On September 9th a national prison labor strike starts. I 100% support this action, and every demand that is being made- if this is the first you’re hearing of this or you’re uncertain of what exactly this entails, please take the time to read up before the 9th, so we’re all prepared to defend the strikers actions and demands when they get smeared in the media. Prisoners are human beings who should receive adequate food, living conditions, medical care, and mental health treatment without being subjected to coercive work requirements, nor should they be faced with extended sentences or violence for refusing to work.
this is tomorrow!! Be ready!!
My uncle is fifty-four. He’s spent more years in prison than out in his lifetime, starting way back when he was seventeen. My uncle is an addict. Now, he’s been out of prison and has steered clear of the addictions that led him to prison for six years, and my issue with his convictions is another story entirely.
But my uncle was already a master carpenter when he went into prison, and a talented artist. The prison system of the United States had my uncle working for contractors to design and work on buildings for something like a dollar and fifty cents an hour, while promising him that every two days he worked, he would get a day off his sentence. (Anyone want to take a wild guess just how true that was?) And all those years working and spent in a prison cell, my uncle actually got better at his art and his skill. I started sending him books based on my major, botany, and he actually started working on designs that incorporated plants and solar power, from what he understood of the subjects. True solarpunk.
At fifty, when my uncle was released, he was happy to be out. Only for the prison system to try and force him back in. A minor drug charge from thirty years back, after he’d already been in prison for twenty, and a judge wanted to send him back for another ten years.
Don’t think for a second it wasn’t because the privatized prison system was profiting off him, and don’t think for one moment that he is somehow special. The privatized prison system uses prisoners as firefighters, as clean-up crews, as “contractors” for private companies, doing everything from sewing your bedclothes to building the house you live in. And they make almost nothing, then get out of prison and find the skills they acquired in prison mean shit, because no one will hire them and they can’t vote to change that.
My uncle is fifty-four years old and he has spent most of his life in prison, not even for a violent crime, mind you. He and his friends got caught smoking weed in an apartment, some twenty years back, and one of the people there had some coke on them. The judge “made an example” of them all, and they all got ten-fifteen year sentences. They all spent a decade and longer having their skills exploited with promises that never came through.
Just like everyone else in the prison system today.
Support the strike.
About to go out and do this with my Iww branch
They threatened to arrest us in front of the mall
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 