate firefighting program, for example, reportedly saves the state $90 million to $100 million a year. A major aspect in classifying coercion is the ulterior motive of an outcome or end goal; that the consent which was given under pressure or even violence was teleologically beneficial to one party. This is what indicts coercion as evil: it is ill intentioned. The incarcerated people fighting fires did not only supposedly volunteer, but their volunteering also happened to save the state millions via their exploitation. In reality, we know that their labor doesn’t just haphazardly or coincidentally save the state millions, rather their exploitation is sought after and sustained in order to save the state millions. This is capitalist exploitation in the highest form—they boast of the incarcerated labor saving the state millions, however it only save them millions because they exploit them.

As incarcerated political organizer Kevin Rashid Johnson recently wrote, “Under the 13th amendment slavery was not abolished, it was merely reformed.” Similarly, as the JLS representative told Ware, the fight against prison slavery is one that should and hopefully will be brought to Geneva and lambasted on the global scale. As they both note, it is not just the exploitative, coercive labor itself that continues the legacy of slavery and convict leasing, but the entire prison environment itself.

Using California’s incarcerated firefighters is just one example in the many ways incarcerated labor, in all forms, is an ultimately coercive conundrum. And more than just within the concept of labor, there’s also a vast history and contemporary system of incarcerated people being rendered “subjects” to universities, research facilities, and private companies who often target incarcerated populations, because they are most vulnerable and their exploitation is normalized. Moreover, these institutions also know that persuading incarcerated people to ‘consent’ to undergo these various trials can be simple when the given alternative is, as previously mentioned, sitting in the violent prison environment.

Could the slave tell the slave master no without punishment, and is an initial sexual inquiry from a slave master to a slave not steeped in a massively uneven power dynamic?

The national prison strike and the courageous organizing of incarcerated revolutionaries should awaken us to the lack of absolute moral outrage our movements should be building upon, with prisons and jails lining the infrastructure across most states in the US. In 2014, an incarcerated woman sued for cruel and unusual punishment and sexual assault after she was sexually abused by two guards while in solitary confinement, and their defense was that she’d previously “consented” to the sexual acts. The Tenth Circuit sided with the prison guards, stating that the intercourse was ‘consensual’ and thus did not break violate her Eighth Amendment rights. Can an incarcerated person truly consent to sexual intercourse with armed prison staff, those who hold the keys to her cell and freedom? Could the slave tell the slave master no without punishment, and is an initial sexual inquiry from a slave master to a slave not steeped in a massively uneven power dynamic? The case went by quietly mostly, with no mass protests, public outrage, and questioning of how our overall concept of legal consent is immoral.

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Here, we see a definite need to interrogate and ultimately reconsider our notions of consent and coercion as they intersect with incarcerated individuals. Had our movements—intellectual movements and activism movements—prepared for, incorporated, and uplifted the rights of incarcerated people, national outrage surely (hopefully) would follow such outraging cases.

“Consent is a deeply fraught concept within prisons, when we think about giving informed consent to participate or work, it is also important to understand the available options,” Jared told me. “When prisoners are presented with choices, they are often choices between different forms of exploitation, abuse, or torture. […] the choices presented to prisoners are not the sort of choices that can produce informed consent.”

Of course, many of the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals I’ve spoken with who’ve undergone this dangerous labor say that they found fulfillment, enjoyment, and passion in in their jobs. Like Charlie, the immigrant who I speak to in code and covert. “I was helping to clean parts of the roof, which I was really excited to do since that probably meant they trusted me a lot,” he recalls.

In another story, Charlie tells me of an injury he got while climbing on tall ladders to clean behind the lights in their recreation room. “I didn’t really know what I was doing up there, and ended up falling and knocking my arm out of socket.” He says a medic popped his arm back in place, but it still hurts to this day. He says he never filed a complaint, because he ‘volunteered’ to do it.

