Prisoners are Workers

PRISON Strike Against Modern Slavery

The second prison strike since 2016 starts today, the anniversary of the start of Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831 and ends September 9th, the anniversary of the Attica revolt in 1971. 

https://incarceratedworkers.org/campaigns/prison-strike-2018

Florida Prison.  This looks very familiar.

There are 10 demands, with getting rid of 'solitary' and the issues of private prisons and capital punishment missing.  It is quite a mild document, but does include the right to vote denied to 6 million former felons. What I'd like to focus on is the U.S. Constitution.  The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

In other words, servitude or slavery is allowed in prisons, legally.  It is all 'legal.'  And many prisoners are black or brown, so it seems very familiar. Right now millions of prisoners are working for free, or pennies an hour, for capitalist corporations, for various states or governmental institutions, for local companies, and sometimes in for-profit prisons.  Since the abolition of slavery, this became one of the main methods of labor control and exploitation of non-white populations, especially in the U.S. South.  It accompanies the institutional racist police and court practices of the drug war, killer fines, police shootings, militarized police and the incarceration state.

The books 'Slavery By Another Name ... ' and 'The New Jim Crow' made this obvious. They both describe a 'prison-industrial complex.'

Labor is Power, even in Prison

So our U.S. Constitution, which is treated as almost a religious text by liberals and conservatives alike, has an additional flaw.  We can add this line from the 13th Amendment to the undemocratic Electoral College, undemocratic Senate and undemocratic Supreme Court; the misinterpreted 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights; the misinterpreted 1st Amendment, which says money is now 'free speech' and the rubber-stamp Grand Jury system.   

Time for a new set of laws.  These are done. 

Alternet on progress of strike, 8/24:  https://www.alternet.org/us-prison-strike-fourth-day-reports-hunger-strikes-and-work-stoppages-nationwide

The South Rises Again

Prior reviews on this topic:  "Are Prisons Obsolete?" "The New Jim Crow," "Slavery by Another Name," "Clandestine Operations," "Kolyma Tales," "The Unseen."   And on the law:  "Loaded," "Witty Lightweight Attacks Marxism," "The Appeal," "The Trial Before the Trial," "Rise of the Warrior Cop" and "3 Days in the Jury Pool."

Red Frog
August 21, 2018