One Year After the Lee County Massacre

What can we do for the 2.4 millions of men women and trapped in our a nation’s prisons?
What can we do for the 38,000 people incarcerated in South Carolina?
What can we do for the 1,200 incarcerated in Lee County?

We’ve been asking ourselves these questions since the era mass incarceration began to raise eyebrows once the war on drugs evolved into an opioid epidemic after hundreds and thousands of black and brown men and women were locked up and stripped of their rights. The transformation of the narrative surrounding addiction made people wonder if incarceration ever worked for anyone.

What can we do for the 2.4 millions of men women and trapped in our a nation’s prisons?

Today the system continues to eat more and more bodies, though it was already bursting at the seams. Overcrowding did not seem to be an issue for prison officials as laws became more oppressive, the conditions within prisons became more destitute and prisoners’ hope to get out became more slim. As we’ve watched the conditions of our nation’s prisons deteriorate we see the food served to prisoners get worse (to the point of being an edible), job opportunities become more limited and salaries decrease to just cents an hour while phone rates and commissary prices continue to go up. It’s as if no one cares about the millions of people behind bars as access rehabilitation programs are restricted and funding is limited. The living conditions of prisoners nationwide are unfathomable. Overtime we’ve become complicit to watching human beings live and die in filth and degradation in one of the richest country’s in the world. We have the resources to provide humans with corrective care and treatment in our criminal justice system.

What can we do for the 38,000 people incarcerated in South Carolina?

In South Carolina, the United State’s slave capital, incarcerated people were dying left and right with no logical reasoning or official accountability. Often families aren’t given closure when an incarcerated loved one dies. It is as if the system forces prisoners into destitute conditions to the point of death as a solution to overcrowding. Our prisons are not working and they never were. Recidivism rates have always been high and conditions have never been rehabilitative. With the lack of funding dedicated to programming, we’ve realized that prisoners are becoming better criminals on the inside rather than more productive citizens. It was if no one cared until one of the deadliest massacres of the century happened on April 12, 2018 at Lee County Prison.

What can we do for the 1,200 incarcerated in Lee county?

At Lee County Prison prisoners were placed on lockdown, room assignments were switched to the point of rising tensions and once fights occurred prisoners were neglected for hours. For every hour that prisoners fought a person lost their life and over two dozen prisoners were seriously injured. The tragic event was the bloodiest of its kind that we’ve seen in decades. As we continue to ask the same questions we become engrossed in our daily distractions and move on from the crises that caged community members are forced to endure every day. Today in South Carolina people incarcerated at level 3 prisons are now on permanent lockdown status, they’ve been oppressed under lockdown conditions with limited recreation time and food brought to their cells for over a year. Prison police officers do not respond to violence between cellmates, while using a disproportionate amount of force on oppressed inmates. Prisoners well being is not a priority in South Carolina prisons or any prison in the United States.

It’s Time to Follow Prisoners’ Lead, Uplift their Voices

As we continued to ask questions, prisoners provided us with answers. In the 10 Demands of the National Prison Strike prisoners responded to the massacre that occurred in Lee County for whose conditions are identical to that of prisons across the country. The violent conditions of prisons are on the brink of a massacre in every state. After waiting decades for prison officials to create solutions, prisoners have created their own. Realizing that conditions at Lee county are identical to that of prisons across the United States and that circumstances anywhere could boil to the point of deadly tensions, prisoners knew that they had to take the lead. Today prisoners have organized. As a result of the unnecessary deaths that occurred as a result of staff neglect at Lee County, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, an incarcerated groups of activists organized the 2018 National Prison Strike which turned out to be the largest in our nation’s history. Prisoners organized across state lines and through the barbed wire in collaboration with outside organizers to expand participation throughout 17 regions across the continent and overseas with solidarity among German and Palestinian prisoners.

At this point prisoners are telling us what to do and our task is simple. We are responsible to support them. Realizing that prisoners are organizing in the face of retaliation, on the outside we have no excuses. Each of the prisoners 10 demands have been taken on in different forms by allies, students, grassroots groups and organizations across the country. We are deciding to tackle the immense problem of mass incarceration as a unified group under a common call for abolition led by those who are directly impacted. There is no way that we can allow these conditions to persist. There is no way that we can allow the directors and officials that we pay to create solutions, to be comfortable while millions of individuals are on the brink of death and destitution.

The national prison strike ended with a demand to restore voting rights for the incarcerated, knowing officials must be held accountable to these populations and that they hold the solutions to this massive problem in our nation’s prisons. We refuse to continue to allow their voices to be silenced while policies are being crafted that further oppress them. Through the introduction of voting rights legislation are forcing the legislature to voice their stance on policies that lift incarcerated voices and promote a true democracy that includes the voices all citizens in this country.

While the South Carolina Department of Corrections promotes propaganda to make it seem as though they’ve resolved the desperate conditions of their prisons, the lack of any prisoners voices in agreement with Director Stirling points to their failure to make the real changes that prisoners demand. Any solutions that have been created is is not at all due to the work of Director Stirling or prison officials, it is completely due to the courageous and bold organizing of those on the inside. Prisoners have been able to create a national coalition and introduce legislation in their state capital in an effort to restore their voting rights. On this one year anniversary of the Lee Country Massacre take some time to think about which demand impassions you. This movement calls for each of us to use our skill and capacity to contribute to the common call, we have the resources to empower the prisoners voices. We move forward, faster together.

R.I.P.

Raymond Angelo Scott

Michael Milledge

Damonte Marquez Rivera

Eddie Casey Jay Gaskins

Joshua Svwin Jenkins

Corey Scott

Cornelius Quantral McClary

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