JW! Media Post

JW! Media Post is dedicated to presenting news and other media that focus on the prison industrial complex, particularly in the United States of America. JW! Media Post began as a media outreach tool for the former Wahington state based social justice non-profit organization Justice Works! JW!MP continues its mission as an offshoot of PepperSpray Media

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - We continue our interview with an Alabama prisoner about the end of a 10-day strike to protest severe overcrowding, poor living conditions and the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery and servitude "except as a punishment for crime," thus sanctioning the legality of forced, unpaid prison labor. We speak with Kinetik Justice, who joins us by phone from solitary confinement in Holman Correctional Facility and is co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement and one of the organizers of the strike, and with Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder and national president of The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS), a faith-based organization focusing on criminal justice reform and rehabilitation of repeat offenders.

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - We go behind bars to get an update on the end of a 10-day strike by Alabama prisoners to protest severe overcrowding, poor living conditions and the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery and servitude “except as a punishment for crime,” thus sanctioning the legality of forced, unpaid prison labor. "These strikes are our methods of challenging mass incarceration, as we understand the prison system is a continuation of the slave system, which is an economic system," says Kinetik Justice, who joins us by phone from solitary confinement in Holman Correctional Facility. He is co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement and one of the organizers of the strike. He says organizers tried petitioning their conditions via the courts and lawmakers, but when they were unsuccessful, "we understood our incarceration was pretty much about our labor and the money that was being generated from the prison system, therefore we began organizing around our labor and used it as a means and a method to bring about reform in the Alabama prison system."

[jwmediapost]

Details of the murder of George Jackson At San Quentin Prison in 1971

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The prisoners filling the cells of New York's Attica prison in 1971 faced inhumane conditions. They earned 56 cents per day for manual labor in searing workshops, were only allowed one bar of soap a month and could only shower once every two weeks. They were not allowed to read what they wanted to read and there was no due process in parole hearings. The prison population was largely black and Hispanic, controlled by an all-white guard staff. After years of agitation by civil rights activists and the black power movement, the authorities across America were beginning to push back. When tempers reached a boiling point on September 9, the prisoners erupted in a full-fledged rebellion, taking over the prison and holding it for four days, along with several guards who had been taken hostage. But when the negotiations broke down over the point of amnesty for violence conducted during the take-over of the complex, the mood in and outside the prison soured. By the time state troopers and police forces had retaken Attica by force on the morning of September 13, ten hostages and twenty-nine inmates had died. In this video produced by The Nation's Frank Reynolds and Liliana Segura, lawyer Elizabeth FInk, former national guardsman Tad Crawford and former Attica prisoners Carlos Roche and Joseph "Jazz" Hayden recount what happened during those days forty years ago, and the repercussions still being felt from the uprising. For more videos, visit TheNation.com

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org - Over four decades after the infamous Attica prison uprising, we look at the savage conditions inside the New York facility where three guards nearly beat a prisoner to death in 2011. The guards were charged for the attack, but just before the trial was to begin, they all have pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and will not serve jail time. This marks the first time a prison guard in New York has been criminally charged with a nonsexual assault of a prisoner, and it's also the first time in state history a guard has pleaded guilty to committing an unauthorized violent act against a prisoner while on duty. More than 2,200 men are walled inside Attica, and reports of guards using force against them are up 25 percent in the last four years. The maximum security prison has few security cameras, and prosecutors in the case say this has let guards and prisoners get away with violence. Critics have called for the prison's closure. We speak to reporter Tom Robbins of The Marshall Project, whose investigation of the guards' case was published in collaboration with The New York Times; and former Attica prisoner Antonio Yarbough, who served 20 years for a triple murder but was exonerated last year.

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - We speak with Chase Strangio, lawyer for imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, about the hunger strike she launched Friday to protest her prison conditions. In a statement, Manning said she would only consume water and medication until she’s provided "minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity." She’s demanding a written promise from the Army that she will receive medically prescribed recommendations for her gender dysphoria. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender identity. Strangio is a staff attorney at the ACLU who represents Chelsea Manning in a lawsuit against the Department of Defense.

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http://democracynow.org  - In an exclusive interview, we speak with a woman held for nine months with her four-year-old daughter at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania as they seek asylum from El Salvador. She describes how she won their release only after she bowed to pressure to break her hunger strike and eat an apple. Democracy Now! correspondent Renée Feltz filed this report.

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - We continue our look at what the ACLU calls an illegal debtors’ prison in Arkansas by speaking with a former resident who wrote a check for $1.07 for a loaf of bread. She describes how after her check bounced, her debt ballooned with fees and fines to nearly $400, and police officers twice came to her job to arrest her. Since then, she has been caught up in Sherwood’s Hot Checks Department. We are also joined by lawyer Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who says the woman’s experience is common.

