Incarcerated organizers in third month of Alabama prison shutdown

Activists march in solidarity with incarcerated organizers outside of St. Clair prison. – Photo: Birmingham Democratic Socialists of America Prisoners in Alabama have been organizing for years against a prison system that upholds modern day slavery by Natalia Marques On March 30, for the eighth week in a row, a group of activists gathered outside of St. Clair Correctional Facility, near Birmingham, Alabama, to show solidarity with incarcerated organizers, who have been refusing to engage in prison labor since Feb. 6. Organizers want to sustain the shutdown, which entails a full stoppage of all labor inside the prisons that prisoners are forced to do, for at least 90 days. The organizers, led by the Free Alabama Movement, are living under the boot of the most violent state prison system in the United States – a nation known for having the largest prison population in the world and regularly employing torture and archaic methods of execution against its prisoners. The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has become notorious for running a regime of violence against prisoners, while employing those same prisoners in a system of legalized slavery. Incarcerated organizers in Alabama claim that ADOC keeps parole rates artificially low in order...