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Georgia Prison Strike: A Hidden Labor Force Resists
Last week a diverse group of nonviolent protesters across Georgia stood up for their rights, calling for decent wages, better social services and respect for their civil liberties. It didn't take long for the government to crack down on the demonstrations, however: the protesters were already in prison.
The uprising of Georgia inmates on December 9 defied the stereotype of the chaotic "prison riot" in the public imagination. Yet neither did "Lockdown for Liberty" fit within the conventional model of civil disobedience or industrial action. But when the inmates in at least six different prisons refused to leave their cells to report to work and other activities that day, a strike began. And it effectively paralyzed a small chunk of the bureaucratic monstrosity of America's prison system.
The incarcerated have historically filled the dregs of the American workforce, an emblem of racial subjugation often invisible in the politics of labor and social policy. It was against this hidden legacy of exploitation that the Georgia inmates, with the support of the NAACP and other civil rights advocates, raised issues common to incarcerated people nationwide: abusive treatment, degrading living conditions, a lack of accountability in the administration and parole authorities, and a lack of basic educational and social services (see below).
Pointedly invoking the term "slave" to describe the circumstances under which they toiled, the strikers showed how historically entrenched racial divisions play out today in the black-white disparities throughout the criminal justice system. Still, Georgia protesters included Latinos and whites as well as blacks, in a joint effort to resist and challenge structural injustices.
Their demands were hardly radical, but rather, embodied mainstream standards for reasonable and humane treatment: protection from cruel and unusual punishment by officers, affordable medicine when they're sick, and above all, fair pay for their labor. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, "state law forbids paying inmates except for one limited program."
Final Call quoted reports trickling out from inmates earlier this week:
One brother told me, ‘We will ride until the wheels fall off,' and that's been the sentiment amongst the men when they started this," said Elaine Brown, a spokesperson for the strike... Part of our purpose for doing this is that Georgia is the only state that does not pay its inmates at all. Some guys in here work seven days a week and they don't get a dime," said Dondito, one of the strikers, who requested anonymity.
You can almost hear the zero-tolerance conservatives in Washington now: how dare these criminals demand better treatment from the state? The official reaction was to immediately curtail what few resources the inmates possess. According to news reports, prison staff locked down four facilities, attempted to transfer out the leading troublemakers, cut off the hot water, and revoked cell phone privileges (yes, according to Facing South, "Cell phones are contraband in Georgia's prisons, but widely available for sale from correctional officers.")
The strike was called off after six days, following reports of violent crackdowns and rising fears that the situation would escalate. But by then, the inmates had made their mark with one of the largest prison protests in U.S. history. The decision to end the strike, moreover, seems like the beginning of another phase in the inmates' collective action, now that they've caught national political attention. The AJC reported:
an inmate at Smith State Prison in Glenville said in a telephone interview prisoners had agreed to end their "non-violent" protest to allow administrators time to focus on their concerns rather than operating the institutions without inmate labor.
"We've ended the protest," said Mike, a convicted armed robber who was one of the inmates who planned and coordinated the work stoppage. "We needed to come off lock down so we can go to the law library and start ... the paperwork for a [prison conditions] lawsuit.
The proactive militancy of the strike organizers underscores the fact that the entire action not only proceeded largely without violence, but also spread rapidly through several institutions thanks to careful planning and clandestine technology--messages spread via cell, expanding the traditional jailhouse grapevine.
It may be a while before we see another prisoner strike going viral, as the potential for prison-based activism remains constrained by the criminal-justice power structure. But the Georgia inmates helped change the public face of Americans who've been caught up in the country's incarceration industry. Under the most oppressive of conditions, they used disciplined strike tactics to align their grievances with broader struggles for human rights.
It makes sense. Prison is the everyday reality lived by a huge swath of the population (roughly one in one hundred, according to recent surveys) Meanwhile, the impact of prison labor leaves a hidden imprint on our economy as well. Noah Zatz of UCLA Law School has estimated that:
well over 600,000, and probably close to a million, inmates are working full time in jails and prisons throughout the United States. Perhaps some of them built your desk chair: office furniture, especially in state universities and the federal government, is a major prison labor product. Inmates also take hotel reservations at corporate call centers, make body armor for the U.S. military, and manufacture prison chic fashion accessories, in addition to the iconic task of stamping license plates.
