Pris­on­ers across the coun­try say they are gear­ing up for an end-of-sum­mer nation­wide strike against inhu­mane liv­ing con­di­tions and unpaid labor — or, in their words, ​“mod­ern-day slavery.”

The strike was announced in an April 24 press release and shared by a num­ber of advo­ca­cy groups. Accord­ing to one of the out­side orga­niz­ers who was con­tact­ed by In These Times, the press released was devel­oped and writ­ten by pris­on­ers. The strike, which is pri­mar­i­ly being orga­nized by the pris­on­ers, will start on August 21 and last until Sep­tem­ber 9.

The action will involve work stop­pages, sit-ins and a boy­cott of pur­chas­es from prison stores. The pris­on­ers are demand­ing improved liv­ing con­di­tions and an end to unpaid labor, as well as pro­gres­sive sen­tenc­ing reform and access to reha­bil­i­ta­tion programs.

Orga­niz­ers say they derived their boy­cott tac­tics from the Redis­trib­ute the Pain cam­paign, a plan put for­ward by the pris­on­ers’ rights group Free Alaba­ma Move­ment ear­li­er this year. That cam­paign declares that ​“our goal is to remove the assets and mon­e­tary gain from those who prac­tice slav­ery, espe­cial­ly those in the U.S. and their allies.”

“It is time that we take a new look and what is tak­ing place across our nation in our pris­ons,” reads the April 24 state­ment from pris­on­ers. ​“Not only is it impor­tant for us to take a look, but we must also take in con­sid­er­a­tion that for years we have neglect­ed what is actu­al­ly tak­ing place.”

The strike comes in response to a riot that broke out at Lee Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion in Lee Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na on April 15. Sev­en pris­on­ers were killed and 17 were seri­ous­ly injured in an inci­dent alleged­ly sparked by a gang rival­ry with­in the prison. It is the dead­liest U.S. prison riot in 25 years. Prison author­i­ties say they didn’t send guards to inter­vene until they had assem­bled enough offi­cers to do it safe­ly. This took more than four hours. Prison killings have reached a crit­i­cal mass in South Car­oli­na, as they’ve quadru­pled from 2015 to 2017.

South Car­oli­na activist Mal­colm Har­ris, one of the orga­niz­ers out­side of pris­ons help­ing to coor­di­nate the upcom­ing strike, told In These Times that the vio­lence in South Car­oli­na is ​“reflec­tive of what’s going on in the rest of the nation.” Nine­teen per­cent of male pris­on­ers in the Unit­ed States say they’ve been assault­ed by oth­er pris­on­ers, and 21 per­cent of them say they’ve been assault­ed by prison guards. Women only make up 7 per­cent of the total prison pop­u­la­tion, but 33 per­cent of pris­on­ers who are sex­u­al­ly vic­tim­ized by prison staff mem­bers are women.

South Car­oli­na cor­rec­tions depart­ment direc­tor Bryan Stir­ling claims he’s iden­ti­fied the spe­cif­ic cause of the riot: cell phones. ​“Our pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion has found that this is gangs fight­ing over ter­ri­to­ry,” declared Stir­ling short­ly after the riot. ​“And if they’re incar­cer­at­ed, then they’re going to have to have a cell­phone to con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal ways from behind bars.”

Many have pushed back on this analy­sis, point­ing out that with­out cell phones, the gris­ly details of South Carolina’s riot wouldn’t be known to the pub­lic. Crit­ics also men­tion that South Carolina’s Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions has been push­ing for the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC) to allow author­i­ties to use cell phone jam­mers for years. This effort is tak­ing place nation­wide: In 2016, 10 GOP gov­er­nors wrote a let­ter to FCC Chair­man Thomas Wheel­er ask­ing the agency to grant states the ​“flex­i­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty” to stop com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in pris­ons. One of the law­mak­ers who signed the let­ter is for­mer South Car­oli­na Gov­er­nor Nik­ki Haley, cur­rent Unit­ed States Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations.

Crit­ics of mass incar­cer­a­tion attribute inci­dents like the South Car­oli­na riot to the over­all con­di­tions of our puni­tive jus­tice sys­tem, like the erad­i­ca­tion of incen­tive pro­grams for pris­on­ers. ​“They’ve steadi­ly cut back what lit­tle pro­grams they had, and they’re just ware­hous­ing peo­ple in under­staffed, over­crowd­ed pris­ons,” Paul Wright, the direc­tor of the Human Rights Defense Cen­ter, a non­prof­it that advo­cates on behalf of peo­ple in deten­tion, told CBS. Accord­ing to Wright, ​“Prison and penal oper­a­tions have been stud­ied pret­ty exten­sive­ly for the last 15 years. When you take away all hope and you take away any rea­son for [pris­on­ers] to behave them­selves, then that’s when you start hav­ing high­er lev­els of vio­lence, assaults, and attacks.”

Har­ris echoed Wright’s sen­ti­ments. ​“All these things we’re fight­ing against with the strike, they’ve exac­er­bat­ed every­thing in the pris­ons and they’ve bred vio­lent reac­tions,” he said. He also pushed back on the nar­ra­tive that more guards would nec­es­sar­i­ly mean less vio­lence. ​“There’s always going to be more pris­on­ers than guards,” he said. ​“More guards are not going to stop the problem.”

Isaac Bai­ley, whose broth­er is impris­oned at Lee, wrote an edi­to­r­i­al for the The Char­lotte Observ­er on April 18th sum­ma­riz­ing what he had heard about the riot from his broth­er. Accord­ing to Bai­ley, the actions of prison author­i­ties helped facil­i­tate the gang vio­lence. ​“Pris­on­ers knew offi­cers would not come to the res­cue if they were attacked — which pro­vid­ed a major incen­tive to join gangs as a means of self-preser­va­tion,” wrote Bai­ley. ​“After every inci­dent, pris­on­ers are locked down longer, which leads to more resent­ment and unrest and more vio­lence, a vicious cycle.”

This strike is slat­ed to fol­low sim­i­lar col­lec­tive actions through­out the country’s prison sys­tem. Last Decem­ber, 45 pris­on­ers in Iowa Park, Texas began a hunger strike. The fol­low­ing month, pris­on­ers in eight Flori­da pris­ons ini­ti­at­ed a work stop­page to protest against unpaid wages and inhu­mane liv­ing con­di­tions. Many claim that they faced retal­i­a­tion for their efforts, with some alleged­ly sent to soli­tary con­fine­ment for par­tic­i­pat­ing. That same month, 45 pris­on­ers in Iowa Park, Texas began a hunger strike. This past East­er, rough­ly 1,000 pris­on­ers at Wash­ing­ton State Pen­i­ten­tiary par­tic­i­pat­ed in a hunger strike to protest the qual­i­ty of their food. A cou­ple weeks lat­er, pris­on­ers in Huntsville, Texas went on a hunger strike in response to an imposed lock­down in their prison.

It’s unclear how many pris­ons through­out the coun­try will end up par­tic­i­pat­ing in the action, but the orga­niz­ers are call­ing on indi­vid­u­als to ​“spread the strike and word of the strike in every place of detention.”