IGDCAST: Building the Strike

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Originally posted to It’s Going Down
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This weekend we caught up with several participants at the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) Convention, who came together from across the country to discuss the upcoming national prison strike that is taking place on September 9th. The strike will focus on attacking prison slavery, which under the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, makes slavery legal as long as the person doing the work is incarcerated.

Four people in total are interviewed on this episode, including a formerly incarcerated IWOC member from the South, and two IWW/IWOC members from Minneapolis. These participants are also involved in the African People’s Caucus within the IWW and discuss the connections between fighting against policing and the prison system. There is also a brief discussion on drawing connections between the ongoing standoff in North Dakota at the Standing Rock Camp and the national prison strike. Lastly, the speakers discuss the desire to turn the strike into a national movement for the abolition of prisons and talk about the hurdles that lie in front of them.

Lastly, we have another interview with another conference attendee that is involved in Portland Anarchist Black Cross (ABC). This person discusses various programs and projects that Portland ABC is involved in, including forming dual reading groups in the inside and the outside, the creation of a ABC prison newsletter, and the formation of an inside ABC chapter. We spend some time discussing the Oregon prisoner, Joshua “Zero” Cartrette, who is an anarchist that went from being involved in white supremacist prison gangs to holding anarchist and anti-racist beliefs. We talk about this conversion and a lot of the work that Zero is putting in to reach out to young prisoners and steer them away from white power gangs and politics.