A Message from Decarcerate Louisiana

“Greetings brothers and sisters, I am a revolutionary, social change organizer, and freedom fighter currently incarcerated behind enemy lines at the Louisiana state prison in Angola.

I want to explain to you what Decarcerate Louisiana… Decarcerate Louisiana is a human rights movement, advocating for human rights and human dignity of people inside and outside the prison system.

In order for any of us to be productive and prosper as a people, poverty must go, slavery must go, all conditions and practices, laws and policies that would deny or interfere with our higher development and growth and progress must go. Poverty level wages that make us poor, keep us in debt, make us beggars, make us desperate must go.

Laws like the 13th amendment that abolish slavery but then turn around and make an excuse to impose slavery if a person is convicted of a crime must go. We believe that federal and state constitutions that impose slavery if a person is convicted of a crime is a dirty scheme, an evil plan put forward by modern-day slave traffickers disguised as public officials and big businesses to re-enslave the 2.4 million americans currently being warehoused and forced to work on prison farms across the united states of america.

This is why we are anti-ghetto, anti-slavery, anti-oppression. If you can relate, and you can see the relationship between unjust laws and policies, crooked public officials, corporate greed, unsustainable development practices, ghettos, domestic violence and crime, and how each weaves together as a plan to segregate, marginalize, criminalize, and imprison us, you are awakened to the truth and the true state of affairs in this country. Decarcerate Louisiana is an organization for the people. Please join us in our organizing to change the laws to abolish slavery, and the jails and prisons and to tear down ghettos that serve as a pipeline to prison.

Starting on August 21 and going through September 9, we are calling on prisoners in Angola and throughout the state of Louisiana to go on hunger strike and/or refuse to go to work as slaves in the field, in the kitchen, in the various work factories on the prison farm plantation system. For the whole period from August 21 through September 9, we will conduct a hunger strike and work stoppage in solidarity with the Nationwide Prison Strike and in protest of the 13th Amendment, racist and bigoted courts of law, racist and bigoted parole boards, racist and corrupt prison guards and prison officials, overcrowding in dorms and cellblocks, inadequate medical care, inadequate food, inadequate classification, inadequate shelter, lack of educational opportunities for rehabilitation and reentry, and all the unfair, inhuman and barbaric treatment that characterizes the new system and institution of slavery.

In protest of the exploitation carried out by the corporations that contract with the state to provide us commissary, telephone services, medicine, food and drink through visitation, clubs inside the prison and rodeo twice a year, we will boycott the prison canteen, prison rodeo, and prison phone system.

To become a member or supporter of our organizing work, contact decarceratelouisiana@gmail.com, follow at facebook.com/decarceratelouisiana, or visit decarceratelouisiana.com

All power to the people.”