Today’s Action: Tell Congress to address the national prison strike’s demands

Our industrial prison complex (the largest in the world) is a profit 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.

Our government encourages this cheap labor, disproportionately men of color ensnared by racialized incarceration rates, which many activists are now calling a “modern-day slavery.”

In response, this past month, we witnessed one of the largest prison strikes in history. Inmates in at least ten states held vigil and struck peacefully against unpaid labor, unsafe and unsanitary living conditions, unfair sentencing, and lack of representation. The strike is over — but their ten demands for reform  remain.

Call or email your members of Congress and urge them to take action on the national prison strike’s ten demands for change. Tell Congress to stand up against our modern-day slavery system.

Last week, a prison in South Carolina refused to move its inmates during Hurricane Florence’s mandatory evacuation, a horrifying decision to those who remember thousands of New Orleans prisoners abandoned, locked up in pitch darkness, chest-deep in water, and no food or drinking water for days after Hurricane Katrina (and an estimated 517 died). In 2017, Hurricane Harvey left Texan prisoners knee-deep in sewage for nearly two weeks.

And this type of disgusting neglect doesn’t just happen during storms: prisons cut safety and sanitary corners every day to increase profit margins on their contracts. And most horrific is the epidemic death toll: in the past two months in Mississippi, ten inmates have died in their cells…and the causes of death are unclear.

Here’s the final insult: most incarcerated individuals lose their access to vote, their ability to fight against this gross mistreatment completely stifled. Which is why those who can vote must now lend supportive voices to these issues.

Email or call (202.224.3121) your members of Congress and demand they take action on the national prison strike’s ten demands for reform. Urge Congress to stand up against racialized sentencing, inhumane conditions, and our modern-day slavery system.