The Prison Issue
National Prison Strike • National Prison Strike Map • National Strike Press Release • Interview with JLS spokesperson, Amani Sawari • Responses to the New York Prison Strike
1. August 8th Lea County Correctional Facility Hobbs, New Mexico Four housing units at the private GEO group prison refused orders to return to their cells and went on strike in response to harassment and abuse— prison administration made cuts to visitation and there were complaints of guards harassing family members.
2. August 9th
Toledo Correctional Facility Toledo, Ohio Two inmates, David Easley and James Ward went on hunger strike at Toledo Correctional Facility (Toledo, Ohio) in response to a call for a national prison strike. [Sept. 14 hunger strike started up again and a third person participated—Matt Hinkston] They were put in protective custody without a hearing to isolate them from the other prisoners and their hunger strike is being denied legitimacy. Some supporters have had their phones and Jpay accounts blocked so they couldn’t communicate with anyone in the prison system.
5. August 21st
6. August 21st
7. Late August Various Locations Georgia & Florida
California State Prison Los Angeles County
Hyde Correctional Institution Fairfield, North Carolina
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak & Other Orgs Issue 10 Demands
Various Locations South Carolina
Lancaster State Prison Lancaster, California
NC prisoner Joseph Stewart issued 8 demands
Sit-down strikes, work stoppages, hunger strikes, and boycotts of the commissary. Organizers stated that the strike was in response to the riot at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina resulting in the death of 7 prisoners.
Prisoners at these institutions are on workstrikes and commissary boycotts; South Carolina DEpartment of Corrections (SCDC) claims that there are no work strikes in South Carolina prisons and some prisoners had confirmed this; one anonymous prisoner says that theyre unable to participate in a no-work strike so theyre participating in a commissary boycott (theyre not spending money with the state).
United Kings Against Genocidal Environments (KAGE) engaged in a hunger strike in response to the call for a National Prison Strike (the strike reportedly lasted 4 weeks).
NATIONAL 8. August 21st
3. August 20th
4. August 21
st
Saguaro Correctional Center Eloy, Arizona
Broad River Correctional Institution Columbia, South Carolina
Georgia Diagnostic & Classification State Prison Jackson, Georgia
Lee Correctional Institution Lee County, South Carolina
Georgia State Prison Reidsville, Georgia
McCormick Correctional Institution McCormick, South Carolina
Dade Correctional Institution Homestead, Florida
Turbeville Correctional Institute Clarendon County, South Carolina
Charlotte Correctional Institution Punta Gorda
Kershaw Correctional Institution Lancaster County, South Carolina
Holmes Correctional Institution Bonifay, Florida
Lieber Correctional Institution Ridgeville, South Carolina
Franklin Correctional Institution Carrabelle, Florida Apalachee C.I. Sneads, Florida
PRISON STRIKE
2018
9. August 21st Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Burnside Jail, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia: there were protestors outside of the prison and inmates were demanding improvements to health care, rehabilitation, exercise, visits, clothing, food, air quality, and library access. They asked: We are asking for a more productive rehabilitative environment that supports the wellbeing of everyone in the system. These policy changes will also benefit the workers in the jail.” They brought up the issue of workers’ treatment (re: non-inmates).
10. August 21st California State Prison aka New Folsom Prison Sacramento, California Heriberto “Sharky” Garcia began to hunger strike in response to the National Prison Strike.
11. August 25th
12. August 27th
San Quentin State Prison San Jose, California
Wabash Valley Correctional Facility Carlisle, Indiana
500 people held a rally outside of San Quentin State Prison in support of the National Prison Strike; rally was organized by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee and Prisoners Human Rights Coalition from San Jose, CA.
Seven prisoners began a hunger strike
13. August 28–29 & September 8–9 Sussex II State Prison Waverly, Virginia
Eight to Three
The Prison Issue
Primary Document: National Prisoners Strike Press Release
PRESS RELEASE: NATIONAL PRISONERS STRIKE AUGUST 21st - SEPTEMBER 9th 2018 Men and women incarcerated in prisons across the nation declare a nationwide strike in response to the riot in Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in South Carolina. Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation's penal ideology. These men and women are demanding humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery. These are the NATIONAL DEMANDS of the men and women in federal, immigration, and state prisons: 1. Immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons and prison policies that recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women. 2. An immediate end to prison slavery. All persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction must be paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor. 3. The Prison Litigation Reform Act must be rescinded, allowing imprisoned humans a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights. 4. The Truth in Sentencing Act and the Sentencing Reform Act must be rescinded so that imprisoned humans have a possibility of rehabilitation and parole. No human shall be sentenced to Death by Incarceration or serve any sentence without the possibility of parole. 5. An immediate end to the racial overcharging, over-sentencing, and parole denials of Black and brown humans. Black humans shall no longer be denied parole because the victim of the crime was white, which is a particular problem in southern states. 6. An immediate end to racist gang enhancement laws targeting Black and brown humans. 7. No imprisoned human shall be denied access to rehabilitation programs at their place of detention because of their label as a violent offender. 8. State prisons must be funded specifically to offer more rehabilitation services. 9. Pell grants must be reinstated in all US states and territories.
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The Prison Issue
10. The voting rights of all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pretrial detainees, and so-called “ex-felons” must be counted. Representation is demanded. All voices count! We all agree to spread this strike throughout the prisons of Ameri$$$a! From August 21st to September 9th, 2018, men and women in prisons across the nation will strike in the following manner: 1. Work Strikes: Prisoners will not report to assigned jobs. Each place of detention will determine how long its strike will last. Some of these strikes may translate into a local list of demands designed to improve conditions and reduce harm within the prison. 2. Sit-ins: In certain prisons, men and women will engage in peaceful sit-in protests. 3. Boycotts: All spending should be halted. We ask those outside the walls not to make financial judgments for those inside. Men and women on the inside will inform you if they are participating in this boycott. We support the call of Free Alabama Movement Campaign to "Redistribute the Pain" 2018 as Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, formerly known as Melvin Ray has laid out (with the exception of refusing visitation). See these principles described here: https://redistributethepain.wordpress.com/. 4. Hunger Strikes: Men and women shall refuse to eat. How You Can Help: · Make the nation take a look at our demands. Demand action on our demands by contacting your local, state, and federal political representatives with these demands. Ask them where they stand. ·
Spread the strike and word of the strike in every place of detention.
