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Vol. 76/No. 22      June 4, 2012

 
Solidarity with prisoners’ struggles!
(editorial)
 

The Militant urges solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike against barbaric conditions at Virginia’s super-max Red Onion State Prison.

These workers behind bars fighting against solitary confinement and abusive treatment were inspired by similar struggles from California to Israel, and their battle will inspire others.

The United States leads the world in incarceration rates and the use of solitary—a form of psychological torture. There are more inmates in solitary confinement in California alone than in any other country on the face of the earth.

The conditions—isolation, tiny cells, restrictions on showers and exercise, limitations on mail, visits, books and other contact with the outside world—are methods used to dehumanize, degrade and demoralize, as is the entire organization of prisons under capitalism. The increasing brutality workers behind bars confront on a daily basis is but a reflection in microcosm of class relations under capitalism as a whole.

The explosion of incarcerations over the last couple of decades, with vastly disproportionate numbers from the Black nationality, is part and parcel of the propertied rulers’ stepped-up assaults on our wages, working conditions, safety and rights.

In the eyes of the rulers the working class is a criminal class. They make special targets of those of us who face national oppression, anti-immigrant scapegoating or who stand up and fight the bosses or their oppressive system in some way.

Among them are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González and Fernando González, five exemplary Cuban working-class fighters framed up and imprisoned by the U.S. government, and Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar López Rivera, one of the longest-held political prisoners in the world.

Militant workers should embrace the fight for dignity by prisoners today as part of the growing resistance to the capitalists’ deepening assault on our class.

Recent prison fights have set an example in breaking down racial and ethnic divisions among the working class that are fostered by the propertied rulers—which they orchestrate in the most corrupt and degrading manner behind bars.

When the toiling majority finally conquers political power in the United States, we will follow the example of the great revolutions on whose shoulders we’ll stand and batter down the doors to all their prisons and set our brothers and sisters free.
 
 
Related articles:
Prisoners in Va. conduct hunger strike against abuses, solitary
Palestinian political prisoners end hunger strike  
 
 
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