(Seattle, USA) – August 18, 2018 – Prisoners within various institutions nationwide will be on coordinated work stoppages, sit-in strikes, commissary boycotts, and hunger strikes from August 21 – September 9, 2018, demanding “humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform, and the end of modern day slavery.”
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) is a network of incarcerated self-educated legal advocates. On April 22, 2018, JLS issued ten strike demands and a call for actions to be spread nationwide. The call for action was made in response to an April 15, 2018 riot at Lee Correctional Institution (Lee CI), a maximum security prison in Bishopville, South Carolina. Seven prisoners were killed in what was the deadliest prison riot in 25 years. No guards were injured in the incident. While the Lee CI riot was the largest of prison uprisings in recent memory, the Lee CI riot was not unique. System wide and longstanding practices of cruel and arbitrary abuses, the creation of hostile conditions, and demonstrated lack of regard of human life by corrections facility officials has been documented for decades.
There has been a growing wave of repression and retaliation by prisons across the nation in order to subdue actions themselves, and to suppress news of actions from reaching outside supporters. Several prisons have been placed on lockdown that include the restriction or total loss of various forms of communication privileges.
Retaliation against individual prominent prisoners seen as agitators or leaders has also been documented in several states. In recognition of the history of prison rebels and resistors, the 19 days of strike actions were called to commence officially on August 21, 2018, the 47th anniversary of the death of George Jackson, a prominent African-American prison advocate; until September 9, 2018, the 47th anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion, the largest prison uprising of the 1970s prison movement.
Currently incarcerated people across state borders and in various types of correctional institutions and detention facilities have mobilized in response to the calls to action, with many facilities issuing their own additional or regionally specific demands. Actions come at great individual and collective risk with communication restrictions and increased potential for retaliation. There has been a growing prisoner-led resistance movement has been shaped by national-level coordination of direct action inside prisons. Resistance has come in various forms with calls or campaigns for abolition, reform, decarceration, and policy change. Outside support has also come in various forms including coordinated demonstrations, media attention, and grassroots, community based organizing. The 2018 nationwide prisoner strike demands and calls for action have already spread widely, and the movement for outside support has been growing to meet it.
ABOUT
The Nationwide Prison Strike has been supported by a network of groups including Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the Incarcerated Worker’s Organizing Committee, Free Alabama Movement, the Fire Inside Collective, and Millions for Prisoners networks. The objectives of these groups is to work together to increase the capacity for the strike demands to be met. These groups function as advocates, liaisons, and supporters to build bridges for outside support for inside coordinated actions. We advocate prison abolition.
Media contact: Email: prisonstrikemedia@gmail.com