As a captive workforce and disenfranchised populace, the prison system reaches deep into American society, and the distance between the people on the inside and those on the outside is increasingly a matter of luck--whether you're unfortuate enough to have been born the wrong color or in the wrong neighborhood. If the movement launched by the Georgia inmates, and their demands for dignity, look surprisingly familiar, there's a good reason for that: they are us.
For more information, follow the Black Agenda Report's ongoing coverage of the Georgia prison activists.
The strikers' demands, which they continue to press with state officials, are as follows:
A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.
EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.
DECENT HEALTH CARE: In violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering. AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: In further violation of the Eighth Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.
DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.
NUTRITIONAL MEALS: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.
VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.
ACCESS TO FAMILIES: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.
JUST PAROLE DECISIONS: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.
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36 Comments so far
Show AllSalient point: slave labor in prison industrial system - Daily Kos posts how to identify companies using prison labor.
There are times when the most despised of a society take prophetic stances. This is one of them...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/13/924461/-Breaking:-Prisoners-on-Strike-in-GA
Crazy point! how about charging them rent on their cells? Medical? and Food? they want wages? I think GA still uses the hole.. Right?
>^^<
This is all just another part of the plot the right has been pushing against this country for 30 years. Not only do we have to pay like crazy to house these people, but in GA they are worked daily FOR NO PAY???? DAMN! I think I'll move down there and start a business. I can make a TON of money if I don't have to pay my workers a freaking PENNY!
Can you say SLAVERY? And this is what the rich have planned for the rest of us too. This has been their goal for the last 30 years. More for them, less to nothing for the rest of us.
Who is the REAL problem in this society? I don't think it's the pot smokers in GA that are being used for the benefit of the too damned rich, it's the too damned rich themselves. Look at it, WHO causes more problems, those in their homes growing a plant for their own use, or someone who is actively using their wealth to hurt and destroy others? Who has been bribing and buying congresspeople and senators? The rich. Who has been rigging the game so that no one else gets a chance to even play, let alone win? The rich. Who keeps buying up those things that used to be done by the gov't, now costing us at least another 30% on the top of EVERYTHING? The rich. Who is it that has been actively working to destroy the middle class and the poor for their own benefit? The rich. Who is it that costs us more for every dollar we let them keep than it's worth? The rich. Personally, I don't understand why one would be so freaking selfish that you would have to go around actively hurting those with less than you when you already have more than you will EVER need. This is a sickness, and should be treated as such.
We have enough for every man's need, but we don't have near enough for one man's greed. We never will.
BTW, if I lived in GA, I would be so freaking mad about this that I would be at the statehouse every day screaming at anyone who would listen. By allowing the state to essentially offer slavery to corporations for profit, they are screwing EVERY citizen of GA who needs a job to FEED HIS FAMILY. The state should be sued into submission, the constitution changed to NEVER allow such bullshit to go on, and those who are involved should be locked up themselves. We fought a war to stop this kind of bullshit, and the state of GA should be castigated, shamed, and deprived of ALL federal funding (ESPECIALLY for their slavery system) until this bullshit is stopped.
Righties sure hate it when people get paid a fair wage for what they contribute to a company. I guess they prefer anarchy to having ANY gov't or freedoms at all. They sure have done all they could to remove them from us.
So where are the Tea party twits, complaining about how the prison system is taking away jobs from working, NOT incarcerated CITIZENS? Why so freaking quiet?
Good point WJM
Where are those tea party blowhards when you need them?
If these people don't fit the definition of illegal workers noone (sic) does. ....~lol
Love the anger, as it's wholly justified.
But GA ain't the tenth of it:
http://www.unicor.gov/
http://www.iaprisonind.com/
http://pia.ca.gov/
The Fed, Iowa, California, etc., ad infinitum. They ALL do it.
Abu Ghraib, Bagram and the rest of it are all a manifestation of the same thing. These American prisoners are the "Jews" in the famous litany "First they came for the Jews and I did not speak up, as I was not Jewish..."