Certainly most of these people find meaning in their labor, however many will also abruptly tell you: they want to be fairly compensated, equal to their non-incarcerated counterparts, and they want programs which fully guarantee opportunities for positions upon their release from prison. Understanding the transformative nature of enduring a difficult, dangerous, or otherwise time consuming labor while the ultimatum is between that and a prison cell is obvious, and does not take away from the glaring fact of their hyper-exploitation.

Resources & Ways To Get Involved
This strike is lead by the efforts of incarcerated organizers and formerly incarcerated individuals, but groups have also asked that non-incarcerated people take outside action in support of the strike. This can be done in a number of ways, including noise demos, protests, teach-ins, raising funds to donate to their official fundraiser, writing letters to incarcerated people, and simply spreading the word as much as possible. If you are a writer, write; whether it’s for your local newspaper or school paper, as much reporting is needed as possible. If you are an artist, create work which displays support and solidarity. If you are a member of an organization or party, sign onto the list of organizations endorsing the strike and hold a solidarity event.

You can find a solidarity action in your area at this list which It’s Going Down has compiled. Phone zaps, an easy and effective way to place pressure on the prison officials, take place every day and can be found here. If you are in contact with incarcerated people, tell them about the strike (if possible) in the safest manner possible. The prison strike has gone international, with incarcerated people in Nova Scotia engaging in solidarity actions, former Palestinian political prisoners issuing a statement in solidarity with the prison strike and Black liberation struggle, and countless reports of strike involvement at ICE detention centers. This means that even if you aren’t in the US, the impact of spreading the word and can go far beyond our world’s imperialist boundaries.

An important aspect of outside solidarity is financial support, specifically for the organizations and individuals directly involved in organizing the strike. You can find the (only) official fundraising page here, where all donations will be evenly distributed among Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the San Francisco Bay View, North American Anarchist Black Cross, and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. The San Francisco Bay View is an independent newspaper that provides many incarcerated people with news, while also allowing incarcerated people to write for them, so it is a vital resource.

Finally, support the writers and outlets—especially independent writers and independent outlets like Wear Your Voice Mag and ShadowProof—that cover what takes place inside of prisons. The lives of incarcerated people are cast to the shadows, and their struggles and triumphs are only covered by a small and dedicated group of journalists, including incarcerated writers and journalists. Here is a great thread with writers you can support.

HERE IS A LIST OF EXTRA RESOURCES FOR READERS INTERESTED IN DELVING INTO THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ABOLITION:
Angela Davis’ “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
The “Beyond Prison” Podcast
Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners
The Prison Culture blog
Angela Davis’ “Abolition Democracy”
Alternatives To Prison list
Articles, essays, and books about mass incarceration
National Bail Out initiative
Critical Resistance organization
Prison Activist Resource Center
Beyond Reform TedTalk
The Empire Files on mass incarceration
Beyond The Prison Industrial Complex lecture
The Abolitionist Toolkit
10 Year Strategy to end the prison industrial complex

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Aug 29, 2018 5:23 pm

The prisoners at the Burnside jail are engaged in a non-violent protest; here is their statement
AUGUST 19, 2018 BY EL JONES

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A jail cell in the renovated north wing of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility. Photo: Halifax Examiner

Today’s column has been provided to the Halifax Examiner by organizers of the protest in Burnside.

We, the prisoners of Burnside, have united to fight for change. We are unified across the population in non-violent, peaceful protest.

We are calling for support from the outside in solidarity with us. We believe that it is only through collective action that change will be made.

We recognize that the staff in the jail are workers who are also facing injustice. We are asking for a more productive rehabilitative environment that supports the wellbeing of everyone in the system. These policy changes will also benefit the workers in the jail.

Our voices should be considered in the programming and policies for this jail. The changes we are demanding to our conditions are reasonable, and must happen to support our human rights.

The organizers of this protest assert that we are being warehoused as inmates, not treated as human beings. We have tried through other means including complaint, conversation, negotiation, petitions, and other official and non-official means to improve our conditions. We now call upon our supporters outside these walls to stand with us in protesting our treatment.

