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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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DATE: May
1, 2019
Mike
Lukash, Outside Member, Decarcerate Louisiana / Phone: 330-714-3464
ANGOLA
PRISONERS AND SUPPORTERS CALL FOR CHANGE
On May 8, 2019, incarcerated citizens
at Louisiana State Prison at Angola, their families, and other supporters will
mark the anniversary of a nationally-reported* prison strike and work stoppage
on that date in 2018, calling the commemoration “Mayday” to highlight the sense
that it is a distress call to everyone that believes all people have human
rights. Members of Decarcerate Louisiana admit that prison administrators have
made limited efforts to address some of the prisoners’ grievances, but little has
actually occurred to meet the demands put forward a year ago.
As a result, the members of
Decarcerate Louisiana are now renewing their demands as outlined below, while
also connecting their struggle to a larger movement for social justice by
standing in solidarity with Louisiana state teachers who have been waiting for
more than a decade to see their pay reach comparable levels with the rest of
the country. While the Louisiana Governor’s office reports that the state spent
roughly $12,000 per public school student in 2018, the Vera Institute of
Justice reported that the Louisiana Department of Corrections spent more than
twice that (at $25,310) per prisoner.
Decarcerate Louisiana, a movement
that focuses on the rights of prisoners and their families, originated in
Angola, but has since spread to other institutions in the state. Members are
pledged to continue to make public their concerns related to, among other
things, the use of incarcerated citizens as slaves, which is currently
sanctioned by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Decarcerate
Louisiana supporters point out that forcing prisoners to work for as little as
four cents per hour under the threat of severe punishment, including solitary
confinement, is slavery pure and simple and should be abolished completely.
Movements calling for the
abandonment of this practice have risen in recent years across the nation,
supporting each other and organizing across state borders in an effort to
increase public awareness of the issues raised by the wording of the 13th
Amendment, which was ratified in 1865: “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, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.”
Many believe that this wording was
drafted the way it was in order to provide a process to develop a system so a
nation that had been widely dependent on the use of literally millions of
slaves could continue to access free labor. After the 13th Amendment became
law, convict leasing systems quickly developed and then turned into state-run
prisons. But more recently, correctional systems in America have added
privately-owned for-profit prisons, as well as the widely used practice of
making sweetheart deals between prisons and corporations that regularly use
incarcerated citizens as workers for a tiny fraction of the cost of workers
outside the walls. As if in support of this suggestion, Louisiana Department of
Corrections statistics report that seven out of ten prisoners in Louisiana are
Black.
Aside from the underfunding of
public education which has exacerbated the nationally researched
School-to-Prison Pipeline, Decarcerate Louisiana is also concerned and expects
to make future statements about the use of excessive force by prison guards,
the excessive and inappropriate use of chemical agents, the housing of mentally
ill prisoners in situations that routinely become violent and sometimes fatal,
the lack of adequate mental health services in general, the overuse of solitary
confinement for punitive reasons or no reason at all, the exorbitant cost of
the current phone system available for prisoners to remain connected to their
loved ones (which is ranked 43rd in the nation in affordability), the more than
7,000 geriatric prisoners that pose no safety problem to the public, and the
many prisoners who remain incarcerated despite their being convicted by
non-unanimous juries, a practice that is no longer legal.
As a result of these concerns, the
members of the Decarcerate Louisiana movement are reiterating their original
demands made public on May 8, 2018:
(1)
We believe that all living human beings are created equal and have
inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, regardless
of the social status.
(2)
We believe in human rights and human dignity and that government has a
fundamental obligation to protect all its citizens from slavery and human
degradation.
(3)
We are demanding a national conversation inquiring how state prison
farms across the country came to hold hundreds of thousands of people of
African descent against their will.
(4)
We are urging that local, state, and federal governments who currently
hold hundreds of thousands of African Americans on prison farms across the
country be investigated for antebellum criminality, involuntary servitude, and
slavery.
(5)
We are demanding an end to the systematic oppression and exploitation of
prisoners and their outside family and supporters for profit.
(6)
We are demanding classrooms for our education and rehabilitation, not
slavery.
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* “Louisiana Prisoners
Demand An End To ‘Modern Day Slavery,’” Bryce Covert, The Appeal, 6/8/18
* “Angola Inmates Halt Farm Work, Demand ‘Slavery’ Investigations of U.S. Prisons,” Benjamin Fearnow, Newsweek, 5/9/18
