2018 Prison Strike

Pulling Down the Bars: The 2018 #PrisonStrike - It's Going Down

The 2018 Prison Strike has officially begun.

Already, the strike has spread into Canada, and numerous facilities around the US are already seeing hunger strikes pop off as prisoners issue demands. Prison officials are also cracking down on various facilities, shutting them down, and locking up prison rebel leaders as deep in the hole as they can.

This page will be updated throughout the strike with news of action and repression on both sides of the razor wire. For background information, strike demands, as well as a list of solidarity events, please go here.

 

Let them strike it’s not going to change anything.

The atmosphere in a prison is one of violence, gangs, rape, and intimidation.

No one has ever come up with a good solution (or at least a practical solution) and no one ever will.

 

Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% and has some of the most humane prisons in the world.

Of course they also have some of the lowest crime rates in the world.

 

In the United states its much higher from 56% within the first year of release, to 75% within 5 years.

They toss non-violent offenders in together with violent offenders in overcrowded conditions, and it’s a revolving door of criminality

 

Yeah, I bet they will

 

Well said! Putting people in cages and poking them with a stick is a poor form of rehabilitation. And that's not mentioning the thousands of people who don't deserve to be there.

Almost everything prisoners have is due to prison strikes and rebellions. And outside solidarity. So yes, demands can be easlily achievable. Like their primary demand of ending group punishments. It's not like their demands are to abolish prisons, not yet anyway.

This is the largest prison strike in american history.

 

More updates:
One week into the National Prison Strike and already history has been made. Even in the face of massive repression, preemptive lock downs, and the targeting of suspected strike leaders and organizers, currently we know about strike actions happening in at least 10 states across the US – with more being learned about everyday. And into Canada.

Despite the State’s best efforts to clamp down on resistance, prisoners have still been able to send out word clandestinely across State lines in order to coordinate collective acts of refusal such as striking at their jobs, boycotting the canteen, organizing demonstrations, and also getting word out to media and supporters.
Such actions have also taken place across racial, religious, and gang lines – presenting the prisoners demands to the State and the prison capitalists as a class, while at the same time, recognizing the need to destroy and abolish prisons as part of a neo-colonial and white supremacist framework of domination. These actions also come together totally and completely independently of any large scale “Left” organizations, non-profits, or political parties, and instead have arisen out of the self-organization and decision making of the prisoners themselves.
If the past two years has shown us anything, its that our relationships in our communities, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and prisons – and how we come together to fight shared conditions, is not only our single means of self-defense, but also our only hope of creating a different way of life.

Society and the states which seek to manage it face grave challenges in the face of elevating wealth inequality, mounting crisis, and the threat of ecological collapse. Across the world, fascism and populist nationalism are presented as an “alternative” to the pitfalls of decades of neoliberalism which have only accelerated these trends, one of which in the United States has been the constant reaffirmation of racial slavery and the shifting of traditional sites of production into prisons.

On one hand this shows that as our comrades wrote, the “civil war never ended,” but moreover the true nature of the “devil’s bargain” of white supremacy. For those that support calls for “law and order” and an end to basic social programs, might have seen their former jobs moved into the hands of prisoners who work for free or for pennies. This type of talk is not hyperbole – starting in the 1990s for instance, AT&T dumped thousands of union workers only to turn around and fill their jobs with prisoners.

This is simply one example among many, but the point is clear: while both corporate parties pumped up fear of immigrants and the Black poor, it was the prison system, not migrant workers, who were actually taking jobs. This reality will only be accelerated in the coming years, as the gig economy and automation will leave huge sections of the workforce without access to work or more likely, enough wages to live on. But hey, there’s always prison!

Thus, the current prison strike should be seen as a multi-faceted strike and attack on the system of racialized capital as a whole; with everyone that is supporting or taking part in the strike playing a part: from those dropping banners, to those striking inside the prison walls. In this spirit, we see this activity akin to those that participated in the Underground Railroad in a variety of capacities, Native, Black, and white indentured servants who found freedom in Maroon societies outside of civilization, and a rebellious collection of poor farmers who deserted the Confederate army, and the masses of Black people who collectively took part in a general strike while fleeing their plantations, crippling the Confederacy.
Shinning a Light Into Hell: #PrisonStrike, Week One - It's Going Down

CrimethInc. : The Hotwire #34: August 29, 2018 : #PrisonStrike update—Nazis mobilize in Germany—Riotization of protest interview

Why the End of Prison Slavery Could be the Rebirth of Organized Labor - It's Going Down

 

Do the crime, do the time.

 

Many of the prisoners demands are reasonable but the idea that they should be paid the prevailing wage in the state their incarcerated in is absurd.

 

Prisoners: more rights and privelages than veteran soldiers.

Prisoner: murders family. "give that man more money!"

Veteran: fight for country, gets spat on, no job opportunities "Baby killer!"

 

Unfortunately, even the UN cannot go into those prisons and inspect them for human rights abuses. It sounds like the prisoners have been using the internet to organize, and these prisons can simply cut them off from the internet altogether. Its a double edged sword because the more they abuse them, the more expensive it becomes to watch them. Prison strikes are about making them look bad and making them pay for the privilege of abusing them.

 

But forcing people against their will to work for you, for profit, and paying them a few pennies is slavery. Prison slavery was written into the constitution after chattel slavery was abolished.

You do know the majority of folks in prison are there for non-violent offenses, right? And the ones that aren't veterans are probably not anti-veteran. Im not sure what you think your argument is or why people like you always say "but the veterans" whenever folks are trying to better their lives, in many cases with veterans, but never against veterans...

 

Yeah I pretty much don't care about criminals hey. You're talking about "bettering lives" when a large percentage of people in the can are in there for adversely not bettering people lives. Assaults, rape, harassment, lethal drug trafficking, manufacturing and distribution.

Nup, I wouldn't give them shit. Unfit for society for a reason, not sure why they need social privelages.

 

You've never broken a law before? Crazy, I've never actually met anyone like you in person yet. (Written before you changed your post)

 

Anything I've ever done to break the law didn't hurt anybody else, that's why I'm not in there. I'm actually consciously aware of how my actions might affect somebody else's lives. Other than smoking non legally distributed weed, I'm sitting on a clean slate. and if I get arrested for that, that's on me. I did the crime, gotta do the time. I would never expect any benefits out of it.

 

People who have no money might as well be illegal for all practical purposes.

 

Hey now that I think about it, Irminsul could totally be in the League of Shadows.
I can see it.

 

Doesnt seem to be many people giving a shit


Doesnt seem to be making big on the news sites in your country

 

Alright, have fun going to a for-profit prison for a non-violent offence and getting put to work for free to generate revenue for some billionaire who undoubtedly is responsible for countless violent crimes.

No, most mainstream news does not cover things like this. Unless there's either a riot or people getting murdered by the dozens then you probably won't hear a thing in the mainstream. Although there is a lot more coverage than the 2016 strike. But to cover the strike would mean to shine light on the demands and the fact that there is prison slavery, and many of the products and services in america are from the unpaid and forced labor of non-violent victimless prisoners.

 

All Pennsylvania prisons are locked down. And there is no such mention of any strike on Prisontalk.com