We join in this protest in solidarity with our brothers in prison in the United States who are calling for a prison strike from August 21st to September 9th. We support the demands of our comrades in the United States, and we join their call for justice.

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Our demands in Nova Scotia are different, and we note that they are comparatively more modest. We are part of an international call for justice and we recognize the roots of this struggle in a common history of struggle and liberation.

We are not the first, and we will not be the last.

We recognize that the injustices we face in prison are rooted in colonialism, racism and capitalism. August is a month rich with the history of Black struggle in the Americas.

In 1619, the first ship carrying forcibly enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. More than two hundred years ago, the first successful slave revolt created the first independent Black nation, Haiti. In the early nineteenth century, Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner launched their rebellions, and in 1850, after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Tubman began an Underground Railroad to Canada. A century later, the March on Washington, the Watts uprising, and the police bombing of MOVE have marked August as a time of great possibility and great pain.

In Canada, we recognize Prisoner Justice Day on August 10th as a time to remember all those who have died in custody in this country.

We also acknowledge the sacrifices made by our forebears, those who have fought to end the inhumane, racist treatment accorded prisoners. George Jackson, one of America’s prominent prisoner activists, was assassinated in San Quentin in August 1971, and his name is joined by others — Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, WL Nolen, and others.

In August 1978 in San Quentin, activist Khatari Gaulden died after being refused adequate health care for an injury suffered under mysterious circumstances. To honour his name and to fight for prison justice, a coalition of activists, inside and outside the prison walls, formed the Black August Organizing Committee. Starting in the “concentration camps” of California, Black August strikes swept through prisons across America.

In this tradition and together with those imprisoned south of the border, we, the prisoners of Burnside continue this legacy. We are not violent, we are standing up for simple issues of human justice.

We are organized together because conditions must change. Our demands are as follows:

1. Better Health Care
The province has a duty to provide adequate and ethical health care to everyone. Some of the issues we are facing in our health care include: having medication cut off or delays in providing necessary medication; long waits for x-rays and other medical services; lack of care for chronic and serious illnesses; access to specialist appointments; having our medical complaints dismissed; not enough medical staff; not receiving compassionate care.

Many prisoners face serious mental health issues, addictions, and chronic illnesses caused by poverty. We also know the prison environment causes many health problems. Medical treatment is a right: being deprived of health care is not part of our sentences.

2. Rehabilitation Programs
We are told that the purpose of jail is to rehabilitate us. We want to ask: How are we being rehabilitated if there are little to no programs helping us to get the work, education, and life skills we need to become productive members of society?

We need programs that address mental health and addiction problems; that teach us employable skills; that help us to learn financial management and other life skills; that help us build healthy relationships with our families; that help us reintegrate into society.

What is the point of jail if we are coming out with nothing changed or worse from when we went in?

3. Exercise Equipment
Exercise is necessary for our physical and mental health. We remind the province that we live in a province with winter. We require equipment so we can work out indoors. Exercise helps reduce stress, keeps us occupied in healthy ways, and helps us deal with the prison environment.

We often do not receive the yard time we are entitled to under the Corrections Act. This is a violation of the rights we already have. We call for adequate time for fresh air, exercise, and sunlight.

4. Contact Visits
If we are being scanned for drugs and other contraband, we want to ask the province: Why are we prevented from having contact visits with our families? If the body scanners eliminate contraband from entering the prison, then there is no safety or security reason why we can’t receive contact visits with our families and friends.

Many of us are parents. We call for contact visits that allow our children to see us not behind glass.

5. Personal Clothing and Shoes
If we are being scanned for drugs and other contraband, then we should be able to wear clothing from outside the institution.

The clothing and shoes provided by the jail is often inadequate. We have been provided with shoes of different sizes, shoes that do not fit, and we are not provided with winter clothing like gloves that allow us to go outside.

Wearing our own clothing helps prevent institutionalization, allows us to have appropriate clothing, and helps us feel like human beings.

