Georgia Prisons

In December 2010, prisoners across the state of Georgia went on strike to protest conditions. Rather than address the prisoners’ concerns of abusive conditions, the state responded with repressive force, beating prisoners to the point where at least one prisoner went into a coma. Since then, 37 prisoners have spent the last 18 months in solitary confinement, a form of torture, in response to their political activities. On 11 June 2012, some of those prisoners began a hunger strike in response to the continued attempts to repress them. More recently, prisoners in other facilities in Georgia have joined the hunger strike.

MIM(Prisons) stands in solidarity with these comrades that are combating the abuse faced by Georgia prisoners, being beaten and thrown in solitary confinement. State employees have told these comrades that they are going to die of hunger under their watch. Oppressed people inside and outside prison need to come together to defend themselves from these state sanctioned murders and abuse.

A popular story in the bourgeois press this week gave an interesting side-by-side comparison of the lumpen in the United $tates to the Third World proletariat. The story came on the heels of new repressive practices targeting Latinos in the state of Georgia with immigration laws beginning July 1 of this year. For fear of deportation and imprisonment, both of which restrict their ability to work, migrant labor crews made up of Mexicans and Guatemalans are steering clear of Georgia. As a result fruit is rotting in the fields.(1) The story exposes the extreme parasitism of this country that cannot even harvest its own food. Amerikans are so rich and spoiled that the labor market cannot fill jobs paying above minimum wage if the work is too hard. If the labor market were free and open the jobs would fill up instantly, but Amerikans oppose this vehemently as they cannot maintain exploiter-level incomes without closed borders. In these times of economic crisis many of these parasites would have you believe that they are “struggling to put food on the table.” As they let food literally rot in the fields, we see that just is not true.

To solve the relative labor shortage, the governor of Georgia turned to the population that sits somewhere between the foreign-born and the Amerikan in terms of citizenship rights – prisoners and the formerly incarcerated. Generally defined as the permanently unemployed, excluded from what Marxism calls the “relations of production,” the lumpen class includes most prisoners by definition. There is a degree of continuity between the lumpen on the street and the imprisoned lumpen, but many get out of prison to join the petty bourgeois class that dominates this country.

One article cites the Georgia Department of Corrections as claiming that unemployment for all probationers in the state is only 15%, but the Governor’s office reports that it is 25%.(2) While much higher than the overall rate of 10% in Georgia, this is still lower than most estimates for young Black male unemployment, and therefore suspiciously low considering that most job applications in the United $tates require you to declare whether you have been imprisoned or convicted of a felony, and this information is used against the applicant. Just looking at the 25% number might suggest that 75% of Georgia probationers have a greater continuity with the (employed) petty bourgeoisie than with a lumpen underclass. Yet recidivism rates in this country over 50% indicate that many of the alleged 75% with jobs will not be staying in the workforce for long. The majority of parolees will not remain in the workforce, but will cycle in and out of jail, prison, rehab, hustling and short-term employment.

While many former prisoners of the United $tates will never live the Amerikan dream, their ideology reflects that culture more than that of the working people of the world. One farmer in Georgia did a side-by-side comparison with a crew of probationers and a crew of migrant laborers and the migrants picked almost 6 times as many cucumbers.(1) Apparently the probationers didn’t even bring gloves, and we assume most had no experience with this type of work, so there was certainly room for improvement. But the whole crew didn’t even last a full day before quitting. The reports are vague about how many probationers actually lasted more than one day of work, but it was evidently a minority in this small sample.

In response to recruitment efforts for these jobs among U.$. citizens, one Black womyn in Georgia was reported to say, “The only people that would even think about doing that are people who have nothing else left… An educated black person does not have time for that. They didn’t go to school to work on a farm, and they’re not going to do it.”(3) We call those “who have nothing else left” the proletariat, and those who “[don’t] have time [for hard work]” a parasitic class living off the labor of the proletariat. By virtue of living in the United $tates alone, even the lumpen have access to many resources through the highly developed infrastructure in this country: welfare programs, religious and charity organizations, and just living off of the excess and waste of the general population. Overall they are not driven to take the hardest jobs, and U.$. capitalists must look to the Third World for labor, even for production that is tied to U.$. soil and therefore pays exploiter-level wages. (Legally the jobs start at the minimum wage of $7.25, while piecework incentives allow the fastest pickers to make $20 an hour at one cucumber farm.(1) Of course, when only migrants without papers are working and the press isn’t around it is common for agricultural work to pay well below the legal minimum wage.)

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), in a country where a professor or shop owner was far poorer than the unemployed Amerikan, the Chinese had to actively combat the type of thinking epitomized in the petty-bourgeois womyn quoted above. Millions of petty-bourgeois Chinese went to the countryside to work and be re-educated. Many youth went happily, excited about building a new China, while many cried the whole time and went on to write books about it to explain to Amerikans why the GPCR was so horrible.

