Three years, ago the 2018 National Prison Strike united incarcerated people across 17 states around 10 demands. In order to elevate those demands, incarcerated organizers promoted four actions for inside participants to engage in: work strikes, sit-ins, boycotts and hunger strikes. The outside world took notice worldwide responding to prisoners call to post their demands publicly, organize marches, protests, pickets as well as host online webinars and panels featuring recorded messages from inside participants.
Outside Solidarity Solidified in Reformist Ideology
Over the Black August weeks of 2018, the outside world was shocked into submission of the idea that United States prisons are in desperately horrible condition, supported mainly by the sharing of devastating images captured by prisoners on social media. Advocate groups, nonprofit organizations and business leaders alike accepted the facts that people in prison were presenting supported more as the weeks went on by a growing social media reach. People in prison communicated directly with outside endorsers through spokespeople like myself nationally and on the state levels. To be able to present on live National television about the demands on prisoners on George Jackson Day was a surreal experience, not to mention the callback to present an update that following week. The hold that the prison class had on the United States’ public consciousness through public mass media was solidified.
The 2018 demands embraced the idea that prison institutions could more justly serve people held there by incorporating more robust programming and reforming those laws that feed over-population; these were ideas that the average American learned to accept as a result of prisoners actions. As a result of the initial push and ongoing education some strides had been made in the prison resistance movement including: reduced phone call costs in many states as well as eliminated costs in a select few. We also watched voting rights be restored to ex-felons in NJ and CA, as the first county jail become a polling location in Illinois’ Cook County Jail.
While these successes are significant, they do not outweigh the desperate conditions that the global health crisis’ pandemic has exasperated behind the wall including: restrictions on movement, limited communications, eliminated in person-contact visitation and the grief of loss in isolation that many people in prisons, jails and detention facilities are enduring on a daily basis many nationwide.
2018 v. 2021 Similarities & Key Differences in Methods of Inside Action
When I initially read Jailhouse Lawyers’ press release I was familiar with the actions that we usually see people in prison engage in in-protest: strikes and boycotts, but when I got to the fifth suggestion I was caught off guard, ” Sabotaging prison work equipment to ensure it will not function” and while I wasn’t in disagreement, I couldn’t help but be shocked by the boldness.
However I relent, people in prison should be bold about the fact that they are not adequately paid for the work that they do. On top of that, the prison class should be even more bold about the fact that they are a irrevocably invaluable piece in the Amerikan jigsaw puzzle of a “dream”. The prison class provides the base labor that many American corporations depend on, including the state government. They should be bold in the knowledge that the prison class is an evolved form of the exploited labor pool that African descendants of slaves provided as Amerika was being built.
Knowing this people in prison are fully justified in their call, mishandling or misusing any equipment weaponized against them to the point of destruction. As Freire shares in his pedagogy of the oppressed, “Engaged in the process of liberation, he or she cannot remain passive in the face of the oppressors violence.” The language of the oppressed (prison) class must include some form off aggressive action in order to even capture the attention of a violently aggressive oppressor.
Unmet Demands in Pandemic Conditions Incite Violence
This added method is a key difference in this year’s post-pandemic prisoner led national demonstration that was spurred by the negligent response of department of corrections to the pandemic nationwide. As I noted in an earlier article, had Prison Officials met the 2018 demands of the 2018 National Prison Strike than the number of coronavirus cases and treatable deaths wouldn’t have been so devastatingly high, in Michigan alone we saw thousands of infections across nearly every single state facility.
Had Officials responded to demand #1 by paying people in prison a living wage, then prisoners would have the funds to communicate with loved ones regularly during the global lockdown. They would have also been able to afford the supplements and supplies to keep themselves protected from the spreading virus. Or alternatively less expensive, had officials responded to demand #6 and restricted sentencing laws to incorporate earned credits retroactively, we could have witnessed the mass releases desperately required in order to eliminate nationwide prison overcrowding.
Unfortunately the situation had to burst beyond the seams before even the smallest steps towards abolition were made. It wasn’t until the death toll rose to staggering heights that some governors began to seek out alternatives to confinement and grant commutations for elderly and other types of at-risk prisoners. Even-so conditions continue to worsen for the vast majority of those behind the wall. Demands 7, 8 and 9 are all “legitimately” obstructed by covid: How could we hold classes, Host basketball leagues? Or invite guests to hold programs? Everything related to programming, even around voter education programming has ceased. These factors create a boiling pot of chaos for conditions to burst at the seams, similarly, but even more substantially, to what we saw in South Carolina at Lee County April 2018.