6. Same Quality Food As Every Other Jail
We call for nutritious food in every jail that meets the needs of prisoners from all religious and cultural backgrounds. We do not understand why menu items can be provided in one institution but not in others. If menu items can be provided in other provinces, or in other facilities in this province, there should be no reason why they cannot be provided here.

We call for the province to respect the dietary needs of prisoners from different cultures. We have struggled in getting menus for religious prisoners. Prisoners have become ill including suffering serious nutritional deficits, and health damage. This is unacceptable and a violation of our religious rights.

7. Air Circulation
We call upon the province to improve the conditions in the jail. In the recent heat wave, the health of prisoners was endangered, particularly prisoners with existing or chronic health issues.

8. Healthier Canteen
We call for healthy items to be added to the canteen. Prisoners supplement the meals provided by the prison with these items that we purchase using our own money or money given us by our families. We do not believe that providing us only with items filled with sugar and chemicals helps promote our health. Junk food is being eliminated from schools, hospitals, and other institutions, so why are people in prison limited to these unhealthy options?

9. No Limits to Visits
Visits with our families and friends help promote our reintegration into society and keep us connected to our support systems. Our families are called upon to put resources into the system through paying for phones and canteen. If the jail can profit off our families, why do we face limitations in seeing them?

10. Access To Library
We call upon the province to immediately allow us to access the library. Legal materials in the library are necessary for us to access our legal rights in court.

We should not be limited in our attempts to educate ourselves.

***

Let us restate. All of these demands are reasonable, and promote our basic well-being. We recognize that the prison industrial complex is intended to divide us. We are unified in our purpose. They cannot segregate us all.

We call upon all people with a conscience beyond the bars to join us in sharing this statement, in writing the Minister of Justice, your MLA, and the Department of Justice to support our demands, to commit to learning more about the conditions in this province’s jails, and in taking actions in solidarity with our struggle.

We send a message of hope to our comrades in prisons all across this country and the world.

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
—Nelson Mandela

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province ... statement/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 30, 2018 5:14 pm

The state's estimated cost to cool a hot Texas prison has dropped from $20 million to $4 million
At a Capitol hearing, the Texas prison system's director said exceptions in construction requirements allowed for the cost decrease.

BY JOLIE MCCULLOUGH AUG. 29, 201817 HOURS AGO


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Inmates shuffle past fans in the Darrington prison's main hallway on a hot July day. Jolie McCullough / The Texas Tribune

After settling a costly legal fight over installing air conditioning in a notoriously hot Texas prison, the state's corrections department has drastically slashed the estimated cost to permanently cool it.

At a committee hearing Wednesday at the Texas Capitol, Texas Department of Criminal Justice Executive Director Bryan Collier said the estimated cost to install permanent air conditioning at the Wallace Pack Unit near College Station is now about $4 million. In 2017, amid a years-long federal lawsuit over what a judge ruled were unconstitutional conditions in the prison, an expert obtained by the department said the cost would be more than $20 million.

Before settling the lawsuit, the department conducted its own research and the cost dropped to $11 million, but Collier said in Wednesday's hearing that number had dropped even further after the state comptroller's office said some construction upgrades weren't necessary. The state spent more than $7 million on the lawsuit over installing air conditioning in the Pack Unit's housing area.

As a result of the lawsuit, the department also has asked the Legislature for funds to install air conditioning at the Hodge Unit in East Texas, which houses developmentally disabled inmates, for an estimated $2 million, Collier said. Another $3 million has been requested to enhance security at some air-conditioned lockups so higher-level security inmates who are medically vulnerable can be moved to cooler beds.

In 2014, several Pack inmates sued the department, claiming the lack of air conditioning in the Pack prison was unconstitutional. They pointed to at least 23 prisoner deaths in Texas from heat stroke since 1998, 10 of which occurred in the heat wave of 2011.

The department fought the lawsuit for years, saying the cost was too burdensome and their mitigation efforts against heat, like providing ice water and allowing personal fans, sufficiently countered the stifling temperatures. After a landmark ruling requiring air conditioning for vulnerable inmates last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said “taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars to pay for expensive prison air conditioning systems.”

