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The success of the 2018 prison strike depends on us keeping our eyes on prisons
For the last two weeks, incarcerated people around the country have engaged in a coordinated strike, spanning federal, state, and immigration prisons in multiple states. The strike includes work stoppages, commissary boycotts, hunger strikes, and sit-ins. It began on Aug. 21 and is scheduled to end this Sunday, Sept. 9. The start date corresponds with the anniversary of the death of George Jackson, the Black Panther and prison organizer, and the end date is the anniversary of the 1971 Attica uprising. Organizing for the strike has been led by people in prison with support from outside organizers. [Raven Rakia / The Appeal]
The call for the strike came after a prison riot at Lee County Correctional Institution in South Carolina in April left seven incarcerated people dead. It was the highest death toll from prison violence in more than a quarter century and was sparked by overcrowding, unbearable conditions, and guards fanning tensions between gangs. Guards waited hours to intervene, allowing the death toll to mount. The group Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and other organizers had been planning to call for a strike but moved the timeline up after the violence at Lee. A statement issued by the group said, “Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology.” [Natasha Lennard / The Intercept]
The strikers’ list of 10 demands includes an end to prison labor that pays little or nothing and amounts to “prison slavery,” improvements to prison conditions, the end of “death in prison” sentences, rescinding the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and an end to gang enhancement laws. [Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee] Cole Dorsey, a formerly incarcerated person who played a key role in helping to organize the strike from outside the prisons, described it as “really a declaration of humanity. The humanity of imprisoned men and women.” [Interview with Cole Dorsey, Amani Sawari, and Heather Ann Thompson / Democracy Now]
Strikers and organizers know that their fight will have to continue long after the strike ends. A zine distributed by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee says, “Most of the demands are not actionable items that prison authorities are able to grant. … 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 the political consciousness and agenda.” [Toussaint Losier / Jacobin]
In this larger fight, people in prison will rely on the support of those of us who live outside prison walls. As Dorsey put it, “the only way their voices are going to be heard is through us on the outside amplifying their voices.” Amani Sawari, one of the prison strike organizers, shared ways to support the strike in the interview with Democracy Now, pointing to a list of solidarity actions available online and the purchasing power consumers have to boycott industries that use prison labor. [Interview with Cole Dorsey, Amani Sawari, and Heather Ann Thompson / Democracy Now]
It is because information on what goes on inside prisons is so difficult to obtain, and because the narratives are so heavily controlled by corrections officials, that it takes a weeks-long, national strike— organized and engaged in at enormous personal risk and with great sacrifices—to bring sustained attention to this fight. The riot at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina was a clear example of the wide gap between the accounts of corrections officials and those of incarcerated people. Corrections officials described the fight as one over “territory, contraband and cell phones” and immediately promised to jam contraband cell phones in prisons. Yet because of contraband cell phones, incarcerated people were able to get out messages about the violence, the authorities’ hours-long delay in responding, and the conditions that had set the stage for the violence. [Heather Ann Thompson / New York Times]
Even with heightened media scrutiny, corrections departments deny the existence of strike actions in the facilities they control. But the scope of the strike has made those denials harder to credit. [Mitch Smith / New York Times]
Organizers of the prison strike this year see it is a success because there has been wide and sympathetic coverage of its aims outside traditionally left-leaning outlets, which is necessary for reaching the broader public. Writing in Truthout, James Kilgore said, “When the 2016 U.S. prison strike kicked off, the media barely whispered … an action that ultimately involved thousands of people in two dozen states drew virtual silence from mainstream media.” Amani Sawari, a prison strike organizer, noted how the tactics in this strike differ from those in 2016, with even people in prison who don’t hold jobs finding ways to participate through sit-ins, boycotts, and hunger strikes. A week into the strike she told Truthout that strike actions had been confirmed in 11 facilities and solidarity actions in 21 different cities. Because prison officials restrict communication to suppress information about strike actions, she said she expected to learn of actions in more prisons once the strike is over. [James Kilgore / Truthout]
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