There are righteous reasons why a population of unemployed Blacks would be resistant to working at hard, lower-paying jobs while Amerikans around them are making much more for sitting around in air conditioning pushing paper, and we don’t expect that to change under capitalism. That is why all U.$ citizens will require re-education to become productive members of society, from the poorest lumpen who despises working for the white man to the richest CEO whose income could support a large village.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) over the past 5 years.

It started with the food (menu). In 2006, the GDC made a drastic change in the menu, downsizing the meals and eliminating all salt in the name of health. They even put a memo up saying “this is a healthy change meant to promote health.” This lasted a week, before inmates “bucked” causing them to change it back. So these guys (GDC) went back to the think tank to come up with a better way to get over on us. Well, they succeeded. What they did was, instead of changing the menu all at once, they decided to do it little by little. Take boiled eggs out this month, egg salad 3 months later, tuna goes in June, no more soy milk for vegans in August, less chicken next year. They did this to avoid disruption from us. They took a page out of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Got us acting like the animals walking around saying “didn’t we use to have that”, “I thought the menu said ‘this’ one time.” To me, this “take a little here” strategy has become one of their favorites.

It doesn’t stop there, Georgia inmates, got to be the sorriest group of guys in history. I’m a part of it, sad to say. It’s unbelievable how submissive these guys are. They go for anything.

Back in 2006, according to Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) laundry was ordained to be washed 6 days per week. Then a drought hit Georgia for a month. So they downsized laundry cleaning to 3 days. That was 4 years ago - so tell me why laundry only goes out 3 days a week still? The drought been over. Hell, there was a flood or two since them. Nobody cares.

In 2008, all the wardens in every prison in GA went down to their dorms to inform inmates that everything on Friday will be shut down and will be considered a part of the weekend. I have no idea how they swung that one by without a riot. No mail on Friday, no lunch, no law library, no medical, no counseling, no programs, etc. Rumor is they will soon be giving inmates in GA 2 meals a day everyday. No uprisings.

Because so many prisoners used adapters to charge cell phones, the GDC banned us from buying them in almost every prison. No protests.

There once was a time when medical visits were free. But then they started charging $5 per visit. Earlier this year they took it a step further and started charging us for the visit and medicine. So if I went there for a cold it would cost me $5 to walk in the door, $5 for the medicine, and another $5 for the nasal spray. We just keep taking it in the ass.

In the last 3 years, 5 prisons (1800 inmates each) shut down. So the GDC, instead of releasing folks, chose to add multiple annex (open dorm) buildings to each prison. When overcrowding still persists they started putting triple bunks in all cell houses. The prison I’m at has 3 men per room in all cell houses bottom range. Top ranges have 2 men. But it won’t be long before they triple up every dorm. What this is doing, besides humiliating us, is putting serious strain on the existing facilities, such as medical.

When this prison was built, it had an inmate capacity of 800. Well today you have over 2000. All that has changed has been the amount of inmates. Instead of medical staff having to care for 800 they now have to care for 2000. Same size staff, same size rooms. Nothing was enlarged to compensate for this population boom. The law library has enough computers for 800 men. Today we don’t have time to do legal work on the computer because we have 4 computers for 2000 men. Visitation area was designed for 800 men. Today, because of the population, its regular for an officer to come up to you and your family and say “you have to go so others can come in.” It wouldn’t matter if your folks flew in from France they will force your visitor to leave because they don’t have enough space. No riots.

In GA, it costs taxpayers $1.1 billion a year to support this system. Next year the feds will not give the GDC $85 million that they thought they would get. So it will get ugly in Georgia. There’s no telling what they might do next. Georgia prisoners will continue to submit. Will continue to go to work (prisoners in GA earn $0 in wages) for free, just to have something to do. Next year, these pigs will be understaffed with this 85 million being withheld. They already are scrambling for ways to earn money. We need to sacrifice all our cares for one month and not work, that would break their back. It would be then that they really realize where the power lies. But that day might not come in GA, cause we are the prisoners with no nuts.

Prisons in Georgia cut down trees, scoop waste from pipes, make clothes, cook food, repair equipment, do plumbing, fight fires, till the land, teach school, make boots, and many other things. Yet we don’t get any benefits, workers comp, or pay, whatsoever. Any labor, whatever the work, is done for free. Wages don’t exist in the Georgia Department of Corrections. The only way you can earn money is by working the last 6 months of your sentence in a halfway house or pre-release center.

Most of the public has no objections to Georgia prisoners not being paid. They support laws that make it harder for us to succeed or enjoy life. They want us to stay in prison forever. When we get out they don’t want us to be able to get a good job or live anywhere near them.

Politicians talk about rehabilitation but that ain’t what they really want. They want only to exploit others for gain and retain power. This system we are under doesn’t care about the people, they only pretend to care.