· Contact a supporting local organization to see how you can be supportive. If you are unsure of who to connect with, email millionsforprisonersmarch@gmail.com · Be prepared by making contact with people in prison, family members of prisoners, and prisoner support organizations in your state to assist in notifying the public and media on strike conditions. · Assist in our announced initiatives to have the votes of people in jail and prison counted in elections. For the Media: Inquiries should be directed to prisonstrikemedia@gmail.com
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The Prison Issue
Amani Sawari, Spokesperson 2018 National Prison Strike
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Interviewed by Alexis Wong
The National Prison Strike in 2018 sparked my investigation into the topic of prisons in the United States. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) was the organizing group that released the ten demands via their Twitter account. I reached out to their spokesperson, Amani Sawari, a dedicated activist and writer who has written extensively about issues within the prison system, to hear more about the strike. I spoke to her twice—once after the formal ending of the National Prison Strike and again nearly a year later. I sought to understand how organizing happens within prisons and the root of each of the demands. My first conversation with Amani inspired me to more closely follow the prison reformation movement. When I circled back with her for updates, we also discussed the steps some states had taken to reinstate the voting rights of people who were formally incarcerated in the last year.
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Interview with Amani Sawari
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October 3, 2018 10:00 am PST Wong
I’m trying to understand the prison system and I’m hoping to understand more about how criminal justice is carried out and what the human cost might be. So, I wanted to chat with you about the strike, the organizations and groups that were involved, and what the outcomes were.
Sawari
Speaking to like public response and government agenda, I feel like the onset of the strike—what ignited it to happen really speaks to both of those. I don’t know if ya’ll know what happened in Lee County Correctional institution in South Carolina, there was a massacre that occurred there and what started it off was this sort of government agenda. Officials wanted to take away prisoners’ lockers, they did this as a security measure. They said, you know, ‘Prisoners could be hiding contraband in their lockers, so we’re gonna take them away.’ Now, when you’re incarcerated the only place where you can securely keep your documents, your obituaries, your books, your items that you want to make sure are safe would be in this locker. Otherwise everything is exposed. So officials made the choice to take the lockers away and then after they made that choice they switched up prisoners’ room assignments. So now prisoners had nowhere to safely put their belongings and they were living with people that they did not know, did not trust. Strangers. Some of them from rival groups, rival gangs, and things like that. With their items being exposed and being in a new, unstable, volatile situation, conflicts arose. Now what was unique about what happened in Lee is that fights went on for over seven hours before any officials stepped in. Staff were complicit in these fights, people were bleeding out, people were dying, and no medical attention was given to anyone for over seven hours. Forty-two people ended up being injured, seventeen people were critically injured, and seven people lost their lives. So for every hour that medical attention was refused and staff just stood by and watched, one person died. And so prisoners knew these types of conditions—where it’s so overcrowded, where it’s so violent, so volatile, so unstable, where there’s a lack of trust between officials and the inmates, where inmates don’t feel safe, they don’t feel protectedthis is the condition everywhere, in every single prison all over the country. And as a result of what happened there officials did release a statement. It just sort of credited all of the violence to gangs and contraband cell phones. And the fact that officials can sort of have this overriding statement of, ‘Oh, well its gangs,’ that absolves them from any responsibility is absolutely ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if it’s a gang, it doesn’t matter if someone
A year-long investigation into the deaths of the seven inmates concluded April 12, 2019. The State (a news outlet in South Carolina) said that the report would not be made public.
On July 23, 2019 two wrongful death suits were filed against correctional officials due to the unsafe living conditions which they say sparked the riot.
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Interview with Amani Sawari
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found a cellphone, officials are still responsible for keeping the people safe that are incarcerated. So this narrative of, ‘Inmates are gang members that can’t be controlled, that can’t be tamed,’ it needs to be broken down, and that is what inmates were attacking. So, no media reached out to inmates for their response on what happened. Not that media has access to inmates, but inmates weren’t given a voice regardless. That’s why the incarcerated leaders of the National Prison Strike called the strike and put out their ten demands. They knew that they wanted to eventually do a strike, they were planning it for 2019 but when the massacre happened—and this was April 15th and 16th [2018]—prisoners moved the strike dates up to 2018 and put out these ten demands in order to respond to the violence that happened there, to take back their voice, to provide a solution for all prisoners, and all prisons and all prison officials—within the ten demands that can be used to reform our criminal justice system in a substantial way.
Wong
What organizations are the mouthpiece or the representatives of incarcerated people?
Sawari
So, there are a few individuals and organizations. During the National Prison Strike is when, well actually before the national prison strike, probably in April, maybe a couple weeks after, is when prisoners started reaching out to organizers and asking for support in rallying up the public in getting behind their cause and standing in solidarity. Prisoners reached out to me and asked if I’d want to be their spokesperson on behalf of the strike. They reached out to the Incarcerated Workers Organizers Committee (IWOC), which has always been organizing on inmates’ behalf. They also reached out to I Am We, Millions For Prisoners prison advocacy group—that group has hosted events for JLS, Jailhouse Lawyers Speaks, in the past. They hosted the Millions for Prisoners March, it was August 19th and it was in Washington D.C. in 2017. And so these were some of the organizers within those groups. Like Ben Turk is a part of IWOC in Wisconsin, Brooke is also a part of IWOC in Oakland, California. There’s Nube from the California Prison Focus who [is] also super instrumental in prison organizing. And one thing that prisoners were looking for in looking for outside organizers is people that have organized with them in the past, but also people [who] would allow them to take the lead. A lot of the time, when prisoners reached out with ideas or with wanting to have a rally done or with wanting to spread the word about something, organizers would come take it and then take over and not give prisoners the voice to continue to lead, to continue to put things out, to continue to be a part of the organizing process. And so what’s really special about IWOC is that they assist in helping prisoners mobilize and that’s always been my core thing too. I’m not gonna
Ben Turk is a prison abolitionist. He is also the Inreach Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of IWOC. Nube Brown is a prison abolitionist located in San Jose, CA.
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Interview with Amani Sawari
move until I know that this is the direction that prisoners want to go in. And so those are some of the organizations. But then in addition to those main outside organizing groups and organizers, there are probably 380 groups and organizations that signed on as endorsers of the national prison strike. So throughout the strike and leading up to the strike, and even in these weeks following we were sending weekly updates to those groups. So Jailhouse Lawyers Speaks—the incarcerated organizing force behind the strike, the real leaders—would send me actions that they wanted to see done and then I would put those into an email that would go out to the 350 groups. So if JLS wanted to have petitions circulated, id make that a part of the solidarity update, “JLS wants this petition signed, please share it”, “They want to see more noise demos”, “They want a circulation of this booklet”, things like that. And then those would go to those groups and then they would send it to their membership bases. Now the petition has over 30,000 signatures just a couple weeks after the strike has ended. So it’s amazing to see how prisoners have been able to find key groups to mobilize through and trusted people that will allow them to continue to take the lead on the work that they’re doing.
