This is a call
to end slavery
in america
Slavery is alive and well
in the prison system,
but by the end of this year,
it won’t be anymore.

national prison strike
september 2016

This is a call
to end slavery
in america
Slavery is alive and well
in the prison system,
but by the end of this year,
it won’t be anymore.

national prison strike
september 2016

Find more information, updates
and organizing materials and
opportunities at the following
websites:
SupportPrisonerResistance.net
FreeAlabamaMovement.com
IWOC.noblogs.org

In one voice,

rising from the cells of long term
solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell
blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the
United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.
On September 9th of 1971 prisoners took over and shut
down Attica, New York State’s most notorious prison.
On September 9th of 2016, we will begin an action to
shut down prisons all across this country. We will not
only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it
ourselves by ceasing to be slaves.
In the 1970s the US prison system was crumbling. In
Walpole, San Quentin, Soledad, Angola and many
other prisons, people were standing up, fighting and
taking ownership of their lives and bodies back from
the plantation prisons. For the last six years we have
remembered and renewed that struggle. In the interim,
the prisoner population has ballooned and technologies

Find more information, updates
and organizing materials and
opportunities at the following
websites:
SupportPrisonerResistance.net
FreeAlabamaMovement.com
IWOC.noblogs.org

In one voice,

rising from the cells of long term
solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell
blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the
United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.
On September 9th of 1971 prisoners took over and shut
down Attica, New York State’s most notorious prison.
On September 9th of 2016, we will begin an action to
shut down prisons all across this country. We will not
only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it
ourselves by ceasing to be slaves.
In the 1970s the US prison system was crumbling. In
Walpole, San Quentin, Soledad, Angola and many
other prisons, people were standing up, fighting and
taking ownership of their lives and bodies back from
the plantation prisons. For the last six years we have
remembered and renewed that struggle. In the interim,
the prisoner population has ballooned and technologies

of control and confinement have developed into the most
sophisticated and repressive in world history. The prisons
have become more dependent on slavery and torture to
maintain their stability.
Prisoners are forced to work for little or no pay. That
is slavery. The 13th amendment to the US constitution
maintains a legal exception for continued slavery in US
prisons. It states “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.” Overseers watch over our every move, and if we
do not perform our appointed tasks to their liking, we
are punished. They may have replaced the whip with
pepper spray, but many of the other torments remain:
isolation, restraint positions, stripping off our clothes and
investigating our bodies as though we are animals.
Slavery is alive and well in the prison system, but by the
end of this year, it won’t be anymore. This is a call to end
slavery in America. This call goes directly to the slaves
themselves. We are not making demands or requests of
our captors, we are calling ourselves to action. To every
prisoner in every state and federal institution across this
land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops

Prison impacts everyone. when we stand
up and refuse on September 9th, 2016,
we need to know our friends, families
and allies on the outside will have our
backs. This spring and summer will be
seasons of organizing, of spreading
the word, building the networks of
solidarity and showing that we’re
serious and what we’re capable of.
Step up, stand up, and join us.
Against prison slavery.
For liberation of all.

of control and confinement have developed into the most
sophisticated and repressive in world history. The prisons
have become more dependent on slavery and torture to
maintain their stability.
Prisoners are forced to work for little or no pay. That
is slavery. The 13th amendment to the US constitution
maintains a legal exception for continued slavery in US
prisons. It states “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.” Overseers watch over our every move, and if we
do not perform our appointed tasks to their liking, we
are punished. They may have replaced the whip with
pepper spray, but many of the other torments remain:
isolation, restraint positions, stripping off our clothes and
investigating our bodies as though we are animals.
Slavery is alive and well in the prison system, but by the
end of this year, it won’t be anymore. This is a call to end
slavery in America. This call goes directly to the slaves
themselves. We are not making demands or requests of
our captors, we are calling ourselves to action. To every
prisoner in every state and federal institution across this
land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops

Prison impacts everyone. when we stand
up and refuse on September 9th, 2016,
we need to know our friends, families
and allies on the outside will have our
backs. This spring and summer will be
seasons of organizing, of spreading
the word, building the networks of
solidarity and showing that we’re
serious and what we’re capable of.
Step up, stand up, and join us.
Against prison slavery.
For liberation of all.

