#08.27.16

08.27.2016

Paget Brewster arrives at the Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters Celebrity Benefit 2016  - (x)

08.27.2016

08.27.2016

08.27.2016

This is a rally and march to support the Sept. 9th Prison Workers Strike! We plan to take to the streets to show our solidarity with all prisoners taking action on September 9th. We'll meet up at the Ohio Statehouse, where we'll hear live from prisoners on the inside about why support from us on the outside is so important for the success and safety of prisoners during the strike. Then, we'll march to the Franklin County Jail, and from there to the state headquarters of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC), where we will stage a mass call-in to express our unwavering support for the September 9th strike and those organizing it. In the past several years, thousands of convicts across the country have already been putting their lives on the line to end prison slavery by leading work stoppages and hunger strikes inside of their institutions. Meanwhile, most Americans are blissfully unaware that prison laborers produce food, furniture, pharmaceuticals, lingerie, ships, baby formula, uniforms, and military aircraft for free or for pennies per hour. The phenomenon referred to as "mass incarceration" is not a mistake or accident produced by a misguided criminal justice system, but rather a relatively conscious injection of capital into the infrastructure of forced labor as a means of production, as well as a relatively conscious commodification of the bodies of disproportionately black and brown convicts. This isn't just irresponsible opportunism on behalf of corrections corporations and state corrections departments, but a literal reconstruction of the material conditions of a slave: someone who has experienced a social death, who produces wealth for their owner (through forced labor), and whose body is, in turn, worth money to their owner's class (to trade or sell). Meanwhile, as per Michelle Alexander's recent book "the new jim crow," some forty million ex-cons find themselves struggling to survive without hope for economic advancement or even a reasonable chance of subsistence in a job market that discriminates heavily against felons, just like in the Jim Crow South. For more information about nationwide prisoner resistance: https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/