Oppression comes in many forms. One form is this country’s prison industry. Industry meaning they make profit off these prisons. Most of the prisons in the United States are privately owned. They even have contracts with the US government that require the States to provide inmates for the private prisons, and if the government fails to meet their contracted quota, the private prison can sue the state. SPARC stands in solidarity with the prisoners struggles from Shutting down Rikers in NYC to the current struggles across the US, in particular to the prisoners in Missouri stuck in a state prison under inhumane conditions.

Historically, the police have repressed uprisings and rebellions, especially from the most oppressed sectors of the working class. Currently, Inmates in St. Louis, Missouri have recently been forced to work in increasingly life-threatening conditions in a workhouse on 7600 Hall Street. A few of the conditions include working in 110 degree weather, without providing air conditioning or cooling towels. Inmates have been collapsing and are being denied medical attention. The police were also so barbaric as to throw inmates into solitary confinement who made a sign asking for help. This is a clear and atrocious instance of state repression against the most exploited sectors of workers, prison inmates. In the past week, demonstrations organized demanding a closure of the workhouse by a wide range of groups (including Greater STL, STL 161, Progressive Youth Organization-STL, Serve the People-STL, DSA, Decarcerate STL, NLG, IMT, and Socialist Alternative). Four people have been arrested and others have been brutalized by regular and riot police, as state repression is being handed out in the streets and in the cells. SPARC writes this statement in absolute solidarity with the demands of the resistance by the inmates being forced into labor on 7600 Hall Street and with the group of organizers and political prisoners militantly rising against the repressive forces of the state.

What is happening in St. Louis at 7600 Hall Street is not an isolated incident involving rogue prison guards harming inmates who got unlucky. Rather it is a symptom of state which promotes mass incarceration and viciously represses black and brown inmates to extract virtually free labor from them; it is a continuation of the legacy of chattel slavery. The capitalists in cahoots with the state create the conditions for crime to exist in our communities by perpetuating poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. The prison-industrial complex was then constructed to imprison as many people as possible, most being black and Latino. Thus, the phenomenon of mass incarceration was carefully manufactured to make the most oppressed sources of free and cheap labor. Since inmates are disposable and crime is perpetuated and manufactured (through broken windows policing, among other mechanisms), correctional facilities treat prisoners as animals, especially when they begin to organize and demand better treatment and conditions. Many of the inmates at 7600 Hall Street are there because they cannot afford bail. Their cases are similar to Kalief Browder in NYC who committed suicide after being tortured in solitary confinement, since many inmates in STL are also being subjected to similar torture. As sources of cheap labor for the vast U.S. empire, prisoners constitute one of the most important sectors of any revolutionary movement in America. Prison strikes and rebellions are an indispensable manifestation of the class struggle in imperialist nations. Thus, SPARC expresses the utmost solidarity with the prisoners’ uprising and with the organizers on the outside who are putting their bodies on the line to support. We need to build links between those stuck in the beast and those of us roaming the streets, and together we will win!