"They enslaved and tortured citizens for no real crime and I said nothing, because I didn't smoke pot..."
The U.S. is finished. Morally, militarily, economically.
They will be arresting more and more of us to feed the corporate maw and to stifle dissent.
As I said, Georgia ain't the tenth of it.
When they come for you, what will you do?
Actually, slavery is still legal in jail... The 13th Amendment actually reads, "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
It's still slavery, and it still wrong, of course, but in this most barbarous of nations, still "legal."
That's the definition of the sentence of doing time with hard labour
I doubt these inmates were sentenced in a court of law to hard labour as punishment
Pity, they should have been. This is what comes with too long sentences. They have too much time to sit about coming up with phony lawsuits to bring against the state!.
No term over 8yrs! Use corporal punishment, Caning, Whips and such for lesser crimes. But after 5 to 8 yrs your just wasting their time and my money.
Execution by organ-bank would allow the felon to give back to society. (One piece at a time) No fuss no more writing books, just out of societys hair. Oh I forgot no time to build up para-military like prison gangs, that turn around and attack us on the streets and in our homes!
>^^<
My, what a complete idiot you are. Thanks for clarifying that once and for all.
Man, sometimes the sheer volume and velocity of your idiocy blows my hair straight back.
Ever seen what the typical non-violent prisoner endures? I suspect not.
I could take you, sir, assuming you're a good and moral fellow, and in a couple of months of prison conditions, turn you into a lying, thieving killer or an abject, shameless whore with raw knees and elbows.
Most advanced nations understand that crime is created by society in large part...the same societies that provide for the well-being of their citizens have the lowest crime and recidivism rates.
But them's facts, and I can tell how you feel about facts.
But if your post is satiric, well done.
Cheers.
As Alan MacDonald has recently pointed out, there are a number of activities all independently invoked that express the same basic common denominator: They represent civilians' attempts to curb the powers of empire. More and more persons now realize that empire has so clearly overstepped sane as well as legal bounds.
Note the student protests in London.
Note the citizens' protests in Greece, Iceland, Ireland, etc.
Note the pressure put on Julian Assange, a well-orchestrated fear tactic--designed to silence GENUINE journalists everywhere.
Note this prison strike.
Note the realization of South American nations that the West will not take any part in charting policies to offset climate change.
Note the fact that several of the regular writers whose work is featured on CD are one by one waking up to the hoax that's passed as a two-party "democracy."
It may well be that the greater the awakening, the heavier the boot-print of "big brother."
The elites have overstepped the boundaries, challenging what most citizens can endure.
It will be difficult to contain the force of billions waking up.
We look at U.S. prisons, we look at Haiti, we look at how Katrina was handled and our realization for the disregard for human lives, mostly "darker-hued" human lives cannot be avoided.
While American citizens' minds may remain captive to a mass media that distorts messages to keep the pack quiet, if not under virtual hypnosis, the same cannot be said for the far more educated populations of Europe and Asia.
Many from within these lands have known war first-hand, and thus are far less likely to believe the propaganda designed to "justify" naked wars of aggression. These acts of aggression also coincidentally tend to target those of darker hue.
I do not see how a worldwide revolution can be avoided. Little by little the seams are bursting... and while I pray violence will not be used in futile attempts to curb the "rebellions" to a status quo that consigns so many to death, misery, and poverty... if deployed, even that approach will not work.
Note that the military recently published a study that centers on urban warfare. The "sages" in uniform are preparing for "insurgencies" among disadvantaged citizens in other sovereign lands. Our own is no doubt on the updated list.
Don't forget BP and Gulf Gusher. Don't forget how Obama handled it.
Siouxrose
"I pray violence will not be used in futile attempts to curb the 'rebellions; to a status quo that consigns so many to death, misery, and poverty."
