Monthly Archives: September 2016

Washington DC: Noise Demo in Solidarity with Striking Workers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Baltimore/D.C. Based Organizations Make Noise In Solidarity With National Prison Strike.

Washington, D.C. – September 9th, 2016 –

On the 45th  anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, the most notorious prison rebellion in US history, prisoners around the country pronounced to once again make their voices heard. Refusing to work their assigned job is the direct action over 1,000 plus prisoners agreed to perform.

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, D.C chapter (IWOC) has swiftly organized a “noise demo”  to match the prisoners’ efforts with disruptions from the outside. Calling for aid to strengthen effectiveness of the noisy action, IWOC has pulled support from organizations in Baltimore, Virginia and local support in D.C. The noise demo will take place on September 9th, the same day of the national work stoppage. IWOC is a national project of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor union dedicated to workplace democracy and building a mass workers movement against capitalism. Continue reading →

September 9 Endorsement: RATPAC-PS

From Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism – Puget Sound

In 8 days (9/9/16), the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion, there will be a coordinated work stoppage by prisoners across the US.

Prisoners are among the most acutely oppressed and exploited workers. Mass incarceration, historically speaking, has direct continuity with Southern chattel slavery (and under the 13th Amendment, slavery remains legal so long as the slave is convicted of something first. The criminal “justice” system, of course, has always been complicit in maintaining racialized enslavement.) Whether it’s private prisons, large-scale deportation (thanks Obama!), or prisoners being hired out to work for pennies at gunpoint, prisons exist to serve the ruling class. They enforce and reproduce white supremacy, and show brutally directly that the state does not stand outside capitalism, systemic racism, and the power of the ruling class – it administers and enforces them. Nothing short of prison abolition must be revolutionaries’ goal. Continue reading →

The Abolitionist Issue No 26

From Critical Resistance

Dear Friends,

6d88e477-d0aa-4acd-ac56-c9af8e9320d8Do you need tools to unpack current national discussions on political reforms? Confused  that all sorts of folks are talking about the “crisis of mass incarceration” now? Anxious that police reform is becoming staple and friendly headline for your town’s newspaper? Looking for resources to use in your fall classes to help unpack this moment, to build shared abolitionist analysis, to create tools for intervention in your space, and to continue the fight to dismantle the PIC?

Issue 26 of The Abolitionist is here and we invite you to subscribe!  This issue, “Obstacles and Opportunities,” pushes us to take a critical look at our movements to eliminate policing, imprisonment, and the rest of the prison industrial complex (PIC). We hope that this issue is a timely one and can help us to sharpen our shared struggles toward a world free of the PIC.  Continue reading →

Prisoner SOLIDARITY: for September 9

From Arizona Prison Watch

September 9th is the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising, a massive 1971 prisoner protest against dismal conditions and abuse, which ended with the state of New York murdering scores of people.

Given the continuing abuse, neglect, and enslavement of over 2 million imprisoned people in the US today, prisoners across the US have called for and will begin a nationally coordinated work stoppage and protest on Sep 9, 2016. Learn more at SupportPrisonerResistance.net. 

There is at least one Arizona demonstration on September 9, outside ASPC-Lewis, in Buckeye, and many others across the country in solidarity with those prisoners who will be stopping work. Oh yes, it’s going down!

The following is the most moving poem on prisoner support I’ve ever heard, from our brother Ben at Insurgent Theatre. He wrote this is the wake of Mariam Abdullah’s suicide at ASPC-Perryville in July…

Please share to help inspire people making personal connections with prisoners in the course of building this movement.  He’s an impassioned and committed prison abolitionist and anarchist – he and the folks he hangs with have done some great work towards liberation for all.

Great resources on the Attica uprising:

Attica Prison Uprising 101: A Short Primer

A story of Attica

Live Updates from the National Prisoner Strike

From MaskMagazine

This article is going to be continuously updated. Click the above link for more up-to-date info.

 

Perhaps you’ve heard things are heating up inside prisons and jails across the country today.

After a call to action to end slavery in America by the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) with “Let the Crops Rot in the Fields“, and tireless organizing on the part of IWOC-IWW, FAM, and other prisoner solidarity groups, people on the inside are leading a national work-stoppage on this, the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison uprising.

Continue reading →

Protests Planned In Over 20 States To Expose ‘Slave-Like’ Conditions In U.S. Prisons

ThinkProgress.org

Protests Planned In Over 20 States To Expose ‘Slave-Like’ Conditions In U.S. Prisons

Credit: Dylan Petrohilos/ThinkProgress

Thousands of inmates in state and federal prisons in up to 24 states are planning an organized strike and protest on Friday — potentially the largest prison strike in U.S. history. Planned for the anniversary of the Attica Prison riot, the protest aims to bring widespread attention to inhumane living conditions, “slave-like” labor, and daily injustices that plague the shadowy cell-blocks of the justice system.

