[ Building on the foundation of previous strikes and organized
movements, people on the inside of Alabama prisons are now regrouping
to continue the fight for abolition]
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ALABAMA PRISON STRIKERS’ DEMANDS PUSH FOR DECARCERATION  
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Jared Ware
November 11, 2022
Prism
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_ Building on the foundation of previous strikes and organized
movements, people on the inside of Alabama prisons are now regrouping
to continue the fight for abolition _

,

 

Hours before dawn on Sept. 26, the incarcerated workers who run the
prison kitchens across Alabama were slated to begin their shifts when
they refused to take up their posts, kicking off one of the largest
prison strikes in U.S. history. 

“Everything was electric from then on—[people] were excited and
anxious for action,” said Antoine Lipscomb, a founding member of the
Free Alabama Movement (FAM) who spoke with Prism Reports from
Limestone Correctional Facility, one of the largest and deadliest
[[link removed]] prisons
in the state, currently housing nearly 2,300 people. 

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) classifies 14 prisons
within the state as “major facilities,” and there are almost
17,000 people [[link removed]] incarcerated in
those prisons. In a highly unusual move, the ADOC publicly confirmed
[[link removed]] the
strike action across “all major facilities in the state” on the
very first day of the strike
[[link removed]].
Acknowledging a prison strike and its scope goes against the
prevailing wisdom in prison administration. In 2018, leading up to
the national prison strike
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prison associations advocated the use of disinformation campaigns
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with prisoner resistance
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manage the disruption and discourage further participation. 

While acknowledging the strike, a spokesperson for the governor
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the demands of the incarcerated strikers were “unreasonable and
would flat out not be welcomed in Alabama.” The strike demands
included:

* repealing the habitual offender law
* making presumptive sentencing retroactive
* repealing the drive-by shooting statute
* creating a statewide conviction integrity unit
* developing consistent criteria for mandatory parole
* streamlining processes for medical furloughs and elder release
* reducing the minimum sentences for juvenile offenders
* eliminating life without parole sentences  

Advocates say far from being “unreasonable,” those changes would
constitute a program of substantive decarceration. They would also
address the unconstitutional overcrowding of Alabama’s prisons and
increase opportunities for prisoners to return to their communities. 

The work strike continued for three weeks
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at least five prisons before prisoners in all facilities returned to
work. While the strikers’ demands remain unfulfilled, organizers
both inside and outside the prisons are encouraged by the strike’s
organization and the mass support it received. Contrary to ADOC’s
characterization
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the strike has “ended,” incarcerated organizers describe the
strike as having merely been paused. 

“It will resume,” Lipscomb said, adding that incarcerated
organizers and supporters are resting, regrouping, and discussing
strategy. For many who participated in the strikes, future strikes or
protests aren’t just vehicles for decarceration, they’re also
about survival and the possibility of life beyond incarceration. 

Striking against despair

Long before three strikes statutes became popularized during Clinton
era in the ’90s, Alabama’s version, the 1977 Habitual Offender
Law [[link removed]], drew the ire
of academics and correctional facilities staff in 1985, who argued
life without parole sentences removes “all incentive for good
behavior,” and fuels “frustration and rage, which in turn produces
prison riots and threats to staff.” Currently, 75% of prisoners
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in Alabama prisons under the Habitual Offender Law are Black, despite
Black people representing less than 27%
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population.

Relatedly, one of the key motivations behind widespread strike
participation is the state’s draconian parole board. In July, more
people died inside
[[link removed]] Alabama
prisons than were granted parole. This year
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Alabama parole board has revoked parole in 67% of hearings, a rate
over six times the rate that it has granted it. According to ADOC
data, their rate of granting parole has fallen from 54% of eligible
prisoners
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2017 to 6% this past August
[[link removed]].
In a recent interview
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the Montgomery Advisor, organizer Diyawn Caldwell said, “More people
are coming out in body bags than they are on parole.”

Advocates believe that while individually, the changes demanded by the
strike might have minimal impact on the state’s incarceration rate,
together they would provide thousands of prisoners expanded avenues
toward release. Crucially, the strike is an attempt to combat the
despair that comes from indefinite incarceration with no foreseeable
path to freedom.

According to prisoners, that despair is an essential ingredient to the
violence and drug use that make Alabama’s prisons the deadliest in
the nation. Amid six years
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DOJ describes confinement in ADOC prisons as “constitutional
deficiencies
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That scrutiny, however, has produced no tangible improvements. The
death rate in Alabama prisons has more than quintupled
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2005, from 33 deaths in 2005 to 173 in 2021.

The methods Alabama state officials used to repress the resistance of
the strike further illustrate how incarcerated people suffer at the
whim of the carceral system. Family visitation was canceled
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prisons implemented new “security measures,” the Corrections
Emergency Response Team (known inside as riot squads or goon squads)
was deployed, prisoner activist Robert Earl Council, aka Kinetik
Justice, was placed in solitary confinement
[[link removed]] again
[[link removed]],
and ADOC used the strike as a pretext to reduce the number of meals.

Officials claimed
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shift to two cold meals per day in major male facilities was
logistical, arguing without the prisoner labor force, they lacked the
workers to cook for three meals a day for nearly 23,500 people
[[link removed]]. Prisoners called the
practice “bird feeding
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an attempt to starve prisoners into submission. Prisoners argued these
meals did not meet the needs of prisoners with dietary restrictions
and medical conditions, putting more lives at risk. ADOC also put out
a statement
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the health of a prisoner named Kastello Demarcus Vaughan to refute
allegations of medical neglect. 

Under these circumstances, incarcerated organizers say that a
widespread strike and their demands shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“You’re looking at individuals finally [coming] to the
realization, ‘Hey, I’m gonna die in here,’” said K. Shaun
Traywick, aka Swift Justice, who is currently incarcerated at Fountain
Correctional Facility. “Once they hear it enough, once they see it
in the actions of ADOC and the parole board and society, they finally
realize maybe it’s best that we [strike]. Maybe it will make a
difference.” 

New developments in the prison strike era

Local news in Alabama referred to the strike as “an unprecedented
move
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by incarcerated people. While the duration, discipline, and scale of
the strike are monumental developments in the prisoner movement, the
strike in fact is an extension of many similar actions in recent
years. Prisoner resistance, including work and hunger strikes,
boycotts, and other forms of organized disobedience like
“sit-downs,” have a history
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lengthy as incarceration itself. In the U.S. this is most well
chronicled in the captivating and tragic story of the Attica
Rebellion
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the massacre that ended it. 

The Georgia prisoner work strike of 2010 is frequently cited by
today’s incarcerated organizers as a point of origin and source of
inspiration for a new phase of prisoner resistance. Strikers released
their demands to state prison officials and the press, including the
demand that workers be paid a living wage, noting that prisoners in
Georgia received no wages, which they argued violated the 13th
Amendment’s
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on slavery and involuntary servitude. This demand would later be
adapted to the movement to abolish exception clauses
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has been embraced by many legislative advocates, but has yet to lead
to any decarceration or changes in labor practices.

As _The New York Times_ noted
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already been in prisons for some time, but this was the first known
example of incarcerated people using them to coordinate resistance
across different facilities. They also became a critical tool in
circumventing the prison system’s ability to monitor and prevent
their communication, not only to each other, but to the general public
and the press, often via social media.

The following year, people who were incarcerated in California’s
supermax Pelican Bay State Prison went on massive rolling hunger
strikes
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eventually grew to over 30,000 prisoners in the state
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multiple phases over three years. Incarcerated organizers facilitated
an agreement to end hostilities inside the prisons and mobilized a
large outside group of families and advocates in solidarity. Strikers
raised multiple issues, but key among them were California’s
practice of indefinite solitary confinement, especially for those it
classified as “gang members,” and its “debriefing” process,
which required prisoners to provide information on “gang activity”
to secure their release from solitary. The UN has described solitary
confinement for 15 days or more as torture
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and prisoners argued this practice amounted to torture with inadequate
pretext toward due process or avenues for redress.

While the outcomes of those strikes and the related successful
lawsuit
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varied
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complex, and partial
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the strikes provide a powerful example of how dynamic inside-outside
action can shift policy and practice
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potentially opening up new contradictions and arenas of struggle
against the carceral system. For instance, FAM has adopted many
tactics and lessons learned from the Georgia work strikes in their
efforts. In 2014, incarcerated organizers mobilized two
[[link removed]] strikes
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Alabama, the larger of which led to the shutdown of two
facilities—St. Clair and Holman—which at the time
incarcerated roughly 2,400 people
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Additionally, FAM released “Let The Crops Rot In The Fields
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would inspire the coordination of national prisoner strikes, the first
of which was led by FAM in 2016
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supported by the fledgling inside-outside solidarity organization
the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
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the Industrial Workers of the World (IWOC-IWW). 

The 2016 national prison strike saw “[l]ockdowns, inmate
suspensions, and full-unit strikes lasting at least 24 hours were
reported at 31 facilities,” which housed approximately 57,000
incarcerated people across 24 states, according to Shadow Proof’s
[[link removed]] Brian
Nam-Sonenstein. Repression
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widespread. The following year Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of
incarcerated paralegals and human rights advocates who organize
nationally, launched a Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March
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support from outside organizations. Prison officials in Florida were
so concerned about solidarity action inside that they locked down the
entire state’s nearly 100,000 prisoners. The march was followed
by Operation PUSH
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2018.

