Georgia Prison Strike Summary

I wrote this article for Street Speech, condensing the reading I've done on the subject into a single document. It's written for a newspaper, so there's minimum editorializing.  

On the morning of Thursday Dec 9th, thousands of inmates in six prisons in Georgia refused to leave their cells or go their work assignments. This non-violent sit-down protest lasted 6 days and has been recognized as the largest prison strike in US history. The organizing effort continues to this day. According to one inmate interviewed by Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the prisoners only called off the strike because officials couldn't respond to the striker's demands while they were on strike. Officials were faced with hiring outside workers to maintain the prison, which normally depends on unpaid inmate labor to function.

Lucasville Uprising Hunger Strike

UPDATE: We'll be leaving from Columbus to attend this demonstration at about 9:15 on Saturday Jan 15th. Contact us by commenting here or emailing columbusabc@riseup.net if you'd like to come with or carpool. The demo starts at 12:45. See below for details. 


Here's an online petition you can sign right now! Here's a facebook page you can join to get more updates. See below for other ways to support the Lucasville 4. 

Dear family members, friends and supporters of the Lucasville uprising prisoners,

Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday Jan. 3 to protest their 23-hour a day lock down for nearly 18 years. These four death-sentenced prisoners have been single-celled (in solitary) in conditions of confinement significantly more severe than the conditions experienced by the approximately 125 other death-sentenced prisoners at the supermax prison, Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. They are completely isolated from any direct human contact, even during “recreation”. They are restricted from certain kinds of good ordering including gold weather items for the almost unbearably cold condtions in the cells. They are denied access to computer databases they need in order to prepare their appeals. It has been made clear to them that the outcome of their annual “security level reviews” is pretermined, as one reads, “…regardless of your behavior while confined at OSP.”

Third Solidarity Showcase Done!

We ended up raising $250 for the Mount Hope Infinity! More than I ever expected.

Thank you, thank you to those who donated.

With Insurgent Theatre now matching funds, that makes the total amount $500!

Holy fuck, $500!

December Solidarity Showcase

Hey! It's another variety show fundraiser! This time we're raising money for the Mount Hope Infinity.

Saturday, December 18th, 8PM at Kafe Kerouac (2250 North High Street). Special guest speakers, Andy Mykall and Gus Strange will be here representing the Mount Hope defendants!

FOIA Request Workshop

On Nov 10th, we held a workshop on how to file Freedom of Information Act requests. Here's the information from the handout we created for the workshop.

Introduction-FOIA?

The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) mandates that people have a right to information that the federal government has collected or stored. Federal agencies are subject to FOIA, while Congress and the courts are not. FOIA requests are used to get copies of information held by executive agencies, like any of the various departments (Dept. of Justice, Dept. of Agriculture, Dept. of Defense, Dept. of Energy, etc.) and agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency, for example) that do the work of the executive branch of the federal government. There are several exemptions to FOIA requests – classified

CONSPIRATORS ZINE

This is a list of some instances where the government has tried (often successfully) to gain convictions, disrupt organizations, and persecute people through the use of conspiracy charges and other dirty tricks.

COPY AND DISTRIBUTE FREELY!

Security Culture Puppet Show.

Here's the script for the puppet show we performed at our workshop back on September 28th. It's a light and entertaining introduction to the basics of security culture, with lots of stupid sock-based puns.

If you like it, feel free to make your own performance of it!

SECURITY CULTURE: An Interactive Sock Puppet Farce