Durham, NC: Banner Drop for the #PrisonStrike

The following action report from Durham, North Carolina was anonymously sent to It’s Going Down.

A few friends decided to whip up a late-night banner this past Saturday in solidarity with the striking prison rebels across the country, and in particular, those in held captive within Hyde Correctional Institution, Lanesboro Correctional Institution, and Central Prison in North Carolina. The management and operation of these facilities is the responsibility of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, and at each one of them, prisoners have organized actions to participate in the nationwide strike. Reports of repression are already coming in from Hyde, in particular against Randy Watterson, Tod Martin, and Jase Duras – the administration has promised to “bury them under the prison” for their alleged involvement in the strike.

The banner only took a few hours and a couple of paints to make. We cooked up a quick 11×17″ poster in the morning to go along with it, detailing recent events surrounding the prison strike in the local area: a noise demonstration was held on August 20th at 2PM at Hyde, where ~20 folks made a ruckus to let the prisoners inside know that we were here to support them; they dropped three banners from within the prison yard itself, that read “parole,” “better food,” and “in solidarity.” A second noise demonstration took place on August 26th as the prisoners at Hyde began their sit-in. The poster encourages that supporters of the strike on the outside organize phone zap campaigns to shut-down operations within the prison office, as well as let the prison know we’re watching them.

We dropped the banner and stappled a handful of the posters on Ninth Street, one of the major commercial arteries of gentrifying Durham. We put it up in the middle of the afternoon, when we felt that there would be the largest amount of foot and motor traffic, and the banner was visible to drivers as they went along their way.

As we were putting up the banner, word came through that Jean Carolyn McGirt, a fifty-six year-old Black woman, died the night before in the Durham County Jail. the eighth person to die in the jail in the last five years. We have fucking had it we these murders inside of the state’s cages! Last year, we ripped down a statue; this year, let’s rip down the fucking jail!

We will open all the prisons! In solidarity with each and every prison rebel!

– Some joyous, pissed off motherfuckers