Alabama starving prisoners to end strike.

Editor’s note: It’s that time of year when you’re bombarded by fundraising demands (“your donation will help us pursue smart, fearless journalism that’s more important than its ever been!”). So, apologies. But if you could help us out with a paid sub, we would really appreciate it. We’re making this post free to get the word out about the strike.

Last Monday, men in nearly every Alabama prison walked out of laundry rooms, kitchens and dropped the tools for making cheap license plates. They’re refusing to work (without being paid) until the state addresses conditions in the facilities and ends draconian sentencing. Alabama has one of the toughest “three-strikes” laws in the country, with any class A felony triggering life without parole.

To really drive the point home, life without parole sentences are notated as lasting until the year 9999 on inmates’ records. The strikers are demanding the retroactive repeal of the habitual offender sentences. On the other end, the state’s parole board has drastically shrunk the number of pardons and commutations and inmates are demanding more transparency on parole decisions.

Gov. Kay Ivey called these demands “unwelcome and unreasonable.”

From day one of the strike, the guards cut the food rations to two cold meals a day. When called out by reporters, Ivey’s office sent a press release saying that the “holiday schedule” of two small meals a day was the result of striking prisoners refusing kitchen duty. It’s a fairly flimsy argument—if the food shortages were linked to the strike, one would expect at least some delay (like what happened to food prepared right before the strike?)

So here we are: the lawmaker claiming it’s “unreasonable“ to end slave labor and sentences set to expire in 9999 is using starvation tactics to kill a strike. “They continue food deprivation and it’s getting worse each day,” Swift Justice told me today. “The attitude with the officers are worse as well bc they are being overworked. I'm seeing this take a real fast turn here and it's like that at other camps as well from what I'm hearing—from calm to tensions rising.”

Some of the meals served since the strike.