{"id":1696,"date":"2011-07-29T09:55:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T13:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/strikes-inside-georgia-prisons.html"},"modified":"2011-07-29T09:55:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T13:55:11","slug":"strikes-inside-georgia-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/strikes-inside-georgia-prisons.html","title":{"rendered":"Strikes inside Georgia prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"David Slavin wrote for BayView 21 January 2011,\n\nGeorgia prisoners staged a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest<\/a>:\n
\n\n<\/a>\nInmates are the largest single workforce in Georgia. THEY ARE\nPAID NO WAGES. To anyone who is familiar with Doug Blackmon’s \u201cSlavery by Another\nName,\u201d<\/a> this forced convict labor system should come as no\nsurprise. It is part of the\n\n\u201cNew Jim Crow\u201d<\/a> mass incarceration system\nthat reincarnates the Old Jim Crow in the first half of the 20th century.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nSo some inmates decided to do something about it.\n
\nThis action by the inmates was a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest. It\nwas an action by workers TO WITHHOLD THEIR LABOR by refusing to leave\ntheir cells. The risks they have taken are enormous. Refusal to work\ngets you a \u201cDisciplinary Report,\u201d which can affect parole and your\n\u201cprivileges\u201d in prison.\n

\nThe demands they presented were for\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\nWAGES and WORKING CONDITIONS, which in\ntheir case of course includes living conditions. Since the work stoppage\ninvolved THOUSANDS OF INMATES, it is probably the largest strike or labor\naction in Georgia in decades. Moreover, the inmates have firmly taken a\nstand of interracial solidarity, particularly crucial in Georgia where\nmore than one third of the inmates are white.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd what did they get for striking?\n
\n\n<\/a>\nMiguel Jackson was pepper sprayed, handcuffed and beaten with hammers,\nresulting in a fractured nose and 50 stitches to his face, and guards\ntried to throw him over the railing from the second floor, his wife said.\n<\/blockquote>\nWho do they\n\nwork for?<\/a>\n
\nAll 54,000 Georgia inmates work for \u201cPrison Industries\u201d \u2013 not a\nprivate corporation but the wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of\nCorrections. In effect, PI employs more workers than Delta Airlines, Coca\nCola, Home Depot or any of the largest corporate employers in the state.\n<\/blockquote>\nDoes this sound like “good clean industry” to you?\n

\nWhat did the strikers want?\n

\n…education, wages, decent food and medical care, the right to be in\ntouch with their families, and a chance at a decent life once they are\nreleased by learning employable skills.\n<\/blockquote>\nIf they’re striking for these things in publicly-owned and operated\nprisons, what do you think conditions will be like in private\nprisons scraping out alleged savings by scrimping on guards\nand everything else?\n\n<\/a>\nAnd they don’t save money, not in Arizona<\/a>,\nand\n\nnot nationally.<\/a>\n

\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Slavin wrote for BayView 21 January 2011, Georgia prisoners staged a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest: Inmates are the largest single workforce in Georgia. THEY ARE PAID NO WAGES. To anyone who is familiar with Doug Blackmon’s \u201cSlavery by Another Name,\u201d this forced convict labor system should come as no surprise. It […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,19,72,178],"tags":[8817,8701,1899,1897,7,75,1898,1896,8749],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-history","category-incarceration","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-georgia","tag-jim-crow","tag-labor","tag-lowndes-county","tag-prison","tag-slave","tag-strike","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-rm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}