© American Anti-Slavery SocietyOriginal caption (1836): “Franklin & Armfield’s Slave Prison.” Franklin & Armfield was a Virginia slave trading firm.
Starting Sept. 9, prisoners in the United States will begin a coordinated effort to
shut down prisons across the country. They plan to stop working in correctional institutions. Without prisoners doing their jobs, these facilities cannot be run. According to
Support Prisoner Resistance, the nationwide prisoner work stoppage will serve as a protest against prison slavery, the school-to-prison pipeline, police terror and post-release controls.
Prisoners organizing the strike are not making demands or requests in the usual sense. They are calling themselves to action in a
planned protest and want every prisoner in every state and federal institution across America to "stop being a slave."
Some people may bristle at the notion that prisoners are slaves, but they are forced to work for little or no pay. The
13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, also maintains a legal exception for continued slavery in prisons. It states "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."
Comment: "It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones." ― Nelson Mandela