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The list of organizations include AGING PEOPLE IN PRISON HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN ANTI-EVICTION MAPPING PROJECT BETTER EATING INTERNATIONAL CHINESE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATION JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE GWU FOOD NOT BOMBS GEORGETOWN SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE GERMANY’S INCARCERATED WORKERS’ UNION (GG/BO) HARVARD LAW SCHOOL NATIONALLAWYERS GUILD INCARCERATED WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (IWOC) JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS LGBTQ FOR RACIAL JUSTICE NATIONAL BLACK FOOD AND JUSTICE ALLIANCE OAKLAND PARENTS TOGETHER PALESTINIANS AND JEWS DECOLONIZE PRISON BOOK PROGRAM TEACHERS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Wong
Organizing isn’t always intuitive work, so did incarcerated groups receive any guidance on how to organize themselves and this strike?
Sawari
Well people like me, I really take the lead from the prisoners. I got out of college two years ago and stepped into this work. They recruited me just based off the writing that I put online, on my website. They saw, ‘Okay, she’s a prisoner advocate. She is a human rights advocate. We’re gonna work with her, she’s a great writer.’ They are the leading force. They’ve been doing this organizing, the guys on the inside, some of them have been down for over 20 years, almost 30 years. So they’ve been doing this sort of work for decades. And they’ve perfected it themselves. They’ve done the stuff that’s already gotten them in trouble, made mistakes, already done the things to get retaliated against. Now they know how to remain anonymous, how to do interviews behind the scenes, how to reach out to organizers, what words to say that can captivate the public. There are ones that haven’t been doing it for a long time and they’ve been under the leadership of the ones that have been. Guys like Swift Justice, which you may see on social media, that slavery prison account, the JLS account. These guys have been down for decades and have been doing this work and perfecting their craft in organizing and mobilizing the public. Their first attempt at a national prison strike was in 2016. But prison uprisings have been happening since Attica. Prisoners have been fighting for freedom and resisting against oppressive forces since there has been oppression. So this has been happening over and over
The Attica Prison Riot took place September 1971. Here is a short list of their demands: 1. Improved living conditions 2. More religious freedom 3. An end to mail censorship 4. Expanded phone privileges
A colloquial prison phrase referencing a prison term
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Interview with Amani Sawari
but just in this platform, 2016 was like the first year that it kind of spread across states and they mobilized across barriers. And then this year, its happened abroad, prisoners have been connecting in Canada, in Greece, in Israel— Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel. So its reached a world wide scale now and so prisoners have been able to just perfect what they’ve already been doing for so long.
Wong
Now that the formal strike is over, what actions have incarcerated organizers released to outside groups in terms of next steps?
Sawari
And so inside organizers have released the following actions: there’s a prisoner’s human rights petition that’s circulating on Cause, and so that’s the one that I mentioned that has 30,000 signatures that started circulating probably a few days after the formal ending of the strike. And their main thing for that [petition] is that for every signature there’s a letter sent to Congress. So at this stage we’re trying to educate our legislatures, policy makers, and letting them know that the strike happened—if they don’t already know—why the strike happened, and what prisoners’ demands are. This way we can see what their response is to those demands and filter out policy makers that aren’t in alignment with these types of reforms for our criminal justice system and bring ones in that are. We cannot hold them accountable for these changes that we want to see in our system if they’re completely unaware of what the changes should be. So we’re educating policy makers and then also educating the public to continue to let the people around us know that prisoners in Toledo Correctional Institution are still striking, that prisoners in California have reignited their strike. So the resistance is still continuing and also support to those prisoners who have suffered from retaliation, because in the weeks after the strike has formally ended, the weeks after the media whirlwind is over, that is when prisoners are in the most danger. That is when officials can come in, move them into solitary confinement and think that no one’s gonna be paying attention. I think what’s unique about this strike is that a lot of people recognize the ten demands. It wasn’t just this overriding, ‘End prison slavery’ thing, there were ten specific things that prisoners wanted to see happen. Like rescinding the Prison Litigation Reform Act, like the rescinding of Truth and Sentencing laws, and the Sentencing Reform Act and things like that. And they didn’t see those happen during the strike. Prisoners didn’t expect to see those things happen during the strike, but because we know exactly what we’re looking for, the groups, and the organizations and the individuals who are committed to being in solidarity with prisoners know that this isn’t over. We didn’t see these things happen yet so this is an ongoing struggle and this is something that we’re going to
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A sentence imposed for a crime that isn’t given a definite duration
Interview with Amani Sawari
be continuing to fight against. So there are some inside prisoner initiatives that we are currently working on like the Good Time Campaign in Michigan, the Right2Vote Campaign in South Carolina, the prison accountability projects out of Boyd County, businesses that are exploiting prisoners’ labor. So there are specific campaigns that are attached to each demand and as people find where they fit and see what demand resonates most with them then they can follow that campaign and follow the actions associated with that campaign. So that is how we’re doing it. We’re kind of organizing it out. And different regions are focused on different aspects of the demands. Like I mentioned, Michigan is really focused on bringing “Good Time” back. There are only three states in our country that don’t allow prisoners to earn “Good Time” on their sentence while they’re incarcerated. Even on the federal level prisoners can earn fifty days off of their sentence for every single year that they go without a behavioral misconduct. So this is, this is huge. So when prisoners in prisoners in Michigan, and Missouri and North Dakota don’t have access to that, no matter how many years they go with good behavior, how many classes they took, how many degrees they earn, on top of not being able to earn “good time”, they have this indeterminant sentence, and indeterminant sentencing just takes all hope out of when you think you’re gonna be able to get out because your sentence has this span of like 20 years, 18-40 years, like you don’t know. And so being able to earn “Good Time” in that situation is very important and that’s what they’re focused on. But then in places like South Carolina they’re really focused on getting prisoners their right to vote back. And we can see that as we divide these things up in certain regions, focused on specific aspects, then it’s easier for the whole nation to get behind it. ‘Okay, so we just had that success in South Carolina, now we can move forward and know that this is an expectation that we can have on a national scale.’ During the strike, Texas lowered their phone call cost for prisoners from 26 cents a minute to 6 cents a minute and so we know that if GTL can do that in Texas, then GTL can do that nationwide. Usually it’s the same companies that monopolize the prison market. The phone company is the same one, the commissary company is the same one, the same kind of book companies, video call companies—they’re all the same. So when we see those changes, from those businesses that exploit prisoners and prey on prisoners and their families, then we know it’s possible on a nationwide scale and we need to pressure them. And this is the same pressure that we apply to the policies in prison. Like, recently in Virginia, when they were placing restrictions on women and the type of sanitary products that they could use on their visits—which is absolutely ridiculous—to be able to say, ‘Oh you can’t have a visit with someone you love because it’s your time of the month.’, that type of regulation is unheard of and [there] shouldn’t be that intimate of a connection between prison officials and prisoners’ families. And so as
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You can read this story on The Independent. Its entitled “Prisons in Virginia to ban tampons for female visitors”
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Interview with Amani Sawari
soon as that was attacked there was a phone zap that day and action went out to the human rights coalition. Monday there was a phone zap, hundreds of people called in very upset, wanting to see a change in that policy. Tuesday it was suspended. So we can see how collective action, when people come together as a coalition, and respond to the action that prisoners are putting out, then we can see progress and we can see massive progress. Because prisons have been able to function as they are because there hasn’t been a light shined on what’s occurring on the inside. So when prisoners give us access through whatever means that they have, like with that more recent policy, putting that letter out and saying, ‘This just happened, this policy just came out. We need to rally behind this.’ because instead of us having a weak response and that person being isolated and put into solitary confinement, if we have a strong response, [a] collective response, then we can support that person adequately and change prison policies for the better, and for the benefit of everyone.
