"According to Solitary Watch, the strikes began at Alabama’s Holman, Staton, and Elmore Correctional Facilities on May 1, with additional stoppages scheduled to follow this week at St. Clair and Donaldson, among others. Organizers plan to stretch the protests for 30 days, but say the length ultimately depends on the response of lawmakers.
Kinetik told Solitary Watch,”We will no longer contribute to our own oppression. We will no longer continue to work for free and be treated like this.”
The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed Holman and Elmore were on lockdown in a statement released on May 2. Department officials said inmates at the facilities did not help prepare breakfast Sunday and failed to report to assigned tasks the next day. The DOC also indicated it was not aware of prisoners’ demands or “reason for refusing to work.”
The Movement held similar labor protests two years ago, as the U.S. Justice Department investigated conditions in Alabama prisons. Salon held an exclusive interview with one of the group’s founders in 2014.
“We decided that the only weapon or strategy … that we have is our labor, because that’s the only reason that we’re here,” Melvin Ray, an inmate at the St. Clair correctional facility said at the time. “They’re incarcerating people for the free labor.”...
As Atlanta Black Star has reported, many of America’s biggest corporations directly benefit from prison labor through a process known as insourcing. U.S. employers receive a $2,400 tax credit for each work release inmate hired via The Work Opportunity Tax Credit.
Walmart, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Sprint are just a few companies that regularly employ inmates to evade costs associated with traditional employees, i.e., health insurance, paid vacation or sick leave."
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