Enough Is Enough: Prisoners Across The Country Band Together To End Slavery For Good

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Siddique Hasan, a self-described revolutionary from Savannah, Georgia, has been waiting for a moment like this one, when prisoners across the country band together and say “enough is enough” when it comes to being treated like a slave.

“It’s time for a broader struggle,” he told ThinkProgress during his daily phone time in Ohio’s supermax prison. “People have to lift up their voice with force and determination, and let them know that they’re dissatisfied with the way things are actually being run.”

So far this year, prisoners have been doing just that.

In a growing movement largely going unnoticed by the national media, inmates all over the country are starting to stand up against the brutal conditions and abuses they have faced for decades.

Beginning in March, thousands of people locked away in Michigan prisons launched a hunger strike over the amount and quality of food they were served by a private food vendor. That vendor should have been an improvement from its predecessor, which fed inmates refrigerated meat, trash, and rodent saliva. Instead, the new food provider served small portions of watery food. And what started as a seemingly isolated protest at one facility quickly spread to two others in the state.

In April, inmates in seven Texas facilities refused to go to work in protest of astronomical health care costs, their inability to use work time as credit for their parole, and having to live and labor in extreme heat with minimal compensation. In lieu of producing “mattresses, shoes, garments, brooms, license plates, printed materials, janitorial supplies, soaps, detergents, furniture, textile, and steel products,” participating strikers stayed in their cells.

“We need to be clear about one thing,” an anonymous organizer wrote, “prisoners are not looking for a lazy life in prison. They don’t want to spend their sentences sitting in a cell, eating and sleeping. They still will attend every education — rehabilitation and training programs (sic) available. They are not against work in prison — as long they (sic) receive credit for their labor and good conduct that counts towards a real parole-validation.”

Continue to Full Story at Think Progress

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