Today’s Action: Ask your state reps to support the national #PrisonStrike

One of the largest prison strikes in history has been running since August 21 and will conclude this Sunday, September 9. And there’s good reason for it: our industrial prison complex (the largest in the world, by a long shot) is a money-making machine, built on the backs and livelihoods of 2.3 million prisoners.

Prison labor exists in almost every industry, from customer service to carpentry, farm labor to video production. For this work, which brings state and federal prisons (including many privately owned) billions of dollars each year, most prisoners earn less than a dollar per hour — and in some states are entirely unpaid. Take a guess how interested our government is in rehabilitating and giving up such cheap labor, disproportionately men of color ensnared by racialized incarceration rates, which many activists are now calling a “modern-day slavery.”

The inmates in at least seventeen states have held a three-week peaceful and non-violent prisoners strike, with ten demands for reform. Their efforts include work strikes, hunger strikes, sit-ins, and boycotts (canteens, phone calls etc).

Call or email your state representatives and urge them to stand with the prison strike’s ten demands. Then, boost the national prisoners strike by promoting their stories, searching for and sharing the hashtag #PrisonStrike and #PrisonStrike2018.

The protest goes far beyond under-paid and unpaid labor. Prisons cut safety and sanitary corners to increase profit margins on their contracts. Most place undue financial burden on prisoners and their families (like exorbitant phone call prices). And most horrific is the epidemic death toll: in the past month alone in Mississippi, ten inmates have died in their cells…and the causes of death are unclear.

The strike is already having impact: Texas has just dropped the rates of inmate phone calls from 26 cents to 6 cents per minute. Which is huge, when you earn less than a dollar per hour.

But phone calls are just the beginning of needed changes — which is why we must help amplify their voices through September 9.

Email or call your state representatives and demand their statement on the prison strike’s ten demands for reform. Then, help end modern-day slavery by boosting the national prisoners strike on social media, using the hashtag #PrisonStrike and #PrisonStrike2018.