Wong
When you reach out to policy makers, how are you educating them?
Sawari
Yeah, so there’s a lot of different ways. Getting on the phone is really effective, but you’re usually not talking to the policy maker. You might be talking to someone in their office and they might let you know, ‘Okay, we’re going to forward this to the policy maker.’ I think getting words in front of them is really effective. So whether you’re writing, some people write handwritten letters, or type up a letter, send that in via snail mail, then there’s always a record of, ‘You received this information and this is when it was mailed to you. This is when your office got it’. And then there’s also our social media, emailing people letting them know via email, getting a direct response. I’ve gotten direct responses from members of congress when I was messaging them via email. And then also, like I said, social media. All of our representatives now have platforms on Twitter, and Facebook and this is a great way to just blast them and say, ‘These are the ten demands’. Prisoners in California are still going [so] we’re gonna message the California governor and let him know via Facebook like, this is still happening, hunger strikes are still going on, ‘Did you know that this many prisoners are sacrificing their lives trying to let you know that these are the changes that they need?’, things like that. So really just reaching out to them, putting the words in front of them, putting the demands in front of them, putting the numbers and statistics right in front of them. This is the best way that we can at least let our legislatures know what’s happening so that we can hold them responsible for the changes that we want to see in those regions.
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Interview with Amani Sawari
Wong
How are prisoners educating other prisoners and helping them to understand the system and their place in that, what their rights are, etc?
Sawari
Yeah, so through the National Prison Strike prisoners have been able to educate each other in a few ways. Prisoners taking the risk to not go to work—that stirs up conversation among the prisoners. And people ask, you know, ‘Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you going to work?’ That’s why each day of the strike the amount of people that are participating, the amount of states that are participating expanded because people were learning, ‘This is our opportunity to join a national movement. We’re not going to be striking alone, we’re gonna be striking with the nation. We’re gonna be striking with the world of prisoners and people who are in solidarity with us.’ But one of the main ways that prisoners were able to educate [other] prisoners is through transfers. As prisoners were identified as strikers they would be relocated. Some of them would be relocated from general population into solitary, and while in administrative segregation they can educate an entire new wing of the prison. Others would be moved from one prison to another prison in their state, and through that transfer they’ve been able to educate a new group of prisoners about what’s going on and then just kind of spreading it like wildfire. Some prisoners like Johnson [full name redacted for anonymity] who was transferred from Virginia to Texas, and is being transferred again to Rhode Island, has been transferred interstate for his leadership and his voice in the movement has been letting prisoners know in other states what’s been going on. So transfers—which prison officials have been trying to use to silence prisoners—has been used to sort of amplify their message in different communities.
Wong
You mentioned the prison Litigation Reform Act, can you explain just a little bit about what the intended purpose was for that act and then how it’s caused problems for incarcerated individuals?
Sawari
Yeah, so the Prison Litigation Reform Act was sort of a following response to the mass incarceration that started in the 80’s and the number of prisoners that were coming into prisons in the 80’s and in the 90’s. As more people were being incarcerated the number of cases of abuse – physical, emotional, sexual, mental abuses – were being submitted at record levels by prisoners. Prisoners were suing other inmates in their community, they were suing staff, they were just submitting a ton of cases and the way that the judicial system responded is by passing the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act. So their thing was, the population of prisoners in prisons have increased dramatically and
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Interview with Amani Sawari
[they] were getting a lot of cases from prisoners specifically, so instead of creating a new branch to sort of support prisoners, they barred prisoners’ access from submitting cases to court by saying, ‘You have to handle this internally, there’s no overriding force that can protect your rights.’ So now prisoners were restricted to submitting grievances internally. A prisoner who had just, for example, been physically hurt or abused while incarcerated by someone, or even through some practical or operational failure of the prison, now has to submit a grievance to the same prison that was responsible for the abuse. So the people that were involved in that abuse now have the power in how to handle it, or how to distribute a consequence or provide a solution. And in a lot of cases, prisoners haven’t been justly [compensated] for abuses that they suffered. For example, in Michigan, a prisoner that I’m very close to, his name is Miles [full name redacted for anonymity], he was moved into solitary confinement and when you’re moved to solitary confinement all of your belongings are taken. You’re only allowed to have one book, one item in there and hygiene products. And so he didn’t have his belongings, his papers, his locker, all of his other books. Those were removed. When he came out of solitary confinement 14 months later articles that he’d written, obituaries that he has of family members, documents, were all lost. He didn’t have these irreplaceable things that he’d accumulated over his years while he was incarcerated and he submitted his grievance for the lost paperwork. When you’re submitting grievances into the prison you have a certain number of days. So you have ten days to submit the grievance initially after the infraction occurs, he did that. Then you have another ten days to submit the grievance Step 2, if the grievance Step 1 wasn’t given a solution. If they weren’t able to find his documents— which they weren’t, in ten days—then you have to submit a Step 2. When he submitted his Step 2, it was lost. The paperwork just wasn’t submitted by the actual officials who were responsible. So the people that were responsible for losing his paperwork were also responsible for losing his grievance paperwork. And now it’s been over two weeks and it’s just lost in the system. There’s nothing you can do because he missed the time limit. So there are these time limits on…how much time they have to respond, to figure out that there’s been a problem [and] to respond to the problem. Now they have to work with the people who are responsible for the problem, and a lot of cases are just lost in this black hole of internal investigations with no overriding authority on how to get it done, and no consequences for if it’s not done properly. So a lot of prisoners’ abuses go unresolved without [compensation], without a solution, because of this internal process that prisoners are forced to work through because they can’t take part in the judicial protections that they should be able to as American citizens.
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Interview with Amani Sawari
Wong
I’d love to hear how Truth in Sentencing and the prison reform acts impact individuals in prison.
Sawari
So, it’s really interesting that Truth in Sentencing Act was even called Truth in Sentencing, because if you really think about it, is there any actual truth in someone’s sentence? Especially when it’s an indeterminant sentence? In states like Michigan, to be able to say, ‘We’re gonna give you this prison sentence for 20 to 40 years.’, where is the truth in that? And then not give this person any ability to demonstrate that they’ve been corrected, that they’re seeking rehabilitation, that they are in pursuance of higher education. They have no ability to demonstrate that they want a better life because of these Truth in Sentencing Acts. And it’s really just a warehousing of human bodies. We’re saying, ‘Okay we want to keep these people in prison as long as possible and because of that we have to bar [the] judges’ ability to waver on how long a person should stay in prison.’ So a personal example: I have a friend who is incarcerated in Michigan and doesn’t have access to earning “Good Time”. The sad thing about it is because there was good time for prisoners prior to, I think it was 1998, every single year prisoners are given this piece of paper with their “Good Time” allotment on it and everyone who was incarcerated after 1998 has zero. But they [are] still given this paper and still faced with this ‘No Good Time’, like always. But, for example, a guy in prison in Michigan right now…he’s been in prison for eight years, has not had any behavioral infractions for five years… there’s no “Good Time” on his case right now so he has eight years left in prison. But after calculating all of his Good Time allotments that he did this last year…[there] was a “Good Time” bill up for vote in the legislature, its bill number 5666, house bill – he would [have been] able to get out in a year and a half instead of eight years. He hasn’t had any behavioral infractions, he’s earned his high school diploma, he just enrolled in college classes, he’s been a part of the dog program—he successfully adopted out three dogs. He’s been able to show that he has changed his life. He was incarcerated when he was 17, now he’s 30 and he’s got this “Good Time” over his head like the other 40,000 prisoners in Michigan. And it makes a huge difference when someone knows, ‘Okay, I can make these progresses in my life, I can take classes, I can join programs and I can get time taken off my sentence and also be home with my family earlier and sooner.’ And at home they’re more prepared to be a part of society. When we allow good time and we rescinded Truth in Sentencing, we’re able to reward someone for their attempt to be more prepared to enter society. For every single attempt that they make in taking classes, benefiting from the resources that are available, then they can use those benefits to be home sooner. They can use those benefits to support their family and go back into the world and go back into the work force. It just, it
Truth in Sentencing Laws require offenders to serve a substantial portion of their sentence. Parole and goodtime credit are either limited or completely eliminated.
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The use of the term “Correctional Facility” implies that there is some sort of focus on correcting behavior, rather than bestowing punishment. If the focus is on correcting the behavior of those who have violated the law, what programs are offered that engender “correction”? How is a judge able to determine in advance the time it will take for an individual to become “corrected”? This term is used to appeal to our empathy while it exploits our apathy for “bad people”. But it is important to investigate these institutions as their name does not always imply their function or purpose.
Eight to Three
Interview with Amani Sawari
just makes sense. But when our value is on punishment instead of rehabilitation, then we [put] laws like Truth in Sentencing in place because we value more knowing that a person can’t benefit from rehabilitation. And that’s not the sort of worldview that we should have, especially in a time where we know that our criminal justice system is very broken. We know that a lot of people have been in this too long [and] are ready to come out. We know that a lot of families are suffering from that lack of a second income, we know that a lot of people are being abused at rates that are just astronomical. So we should be taking every single measure that we can to alleviate that system, to alleviate the burden that that system places on families.
Wong
One of the demands mentioned—racial over charging and over sentencing – I would like to get a little more information on what makes JLS consider these instances of overcharging and over sentencing racial overcharging and over sentencing.
Sawari
Yeah! So it’s blatant in certain laws, in certain states. It varies on different numbers but if someone is found to be associated with a gang then a certain number of years – it can be anywhere from three to ten depending on the state – is automatically added to the sentence. So if someone is arrested for a robbery and the robbery charge is three years, and then they’ve been found to be associated with a gang because of the tattoo marks on their body, or the neighborhood that they’re from, or someone that they’re in a picture with on Facebook, then now there’s an additional five years added because you’re [considered to be] in a gang. So these are racist gang laws. And this sort of attachment to a gang often affects black and brown humans at a much higher rate. And then, with the parole denials, we’ve recently seen in New York, an inmate who’d been incarcerated for decades was finally released because his parole was awarded and there was an outcry from policy makers and representatives saying, ‘Why did you let this person out? Look at the crime that they did.’ And it’s really sad to see that when someone’s incarcerated for decades and they’re over 50 years old, and we know they’re no threat to society, that their parole is still being denied. And this is a black man, and their parole is being denied routinely, routinely, routinely, just because of what they did when they were 17 or 20 years old. And it’s obvious that they’re no longer a threat to society. They’ve earned all of these rewards and degrees, and they’ve made substantial changes, they’ve kept a job, they don’t have any behavioral incidences on their record yet they’re still being held accountable when they’re 60 years old and they’ve changed their lives already. And we’ve seen with the new Supreme Court nominee, how it’s very easy for people to forget about someone’s past when they’re not a person of color. To say, ‘Oh we’re not going to let that follow them for
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Interview with Amani Sawari
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the rest of their lives. We’re not going to continue to hold them accountable to that. They’re changed, they’re new.’ But we don’t do this for black and brown people. And we need to have that same sort of respect for human life and value for a person’s ability to change their lives, and our ability to see their potential for what they can bring to our society, for every human being—for black people, for brown people, and for white people. We need to be able to look at them and say, ‘You have a lot of potential to bring to this world and I’m eager to bring that out of you’, rather than to shut that down or oppress you because of the color of your skin.
June 11, 2019 9 am PST Sawari
Pell Grants are grants from the U.S. Federal Government granted to those who are seeking a college education. Incarcerated individuals became eligible for this funding in 1972. But in 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Act revoked Pell Grant funding from incarcerated individuals. The Restoring Education and Learning Act (REAL Act) in 2015 and the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program in 2016 were established in an effort to renew this program in prisons. Continued on right
…this new suffrage movement, the 10th demand of the prison strike demands was restoring incarcerated folks’ voting rights. That seemed like the most ambitious of all the demands, more ambitious than restoring “Good Time”, getting Pell grants, getting conditions back in order. Giving prisoners [the] right to vote, a lot of people thought was ridiculous. So now that this new suffrage movement has turned into its own campaign it’s become one of the most talked about issues as it relates to prisoners’ demands. Because once we give prisoners voting rights, in one fell swoop we humanize them, we give them some political power over changing their conditions, and we also hold representatives and prison officials accountable for making sure that those changes take place. And so I think that all the demands are wrapped up in number 10 which is why I was so excited for this to become its own campaign, and for the Roddenberry Foundation to fund it. They were excited because they saw that connection as well. So getting that grant funding really allows the campaign to take this extra push forward and use all of these resources that we didn’t have access to in the Fall with the National Prison Strike. And, so, some of the main components of it are really just maintaining a national community of people who are committed to making sure that incarcerated and formally incarcerated folks have their voting rights all across the country. And on the outside, the Right2Vote cohort consists of seven organizations in seven different states, [and] the activists and supporters on the inside consists of about 380 incarcerated men and women across 22 states. I’ve been really excited to see the growth of the community behind Right2Vote. That newsletter comes out every single month and we send those out for free. So one of my visions is for thousands of people to be given the Right2Vote report on the inside and stay up-to-date on what’s going on as it relates to people fighting for their rights. And just keeping people on the inside encouraged and letting them know, this
The right to vote in political elections
A 2013 study from the RAND Corporation, funded by the Department of Justice, found that incarcerated individuals who participated in correctional education were 43 percent less likely to return to prison within three years than prisoners who did not participate in any correctional education programs. RAND also estimated that for every dollar invested in correctional education programs, four to five dollars are saved on three-year re-incarceration costs.”
