ED MEAD: Seven prisoners were killed in one of the Carolina prison systems. And those are the prisoners that called for the national prison strike. Now last year, the call was put out by prisoners in Alabama and was pretty successful by, you know, by anybody’s standards. Before that, several years actually, I think as far back as 2010, prisoners in Georgia managed to pull off a statewide five-day prison work strike. It was crushed after after five days and none of their demands were met. Then we have the case in California that started in 2013 – a series of hunger strikes by prisoners there; the first strike and according to the Department of Corrections in California, involved 6,600 prisoners. The second strike, very close to 12,000 prisoners. And the third and final strike – and here, I have to emphasize that these were not figures put out by prisoners, these are figures put out by the California Department of Corrections to the news media.
There were 30,000 prisoners participating in a hunger strike and 2,600 refusing to go to work. So what’s happening here is there is a budding prisoners movement and so the window is open for change and this window, it might take five years, it might take 10 years, it might take 20 years, but the essence of this struggle is to eliminate slavery. Most people don’t know that the 13th amendment abolished slavery with one exception, and that is except as punishment for crime whereas the person has been duly convicted. And so we have 2.2 million slaves in the United States and they are treated as such. And actually until not too long ago, the courts held what they call the hands off doctrine, that prisoners have no rights that state is bound to respect, not too unlike the Dred Scott decision a long time ago.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What do we know about prisoners who have been organizing behind the walls across the country? What kinds of actions have been undertaken by prisoners inside by way of strikes, passive or active resistance? What’s been happening inside?
ED MEAD: Right. First of all, it’s a little premature because when prisoners often when they go on work strike, the prison administration says, “Oh, it’s a lockdown. They’re not on strike. We’ve locked them down.” And it takes a little bit of time for the word to leak out as to what’s going on in various prisons. The Guardian and the New York Times, for example, said there are 17 states in protest on strike, but that article did not include the states of Washington and California and there are prisons here and there that are protesting. So we don’t really know. We can’t get a fair number at this point.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Ed, before we run out of time, I wanted to ask you this question. In recent years, we’ve seen some bridge building between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of sentencing reform and prison reform. Although there really has been no substantive success in passing major legislation in that direction, what is your hope that Democrats and Republicans in Congress can come together to make some headway towards reform of our system?
ED MEAD: I have no hope. What’s gonna change this? It’s the same thing that changed gay marriage and the same thing as in a process of changing marijuana laws and that is an upsurge of resistance by prisoners themselves. The Congress has had over 200 years to do something about this and they haven’t. And all their talk is just that the people themselves, those who are involved have to be their own liberators, have to bring about the process of change. They can’t wait for the benevolent state to do that for them because it will never happen. It never has and never will.
BETWEEN THE LINES: The date that this prison strike, this current prison strike was launched was Aug. 21. The end date is Sept. 9. Those two dates are significant, both for the death of George Jackson who died in 1971 on that date and Attica. But tell our listeners about the significance of those two dates, if you will.
ED MEAD: George Jackson was a prison leader at San Quentin and was gunned down, was killed by a prison guards. And that set off our … well, I guess you could call it a riot at Attica prison in New York. The state suppressed that by killing 43 people just firing into the prison yard on our prisoners at the order of Gov. Rockefeller. And so those two dates are significant for prisoners.