Since 2018, outside organizations have taken different directions
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some more focused on politicization and building infrastructure
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The most frequent acts of resistance by incarcerated people
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place on more local and regional scales against conditions
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authorities [[link removed]] can directly
address. While those efforts have seen some victories, there hasn’t
been a widespread state-wide or national incarcerated-led campaign
over the last four years.

Tactics of strike repression

In the wake of the 2016 national strike, incarcerated organizations
like Jailhouse Lawyers Speak raised concerns about the efficacy of
work strikes as a sole tactic in galvanizing collective action among
prisoners. Having a job can significantly affect someone’s
circumstances during incarceration. Labor arrangements within prisons
vary from state to state, and in some states, it is quite rare for
prisoners to have jobs. Imprisoned organizers have noted instances in
which prison administrators exchange certain sets of privileges with
jobs
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such as better housing situations, greater freedom of movement,
greater access to commissary or phones, and perhaps more time
outside. Stevie Wilson [[link removed]], who is
currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania, and former political
prisoner James Kilgore
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out that the precarity of jobs inside and enticement of special
privileges make it even more difficult to convince incarcerated people
to sacrifice those jobs and act in solidarity with strike efforts.

Additionally, incarcerated people in some form of solitary confinement
don’t have jobs, which means they can’t materially participate in
a labor strike. The 2018 national strike addressed this issue by
expanding the tactical repertoire of resistance to include commissary
boycotts, acts of protest like “sit downs,” hunger strikes, and
labor strikes. While this may have enabled more prisoners to
participate, it can also potentially make strike participation less
legible to the media, and it can be easier for public officials to
deny and repress the strikers
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Since 2018, organizers have discussed the possibility of additional
major prison strikes, but amid concerns that there may not be enough
support to swell into collective action, they have not come to
fruition. Swift Justice said that he had initially stepped away from
organizing for the most recent Alabama strike, quoting the definition
of insanity often misattributed to Albert Einstein, “Doing the same
thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Despite the pessimism around strike participation and support, the
Alabama strike among incarcerated workers defied expectations and was
strongly reflected over social media and local news over the past
month, often with the hashtag #ShutdownADOC2022.

Swift Justice works in a so-called “honor dorm” in ADOC, a prison
space that some have characterized as inhospitable to collective
protest organizing, and was shocked by the level of solidarity and
commitment he’s seen by others incarcerated there, most of whom he
said, “couldn’t make it in general population.” Defying
conventional wisdom, he said that it has been precisely those workers
with the most to potentially lose from participating in the strike who
had the most impact. Many of those workers controlled the essential
duties of social reproduction inside—cooking, cleaning, trash
removal, laundry—which enabled them to shut down the entire Alabama
prison system.

“The weakest link has actually turned into being the strongest
link,” Swift Justice said. 

Political education pays off in the long term

_The New York Times_ and ADOC have both intimated in their reporting
that outside organizers had significant influence on the strike
activity inside Alabama prisons, but both the mass scale of the strike
and the responses of those incarcerated there belie this notion. One
prisoner who spoke with Prism Reports and wished to keep his criticism
anonymous acknowledged that prisoners appreciate the outside support
and organizing of solidarity protests, but he scoffed at the notion
that people on the outside were leading the way or coordinating the
action of those on the inside. 

“You know things don’t work like that,” he said. 

Lipscomb attributes the sustained commitment of the recent strike to
incarcerated people’s frustrations with the parole system and fears
over the likelihood of dying before being able to be released. Most
crucially, he believes that the long-term investment that organizers
like FAM have made by engaging in mass political education with their
incarcerated peers is paying dividends. Incarcerated people in Alabama
have studied the organizing of the Black Panther Party, and the
thoughts of figures like Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely
Carmichael. 

According to Lipscomb, the support of street organizations, which
command a considerable amount of influence inside, has been critical.

“They enable us to do the teaching and networking in a peace and
solidarity like I’ve never seen before,” Lipscomb said. “I
commend the youngsters for their courage and respect for revolutionary
thinking and change.”

As incarcerated organizers regroup and discuss when and how to
reconvene the strike, they do so with a proven ability to bring about
a powerful and widespread strike against prison operations in Alabama.

“I’m a student of history, and struggling has always been a part
of life,” Lipscomb said. “So I’m studying from those who came
before me as a guide to [get us] where we’re trying to be, and that
is free.”

_Jared Ware is a freelance journalist primarily covering social
movements and prisoner organizing. He is the co-host and producer of
the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism._

_Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, Prism reflects the
lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. As an
independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, we
tell stories from the ground up: to disrupt harmful narratives, and to
inform movements for justice._

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* prison strike
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* Prison Abolition
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