From the archived press release by the U.S. Department of Education, 2016.
Eight to Three
Interview with Amani Sawari
is the movement that’s happening on your behalf. We want you to participate but it’s going to keep happening whether you’re comfortable participating or not. Because we know the repercussions—the retaliation—that can happen as a result of someone just receiving the newsletter or letting someone else read the newsletter, you know? And so we also hope that those sort of retaliative measures will also be reduced as a result of prisoners having more political power.
Wong
So this is interesting because I know that in the last couple of months a lot of laws changed in a number of states around formally incarcerated individuals being able to vote and having their voting rights restored. So the work that you guys are doing—getting voting rights restored for people who are still incarcerated—how are you doing that? What is the roadmap for that? Because it sounds very ambitious.
Sawari
Yeah, it is. And it’s exciting, still, for us as organizers to see people who are formally incarcerated get their voting rights back! We think that this new suffrage movement, fighting for people who are currently incarcerated, makes the fight easier for those who are formally incarcerated. We’re talking about giving people their political voice while they’re still in prison. So the question of, ‘Should they have it when they’re out?’, has now become more of a unified “Yes” in a lot of states. We recently saw Colorado and Nevada, over this past May, pass voting rights bills to re-enfranchise formally incarcerated folks. We feel like what incarcerated activists are doing is a part of the fight to get formally incarcerated folks the right to vote back. But we don’t want to compromise on that, and a lot of politicians aren’t comfortable going all the way with the conversation, but we believe universal suffrage is something that should be a non-negotiable in a democracy. And if prisoners don’t lose their citizenship, then they shouldn’t lose their right to citizenship as it relates to their voting rights within a democracy. And so the pathway that we see for that – we strategize every month, we come together in an online space, the Right2Vote cohort which consists of seven states, and we talk about where we’re at on our voting rights bills. We share ideas, we account for one another, we share our successes, our failures, we put petitions together, support one another, letters of support to legislatures, and really just keeping track of where each state is at in the process. And then our roadmap – my goal is by 2025 all people across the nation having voting rights. We know that if we can get ballot initiatives into all of the states that we’re already in by 2020, then incarcerated folks in Massachusetts and New Jersey— where we currently have ballot initiatives—will have their voting rights by 2022. In Washington D.C. we just saw
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Interview with Amani Sawari
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a proposal introduced by councilman Robert White to re-enfranchise the incarcerated folks that are incarcerated in D.C. And if that goes through then those incarcerated folks will have their voting rights by 2021. So, if we can get all the states, or at least a majority of the states to have proposals in this next sweep, 2021, then we can still see a lot of people have their voting rights by 2023. So we think 2025 is a great goal. The more states that start to jump on to the campaign and join the cohort, the more the states that don’t do that, will look bad. So we just really want to push people to get as many proposals in as possible. And we’ve seen proposals come in for re-enfranchising inmates in at least seven states so far! That’s more than what we could’ve asked for. Not all the proposals went through. Some only went in halfway when it comes to passing one house, [and] some didn’t even make it to committee. So it’s all about just starting that conversation and making sure that grassroots organizers and incarcerated activists are working together to have that conversation so that we can humanize as many inmates as possible and make sure that they have a political voice in as many states as possible.
Wong
And when you say proposals, you mean bill proposals, right?
Sawari
Bills, yup! Proposed legislation.
Wong
Got it. There is a piece that I have yet to understand which is—and I know this is a contentious issue—that imprisoned people are in communities being counted only for the purposes of bolstering the community’s resources and political sway, but they’re not allowed to vote. So I was wondering if you could explain how that contradiction plays out.
Sawari
Yeah, so prison gerrymandering is a huge issue. And we see this phenomenon of urban cities losing a lot of their political power, their representative power, because so many of their community members are forcibly taken out of their community and moved into a rural community [that is] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours away. And their bodies are counted in order to give those rural communities more representation and more funding. And so when we build a prison somewhere, the idea is, ‘Okay, we’re gonna have all of these bodies here that will give our city, our county, more numbers so that we can have more representatives and more seats when it comes to votes and legislation.’ So if we’ve got a “City A” and “Rural Community B” and we build a prison that’s for “City A” people in “Rural Community B”, then now “Rural Community B” can have more representatives in their state congress, in their state house of representatives, and “Rural Community B” can have more votes—more
Prisons are often located in largely white, rural districts and by counting the prison population in these districts the area’s political power is artificially inflated. The issue here is that prison gerrymandering acts as an incentive for lawmakers to keep harsh sentencing laws in effect.
Eight to Three
Interview with Amani Sawari
voting power when it comes to what’s happening in the state, [and] where funding is going. They get more funding because they have more people there. But these extra— often at least 1,000 people—in these prisons don’t have access to that funding. They don’t have access to better jobs, they don’t have access to better education; they’re just these bodies that can be completely exploited by the rural community and that have no positive impact on the community where they’re from. So Washington state just recently passed legislation that would count the people in prison in the cities where they’re from instead of where they’re incarcerated. Because that’s where their home is. And if they have more representatives than in the area where they’re from, then we’re preparing them for re-entry. We’re preparing them for going back into their community instead of saying, we’re just going to use you for this community that you’re not really a part of so that we can have more funding that you won’t get. So that’s how that works and that’s another reason why we want prisoners to have a political voice. If they can have that then they will have power over their individual self in whatever community that they’re in. And it would be great if it affected the community where they’re from—that would be even better.
Senate Bill 5287
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The act of inflating numbers without recognizing the voting needs of the communities you’re counting, is reminiscent of the Three-Fifths Compromise in which it was agreed that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person in order for Southern states to garner a third more seats in Congress.