In February, the department and the inmates announced a settlement, and the prison agreed to permanently install air conditioning at the Pack Unit. The judge, Keith Ellison, praised the agreement.

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“I never dreamt we’d get the Pack Unit air-conditioned,” he said at the settlement hearing.

Since the settlement, the department has also been working to move the most medically vulnerable inmates out of hot prisons across the state — almost 75 percent of Texas prisons and state-run jails don’t have air conditioning in housing areas. Collier said the department has identified about 10,000 inmates who are most at risk for heat sensitivity, and 3,000 were already in air-conditioned beds. Since the settlement, about 700 others have been moved to cooled housing, and the rest still need to be moved.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/29 ... cost-drop/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:15 pm

Prison strike should prompt our thinking on the abolition of prisons
Brent Patterson
August 31, 2018

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The Prison for Women in Kingston was opened in 1934 and closed in 2000. Wikimedia photo by Actionhamster.

As you may have heard, there is a prison strike now underway in the United States as well as in one institution in Nova Scotia.

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, an incarcerated group of prisoner rights advocates, called for the strike action to run from August 21 to September 9, highlighting 10 modest demands that can be read here. One of those demands calls for an end to prison slavery.

Journalist-author-activist Chris Hedges argues, "Prisons are a grotesque manifestation of corporate capitalism."

He explains prisoners now work behind bars for major corporations including Chevron, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard, to name just a few.

Hedges notes:

"Prisoners do not receive benefits or pensions. They are not paid overtime. They are forbidden to organize and strike. They must show up on time. They are not paid for sick days or granted vacations. They cannot formally complain about working conditions or safety hazards. If they are disobedient, or attempt to protest their pitiful wages, they lose their jobs and can be sent to isolation cells."

And he warns, "The roughly 1 million prisoners who work for corporations and government industries in the American prison system are models for what the corporate state expects us all to become."

CBC notes, "[Those on strike in the U.S.] have been joined by [prisoners] at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility -- also known as Burnside jail -- in Dartmouth, N.S."

Their own modest set of 10 demands -- including better air circulation, healthier food, access to the library -- was published by the Halifax Examiner in this article.

Significantly, their statement includes the line: "We recognize that the injustices we face in prison are rooted in colonialism, racism and capitalism."

Poet-professor-activist El Jones, speaking in support of the strike at Burnside, recently commented, "People in prison are largely there for crimes of poverty, mental health and addiction."

Let us keep in mind too that Nova Scotia Department of Justice figures show that in 2014-15, 14 per cent of adults sentenced to jail in that province were African Nova Scotian even though they are only two per cent of the province's population.

Furthermore, 12 per cent of the youth sentenced to "correctional facilities" in the province were Indigenous, even though Indigenous people represent just four per cent of the population of Nova Scotia.

The numbers are even more disproportionate in Saskatchewan.

This past June, CBC reported that, "In 2006-07, 70 per cent of male youth admissions to custody (in Saskatchewan) were Indigenous, but by 2016-17 it was 92 per cent."

Statistics Canada says that Indigenous youth made up 46 per cent of admissions to prisons across Canada in 2016-17, while being only eight per cent of the country's youth population.

Speaking of similar incarceration patterns in the U.S., activist-academic-author Angela Davis has commented:

"The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs -- it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism."

She has also highlighted the research that shows there are now more Black men behind bars or on probation and parole than were enslaved in 1850 in the United States.

Davis says, "Abolishing the prison is about attempting to abolish racism."

It was 30 years ago now that I first met Ruth Morris, a Quaker and leader of the prison abolition movement in Canada (and the person who hired me for my first job in activism).

She was later to form her own organization with the stated purpose to "promote structural equality, de-colonization, abolitionism, decarceration, decriminalization and transformative justice."

Those words speak to me all the more now.