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - A federal judge has denied a request from the former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal for life-saving medication that could cure his hepatitis C. Last year, Mumia sued to receive an antiviral treatment for hepatitis C after he was placed in critical condition, and officials said he was was not sick enough to be eligible. The medication has about a 95 percent cure rate. But it costs the state about $55,000 for a 12-week course of the drug. Even as the judge denied Mumia’s motion, he also found that Pennsylvania’s hepatitis C protocol for inmates fails to meet constitutional standards and could prolong suffering. We hear reaction from Mumia Abu-Jamal and speak with his lawyer, Bob Boyle, and correspondent Renée Feltz.

[jwmediapost]

http://democracynow.org  - A woman in Sherwood, Arkansas, just spent 35 days in a county jail after she accidentally bounced a $29 check five years ago. Nikki Petree was sentenced to jail last month by a judge accused of running a debtors’ prison. She had already been arrested at least seven times over the bounced check and paid at least $600 in court fines. Her release comes as the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the ACLU and an international law firm have filed a lawsuit to challenge the modern-day debtors’ prison in Sherwood. We speak with Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who says Sherwood jails people in violation of a long-standing law that forbids the incarceration of people for their failure to pay debts.

[jwmediapost]

Investigative journalist Will Potter is the only reporter who has been inside a Communications Management Unit, or CMU, within a US prison. These units were opened secretly, and radically alter how prisoners are treated — even preventing them from hugging their children. Potter, a TED Fellow, shows us who is imprisoned here, and how the government is trying to keep them hidden. "The message was clear," he says. "Don’t talk about this place." Find sources for this talk at willpotter.com/cmu

[jwmediapost]

A private prison in Mississippi, described as a 'horror show,' has been shut down after years of terrible living conditions, violence and corruption. Jimmy Dore breaks it down. Read more here ▶ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/us/... Subscribe Here ▶ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...

[fuckyeahiww]

Support the Free Alabama Movement and the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee!

[blmpdx]

Street blockade in response to a call for a National Prisoner Strike beginning September 9th (the anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in 1971). The National Prisoner Strike is led and organized by prisoners in states across America who will be participating in work stoppages and hunger strikes to demand an end to inhumane and exploitative conditions. Prisoners are often forced to work against their will and are typically paid less than 25 cents an hour to do everything from fight wildfires, make telemarketing calls, and sew McDonald’s uniforms. Organizers of the National Prisoner Strike are asking for supporters to demonstrate outside detention facilities and businesses profiting from prison labor to expose and challenge this injustice. Groups leading this effort include the Free Alabama Movement, the Free Texas Movement, IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and many others across the country.

Blockade organized by Black Lives Matter Portland, All African People’s Revolutionary Party, Showing Up for Racial Justice PDX, Marilyn Buck Abolitionist Collective, and the Portland Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines.

Learn More: http://blmpdx.tumblr.com/post/150152877687/solidarity-with-the-september-9th-national

News coverage: http://koin.com/2016/09/09/protesters-snarl-traffic-block-max-lines-in-portland/

[amncollective]

Have you heard? September 9th 2016 prisoners from all over the United States are going on strike! It is important to let your friends, family, and comrades on the inside know about whats going down any way you can get this information to them. It is important to organize prisoner solidarity noise demos outside of the nearest prison to spread awareness on the inside about the strike and to support those who are already taking action. More Info: http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-toxic-issue/struggle/national-prison-strike-on-attica-anniversary

https://antistatestl.noblogs.org/files/2016/07/sept9A.pdf

https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/

https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/

The United States has the largest prison population in human history.

Incarceration does not cut down on crime.

Prisoners work for less than $2 a day for private corporations and the US Government.

Prisoners in Missouri not only have to pay for basic necessities (razors, food, etc) but they are charged taxes on it

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000

Prisons are nothing more than a form of social control. A warehouse for those who refuse to function as cogs in the US death machine, for those who are a surplus population in times of mass unemployment, for those otherized by white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, for slaves in the modern day US plantations.

[fuckyeahiww]

A worker is a worker, whether in prison or not, and a group of workers is a union, whether recognized by the state or not. Incarcerated workers are some of the most exploited in the United States. We are doing everything we can do to support them, and call on all people of conscience in this country to join this movement to end the New Jim Crow and abolish the prison industrial complex

Jim Faulkner, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee member (via fuckyeahiww)

[jwmediapost]

Posts about Kinetic Justice Amun written by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Kinetic Justice is one of the organizers of the largest prison strike in U.S. history.