A prison strike is happening right now in America and you may not know about it

[sabotabby]

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising, and the beginning of a prisoners' strike across the US.

A what?

See, what a lot of people don't seem to know is that slavery never ended in the States. Oh, sure, there was that bit with the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement and post-racial Obama, but slavery is still perfectly legal. You just need to be in prison. If you're in prison, the 14th Amendment makes an exception for you. You're also stripped of voting rights and you're likely to be subjected to what we would consider cruel and unusual punishment if, say, a communist country did it. The very fact that prison rape jokes can be a thing tells you how barbaric the attitude of most North Americans is when it comes to those behind bars.

"But wait," you cry—well, not you, you know better—"aren't these rapists and murderers paying for their crimes against society?"

Not most of them. A system exists in the US where simple lawbreaking that most of us do—say, getting a traffic ticket, or having a small amount of drugs*—can compound and compound until it lands you somewhere incredibly unpleasant. Needless to say, this does not tend to happen to white people and it frequently happens to racialized people, especially black people—you know, the ones who were historically enslaved. "I'd never break the law," someone not-you might say. Chances are you have and it just wasn't caught and enforced. But when a population is as much under scrutiny as Black and Latinx Americans, if they wanna find something on you, they'll find it.

And then it's legal to make them work for free for hugely profitable corporations like Victoria's Secret, Whole Foods**, Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and AT&T. (Here's a campaign dedicated to identifying and boycotting which companies employ slaves.) You maybe saw something about that on Orange Is the New Black, but it's way worse in real life. So much so, even, that I'd wager a lot of the American economy is dependent on slave labour, the way it's dependent on under-the-table labour from non-status immigrants.†

If you're interested in learning more about why the prison strike, and why today, here's a great cartoon from the Nib that breaks down the issues and context.

And if you, like me, are interested in knowing how it's going, what's happening right now, whether there's repression or progress and whether there's anything you can do to help—well, good luck. The news is crickets. Even Twitter is crickets. If someone has any info, please share it

* Not me, CSIS. I'm clean as a whistle.
** Fuck those smug libertarian crunchy shitbags with a rusty spork.
† Canada's not any better, particularly when it comes to dependency on exploited immigrant labour, but this is specifically a post about American prisons.

Comments

[rdi.livejournal.com]

There are some useful links under the tag on twitter, but not many posts, ’tis true. Certainly a long way from trending.

[sabotabby]

I've mostly found analyses and "this is gonna be big." But not updates, which is worrisome.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Some of my company's purchase orders with the US government have clauses REQUIRING us to buy items made by US slave labour. When we notice them, we have to manually strike them as being unenforceable due to human rights violations.

After several months of pestering key people, I was able to get our global purchasing system to automatically flag and reject any attempts to purchase items sold by UNICOR or FPI, the sales branch of the US prison system. None of our 27 factories can now purchase such slave-made goods without a director-level override.

But that's just one company out of millions.

[sabotabby]

You rock! Now we just need one of you in every single company, I guess.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

All power to them. Yeah, OITNB is pretty savage in its indictment of private prisons, but I am sure it is toning down reality to make it believable. Encouraging that Obama has banned Federal govt. from using private prisons, and has made several hundred commutations. But so, so, far to go. Shared on FB, fwiw.

[sabotabby]

Like a guy got boiled to death in a prison shower. That's a thing that happened. I guess Oz would show something like that but it would still be called over-the-top and unrealistic for TV.

Thanks for spreading the word.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Strange as it seems ,when i did an open university course many years back the course i did looked at modern slavery and it covered this very same strike.

In fact there was a jazz homage to it by Archie Shepp -

[sabotabby]

I'd heard of it (and of course there was a reference to it on OitNB) but it seems like one of those things that fell down the memory hole.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

You're right, I didn't know till you told me about it.

I still remember how shocked I was to find that the US has made, and continues to make, slavery a consequence of conviction (for certain crimes, for ecertain people, of course).

[sabotabby]

I thought chain gangs were a thing of the past, but nope, they're just integrated into the economy.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Private prisons were outlawed here just recently. The corporations will fight it, & itll take awhile to take effect but its got to start somewhere. For some reason it was only a blip in the news-probably cause trump said some new stupid thing at the same time and they got distracted.

[sabotabby]

That's good news, but really, it's just one step. As a culture we need to entire re-think how we do justice.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I knew a guy who saw someone get burned to death in prison.

[sabotabby]

That doesn't shock me. Nothing shocks me. Prison is fucking ghastly.

[ironed_orchid]

I am cautiously hopeful and like you would like to see some updates about how it's going.

[sabotabby]

There've been a few sporadic updates, but not the thinkpieces-with-facts that I'm hoping to see.

[ironed_orchid]

I looked for updates this morning but all articles were dated 8th and 9th September...

[ironed_orchid]

For short updates and links to local press, this twitter account seems to be the one to follow: PrisonReformMvt

Also on twitter worth checking #PrisonStrike and #EndPrisonSlavery

[sabotabby]

Awesome, thank you muchly!