[Pnews] Prisoners in multiple states call for strikes to protest forced labor

[Prisoner News]

*http://sfbayview.com/2016/04/prisoners-in-multiple-states-call-for-strikes-to-protest-forced-labor/*
*
Prisoners in multiple states call for strikes to protest forced labor*

by Alice Speri - April 8, 2016

Prison inmates around the country have called for a series of strikes 
against forced labor, demanding reforms of parole systems and prison 
policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of 
solitary confinement and better health care.
Prisoners are “driven” to the fields by a guard on horseback in a scene 
reminiscent of plantation slavery on a Texas plantation-turned-prison 
known as the Ellis Unit, the photo taken in 1978. – Photo courtesy of 
the Marshall Project

Prisoners are “driven” to the fields by a guard on horseback in a scene 
reminiscent of plantation slavery on a Texas plantation-turned-prison 
known as the Ellis Unit, the photo taken in 1978. – Photo courtesy of 
the Marshall Project

Inmates at up to five Texas prisons pledged to refuse to leave their 
cells today. The strike’s organizers remain anonymous but have 
circulated fliers listing a series of grievances and demands and a 
letter articulating the reasons for the strike. The Texas strikers’ 
demands range from the specific, such as a “good-time” credit toward 
sentence reduction and an end to $100 medical co-pays, to the systemic, 
namely a drastic downsizing of the state’s incarcerated population.

“Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our 
society economically, morally and politically,” reads the five-page 
letter announcing the strike. “Beginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates 
around Texas will stop all labor in order to get the attention from 
politicians and Texas’s community alike.”

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state’s 
prisons, “is aware of the situation and is closely monitoring it,” 
spokesperson Robert Hurst wrote in a statement to The Intercept. He did 
not comment on the prisoners’ grievances and demands. Prisoner rights 
advocates said at least one prison – the French Robertson Unit in 
Abilene – was placed under lockdown today, but Hurst denied any prisons 
in Texas were on lockdown because of planned strikes.
Constitutional servitude

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution bans “involuntary 
servitude” in addition to slavery, “except as a punishment for crime 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” thus establishing the 
legal basis for what is today a $2 billion a year industry, according to 
the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research institute.
“Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our 
society economically, morally and politically,” reads the five-page 
letter announcing the strike.

Most able-bodied prisoners at federal facilities are required to work, 
and at least 37 states permit contracting prisoners out to private 
companies, though those contracts account for only a small percentage of 
prison labor. “Ironically, those are the only prison labor programs 
where prisoners make more than a few cents an hour,” Judith Greene, a 
criminal justice policy analyst, told The Intercept.

Instead, a majority of prisoners work for the prisons themselves, making 
well below the minimum wage in some states, and as little as 17 cents 
per hour in privately run facilities. In Texas and a few other states, 
mostly in the South, prisoners are not paid at all, said Erica Gammill, 
director of the Prison Justice League, an organization that works with 
inmates in 109 Texas prisons.

“They get paid nothing, zero; it’s essentially forced labor,” she told 
The Intercept. “They rationalize not paying prison laborers by saying 
that money goes toward room and board, to offset the cost of 
incarcerating them.”

In Texas, prisoners have traditionally worked on farms, raising hogs and 
picking cotton, especially in East Texas, where many prisons occupy 
former plantations.
“They get paid nothing, zero; it’s essentially forced labor,” Erica 
Gammill told The Intercept. “They rationalize not paying prison laborers 
by saying that money goes toward room and board, to offset the cost of 
incarcerating them.”

“If you’ve ever seen pictures of prisoners in Texas working in the 
fields, it looks like what it is,” Greene said. “It’s a plantation: The 
prisoners are all dressed in white, they got their backs bent over 
whatever crop they’re tending, the guards are on horseback with rifles.” 
In the facilities Greene visited, prisoners worked all day in the heat 
only to return to cells with no air conditioning. “The conditions are 
atrocious, and it’s about time the Texas prison administration had to 
take note.”

In 1963, in an effort to reduce the cost of running prisons, Texas began 
employing inmates to manufacture a wide array of products, including 
mattresses, shoes, soaps, detergents, and textiles, as well as the 
furniture used in many of the state’s official buildings. Because of 
labor laws restricting the sale of prisoner-made goods, Greene said, 
those products are usually sold to state and local government agencies.

Although they comprise nearly half the incarcerated population 
nationwide – about 870,000 as of 2014 – prison workers are not counted 
in official labor statistics; they get no disability compensation in 
case of injury, no social security benefits, and no overtime.

“They keep a high conviction rate at any cost,” reads the letter 
circulated by prisoners ahead of today’s strike, “all for the well-being 
of the multimillion-dollar Prison Industrial Complex.”
An underground prison network

The Texas action is not an isolated one. Prisoners in nearby Alabama and 
Mississippi, and as far away as Oregon, have also been alerted to the 
Texas strike through an underground network of communication between 
prisons.
“They keep a high conviction rate at any cost,” reads the letter 
circulated by prisoners ahead of today’s strike, “all for the well-being 
of the multimillion-dollar Prison Industrial Complex.”

“Over the long term, we’ll probably see more work stoppages,” said 
Gammill. “In prison, you think it’d be difficult to spread information, 
but it actually spreads like wildfire.”

On April 1, a group of prisoners from Ohio, Alabama, Virginia, and 
Mississippi called for a “nationally coordinated prisoner work stoppage 
against prison slavery” to take place on Sept. 9, the 45th anniversary 
of the Attica prison riot. “We will not only demand the end to prison 
slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,” that 
announcement reads. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”

Prison protests and strikes have seen a revival in recent years after a 
slowdown resulting from the increased use of solitary confinement to 
isolate politically active inmates. In 2010, thousands of inmates from 
at least six Georgia prisons, organizing through a network of contraband 
mobile phones, refused to leave their cells to work, demanding better 
living conditions and compensation for their labor.

That action was followed by prison protests in Illinois, Virginia, North 
Carolina and Washington. In 2013, California prisoners coordinated a 
hunger strike to protest the use of solitary confinement. On the first 
day of that protest, 30,000 prisoners across the state refused their meals.
“We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it 
ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,” that announcement reads. “They 
cannot run these facilities without us.”

Last year in Texas, nearly 3,000 detainees demanding better conditions 
seized and partially destroyed an immigration detention center.

In March, protests erupted at Holman Correctional Facility, a maximum 
security state prison in Alabama, where two riots broke out over four 
days. At least 100 prisoners gained control of part of the prison and 
stabbed a guard and the warden. Those protests were unplanned, but 
prisoners there had also been organizing coordinated actions that they 
say will go ahead as planned.

“We have to strain the economics of the criminal justice system, because 
if we don’t, we can’t force them to downsize,” an activist serving a 
life sentence at Holman told The Intercept. “Setting fires and stuff 
like that gets the attention of the media,” he said. “But I want us to 
organize something that’s not violent. If we refuse to offer free labor, 
it will force the institution to downsize.”

“Slavery has always been a legal institution,” he added. “And it never 
ended. It still exists today through the criminal justice system.”

Alice Speri is a multimedia journalist with an interest in justice, 
civil rights, and the struggle for equality. She has reported on state 
violence and institutional failure in the U.S. and abroad, from 
Ferguson, Missouri, to Haiti and Palestine. Her work has appeared in 
VICE News, Al Jazeera America, the New York Times and several other 
publications. She is originally from Italy and lives in the Bronx. 
Contact her at alice.speri@​theintercept.com or on Twitter at 
@alicesperi. This story first appeared on The Intercept.

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