Hopefully they speak to you too.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:57 pm

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U.S. prison strike seeks an end to slave labour, corporate profiteering and rights violations
Posted Aug 31, 2018 by Eds.

Originally published: Peoples Dispatch by Pavan Kulkarni (August 29, 2018) |

On August 21, prisoners in at least 17 States across the U.S. began a mass strike, which is scheduled to continue until September 9. With 2.3 million people in jail–the highest number in any country–the U.S. has a quarter of all the imprisoned people in the world while having only 5% of the world’s total population.

The inmates are protesting against poor living conditions, the use of prisoners as slave labour by private industries and for arms production for the military, for firefighting and other services. In return for this, they are paid a few cents a day, and in the case of Arkansas, Georgia and Texas, nothing at all.

There are over 800,000 such prisoners whose labour is extracted daily for next to no pay, generating billions of dollars in profits for numerous well-known companies each year. This practice not only subjects the incarcerated–who are not protected by the labour laws–to extreme forms of exploitation but also has the effect of reducing the wages of the regular workforce.

In a protest against the use of prisoners as slaves–the constitutional provision for which was made by the 13th Amendment, ratified after the end of the civil war, which prohibits slavery except when one is forced into it “as a punishment for crime”–inmates are refusing to do the work they are assigned, thus striking at the $2 billion prison labour industry.

“Some prisoners don’t have the privilege of having a job; so they will participate through a sit-in, which would just be prisoners coming together and sitting in a common area, refusing to move, doing so peacefully,” said Amani Sawari, from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak–an anonymous collective providing legal services and advices to inmates, which is spearheading the current strike, with the support of Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC)–a part of the militant trade union, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

August 21 marks the 47th death anniversary of George Jackson, an associate of the Black Panther Party and a co-founder of a Black-liberation group called Black Guerilla Family, who was shot dead while making an escape attempt from prison. September 9 is the anniversary of the Attica uprising of 1971.

Apart from hunger strikes, the current action will also include boycotting prison services for which prisoners are charged exorbitant rates by a handful of private players who have a monopoly. An example is the prison phone system. The contract for this is awarded to private players on the basis of which of them offers to pay the highest commission to the correction department running the prisons.

The rates charged for phone calls are so high that families are often forced to choose between making calls to their loved ones in prison and attending to their medical needs. For many families, the cost of making these phone calls to stay in touch their with imprisoned relatives is higher than their house rent–which is usually the largest monthly household expenditure.


In Florida, for instance, a four-minute call made to an inmate held in prisons cost $56 in 2014. The following year, when U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed an upper limit on the price that could be charged, the five companies which have monopolized the prison-phone system used by inmates challenged the FCC decision before an appeals court in Washington D.C. After the Trump administration came to power, the FCC declined to defend its own decision, and the court ruled against price capping.

A part of the costs so extorted from the families of the inmates is channelled back into the prison system in form of commissions, which in turn are used to run the prison. Thus functions a system where the families of the prisoners are paying to run the very prisons in which their loved ones are incarcerated.

Families of the prisoners on strike, who are boycotting the prison phone system in protest–and thus inflicting losses on this multi-million dollar prison-phone business–are being informed by IWOC or JLS members to not place calls until the strike is called off.

The set of ten demands listed by the JLS also includes revoking of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in order to allow “imprisoned humans a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights”, and the Truth in Sentencing Act and Sentencing Reform Act “so that imprisoned humans have a possibility of rehabilitation and parole”.

With a disproportionate concentration of black and brown people in U.S. prisons, the demands also called for an end to racial practices such as denying Black people parole on the sole ground that “the victim of the crime was white, which is a particular problem in southern States.” Also called for is an “immediate end to the racist gang enhancement laws” which have led to the imprisonment of numerous people on the charge that they are members of a gang–a charge which the police often determine by race, clothing and the neighbourhood of the suspect.

Background for the strike
The strike was originally scheduled for next year but the decision was made to advance it after a seven-hour-long prison riot in South Carolina left seven prisoners stabbed to death and 22 hospitalized in April.

While the prison officials blamed the violence on a gang war for control over territory and contraband cell phones, it was these very officials who had placed rival gangs in the same dorm room. Video footage leaked by prisoners using these very contraband phones, over which officials claim the riot was, showed that many injured prisoners were left bleeding on the floor for hours before the police came to take them to hospital.

As history professor and author of “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy”, Heather Ann Thompson, pointed out, the fact that a tenth of the incarcerated in this prison were serving a life sentence and those serving sentences over 20 years were obliged to complete at least 85% of the time regardless of their behaviour inside–coupled with the filthy conditions and the food and water they get–creates a hopeless situation which leaves little incentive for the imprisoned to reform themselves. This provokes them instead to fight amongst themselves for phones and cigarettes, access to which is severely restricted.

Soon after the decision to go on a strike was made, prison officials began trying to prevent the inmates from organizing. Those suspected of playing a lead role in organizing strikes were isolated in order to prevent flow of information within the prison. Access of prisoners to phones and mails is also reportedly being restricted.

How are the prisoners organizing?
The IWOC and allied organizations have been determinedly mobilizing to overcome these restrictions. Those members of the IWOC who are currently out of prison have been using the prison phone system, as well as contraband cell phones to get information from one inmate in the prison, and communicate it through a different phone call to another inmate in a different cell. Information about the strike was spread by word of mouth by informed prisoners who were transferred to different locations.

Further, a number of newspapers–such as The Kite, San Francisco Bay and Solid Black Fist–which carried articles by the organizers of the strike, have been in circulation among prisoners, often under the radar. An edition of one such newspaper called the Fire Inside–was found in possession of Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a prisoner in Ohio on a death row.

He was convicted on the charge of being complicit in the death of a corrections officer during the 1993 Lucasville Uprising, which was triggered by Muslim prisoners protesting against a planned tuberculosis test which involved injecting phenol, a form of alcohol, into the subject’s body. When their demand for alternate methods was rejected, the protest blew up into an uprising, and the strikers submitted a list of demands addressing numerous forms of abuses the prisoners were facing.

Having found a copy of Fire Inside in Hassan’s intercepted mail, officials monitored his calls, and learnt that he was an organizer of Free Ohio Movement–a Human rights collective “concerned about the judicial and prison system in the state”. Authorities learnt that he intended to “speak to a group of people, including a radio personality, on Saturday, July 28” regarding the prison strike.

Already on death row, Hassan was further convicted for this “offense” of attempting to promote information about the strike on five charges including, “Rioting or encouraging other to riot”, “Engaging in or encouraging a group demonstration or work stoppage”, use of telephone for criminal activity, and a vaguely worded charge which read,

Any violation of any published institutional rules, regulations or procedures.

According to Hassan’s lawyers, the prison authorities isolated him from communicating with fellow inmates or outside visitors by barricading him inside his cell on July 27 with sandbags. One such approved outside visitor, who had provided him with the copy of Fire Inside, told Shadow Proof that the reason for barricading him instead of shifting him into an isolation ward might be that previously, under isolation, Hassan had managed to communicate through air vents to other prisoners, who then passed along his messages further.

This is only one example of the numerous measures that the prison guards have been taking to ensure that the strike cannot be carried through as planned. However, a number of other newsletters communicating about the planned strike have managed to circulate in prisons, informing the inmates in articles printed under innocent headlines such as “It’s Winter!”, Mother Jones reported. Anticipating potential crackdowns on prisoners once the strikes began, the IWOC also provided them affidavit forms through which violations of prisoners’ rights could be reported.

When the strike began
On August 21, the first day of the strike, 200 detainees held in the city of Tacoma in Washington State by Immigration and Customs Enforcement joined the nation-wide strike by going on a hunger strike and refusing to work.

Demonstrations were held by civilians across the State, and one group marched through the University of Washington’s Seattle campus in protest against the university’s contract with Correctional Industries, which uses prison labour to build furnitures for the housing facilities and classrooms in the university.

Among the several other demonstrations held across the U.S. that day included an Awareness March in Oakland–the largest city in California–and a noise demonstration outside a youth jail in the city of Minneapolis in Minnesota State. Different kinds of solidarity actions were seen in at least 21 cities, including in Leipzig in Germany. Palestinians held as political prisoners by Israeli occupation backed by the U.S., also expressed solidarity with the U.S. prisoners on strike.

Late that night, when a group of protesters held a demonstration outside the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, the prisoners inside appeared to be flashing their phone lights at the protesters expressing solidarity from outside the prison walls. The organizers outside the prison, helping the inmates coordinate and communicate with the outside world and among themselves, have heard from their contacts in prisons that strike action had started the very first day in Halifax, Nova Scotia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington and Folsom Prison in California.

Not many reports are available about the details and the scale of the strike inside prisons. “We want to note that although there aren’t widespread reports of actions coming out of prisons..people need to understand that the tactics being used in this strike are not always visible. 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. As we saw in 2016, the Departments of Corrections are not reliable sources of information for these actions and will deny them and seek to repress those who are engaged in them,” the IWOC organizers said in a press statement on August 22.

The financial interests behind perpetuating ‘slave labour’
The pressure that is likely to be exerted on prison authorities to use any means to crack down on work stoppages can be fathomed from understanding the deep entrenchment of an entire spectrum of financial interests in the use of prison labour. The children-friendly McDonalds, for example, is one of the corporations which rely on prison labour, by contracting Oregon Inmates to supply its staff with uniforms, which are produced by inmates. Many of the plastic utensils provided to the customers are also manufactured by firms that use prisoners’ labour. Wendy’s is another such fast food chain.

But McDonalds and Wendy’s are only two household names in the vast network of firms reliant on prison labour–either by directly using prison labour for production or provision of service, or by buying inputs and other essentials involved in delivering their final product from firms using prisoners for production.

More significant and less easily identifiable, however, are the huge investment firms, which invest directly or indirectly in the firms using inmates’ labour, as well as in private corporations which run prisons for profit, and which have successfully lobbied governments to pass laws which mandate prison terms for non-violent crimes–one of the vital reasons explaining why a country with only 5% of the world’s population has in its prison a quarter of all those imprisoned across the world.

The companies profiting from direct or indirect use of prison labour, include banks, such as American Express Company, Bank of America, J.P Morgan and Company; energy producers such as BP America, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation; insurance companies such as Fortis health; pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Bayer Corporation (which has recently acquired Monsanto); telecommunication industries such as AT&T; The Boeing Company, United Airlines, Walmart, etc. Further, the Department of Defense is one of the biggest beneficiaries of prison labour, which has been used increasingly since the Second World War in the production of weapons and other military accessories for U.S. soldiers.

In the face of all the repressive measures that will be used against the prisoners to prevent work stoppage, if the current strike does snowball into the largest prison strike in U.S. history and holds out till September 9, it has the potential to strike at the very heart of the prison-industrial complex, at a time when industrial and financial interests are ever more reliant on the labour of incarcerated people to reap profits.

By attempting to do so, the organizers are not really counting on prison authorities’ caving in to meet all their ten demands. “Most of the demands are not actionable items that prison authorities are able to grant, but rather they require deep legislative and cultural changes. We should not think of these as negotiation goals to pursue state by state with prison authorities, but rather as demands made by prisoner rebels of the racist Amerikkkan plantation system,” a June 12 statement by IWOC said, adding “The goal is not to hold out and win negotiations with officials, but to last those 19 days and punch the issue to the top of national political consciousness and agenda.”

Apart from the agenda of raising political consciousness, the JLS has mentioned that their other agenda is to raise consciousness about the system amongst the prisoners–to deter them from engaging in gang-wars within the prison walls and to unite them in a common fight against the exploitative prison system in the U.S.

https://mronline.org/2018/08/31/u-s-pri ... iolations/
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