Look around and what we see is blatant greed and corruption by the wealthy and powerful, with the people growing more and more aware of this looting and a realisation that the ballot box is just an illusion to fool the subservient. So protests grow, turmoil increases and the system cracks and starts to crumble. In the capitalist system protest and direct action is the only road to real change, justice and freedom. The states answer to this threat is to lock more people up in cages, believing this will solve the problem. However, people in cages are still people, and their resolve to be treated as such will always be there and grow.
Across the system those locked up are also turning to direct action as much as they can within the confines of the brutal state incarceration. Prisoners direct action is growing, in Greece there is a constant battle within the prison system in America across several states prisoners are on strike, and the latest in Europe is in Belgium, where several prisons have prisoners roiting, to the extent that the Belgian government has sent in the troops. Slavery is not dead as long as we have prisons and those locked up used as productive units to make profit for large corporations, as happens in every country in Europe. In America, prisons are nothing more than large production units useing the inmates as slave labour. All those who are protesting, striking, taking direct action, within the prison system must be able to call on the support and solidarity of all those outside the cages, we are all fighting the same system, exploitation,injustice and corruption.
On Monday 25th of April, the prison guards of all prisons in the
French speaking parts of Belgium went on strike, in total 21 prisons.
The prisoners are confined in their cells. All activities, like the
walk, shower, visit, legal counsel, are cancelled. The police took
over the control of the prisons to assure security.
After one week of guards on strike, and with conditions rapidly
deteriorating inside, incidents start to spread in many prisons. In
some prisons, the situation could be called catastrophic. Prisoners
only receive food once a day, didn’t go out of their cells in more
than ten days, hygienic conditions are terrible with infections and
diseases spreading.---------
Alabama prisoners who have been on strike for 10 days
over unpaid labor and prison conditions are accusing officials of
retaliating against their protest by starving them. The coordinated
strike started on May 1, International Workers’ Day, when prisoners
at the Holman and Elmore facilities refused to report to their prison
jobs and has since expanded to Staton, St. Clair, and Donaldson’s
facilities, according to organizers with the Free Alabama Movement, a
network of prison activists.
Prison officials responded by putting the facilities on lockdown,
partially to allow guards to perform jobs normally carried out by
prisoners. But prisoners told The Intercept that officials
also punished them by serving meals that are significantly smaller
than usual, a practice they have referred to as “bird feeding.”----------
Texas.
Claiming that they are treated like slaves, inmates from up to five Texas prisons have
orchestrated a historic workers’ strike. A lack of access to
quality food and water, low wages, overcrowding, and poor working
conditions were among their complaints.
Striking inmates are refusing to leave their cells for work
assigned by Texas Corrections Industries (TCI), a publicly traded
company.
Established in 1963 under the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, TCI uses prison labor to make a variety of products “from
hand soap to bed sheets, from raising livestock to making iron
toilets and portable buildings,” all of which are sold to local,
state, and federal government agencies, as well as public schools,
and hospitals ‒ and prisoners receive none of the profits,
according to a letter outlining
the reasons for the strike.--------
PRISON INMATESaround the country have called for a
series of strikes against forced labor, demanding reforms of
parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living
conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health
care.
Inmates at up to five Texas prisons pledged to refuse to
leave their cells today. The strike’s organizers remain anonymous
but have circulated fliers listing a series of grievances and
demands, and a letter
articulating the reasons for the strike. The Texas strikers’
demands range from the specific, such as a “good-time” credit
toward sentence reduction and an end to $100 medical co-pays, to the
systemic, namely a drastic downsizing of the state’s incarcerated
population.
“Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery
affects our society economically, morally and politically,” reads
the five-page letter announcing the strike. “Beginning on
April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order
to get the attention from politicians and Texas’s community alike.”---------
