Vol. 80/No. 37      October 3, 2016

 

Prisoners protest conditions, mark Attica anniversary across U.S.

 
 Beginning Sept. 9 prisoners in a number of states, including Michigan, Alabama and Florida, organized activities and strikes to use the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion to protest deplorable conditions workers behind bars face today. Demands raised targeted low pay or no pay for prison work, solitary confinement and a host of other prison policies that attack their dignity.

According to the Detroit Free Press some 400 of the 1,300 inmates at the Kinross Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, Michigan, marched and chanted in a three-hour peaceful protest Sept. 10 in the commons area in front of the prison’s housing units. The action followed one the day before where prisoners assigned to work in the kitchen and at some other jobs didn’t show up.

Among the issues prisoners raised are miserly wages of 74 cents to $3.34 per day and obstacles to being able to seek commutation.

Following the rally, prison authorities retaliated against those they suspected of leading the protests. Officials put the prison on lockdown and forcibly removed 150 alleged “instigators” from their cells, shipping them off to other prisons. According to the Free Press, that led to prisoners damaging some housing areas.

“[W]hen you have large numbers of prisoners gathered all together as one, it’s not something we can allow to happen,” Michigan Department of Corrections spokesperson Chris Gautz told Televison 9&10 News.

At the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, some 75 prisoners did not show up for work Sept. 9, the Wall Street Journal reported. In May Holman was one of several Alabama prisons where inmates stopped work over conditions and unpaid or poorly paid labor. Prison authorities there and in Florida often give inmates no wages for their work.

At Holman, prisoners making Alabama state license plates or sewing prison bedding get paid as little as 17 to 30 cents an hour.

More than 400 of the 1,100 men incarcerated at the Holmes Correctional Institution in Florida barricaded themselves in four dorm areas Sept. 7, the Miami Herald said. Prison cops broke up the protests, setting off canisters of chemicals.

Two days later “inmates across the state participated in sit-downs and refused to work,” including at Holmes, reported the Northwest Florida Daily News.

Claiming the demonstrations had nothing to do with “inhumane conditions,” Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson Michelle Glady proceeded to list a series of factors that led to the actions — lack of recreation or vocational programs, rotten food quality and denial of access to the canteen to purchase packaged food, toiletries and stamps to write their family.

In South Carolina, some prisoners took the occasion of the Attica anniversary to issue a list of demands, including for the state minimum wage for general labor, fairer parole practices, reinstitution of educational courses for high school diplomas and cutting commissary costs.

Officials at the maximum security Perry Correctional Institution in South Carolina responded by placing the prison on lockdown after some prisoners there refused to return to their cells, WYFF-4 TV reported.

The call for prisoners to commemorate Attica and raise demands on prison conditions today was initiated by the Free Alabama Movement, a group led by prisoners; the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee; Support Prisoner Resistance; and others.
 
 
Related articles:
Fight continues 45 years after Attica rebels said, ‘We are men, not beasts’
Declaration of the Attica rebellion
 
 
 
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