Wong
How are these rural communities able to use these bodies as a number for representation but not actually represent them?
Sawari
Just the idea that prisoners aren’t valuable enough to give resources to or waste resources on. I’m not an advocate for that so I’m not really sure how to speak to the positive side. We always hear, you know, ‘Not in my backyard’ when it comes to prisons, but now prisons are marketed as a place where we can get more jobs into the community. ‘We’ll have corrections officers working here, more prison officials here, we’ll have some labor to exploit here.’ We know we have way too many prisons in our country, so now that prisons are being marketed as this seed for economic growth for rural communities where there are very small populations—that’s [what has] made it more appealing for those community members.
Wong
Along with the work that you guys are doing— organizing the proposals that are coming in from states around the country—you’re keeping in contact with people who are currently incarcerated, and it sounds like it might be difficult for them to participate in this, but what is the role that currently incarcerated individuals are playing in helping to organize?
Eight to Three
Interview with Amani Sawari
Sawari
They organize on the inside. So Jailhouse Lawyers has a system where people can make committees within their prison and so they have positions: assistant secretary, chair, and a vice chair. If you’ve got at least two people then you’ve got a committee - a JLS committee - in your prison. And [you] work together with a JLS representative on the outside just to get news out about what’s going on in your prison and make recommendations about conditions that should be changed as well as let people know when [or] if you’re going to have a demonstration. So whether that’s a sit in or boycott or strike, now they have a direct connection with someone in the organizing group on the outside to raise awareness about the action that prisoners are taking. Also, prisoners write articles for the Right2Vote report; they let us know different ideological beliefs that they have as it relates to the right to vote, why prisoners should have the right to vote, why prisoners should have political power. And then finally they submit all kinds of things outside of articles - from poetry to art that can be used as a part of the campaign to humanize the prisoners.
You can follow Amani’s writing on this topic at her website WWW.SAWARIMI.ORG
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The Prison Issue
Eyes On: The New York Prison Strike (Winter 2018-2019)
Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York, NY Warden: Herman E. Quay The hunger strikes and protests at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) the winter of 2018-2019 put a spotlight on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBoP) as it fumbled its way through scrutiny. I combed through a number of articles to get a sense for how the public, reporters and the FBoP in the MDC strike story viewed incarcerated individuals and the treatment they endured during the government shutdown and polar vortex. Excerpts from internet sources are included to demonstrate how different media outlets approached and responded to events as the story unfolded. They’ll also color in the day-by-day events. The foundation for comprehensive prison reform and the possibility of prison abolition is built upon the acknowledgment of two truths: 1) that our criminal justice system was established in such a way as to perpetuate the racialized ethos of America seen in the overcriminalization and punishment of Black and brown communities and marginalized groups and, 2) that individuals who are incarcerated are still deserving of basic human rights. The MDC falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a federal institution affected by the government shutdown at the time of these events. Due to the shutdown the FBoP was not receiving funding and meant that the staff members employed in these Federal prisons were not receiving paychecks. Since the FBoP has a number of prisons under its jurisdiction and the polar vortex swept through swaths of the east coast, other prisons may have experienced similar difficulties and deteriorating quality of service during this time.
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New York Prison Strike
The Strike According to News Outlets On Saturday, January 5th the MDC lost power for the first time due to a blown panel. Both incarcerated individuals and staff were without heat and light. 1. “...inmates, had no heat, hot meals, hot water for showers or light in their cells…” (B) 2. “The building next door, also run by the jail, has full power and heat.” (F) Between January 29th - 31st the polar vortex hits the city of New York. Average lows were in the single digits. 1. “The jail switched over to emergency power, leaving the corridors lit only by dim lights, the cells dark and inmates confined to poorly heated cells during the coldest days of the winter so far. This week, the temperature plummeted to 2 degrees in New York City, as frigid weather swept over the Midwest and Northeast.” (F) On Monday, January 14th it was reported that family visitation was canceled. The administering of medications and other medical necessities were also affected by the shutdown. 1. “On Thursday, the federal defenders filed an emergency motion to remove from the jail an inmate whose asthma had worsened from the cold.” (B) By Saturday, January 22nd, attorney visitation had either been canceled or curtailed a total of seven days over the past month. 1. “The nonprofit Legal Aid Society said that it had written to the MDC warden on Jan. 22, demanding that a lack of heat at the jail be addressed amid forecasts of temperatures “dangerous to human life.” (B) On January 27th the same panel that had blown out a month prior, caught on fire. The electrical fire knocked out the MDC’s power and they switched to emergency electricity, generating spotty light in common areas but not in cells; this did not fix the heat issue. Legal counsel was suspended again. 1. “Correctional officers, like hundreds of thousands of federal employees, have been working for four weeks without paychecks. They were already among the lowest-paid federal law enforcement officials, Young said, and the union believes the nation’s prisons are significantly understaffed by around 7,100 positions. That means when the paychecks stop, the situation is especially dire.” (E) 2. “A spokeswoman for Herman Quay, the jail’s warden, said in an email that the building experienced a partial power outage on Saturday but denied that it had affected heat and hot water in the jail’s housing units.” (F) 3. “The Bureau of Prisons indicated that the electrical failure was related to Con Edison, which it said had been “dealing with numerous power emergencies in the community.” A spokesman for the utility, Robert McGee, disputed the characterization and said Con Edison had not had problems in New York during the cold spell. “It’s an internal problem, and their electricians will have to fix it,” Mr. McGee said. “End of story.” Union leaders and defense lawyers also rebutted the account of the jail’s warden and the Bureau of Prisons.” (F)
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New York Prison Strike Between January 29th - 31st the polar vortex hits the city of New York. Average lows were in the single digits. 1. “The jail switched over to emergency power, leaving the corridors lit only by dim lights, the cells dark and inmates confined to poorly heated cells during the coldest days of the winter so far. This week, the temperature plummeted to 2 degrees in New York City, as frigid weather swept over the Midwest and Northeast.” (F) On Thursday, January 31st the MDC was placed on lockdown for security purposes. 1. “...inmates kept on partial lockdown for safety reasons.” (F) 2. “On Thursday, the federal defenders filed an emergency motion to remove from the jail an inmate whose asthma had worsened from the cold.” (F) On Friday, February 1st it was reported that the power outage was due to a frozen heating panel, due to the freezing temperatures outside. Legal counsel is still canceled, medication is still not being properly administered. Requests were made to move incarcerated individuals to another building next door which has full power and heat. The building was occupied by a few dozen female inmates at the time. 1. “February 1, the sixth day of the power outage, one man from this unit decided to make a gesture of resistance, sitting down to eat his dinner in the unit’s common area — where the dim illumination of the emergency lights allowed him to see his food.” (D) On Saturday, February 2nd protestors gathered outside of the MDC attempted to force their way into the building but were stopped by a line of correctional officers with pepper spray. 