Protest at St. Clair prison set for February 23
February 22, 2024, 6:39 p.m.

Incarcerated organizers shut down St Clair Prison—refusing to
finance their own incarceration and exploitation of gas
chamber style executions, forced labor, and deadly abuse;
southern groups host ongoing protests in solidarity

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The prison shutdown began on February 6th and is led
by the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a local
organization of incarcerated people that in 2016 led the largest national prison shutdown in history. The St Clair prison
shutdown is the beginning of longterm efforts towards a
statewide shutdown of AL prisons. Groups from Alabama,
Tennessee, and Georgia join forces to lead ongoing
solidarity protests at St. Clair Prison.
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KNOXVILLE - Following the initial protest on February 6th, FAM Queen Team (Alabama), The Tennessee Student Solidarity Network (Tennessee), and organizations from across the Southeast have been hosting ongoing protests outside St. Clair Prison in Springville, AL, the next one scheduled again for this Friday, February 23rd at 12PM. Protestors are standing in solidarity with the prison shutdown led by incarcerated organizers with the Free Alabama Movement who are fighting a corrupt system where they are “leased” to companies as commodities by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), as well as experience cruel and deadly abuse while in custody.

Alabama prisons are the deadliest and most crowded in the country. The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is so corrupt and violent that in 2020 they got sued by the U.S. Department of Defense for violating the constitutional rights of incarcerated people against cruel and unusual punishment. ADOC is notoriously anti-Black, and frequently exploits the Habitual Offender Act to keep Black people in prison. In 2023, the parole acceptance rate for Black folks was only 4% (ACLU of Alabama). In 2023, national labor unions (USSW, RWDSU) with support of the AFL-CIO sued the state of Alabama, ADOC, the AL parole board, and private corporations, claiming that they were colluding to uphold a heinous regime of modern-day slavery that made ADOC $450M profits from forced prison labor annually. Incarcerated people are forced to labor in deadly conditions to make profits for ADOC and big corporations (including one-third of defense contractors), experiencing beatings, rape, and deadly repression if they try to refuse.

Incarcerated people in Alabama are organizing under unimaginable conditions, risking their lives for the chance to meet the following demands:

• Repeal the Habitual Offender Act
• Make sentencing guidelines retroactive
• Create mandatory parole criteria that the board must follow
• Abolish the Sentence of Life Without Parole
• End All Gas Chamber Executions

“We are here because the South has woken up and realize that the prison struggle is our fight. 575 corporations; the most evil corporations in America; the corporations who are profiting from endless wars, killing Palestinians abroad, and destroying the earth are the same corporations profiting from the exploitation of incarcerated people—from Raytheon to McDonald’s” - The Tennessee Student Solidarity Network

The Tennessee Student Solidarity Network is a youth-led organization aiming to develop working-class youth as longterm political workers.