Inmates in Alabama are on their third day of strike today.
I spoke with the organizers on the ground earlier today and
their message is pretty straightforward, they said,
incarcerated citizens in the Alabama Department of Corrections are in crisis.
In 2019, a lawsuit filed by the DOJ found the prisons to be overcrowded,
understaffed, inhumane, and extremely violent,
labeling them as the deadliest in the United States.
Since the lawsuit, the findings have gotten significantly worse, yet the DOJ
is allowing them to buy more time to come up with, I quote, Alabama solution.
Building new mega-prisons will not solve this crisis.
The DOJ has failed to hold the ADOC and the and Gov.Ivey accountable,
as more lives are being lost and many more at stake.
We are gathering with demands that will resolve the issues
that are plaguing the system that doesn't call for building new prisons.
The strike comes after this photo of Kastello Vaughan at Alabama's Elmore
correctional facility went viral.
Now we've got Attorney Ben Crump on the case who said, this is horrific.
Let's be clear, the State of Alabama has tried to deflect any action or
responsibility for Mr.Vaughan's condition at every turn.
The prison system issued a statement Tuesday saying that Vaughan had surgery
for an obstructed bowel in August and was hospitalized in September for
a complication.
So, I think it's really important we also hear from the prisoners who
are withholding their labor inside of the prison.
They said, how long can 25 people run a prison with 1000,
1800, 2300, etc, prisoners?
If they withhold their labor, the prison won't run itself.
So, we've got a message from the people inside the prison in Alabama.
They release this and we got it directly from the organizers there on the ground.
They said, we the incarcerated citizens in ADOC demand that
the US Justice Department intervene and put an immediate stop to Alabama's
systematic denial of our human dignity and rights.
The State of Alabama is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis due to eight amendment
violations.
The crisis has occurred as a result of antiquated sentencing laws that led
to overcrowding, numerous deaths, severe physical injury,
as well as mental anguish to incarcerated individuals.
This humanitarian crisis led to the Department of Justice filing suit against
Kay Ivey and ADOC yet nothing has changed or gotten better, only worse.
Therefore, for the sake of our lives,
we are exercising our First amendment right to peacefully
protest this unconstitutional, unsafe and hyper exploitative system.
We need help and we need it now, as one unit, we band together and
state the following, repeal the habitual offender law immediately.
Make the presumptive sentencing standards retroactive immediately, repeal the drive
by shooting statute, create statewide conviction integrity unit.
Mandatory parole criteria that will guarantee parole to all eligible persons
who meet the criteria.
Streamlined review process for medical furloughs and
review of elderly incarcerated individuals for immediate release.
Reduction of the 30 year minimum for juvenile offenders to no more than 15
years before they're eligible for parole and do away with life without parole.
There's also a message that was shared specifically from the inmates who are on
death row in Alabama in prison.
They said, we the men of Alabama's death row band together in state that
the Alabama's capital murder statute and
execution method are unconstitutional, inhumane and violate our human rights.
Therefore, we join ranks with all incarcerated individuals in
protest against the state of Alabama and they share their demands as well.
So what's going on here is pretty shocking.
I'm honestly surprised it took this long because what's going on in our prisons
are disgusting.
And I know I don't speak for everyone when I say this, but
I do know that violence begins and ends with the state when it comes to prisons.
And I'm not really afraid to say unpopular things when it comes to prisons.
Because I think throughout our history, there have been so
many things that people have thought for that were so unpopular at the time.
Think about slavery, think about the civil rights movement and
how unpopular Dr.King was back then when he did the march on Washington,
he was not a popular individual.
And if we're actually interested in living in a just society, we've got
to say things that are presently unpopular so that we actually have progress.
And so, the fact that these inmates don't have medical care,
are not being given three meals a day, are being forced to work against their will,
this is not an accident.
The reason prisoners are committing suicide in the prison are because
the conditions are that bad.
And when we have a society that's governed by a system where the means of
production are controlled by private owners for profit.
That's the society we live in, where 10% of people have 70% of the wealth,
they're not gonna run the prison system in a just way and
they haven't since the very beginning.
Let's not forget that the 13th amendment of the constitution states
that slavery is illegal except as punishment for a crime and
that's what happens in the United States every single day.
We see that people are intentionally made unemployed, they have limited options,
they joined the illicit economy just to put food on the table and
feed their families.
And then those actions are criminalized by the state and
they're put in places like ADOC, it is disgusting.
And so, I think all prisoners should go on strike in
the United States because this system isn't human.
>> Yeah, this actually reminds me of, this would have been about ten years ago,
a homie of mine from my neighborhood, he had gotten back from prison.
And he was actually working at my dentist's office and he was like, yeah,
this is actually not that dissimilar from the work that he was doing in prison.
I was like, really you had a job?
He said, yeah, I was making eyeglasses in prison.
I was like, did they pay you like a job?
He's like, yeah, like a buck 50 an hour, literally, and he was like, yeah,
you use that money to go towards some of your basic goods that you would use
in the prison.
And, I remember being shocked by that.
And so, when I read about these prisoners in Alabama and
the strike that they were going on, it's pretty harrowing stuff.
Because, if Amazon workers are people who are sort of at the bottom rung of society,
people who are incarcerated are at the bottom of the bottom.
Right, there are like normal people would feel inclined to be like, well,
we wanna see nice things happen to Amazon workers.
For people who have committed felonies,, they don't have as many advocates on
the outside and so these people are literally voiceless.
But I think, if we're gonna pretend that we're some special country,
special society, how we treat these people is a reflection of our values, right?
And the difference between the United States and some whatever other type of
country is that even though these people committed crimes,
we should be treating them humanely and like human beings.
And so, I think it's really heartening to see these people speaking up for
themselves because trust me, nobody else will.
>> Absolutely yeah, I mean, we will, we are right now,
we're doing our best at that.
>> [LAUGH] >> But yeah,
think about like the economic conditions that were created by the state and
by people in power that led to many of these people committing crimes.
And I know I talked about crimes of economic necessity, right,
stealing to feed your family.
We see the NYPD posting up that they've obtained things that were stolen and
it's baby formula.
But also think about who becomes a serial killer,
these are people who are traumatized, who are terribly mentally ill.
Who were their parents?
Their parents were people that the United States government sent abroad to fight
proxy wars, they came back with PTSD and they raised their kids.
Did they do a good job raising their kids?
Probably as good as they could when they were traumatized as they are.
And we know that there's ample evidence pointing to even the people who
are the most violent in our society, are just terribly sick,
they have mental illnesses that stem from early childhood trauma.
And so, you can trace back a lot of the violence to the state,
any last thoughts on this wars?
>> Man, I just would really like to see some changes in the system,
the prison system specifically.
It's just like we can't throw these people away, that's my final thought.
I understand if somebody killed three people, yeah,
they gotta pay their restitution to society.
And they probably should be in prison for it, I don't have a problem with that,
but we don't have to torture them and treat them inhumanely in the process.
And I noticed like a weird hill to wanna die on, right, some people would think
these are the scum, the gum on the bottom of your shoe type of people, a society.
But again, I think it's a reflection on us how we treat those people who
are basically on the outskirts.
>> That's so true.