1. “February 2, no breakfast was ever served, even to those with diabetes and other medical conditions. When the first meal of the day finally came at 4:30 in the afternoon, guards in riot gear loomed over the food distribution to make sure no one tried to disobey again. At this point, the entire housing unit decided to go on a hunger strike.” (D) 2. “The heat was spotty to nonexistent, depending on the floor. Hot water was scarce. Hot food had not been served for several days, with canned food handed out cell by cell. One inmate, who kept kosher, said he had only been given canned sardines.” (F) 3. “The protesters have included relatives of inmates who said they haven’t been able to visit their kin inside for days, as well as activists and elected officials. They’ve chanted ‘Move them out!’“(B) 4. “Several lawmakers who were able to tour the jail Saturday said conditions were unacceptable and accused jail officials of not understanding the urgency of the situation.” (B) 5. “New York Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon reported that, although prison officials had accepted the blankets from the city the night before, they had not distributed them to inmates.” (B) 6. “...the warden’s spokesperson, who signed the name V. Logan, said in the email the power outage had “minimally impacted” housing units. “All housing units have functional lighting,” the email said. “Heat and hot water has not been impacted. Likewise, inmate meals are not impacted - inmates are receiving regularly scheduled hot meals each day.” Taken together, the accounts of nearly three dozen inmates given to federal defenders painted a different picture of conditions inside the jail.” (F)
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New York Prison Strike
On Sunday, February 3rd Representative Jerrold Nadler, vowed to remain vigilant to ensure that the health and safety of incarcerated people and correctional officers were taken care of moving forward. 1. “...Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has launched an investigation into the response to the heat and electricity failures at the jail. Whether the scope of this inquest will include allegations that staff punished people for protesting their conditions remains unclear.” (D) 2. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the jail near Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, has denied that conditions are so dire. In a statement Sunday, officials said inmates had hot water for showers and in their cells’ sinks, and they estimated that power would be fully restored by Monday.” (B) 3. “Tensions outside the jail reached a boil Sunday afternoon when protesters approached the prison entrance and were pepper-sprayed by guards.” (B) 4. “The Bureau of Prisons, which runs the facility, has denied that the heat had been so limited and said in the Sunday statement that inmates had had hot showers. Several lawmakers who toured the jail Saturday disagreed, having found temperatures as low as 49 degrees in the facility, and criticized the jail’s officials for not treating the situation with the urgency that it required.” (G)
Article References A) Protestors Try to Storm Brooklyn Jail With Little Heat or Electricity, New York Times B) Protestors Swarm Brooklyn Jail That Endured Polar Vortex With No Heat, The Washington Post C) Shutdown Prompts Hunger Strike at Manhattan Jail as Family Visits Are Canceled, New York Times D) Locked Inside a Freezing Federal Jail, They United to Protest Their Conditions – Only to Face Reprisals, The Intercept E) Federal Prisons Feel the Effects of the Shutdown, CNN F) No Heat for Days at a Jail in Brooklyn Where Hundreds of Inmates Are Sick and ‘Frantic’, The New York Times G) Days of Protest Over Unheated Brooklyn Prison End With Restored Power, Slate
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New York Prison Strike
The Last Two Days of the Strike According to Twitter February 2nd, 2019
11:51am The representative for the 10th District of New York, Representative Jerry Nadler, on his visit to the MDC.
12:13pm NYC Council member for the 39th District of New York City, Brad Lander, posted a video of family members passing around a megaphone to share stories about their loved ones in front of the MDC.
12:33pm The representative for the 7th District of New York, Representative Nydia Velazquez, on her visit to MDC.
4:07pm Although the FBoP assured the public that emergency items were unnecessary, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio responded saying that supplies from New York City Emergency Management were being sent anyways.
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New York Prison Strike
4:44pm A reporter for CBS New York tweeted out a statement that the Federal Bureau of Prisons released regarding the second power outage, informing people that a new electrical panel had been installed earlier that day and that the work would be completed by Monday (February 4th) so that power would be fully restored.
6:34pm NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio tweeted that the New York Emergency Management had delivered supplies to the MDC.
February 3rd, 2019
9:43am Senator Mike Gianaris represents New York’s 12th State Senate District and posted a video. The video shows protestors being led out of the MDC entrance.
6:01pm NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio marks the end of the power outage in a Twitter statement.
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New York Prison Strike
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The Strike According to People in the Comments A screengrab of the comment section below the Washington Post article (in the reference list above) online captures the range of common reactions, criticisms, arguments and divisive language used in discussions about prison, folks who are incarcerated and detention. It highlights the gaps of knowledge many have about our criminal justice system.
Eight to Three
New York Prison Strike
Important Takeaways 1. The government shutdown lasted from December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019 2. Throughout the course of this ordeal incarcerated persons intermittently lost their access to legal counsel and family visitation 3. The first time the MDC lost heat and power it lasted 17 days 4. The second time the MDC lost heat and power, protestors and local representatives came to publicly support the inmates’ strike, and issues were resolved within 7 days
Vignettes from the Strike Protesting Inside 1. People across multiple housing units undertook coordinated acts of nonviolent disobedience and at least three hunger strikes. Retaliation by Metropolitan Detention Center staff ranged from pepper spray and solitary confinement to shutting off toilets across entire units. 2. “Corrections officials generally react quite strongly to even the most peaceful and rule-abiding of protests, so things like refusing a meal or some sort of quiet protest can be risky,” said Betsy Ginsberg, a professor and the director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Cardozo Law School, who represents clients at the Metropolitan Detention Center. 3. In other harrowing scenes, family members shouted through megaphones to try to communicate with inmates. “I love you!” one prisoner could be heard yelling from a window.
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Shutting Off Toilets Valves 1. On all three of those housing units where men collectively refused food, jail staff shut off the valves to the toilets in all of the cells, according to accounts relayed to lawyers. Confined to their cells on lockdown, deprived of light, the men on these units now found themselves shivering on their bunks with their heads inches from toilet bowls nearly overflowing with festering feces. 2. But Fathi of the ACLU said toilet shutoffs are also a long-established technique of mass retaliation. “It’s something that should almost never be done,” Fathi said. “Courts have been very clear that a working toilet is a necessity of life to which prisoners are legally entitled and depriving them of that for anything more than a very short time for a very compelling reason is presumptively unlawful.” “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” 1. Some inmates are linked to high-profile drug trafficking and terrorism cases, while others are comparatively anonymous New Yorkers awaiting trial. 2. The more than 1,600 inmates—a combination of high-profile criminals and a more low-risk mix of inmates with medical conditions and New Yorkers awaiting trial, according to the Times— huddled in their beds in the dark.