have drawn long overdue attention to—but also under the
threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations,
shackled and forced to work.
Our protest against prison slavery is a protest against the
school to prison pipeline, a protest against police terror,
a protest against post-release controls. When we abolish
slavery, they’ll lose much of their incentive to lock up our
children, they’ll stop building traps to pull back those
who they’ve released. When we remove the economic
motive and grease of our forced labor from the US
prison system, the entire structure of courts and police,
of control and slave-catching must shift to accommodate
us as humans, rather than slaves.

rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease
reproducing the institutions of your confinement.
This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage
to end prison slavery, starting on September 9th, 2016.
They cannot run these facilities without us.
Non-violent protests, work stoppages, hunger strikes and
other refusals to participate in prison routines and needs
have increased in recent years. The 2010 Georgia prison
strike, the massive rolling California hunger strikes, the
Free Alabama Movement’s 2014 work stoppage, have
gathered the most attention, but they are far from the
only demonstrations of prisoner power. Large, sometimes
effective hunger strikes have broken out at Ohio State
Penitentiary, at Menard Correctional in Illinois, at
Red Onion in Virginia as well as many other prisons.
The burgeoning resistance movement is diverse and
interconnected, including immigrant detention centers,
women’s prisons and juvenile facilities. Last fall, women
prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California joined a
hunger strike initiated by women held in immigrant
detention centers in California, Colorado and Texas.
Prisoners all across the country regularly engage in

have drawn long overdue attention to—but also under the
threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations,
shackled and forced to work.
Our protest against prison slavery is a protest against the
school to prison pipeline, a protest against police terror,
a protest against post-release controls. When we abolish
slavery, they’ll lose much of their incentive to lock up our
children, they’ll stop building traps to pull back those
who they’ve released. When we remove the economic
motive and grease of our forced labor from the US
prison system, the entire structure of courts and police,
of control and slave-catching must shift to accommodate
us as humans, rather than slaves.

rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease
reproducing the institutions of your confinement.
This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage
to end prison slavery, starting on September 9th, 2016.
They cannot run these facilities without us.
Non-violent protests, work stoppages, hunger strikes and
other refusals to participate in prison routines and needs
have increased in recent years. The 2010 Georgia prison
strike, the massive rolling California hunger strikes, the
Free Alabama Movement’s 2014 work stoppage, have
gathered the most attention, but they are far from the
only demonstrations of prisoner power. Large, sometimes
effective hunger strikes have broken out at Ohio State
Penitentiary, at Menard Correctional in Illinois, at
Red Onion in Virginia as well as many other prisons.
The burgeoning resistance movement is diverse and
interconnected, including immigrant detention centers,
women’s prisons and juvenile facilities. Last fall, women
prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California joined a
hunger strike initiated by women held in immigrant
detention centers in California, Colorado and Texas.
Prisoners all across the country regularly engage in

myriad demonstrations of power on the inside. They
have most often done so with convict solidarity, building
coalitions across race lines and gang lines to confront the
common oppressor.
Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are
returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope
to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build
them into a single tidal shift that the American prison
system cannot ignore or withstand. We hope to end
prison slavery by making it impossible, by refusing to be
slaves any longer.
To achieve this goal, we need support from people on

the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment,
a place of control and confinement where repression is
built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture
and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they
come down on us, and the only protection we have is
solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether
in private or state-run facilities is a scheme where slave
catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our
lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations
on the inside are a tool used to control our families and
communities on the outside. Certain Americans live
every day under not only the threat of extra-judicial
execution—as protests surrounding the deaths of Mike
Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and so many others

Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are
returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope
to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build
them into a single tidal shift that the American prison
system cannot ignore or withstand.
myriad demonstrations of power on the inside. They
have most often done so with convict solidarity, building
coalitions across race lines and gang lines to confront the
common oppressor.
Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are
returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope
to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build
them into a single tidal shift that the American prison
system cannot ignore or withstand. We hope to end
prison slavery by making it impossible, by refusing to be
slaves any longer.
To achieve this goal, we need support from people on

the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment,
a place of control and confinement where repression is
built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture
and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they
come down on us, and the only protection we have is
solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether
in private or state-run facilities is a scheme where slave
catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our
lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations
on the inside are a tool used to control our families and
communities on the outside. Certain Americans live
every day under not only the threat of extra-judicial
execution—as protests surrounding the deaths of Mike
Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and so many others

Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are
returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope
to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build
them into a single tidal shift that the American prison
system cannot ignore or withstand.