When prisoners rebel and demand to be treated as human beings, we are not just fighting inhumane living conditions and shitty food. We are striking a blow at the state, which maintains the situation of slavery and super-exploitation—by which each of us are robbed of the fruits of our labor every day.
Work strikes or “shutdowns,” as we like to call them down here in Alabama, are also geared toward consciousness-raising of prisoners as an oppressed class; and by refusing to work for free (which is slavery), we are asserting our power as workers and as human beings, thereby challenging the view that prisoner labor is free and exploitable.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal unless one has been duly convicted of a crime and ratified by Congress on December 6, 1865, which merely removed the ownership of slaves from the province of the individual citizen to that of the state, which then became the sole owner of other human beings (or slaves)…