Without An Aggressive Mass Decarceration Effort a Second Wave Will Devastate the United States
Black August has been recognized by the prison class as a month of resistance since the early 1970s. The demands of prisoners have not changed much over the decades. Over the last few years, as people in prison expand their networks to include more outside organizers; Black August has evolved from being isolated behind the wall to being commemorated by students, teachers, activists, business owners, artists and entertainers nationwide.
Historically during the months of August and September incarcerated citizens have organized across state and international borders to perform actions in solidarity with one another. These actions include sit-ins, boycotts, work strikes, hunger strikes (often referred to collectively as “Prison Strikes”) while raising awareness on the outside about their conditions. This is done while collaborating on proposed solutions with outside organizers participating in ctions that include phone zaps, panel discussions, protests, and noise demos.
These types of organized actions between enslaved and free people in the United States have always been a part of the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). However, when prisoner human rights activist and inside organizer George Jackson was murdered by guards in California’s San Quentin Prison on August 21, 1971 his message against racial division and unity in the face of state violence infested prisons across the country, until boiling over into New York’s Attica Prison Uprising on September 9, 1971, where thirty nine people lost their lives. Today Black August, mistakenly coined by some as a ‘second Black History month’, is actually a commemoration of martyrs who lost their lives in the struggle against the prison industrial slave complex (PISC) that include Black, Native American,Hispanic and poor white peoples.
For the past 48 years this period from August 21st through September 9th is often met with the resistance of caged people across the globe, and more broadly throughout the entire months of Black August and Bloody September. More recently, in 2018 SawariMedia collaborated with inside organizers, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, to promote their Nationwide Prison Strike that accrued over 400 business, nonprofit and candidate endorsements. Prison Strike actions spread across 17 states into Nova Scotia, Canada; Leipzig, Germany and to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. While the demands of the National Prison Strike have yet to fully come to fruition prisoners were able to shift mass consciousness in their favor. Had prisoners’ demands been met, especially changes in over-sentencing laws and baseless parole denials, we would not have seen the spike in inmate coronavirus cases that led to dozens of preventable deaths. Now the coronavirus is being weaponized by prison officials against incarcerated people, jailhouse lawyers speak confirms, “All across this nation web of prisons, pigs are infecting and killing us with the covid virus. #COVID19 #prisonershumanrights”.
In states like California, New York and Michigan exploding prison populations make the perfect grounds for the spread of the virus. Jermaine Glenn, an incarcerated father and husband exclaims, “we’re incapable of following these recommendations, we are actually increasing the possible spread of the virus. In a matter of 14 days the MDOC went from 1 confirmed case to 122 confirmed cases and 1 death throughout the state of Michigan’s prisons”. People confined in jails, prisons and detention centers in the US have no control over even maintaining their individual health and live in daily fear.
Many activists frame the sole issue for corrections departments inability to manage their facilities as a staffing problem but a CDCr prisoner at California State Prison in Lancaster negates that observation saying, “And that may be so, if we are trying to build up the prison industrial complex; however, with 2.3 million souls behind physical bars, and another 7 million tethered by parole or probation, for sure, the highest incarceration rate in the world, the truth is, the prisons are overcrowded; really, really overcrowded.”
We must come to terms with the fact that there is absolutely no way for jail, prison and detention facilities to effectively manage the health and well-being of millions of people during a global viral pandemic. Knowing this we must pivot to a call for mass decarceration. We allowed mass incarceration over the past few decades to create this problem. Now the only way to resolve this epic failure is to mass decarcerate, release as many people as quickly as possible. Only after evacuating the vast majority of our human warehouses, will population sizes be more manageable to allow prison and elected officials to appropriately apply the CDC guidelines for public spaces, most critically being maintaining 6ft social distancing between individuals.
This year is the 49th anniversary of George Jackson’s assassination and the Attica Uprising and inside actions have not stopped. Jailhouse Lawyers Speaks has put out a call to action, “Starting August 21st – September 9th unite for prisoners human rights by having or supporting actions, we request that organizers amplify immediate issues prisoners in your state face, the demands from the National Prison Strike of 2018, and uplift Jailhouse Lawyers Speak new International Law Project ”. These organized actions raise global awareness around the status of the incarceration nation, the United States of America, while also directing the masses to empower impacted people as our solution crafters around this critical issue rather than to self-deteriorating corrections departments.
