The first part of the prisons likely to be hit will be the kitchens, where stoves will remain unlit, ready-meals unheated and thousands of breakfasts uncooked.
From there the impact will fan out. The laundry will be left unwashed, prison corridors un-mopped, and the lawns on the external grounds ring-fenced with barbed wire will go uncut.
On Tuesday, America’s vast army of incarcerated men and women – at 2.3m of them they form by far the largest imprisoned population in the world – will brace itself for what has the potential to be the largest prison strike in US history.
Nineteen days of peaceful protest are planned across the nation, organised largely by prisoners themselves.
One of the most passionately held demands is an immediate end to imposed labor in return for paltry wages, a widespread practice in US prisons that the strike organisers call a modern form of slavery. More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing.
The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour.
The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to slavery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited.
Inmates who join the action know that they face potentially serious consequences. Participants face being placed individually into isolation cells, while past prison strikes have been met with lockdowns of entire institutions.
Communications too are certain to be blocked, leading potentially to a blackout of news on the protest.
According to prison reform activists engaged in planning the strike, retaliatory measures have already started. Karen Smith, who runs the Gainesville, Florida chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee that is backing the strike, said that prison authorities have moved most of the local strike organisers into solitary confinement wings where they will be unable to communicate with others.
“Other inmates have been warned that if they continue to contact advocacy groups they will be moved to the most brutal camps.”
theguardian.com