Prison strikes spread across country
Inmates are striking across the country to make their voices heard after seven inmates died at a riot at a prison in South Carolina.
Prisoners started the strike Tuesday and will stop Sept. 9. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a network of imprisoned prisonerrights advocates based out of Lee Correctional, is leading the strike, according to
Supporters of the strike have taken to social media to show support. Among them is a student in Hawaii who focused many of his posts on Hawaiian inmates being housed in Arizona.
E. Tong, a Ph.D. student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, tweeted about prisoners at Saguaro Correctional Center, a privately-run multisecurity level facility in Eloy.
It is run by Tennesseebased CoreCivic, which runs correctional, detention and transition facilities across the country. There are six CoreCivic properties in Arizona.
Hawaii pays the company to house some of its inmates.
Tong’s first tweet received more than 3,000 retweets and more than 5,000 likes.
“In solidarity with the #PrisonStrike today, here’s a thread about the nearly 1,500 pa’ahao kane (the majority of Hawai’i’s incarcerated males) locked up at the Saguaro Correctional Center, a forprofit private prison in Arizona,” the student tweeted.
In his thread, the oceanography student mentioned the documentary film, “Out of State.”
The film shows the journey of native Hawaiians transitioning from being held behind bars in Arizona to going home to Hawaii.
Tong tweeted, “No amount of cultural programming justifies inmate work line wages of 15-50¢ per hour.
This kind of human trafficking is the new blackbirding in the age of anti-black mass incarceration.”
Prisoners striking have issued a list of demands, according to Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. The group says the demands are:
❚ Immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons and policies.
❚ An immediate end to prison slavery.
❚ A rescission of Truth in Sentencing and the Sentencing Act.
❚ An immediate end to racial discrimination in charging, sentencing and parole denial procedures.
❚ An immediate end to gang enhancement laws that discriminate against minorities.
❚ Funding for state prisons to offer additional rehabilitation services.
❚ A reinstatement of Pell grants in all U.S. states and territories.
❚ Voting rights for all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pretrial detainees and “ex-felons.” the Act Reform