STRIKE

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.

Two inmates, David Easley and James 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.

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.

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.

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.