The prison strike has launched! Around the country, RAM chapters hosted and participated in events to show solidarity with people incarcerated, and those at the mercy of ICE.
In the lead-up to the prison strike, groups in Chicago, New Haven, the Inland Empire, and New York sent letters to people in prison to let them know about the strike. At least 2 new facilities joined the nationwide prison strike as a result.
Groups in Chicago, Corona, and Brooklyn had noise demonstrations at local prisons to show outside support, and to communicate to people inside that the strike is happening.
In recognition of the continued struggle against white supremacy, Brooklyn comrades burned an effigy of white supremacist enemies (a cop, a judge, and a businessman/politician) for Nat Turner Day.
RAM-NYC is sending food support to a striking facility.
Elm City RAM participated in the hunger strike outside the Hartford federal courthouse to demand that Salma Sikandar, a Bangladeshi mother and 19-year resident of New Haven, be granted stay of deportation. The stay was granted the next day.
As we get word that multiple facilities are participating in the strike, from ICE detention centers to state prisons to jails, and that many already face repression, we pledge to continue actions in solidarity with strikers. We recognize the extreme conditions faced by those willing to stand up and fight while at the mercy of sadistic institutions. We will see this fight through alongside the prison rebels and use all our resources to take action outside the walls.
However, as Elm City RAM says, “the fight for justice is not over until the state apparatus is destroyed.”
We support the demands of the strikers and as the struggle against the carceral state and white supremacist system rages on, we fight for total abolition: of the police, the prisons, detention facilities, court rooms, borders, and the state.
None are free until all are free!
All power to the prison strikers!
August 2018