Since my retirement I've been reading a lot of history and watching History Channel and similar such stuff, and to hope that violence will not be used both by those attempting the rebellion and those attempting to suppress it is, I'm afraid, not likely. Already incidents of everyday violence are increasing both in their severity and their seeming wack pointlessness. Watching local news is witnessing what the psych techs call "acting out" in progress, only widespread across many segments of society. An act of violence feels to those who do it like one is doing something, taking action. The fact that long term the consequences are rarely if ever good cannot usually be seen by people desperate to prove to themselves that they count for something, that they aren't helpless to affect whatever circumstances they perceive.
As for the Powers That Be, to hope violence won't be used as a tool of suppression: well, I can't help but recall the Branch Dividians, Randy Weaver's family, the house where the Symbionese Liberation Army was holed up.
And people cheer for violence in the entertainment media and identify deeply with those who have the power to enact it -- the Dirty Harry Syndrome.
I too hope that both sides find creative ways to proceed and hold their fire, but it doesn't look good. Then again, I am what my posting name says and I always hope I'm wrong.
PARANOID: Thank you for the thoughtful response to my post. I cannot say I am optimistic, either. I never thought during my lifetime I'd witness the shreading of The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, and any remnant of decency... on the part of so-called leaders.
In contemplating recent posts by Elizabeth H about her students' nonchalant regard for torture and senseless violence, I asked myself what types of de-programing devices would be necessary to bring The Humanity back into this generation? So many cultural factors have gone into the social engineering that has conditioned much of this group to forfeit its capacity for empathy. Perhaps these individuals will need that defense mechanism to survive in a "Mean Streets" world?
It didn't have to come to this. Every Biblical Revelation, followed by the prophecies drawn from numerous mystical sources, added to the lessons of history show the way to anything BUT this destination (or outcome). Sure, the fat lady hasn't sung her last song, but things are evidently caught in a momentum that insures they will get worse before they get better. I still have faith that an ultimate Catharsis will arise. How many become martyrs to that cause is way beyond what I can see, or would wish to (inwardly) see.
Not much has changed since the making of a movie based on a true story:
"I Am a Fugitive From a (Georgia) Chain Gang (1932) is a gritty, uncompromising, critical, and combative look at the unjust and barbaric treatment of criminals in a southern state's prison system following World War I. The harsh and grim melodramatic film was one of the first of Warner Bros.' films of social conscience, reform and protest during the early 30s (at the height of the Depression-era). The film reflected the dire effects of the Great Depression on the common man in its story of a WWI veteran who faced unemployment, was unjustly convicted of a petty robbery, and then twice served and escaped from a southern chain gang as a hunted fugitive during the 1920s. One of the film's taglines described his second escape: "Six sticks of dynamite that blasted his way to freedom...and awoke America's conscience!" http://www.filmsite.org/iama.html
Chain gangs were mostly black people and were used to replace slavery after the emancipation.
You should not talk about misinformation. Presently, Georgia is 30% black but 64% of their prison population is black. In 1930, Georgia was 25% black abnd 75% white. And, yes, chain gains were mostly black. Your statement that Georgia was 85% black is absurd.
I suspect that you might be a some kind of bigot by posting such erroneous "information."
I do not disagree that it is about classes, but it is more about race.
Comments like this evoke a pyramid shaped metaphor like “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” A pyramid can be a pile of rocks that is stable because it is at its natural angle of repose. The pyramid of cultural status, seen as a metaphor of a heap of individuals in a culture, suggests that a rock fall, created because of erosion of the base, is what is happening now caused by economic problems. A king-of-the-heap structure, like cutthroat capitalism, can only cause this pile up and collapse because there is no mechanism, other than gravity and friction, causing it to equalize. If there is no new material, in the form of resource to plunder at the base, the only thing to do to increase stability is to knock down some of the pinnacles. Basing status on something other than hoarded money is also a needed incentive. Money, and capitalism, have utterly failed to advance humanity. Most prisoners are essentially political prisoners, and slaves are political slaves. Whether we are in a physical prison or not makes no difference.
Interestingly, this servitude is still absolutely legal under our Constitution. There is a gaping loophole in 13th Amendment:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
have all these inmates been sentenced to labour?
otherwise it is not part of their punishment, their punishment is incarceration
From the Federal Bureau of Prisons web site one may glean the following:
"Sentenced inmates are required to work if they are medically able. Institution work assignments include employment in areas like food service or the warehouse, or work as an inmate orderly, plumber, painter, or groundskeeper..."
Many state prison systems maintain similar work requirements.
Slavery is, as it has been from the beginning, alive and well in the United States.
and on it continues...
The use of prison labor in the USA is not solely confined to the state of Georgia. A former girlfriend served time (got caught selling LSD on the street in Santa Barbara) in a California juvenile lock-up where the inmates manned telephone customer service positions.
Rivaling the the military intelligence complex is the American prison industrial complex.
i assume that Elaine Brown, identified in this article as a spokesperson for the prisoners, is Elaine Brown, former chairman of the Black Panther Party? (Yes she was the "chairman.")
Quick Google search, yes it is the same Elaine Brown, with a new organization, Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners' Rights.
When we organized the student walkout from the University of Washington on the day of the WTO protest in Seattle (over 2,000 students walked out), one plank in our platform was the right for prisoners to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain.
The next year we brought Elaine Brown to address our campus conference on Democracy and Globalization. She rocked the auditorium, got a standing ovation.
I believe the real issue here is class, not race.
Although it may be counter intuitive since there are such a disproportionate number of blacks in our prison system, our prison/industrial complex is an equal opportunity exploiter. They really don't care if the inmates are black, brown, white or purple, just so long as we keep on incarcerating them, and they keep making money.
Now there is a hell of a lot of racism in our justice system, but again in a counter intuitive twist, it is not the major problem. The problem is we have an unjust society, whereupon the poor become desperate and having lost all reasonable hope, do things like go rob liquor stores.
If you rob a liquor store you go to jail, if you rob a pension fund you get a government bailout and a end of the year bonus. This is our bizarre version of "justice". Add to that for profit prison's, contractors, businesses dependent on slave labor and we have the new American nightmare.
So if we ever end the overt racism in our "justice" system, the jails will still be overflowing. The only difference will be that more poor disenfranchised white trash will be incarcerated for the "crimes" they committed.
WASILLA: Your post reflects a sound analysis. I'd add the Draconian drug laws to the list of what causes FAR too many to find themselves behind bars.
It's always struck me as insane that our society finds: deranged pornography, guns, tobacco, alcohol, violent entertainment, and "War Made Easy" all legal, while criminalizing the virtual peace pipe (i.e. marijuana).
I had to buy something at a major department store today and I noticed a Black kid who looked like he was creeping around waiting for the opportunity to steal something. It hit me that he had probably already been popped for something minor, like possession of a street drug, gained a "criminal record;" and now, even if he had the intent to work probably would find doors closed in his face.
The next thought to follow was how many just like him have been given the "stigmata of felon," and now cannot GET work? The entire prison-industrial debacle wreaks of delusion, and yet it continues to ruin lives while conversely beefing up a state-sponsored policing apparatus then in turns creates the rationale to build prisons, employ countless judges and lawyers, and ultimately get beds ready. These await unpaid labor (now), and possibly "dissidents" later.
Our nation is a moral cesspool. There are so few laws in practice that make sense; and the ones that do, have largely been tossed aside to give trespassers far too much room to do harm to persons, families, livelihoods, and the whole fabric of the nation.
Prisons serve as population control for the lower class, and jobs program for lower class i.e. prison guards. Jobs program for the middle class who earn their wages apprehending and incarcerating the lower class. The war on drugs was invented to expand this process. Drug epidemics were expanded by the CIA in the 1980s to further expand this program. This is just one of the many wasteful institutions we tolerate. Regardless of what you so very concerned posters post, it will not change, as 99% of you are too lazy or cowardly to do anything more than post a comment. Progressives have been writing about truth and justice for the entirety of my life, and for the most part, things have only gotten worse.
rkt9: So your conclusion is that because things got worse, progressives are to blame?
Or are you playing the part of agent provocateur, here to drum up a little interest in violent insurrection? Sure, that'll work against Darth Vader's American Empire.
Slavery...
It was unions that busted the chain gangs. Now that they're gone (or nearly so) there's nothing to stop creeping slavery. But it has become bold. It no longer creeps. Now it stomps around like drunken elephants and donkeys.