Witness to Mass Incarceration Prison Strike Op-Ed September 3,2018
Before I left, my mother told me that prison would be harder for me than surviving the holocaust was for her. By the time I was incarcerated for a second time at age 60, I had been persecuted on the inside and out for being an open, unapologetic lesbian. When I wrote a public letter describing in detail the conditions of American prison camps, I was thrown in solitary confinement to face the torture of isolation. When I became ill, I was denied medical care and blamed for my illness. When I arrived back in New York after release, I was homeless. I had seen people suffer unspeakable abuse and neglect. I had watched people die under a system that profited off the loss of our most basic human rights.
The American project of mass incarceration exploits the labor of black, brown, queer, and poor human beings for immense profit. It exercises its power by denying those people the right to vote, and lobbying congress for mandatory minimums and longer sentences. It grows its power by dehumanizing people rather than rehabilitating them, ensuring they’ll return to prison rather than build a life after incarceration. It maintains its power by making the people inside it believe that they have no choice and making the people outside it believe they do not deserve one.
But for the last 12 days across 17 states, incarcerated Americans have been on strike. They have shown outstanding courage through their peaceful protests by refusing to work for their corporate owners, refusing to purchase overpriced services, and refusing to eat inedible food. Some people might think the idea of a “strike” at prison is an oxymoron — how could inmates make demands, what right do they have?
American children are taught that prison is where debt to society is paid. But for that debt to be paid, a social contract must exist. For decades now, our social contract has been bought out. Corporations that buy prisons cut costs on healthcare and food and sell products made for pennies by inmates. Corporations leave prisons without clean water or sanitation or hygenic supplies for days or weeks because not doing so would cut profits. Corporations hire sadistic overseers who abuse inmates without consequence. Corporations are holding American citizens as modern slaves.
Now, those citizens are demanding their rights.
They are on strike against the private corporations that profit from their unpaid or pitifully cheap labor. They are on strike against the constant violation of their human rights. They are on strike against the death penalty and life without parole. They are on strike against laws that target and overcharge black and brown humans. They are on strike against a punitive system that refuses to rehabilitate them, let them vote, or give them any voice at all.
They are on strike to demand their own humanity.
I stand with these brave Americans who are fighting each day to preserve their basic human dignity. We are seeing now one of the best organized and largest resistance movements in American history, and the media is all but silent.
