In the recent years of the the prison resistance movement, new methods for inside organizing have tremendously pushed inside organizers cause forward. People in prison had pleaded for more human conditions and just policies since before the years of the Attica revolution in 1971 that promoted 35 demands around these issues. During the early 70s prisoners demands were circulated predominantly via snail mail or word of mouth. The uprising, also called a riot by the corporate media, lasted for four days before police raided the penitentiary with indiscriminate fire resulting in 10 officer and 29 prisoners being killed. The conditions that ignited the uprising: overcrowding, mail censorship and limits on provided hygiene supplies still continue to plague prisoners five decades years later, as the 50th anniversary of the uprising was marked last month. Now’s the time to highlight and amplify the drastic changes that push the prison resistance movement steadily into the forefront.
Recent Prison Strike History
In the 2000s, advancement in computer communications through social media ensured that people in prison wouldn’t be forced to suffer in isolation, even while in isolation. As numbers in captivity continued to rise, hunger strikes popped up in prisons throughout the the early 2000s with the California Hunger Strikes of 2011 and 2013 being the most prevalent. During these statewide actions tens of thousands of people in prison refused to eat in protest of the state’s overuse of solitary confinement. With thousands of people participating across several prison locations, news about the demonstrations traveled widely online. State officials were losing their upper hand of setting the narrative for what’s going on behind the wall as prisoners put their bodies on the line to capture the masses attention. As hunger striking (being the most accessible act of defiance available to prisoners) increased in popularity as this method of demonstration, prison officials responded by implementing force feeding protocols. The autonomy over ones own body, even as a person in prison, was unhinged by staff in an attempt to unravel incarcerated persons sense of unity within their communities, all under the false banner of “preserving safety and order”.
In 2016 and 2018 further media advancements opened up new platforms to use as tools to reach more of the masses, thrusting prisoners’ calls-to-action into the center of more people’s hands. The demands of the 2016 National Prison Strike varied from state to state. In 2018, ten national demands were consolidated from individual state movements and disseminated widely via newsletter and social media. As a result, as people in prison were planning, people on the outside (some who had no familial or otherwise direct connection to anyone in prison) were alerted through the use of social media of upcoming prisoner led demonstrations before even one person behind the wall engaged in any type of physical act. Now the 2020s, in the shadow of a nationwide lockdown, have greatly extended our use of media platforms in every realm of life, from scheduling a doctors appointment to ordering a sandwich. Although social media, and even internet access, are completely restricted from people in prison, these media tools are still used to promote prisoners demands by outside networks (like myself) informed by those leaders behind the wall, but in some cases even by prisoners themselves. We saw the greatest evidence of this during this year’s ShutEmDown2021 Demonstrations which continue to elevate the bar for resistance actions. With only four demands, this year’s call to action was the most similar the Attica Uprising’s style of resistance with a call for sabotage of prison equipment. On the outside, participants elevated the prisoners demands by hanging banners over freeways, hosting noise demos outside of facilities and defacing state property.
Next Steps for Prison Resistance Media: Building a Massive Prison Bridge
The development of the prison resistance movement depends on inside organizers being less reliant on snail mail. Mailrooms have unchecked authority over what mail gets to its intended imprisoned recipients. In some cases, senders have their mail returned back to them with a notice stapled to it stating that the mail was screened and rejected citing some section of the prison’s independently written mailroom policy. As a result of repression on prisoner communication, SawaiMedia has received hundreds and hundreds of mail rejections from prison mailrooms all over the country. In recent years we’ve been able to use snail mail in order to promote upcoming actions, like the NoShackles newsletter promoting the Millions for Prisoners March, but as soon as prison officials identify a source of organizational prisoner support, that line of communication is blocked. SawariMedia has been able to restore those lines of communication with rebranding publications and now after four years (and four newsletters), instead of allowing what we’ve built to be knocked over, we choose to re-strategize.
With snail mail is at an all time SLOW and social media platforms continuing to grow, SawariMedia is shifting our newsletter distribution process from being in-house to being at your house! Are you willing to support the distribution of prisoner resistance media by partnering with one of our inside subscribers to forward their newsletter subscription? This effort requires passionate people willing to become a PrisonerPeer or build a PrisonBridge Group. Our intention with this effort is to consolidate a large group of outside organizers to receive the Right2Vote Report via email and forward the publication to their incarcerated partner, allowing each of our inside organizers who depend on this resource to continue to receive their Right2Vote Report every other month.
PrisonerPeers are individuals that are willing to partner with one inside organizer who’s subscribed to the Right2Vote Report to forward their subscription. PrisonerPeers will support the inside organizer that they are partnered with by printing the Right2Vote Report from their email and mailing it to the prison mailroom where their partner is housed. Peers are encouraged to use their name, but are welcome to use our address on the return portion of the envelope: PO Box 760504, Lathrup Village, MI 48076. Similarly, PrisonBridge Groups are groups of people who are willing to connect with groups of inside organizers who’re subscribed to the Right2Vote Report. These groups could be as informal as a church small group or formal, like a group of students involved in a course, or an independent social justice group; regardless of how your group comes together we are eager to get your involved. Participation is as simple as it sounds, outside participants will need to have access to a printer and be subscribed to our email newsletter so that once they get the email notification about the newest issue being ready they can print it right from their email, stick it into an envelope, put 1 stamp in the corner and mail it to their prisoner peer.
We currently have 2,800 email subscribers. If just a third of our subscribers on the outside would commit to forwarding the Right2Vote Report to at least one inside organizer then we can ensure that every one of our incarcerated readers are supplied with their subscription through 2022. With 6 newsletters published per year the individual cost of sending the newsletter would amount to around $5/person for the year (much more than many prisoners could make after a week of prison labor). My goal is to have at least 500 outside participants be apart of this effort through 2022. Will that include you? Passion makes the difference.
Here’s An Invitation for Outsiders to Get IN, Deeper
In order to be a participate in this effort you’ve gotta be an abolitionist and…
- Subscribe to right2vote.report – scroll down the bottom of the webpage or fill out the form below
- Have access to a printer (color or B&W)
- Able to print and forward subscription(s) to incarcerated subscriber(s) within one week of receiving the emailed newsletter
Everyone who signs onto this effort will be invited to an exclusive meeting (online) in November 2021 to go over how to format the newsletter for mailing (there are 2 options), learn about prison mailroom policies to be aware of and receive their incarcerated reader(s) mailing information to begin forwarding for 2022.
