To honor Dr. King's legacy is to support the Florida prison strike

To honor Dr. King's legacy is to support the Florida prison strike
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
iStock

On Monday, January 15, the holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, Florida’s incarcerated population will be participating in a large scale strike. In order to call attention to the practice of systemic slavery that allows for the exploitation and inhumane treatment of prisoners, participants in this act of civil disobedience will institute a work stoppage. Organizers of the peaceful protest have dubbed the effort “Operation PUSH” and have penned a manifesto outlining the changes they are demanding. Such changes include wages for labor, an end to the death penalty and abuse from guards, access to parole incentives, restored voter rights for former felons, and an end to canteen price gouging. These pleas for humanity from the most vulnerable and marginalized population among us cannot continue to fall on deaf ears if we are truly committed to the struggle for liberation and a just society.

There is more than enough evidence and well documented research to support the claim that while chattel slavery may have ended, the modern day criminal justice system has done a more than adequate job of taking it’s place. Ava Duvernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary 13th delves deeper and explores the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States. The powerful documentary sheds light on the very conditions being protested by Florida’s inmates and highlights some of these disturbing practices. The film focuses on the clause in the 13th amendment, which while abolishing slavery, did allow for exceptions, including prisoners. This effectively legalized the practice of slavery and allowed for a targeted assault on communities of color. Following the Civil War, which freed the enslaved, African Americans were then arrested in mass for very minor offenses and forced into unpaid labor in an effort to rebuild the economy of the south. This, of course, resulted in them essentially returning to slavery. Fast forward to today where the United States houses 5% of the world’s population, but over 25% of the world’s prison population- a disproportionate number of which are Black and Hispanic. And Florida’s statistics and conditions are among the most dismal.

Florida’s history of exploiting prison labor extends as far back as the opening of the state’s first penitentiary in 1868. Concerned with the price of building and maintaining the prison, the state came up with the novel idea to use the free labor of inmates to offset costs. They then passed vagrancy laws in order to fill those cells and further profit off the backs of prisoners. Inmates are not only responsible for prison upkeep such as maintenance, repairs, planting crops, cooking, cleaning, etc, they are also leased to outside government agencies and nonprofits for little to no wages. South Florida residents were reminded of this practice most recently when inmates were used to clean up after Hurricane Irma.

Florida inmate work crew in Coral Way on September 15, 2017

Florida inmate work crew in Coral Way on September 15, 2017

Alana Greer/ Community Justice Project

While the highest hourly pay for a Florida inmate for a prison job is .32, a $4 can of soup purchased at the canteen is a staggering $17. This kind of price gouging of prisoners for their basic necessities and sanitary needs transfers the financial burden to the prisoner’s families, who are often poor themselves. Not only do inmates struggle to earn enough money to place phone calls or purchase goods, but once they are released they are left without financial resources to support themselves. After leaving the prison gates, so begins what scholar Jeremy Travis calls the “period of invisible punishment.” Outside of the sentence imposed by courts, measures are taken to further punish individuals. They are denied public housing, education, welfare benefits, job opportunity, voter rights, and often face deportation. These measures are not done for the sake of the public, who would actually benefit from a model of rehabilitation, but are purely punitive and meant to push these individuals further to the margins. With these legal barriers in place to prevent any hope of successful reentry into society, offenders often return to crime and the revolving prison doors continue to swing, while profits from their unpaid labor continue to soar.

In Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which was recently banned in New Jersey prisons, she states, “More African American adults are under correctional control today- in prison or jail, on probation or parole- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, of too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites.” Public perception of those that make up the prison population is that they are violent, amoral, and simply prone to criminality, a perception predicated on racism and specific tactics meant to convince the public that they are deserving of all manner of cruelty. But the reality is that most are jailed on non violent drug offenses, with Black and Hispanics receiving far harsher punishment than their white counterparts for the same offense.

Alexander outlines the ways in which the Nixon-era “war on drugs” was no more than a thinly veiled assault on people of color. This fact was confirmed by Nixon’s former domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, who was quoted as saying “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." The effects of these injustices are still felt today, as data, studies, reports, and court decisions on stops, arrests, charges, pleas, and sentencing reach the same disturbing conclusion: Blacks are treated far more harshly than whites. This flies in the face of the fact that Florida’s dire opioid crisis impacts the state’s white residents at a much higher rate. In fact, Eighty-three percent of deaths from opioid overdose in Florida are of whites — mirroring nationwide trends — yet drug law enforcement is heaviest on Blacks, illuminating just how deeply the racist roots of the drug war run. Last year, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch issued a report on the danger of criminalizing drug possession in the United States — with someone arrested for drug possession every 25 seconds — and found that “even though Black adults accounted for only 14 percent of those who use drugs, they represent one-third of those arrested for drug possession.”

