America’s Slave Empire
Three prisoners—Melvin Ray, James Pleasant and Robert Earl
Council—who led work stoppages in Alabama prisons in January 2014 as
part of the Free Alabama Movement
have spent the last 18 months in solitary confinement. Authorities,
unnerved by the protests that engulfed three prisons in the state, as
well as by videos and pictures of abusive conditions smuggled out by the
movement, say the men will remain in solitary confinement indefinitely.
The prison strike leaders are denied televisions and reading
material. They spend at least three days a week, sometimes longer,
without leaving their tiny isolation cells. They eat their meals seated
on their steel toilets. They are allowed to shower only once every two
days despite temperatures that routinely rise above 90 degrees.
The men have become symbols of a growing resistance movement
inside American prisons. The prisoners’ work stoppages and refusal to
co-operate with authorities in Alabama are modeled on actions that shook the Georgia prison system
in December 2010. The strike leaders argue that this is the only
mechanism left to the 2.3 million prisoners across America. By refusing
to work—a tactic that would force prison authorities to hire compensated
labor or to induce the prisoners to return to their jobs by paying a
fair wage—the neoslavery that defines the prison system can be broken.
Prisoners are currently organizing in Arizona, California, Florida,
Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia and
Washington.