Across the country, it’s common practice for American inmates to be forced to work in “slave-like” conditions, doing long hours of hard labor with little or no compensation, and they’ve had enough. Though the strike on Friday, as planned, is the largest yet, the national prison work stoppage comes after a long, largely unreported build-up in collective action among America’s prisoners protesting these conditions.

Continue reading →

IWOC Sep 9 News Release

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Information:
Phillip A. Ruiz
Incarcerated Worker Organizing Committee
TEL:(816) 866-3808 or (323) 691-0557
wobista@protonmail.com

International Prison Strike Slated to Begin September 9th

IWW General Headquarters, Chicago, IL. Sept.9th, 2016

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) announces that the first internationally coordinated prison strike in history is scheduled to begin today, with the support of the IWW and the participation of over eight hundred incarcerated IWW members. The prisoners who began organizing the strike had originally sent out this request: “To every prisoner…we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.” September 9th was chosen as the date to begin the strike because it is the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising in New York state, the most notorious prison rebellion in US history. Continue reading →

US prisoners are going on strike to protest a massive forced labor system

From qz.com

US prisoners are going on strike to protest a massive forced labor system

Some call prison labor the “modern chain gang.” (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)
Written by

Hanna Kozlowska

5 hours ago

On Friday (Sept. 9) prison inmates across the US will participate in what organizers are touting as the “largest prison strike in history,” stopping work in protest of what many call a modern version of slavery.

The protest, organized across 24 states, is spearheaded by the inmate-led Free Alabama Movement (FAM) and coordinated by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a branch of an international labor union. Its manifesto, published online by “prisoners across the United States,” reads:

This is a call to end slavery in America…To every prisoner in every state and federal institution across this land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.

The strike will be held on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison revolt, when prisoners took control of a maximum-security correctional facility near Buffalo, New York, demanding better conditions and an end to their brutal treatment.

Continue reading →

‘It’s Just Dressed Up Slavery’: America’s Shadow Workforce Rises Up Against Prison Labor

From ThinkProgress.org

 

‘It’s Just Dressed Up Slavery’: America’s Shadow Workforce Rises Up Against Prison Labor

Dismantling the myths that drive an exploitative multi-million-dollar industry.

Louisiana Department of Corrections Sgt. Boo McKey watches a work crew head to the fields at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. CREDIT: AP Photo/Bill Haber/Dylan Petrohilos/ThinkProgress

As soon as Stewart Anderson stepped foot inside the Lorton Reformatory, a Virginia prison, he knew he’d have to work for negligible pay in order to endure his 20-year sentence. At Lorton, prison labor was voluntary. But prison food was difficult to swallow, and Anderson wanted to supplement his diet with commissary items: peanut butter, noodles, dried fruit, and Kipper Snapper, a brand of fish in a can.

“It was more of a volunteer thing than it was forced labor, but it was tantamount to the same thing,” the D.C. native, who was convicted for assaulting a police officer, told ThinkProgress. “The system systematically forces you to work without ‘forcing you to work.’ Poor quality of food drives you to take on a prison job that pays you an average of 32 cents an hour, and you worked an average of five, six hours a day.”

Because he was able to read and write well, Anderson was always assigned to clerical work — answering phones and keeping inventory of products made by fellow prisoners. He was hellbent on avoiding the grunt work that most people have to do behind bars: scrubbing floors, cooking, sewing clothes, manufacturing license plates for the general public. He was equally determined to develop and hone skills he could use to employ himself when he got out. All the while, he was under no illusion that the purpose of the work was to train people like himself for the day they re-entered society.

Continue reading →

Black Liberation and the Abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex

From TrueLeapPress.com

Black Liberation and the Abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex

An Interview with Rachel Herzing

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Rachel Herzing lives and works in Oakland, CA, where she fights the violence of policing and imprisonment. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex and the Co-Director of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project, a community resource sharing stories of interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services. The following interview was conducted by the True Leap Publishing Collective.

 

True Leap Press (TLP): Hi Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. We are excited to have you as a contributor in this inaugural edition of Propter Nos. Our publishing collective thinks the specific timing of this issue is important to highlight, as it is set to be released in the closing days of Black August. Could you possibly explain what Black August is for our readers, and why it is so important for people to recognize today?

Continue reading →