Opioid Overdose Deaths by Race/Ethnicity

Opioid Overdose Deaths by Race/Ethnicity

Obtained from kff.org

Understanding the history and evolution of race relations in this country, the legacy of slavery, and the Jim Crow-era laws meant to further disenfranchise people of color, is integral to understanding why the upcoming Florida prison strike goes to the very heart of the continued fight for civil rights in this country. Inmates are laying down their tools and refusing to work in protest of the well documented abuses they suffer within the prison walls. An investigative report by the Miami Herald entitled Cruel and Unusual found many disturbing accounts of neglect, rape, and torture, most of which went ignored by Governor Rick Scott. Accounts detail such atrocities as “one inmate suffering from mental illness was locked in a scalding-hot shower for two hours until he collapsed and died. Another prisoner was gassed to death in a concrete cell while begging for medical assistance. A third allegedly tied a double knot and hanged herself while her hands were cuffed.” And while these more extreme forms of cruelty are common, there are still the regular humiliations of depriving inmates of inhabitable dorms, edible food, medical care, sanitary items, and toilet paper.

Florida’s juvenile justice system is just as bleak. A recent investigative report from the Miami Herald also revealed that guards orchestrated “fight clubs” and forced teens to assault one another for the amusement of the staffers. As a means of punishment or simply for fun, they would offer bribes in the form of snacks to encourage the brutalization of other detainees. The practice, called “honey bunning,” lead to broken jaws, smashed eye sockets, broken noses, and the death of 17-year-old Elord Revolte. The teenager was attacked by a dozen other inmates at the instigation of an officer. And though the beating was caught on camera, no one was charged with his death due to the subpar quality of the recording. However, his death spurred an exhaustive investigation into Florida’s juvenile justice system and its culture of pervasive and unchecked violence. It showed that at least 12 other youth detainees have died in suspicious circumstances while under Florida care in recent years.

Elorde Revolte, 17

Elorde Revolte, 17

Miami Herald

In a statement released online, organizers wrote, "It’s time we reverse the psychology and STAND together. The way to strike back is not with violence as this is what they want! If we show them violence they will have a legitimate excuse to use brute force against us and explain to the public that they had to use brute force in order to contain the situation. However, their weakness is their wallet." And indeed their wallet would be affected by the strike, as the prison industry makes a whopping $2 billion annually off unpaid prison labor. Their statement goes on to say, “Our goal is to make the Governor realize that it will cost the state of Florida millions of dollars daily to contract outside companies to come and cook, clean, and handle the maintenance,” the manifesto explains. “This will cause a total BREAK DOWN.”

Monday’s scheduled protest are a culmination of efforts by inmates, their families, and organizations across the country. As an homage to Dr. King’s legacy of civil disobedience, the lay down will be a peaceful protest that they hope will eclipse that of 2016's massive, IWOC-organized strike September 9, 2016, which commemorated the anniversary of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison riots in New York. They are asking that nonprisoners who would like to show support do so by donating to the cause and attending solidarity rallies across the state from 1 to 3 p.m. on Monday. For those not in Florida, there are still many ways to get involved. One of the major ways to help is by donating to local organizations fighting for restorative justice models and inmate rights. You can also support the effort to end voter disenfranchisement and restore the right to vote to over 1.5 million previously incarcerated citizens by supporting the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and signing the petition.

What will it take for us those of us outside of prison walls to join the fight? What will it take for us to realize that the nature of the criminal justice system is not to prevent crime or rehabilitate those who have violated laws, but its primary concern is with punishment, exploitation, and control of Black and brown bodies. At the core of these grievances is merely a plea for basic human dignity, to which we are all entitled. And how long before we recognize the obvious- that we are all sinners, have all been guilty of breaking the law at some point in our lives. What has spared us from the fate of those whom society has labeled as criminals and cast aside has been some combination of luck, happenstance, or privilege. Even as laws are passed across the country to legalize marijuana, there are people serving life sentences for first time drug offenses. And as the cultural terrain shifts back to a time where overt bigotry, violence, and racism are not only tolerated but celebrated by those in office, how long before the rights we enjoy and our very existence is criminalized? In the fight for the rights of the incarcerated, the life we save may be our own.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot