STRIKING BACK AGAINST PRISON SLAVERY – REFLECTIONS ON THE SEPTEMBER 2016 PRISON WORK STRIKES: AN INTERVIEW WITH COMRADE RASHID BY JAMES K. ANDERSON (2025)

The following is an interview conducted with Kevin “Rashid” Johnson by James K. Anderson a member of the IWW Freelance Journalist Union.

JAMES ANDERSON: When did you first learn about the plan for the Sept 9, 2016 prison strike?

RASHID: I knew about it from its inception. I helped to organize and publicize it.

The strike was against prison slave labor. Sept 9th was chosen to commemorate the Sept 9, 1971 peaceful uprising at Attica State Prison, where prisoners of all races united in protest of the murder of George Jackson by guards in San Quentin the month before, and the inhumane conditions in Attica. Officials suppressed the Attica protest by murdering 29 prisoners and 10 civilians, then torturing hundreds more, sparking international outrage and exposure of the inhumane conditions in Amerikan prisons.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you think then and what do you think now about the focus on prison labor/slavery and the emphasis on a prison work stoppage?

RASHID: Focusing on prison slave labor is a key part of the struggle against this global capitalist imperialist system that the U.S. empire presides over. Amerika was built by slave labor which continues. In fact the world’s industrial system was built on it. The Industrial Revolution was fueled by the cotton production based on Amerindian land theft and Black slave labor.

Slave labor continues inside U.S. prisons, which grew out of the old chattel slave system. When chattel slavery was abolished after the U.S. Civil War (1865), the prisons became the new plantations and the new site of racialized slavery. It was then that the U.S. saw its first wave of mass imprisonment and criminalization of Blackness.

The 13th Amendment was enacted at the war’s end which abolished slavery except for those convicted of crimes. The 13th Amendment was actually a compromise with the old slaveowners of the South, allowing slavery to continue but with the state taking ownership of the slaves instead of private individuals. This was done through criminalizing the newly freed Blacks.

Criminal laws were passed across the South to put Blacks back in servitude. Those laws, called the Black Codes, criminalized vagrancy, lack of employment, and such other conditions that the newly emancipated Blacks found themselves in, having been turned out from the plantations illiterate, poor, without land and resources, and created special racially separate courts. While at the same time white supremacists and vigilante groups, like the Ku Klux Klan and White Knights of Camellia, who desired to reclaim white dominance across the South sabotaged Black political and economic achievements and lynched and murdered Blacks seen to be ‘successful,’ and who persisted in trying to exercise any level of actual freedom.

Almost overnight the prisons were overflowing with Blacks, who were then contracted out by the state prison systems as free labor to private corporations and back to the old plantations. These work forces and chain gangs were seen across the South building and rebuilding everything.

The conditions of this new bondage were often much worse than when the slaves were privately owned, because with the Blacks no longer being private property and easily replaced from the endless pool of Blacks being imprisoned, those who exploited their labor didn’t care about their upkeep. So, they weren’t cared for, they were often not fed, many were literally worked to death. A condition that literally continues to exist in today’s prisons, in Texas prisons in particular.

In the Texas prison system today, ALL prisoners are forced to work without any pay at all. Many work in private and state-owned industries. They also produce most all the food eaten by Texas prisoners and staff. There are huge prison plantations of crops of various types of vegetables they grow, also cotton which they also use to make the guards’ and prisoners’ uniforms. There’s an egg plant. Also hog, cow and chicken farms where the prisoners raise these animals for food.

In this agricultural work they are given no modern tools or machinery. But are made to plant, tend and harvest the crops using nothing but handheld hoes. These work groups are derisively called, “Hoe squads.”

This reflects conditions that exist to a lesser or greater degree in prisons across the U.S., where prisoners are made to work for no pay at all or for only pennies, performing labor that sustains the prisons and enriches various corporations. This is labor that officials would otherwise have to employ people from society at minimum wage to do. So, the U.S. prison system is largely sustained and prison corporations reap trillions in profits from exploiting prison slave labor. This is what is known as the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC).

In this regard, prisoners are a large sector of the U.S. workforce, but enjoy none of the benefits and wages that workers in society receive, as inadequate as they are for even those workers. This is why they play an important role in the struggle against this capitalist imperialist system that exists upon the exploitation of workers in general.

JAMES ANDERSON: When did you start organizing/mobilizing for the 2016 strike, and what did that work look like?

RASHID: My involvement in organizing around the Sept 9th strike began after members of my Party, then the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (now the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party), led a prison work strike in April 2016 at seven Texas prisons. This took place after an uprising in Alabama’s Holman prison, where the warden, Carter Davenport, who was notorious for physically abusing prisoners, ended up on the receding end of violence.

These two protest actions in early 2016 inspired the call across the U.S. for a countrywide prisoner strike beginning on Sept 9th. With the April 2016 strike in the Texas prisons, I became involved in agitating and uniting with the Alabama prisoners or the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) through IWOC, to stage the countrywide strike later that year.

I wrote articles and through media contacts and correspondences got other prisoners, my entire Party, and other allied groups involved. I was closely involved with IWOC Comrades in this effort, the late Karen Smith with the Florida IWOC and Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) chapters in particular.

JAMES ANDERSON: Did you get involved with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) prior to the buildup to the 2016 strike?

RASHID: Yes, I did. I had actually joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) several years before, then, during mid-2015, led and formally announced an alliance between the NABPP and the IWW/IWOC. I wrote about it in my article, “Black Cats Bond: The Industrial Workers of the World and the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter,” posted at http://rashidmod.com/?p=1251.

JAMES ANDERSON: Can you describe your work with/in IWOC prior to the buildup to the 2016 strike?

RASHID: I was involved in developing a strategy for the NABPP’s involvement in the IWW/IWOC and other worker’s groups and organizing worker’s strikes, and developing links between imprisoned workers and those in society.

I wrote position papers and corresponded with various people and Comrades on the inside and outside and media folks to help build awareness around, and support for and unity of prisoners and outside people and groups in, the strike.

JAMES ANDERSON: Where were you incarcerated in 2016?

RASHID: I was right there in Texas, confined at the Clements Unit in Amarillo.

JAMES ANDERSON: What sort of buildup and organizing took place inside the prison where you were incarcerated leading up to Sept 9, 2016?

RASHID: We communicated throughout the prison across the races and tribes to stage a work stoppage and to boycott the commissary.

JAMES ANDERSON: What happened on Sept 9th inside the prison where you were held, and what did you do specifically? What did other prisoners do? How many withheld labor or participated in other ways? What other forms of protest or disruption took place? Any details you can recall would be helpful.

RASHID: We actually didn’t do anything besides boycott the commissary, because officials locked the entire prison down on Labor Day, Sept 6, 2016, the day before the strike was to begin. I wrote about it in my article, “Texas Locks Down Prison on Labor Day to Avert Work Stoppage.” Which can be read at, http://rashidmod.com/?p=2219.

JAMES ANDERSON: Did guards/administrators at the prison where you were incarcerated know about the plans for the strike/disruption (and if so what did it entail)?

RASHID: Yes, they did. That’s why and how they were able to head off the work stoppage by locking everyone down starting the day before the strike was set to begin.

JAMES ANDERSON: How did guards and administrators inside the prison where you were held respond to the actions on Sept 9, 2016? Can you recount any details regarding retaliation?

RASHID: As said they locked the prison down, which meant they didn’t use prisoners in any work positions at all. Everyone was confined to their cells, and guards distributed the meals which consisted primarily of a disgusting PBJ and oil mixture on cornbread and prunes.

JAMES ANDERSON: What worked well in terms of preparing for and trying nationally to coordinate the strike in 2016?

RASHID: Having a wide unification of different outside groups and political tendencies support and help spread word throughout the prisons about the strike. Karen Smith proved in my opinion to be one of the most effective outside supporters and collaborators. She almost organically was able to accept prisoners in leading positions of the strike, she built large media support and involvement, she worked with every political tendency out there despite most having different views from her own Anarchist persuasion.

She was always humble and open to facilitate and follow prisoners’ ideas in a democratic manner, and was never inclined to the tendency I observed with many white leftists over the years of their trying to control the struggles and organizations of people of color and prisoners.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did not work well?

RASHID: The involvement of certain white leftists who DID act to coopt and divert the strike into what they wanted it to be. Namely, instead of a movement aimed to contest the 13th Amendment’s pro-slavery clause and prison slave labor, they converted its slogan and purpose into one of abolishing prisons. This was the trend that became the “Abolition Movement,” which was/is something different from the prisoner-led movement to abolish prison slave labor and the 13th Amendment.

The newly injected slogan of “Abolish prisons” came from the general Anarchist idea of “Abolish the state.” It was outside Anarchists who inserted this slogan into the movement in place of our slogan to “Abolish prison slavery,” that actually began in the early 2000s among prisoners on Texas’s death row. The NABPP took up this call shortly after we were founded in 2005. In fact it was introduced into our party by our first recruit, Hasan Shakur, a Texas death row prisoner, who we recruited that year, and was executed in August 2006. I wrote an article (and drew art) promoting this theme of abolishing prison slavery back in 2006, “A Modest Proposal for Abolishing Prison Slavery in Amerika in the 21st Century.” Which can be read at http://rashidmod.com/?p=478.

The idea and slogan of abolishing prison slavery became widely adopted by prisoners across the U.S. largely through our Party’s newsletters, RIGHT ON!, SERVE THE PEOPLE, and others, which were widely popular across U.S. prisons, where we continually promoted the idea and slogan for years leading up to 2016.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you and others who participated learn from the Sept 9, 2016 efforts and the response?

RASHID: We learned that we had immense power in unity and the ability to unite in huge numbers around commonly shared oppressed conditions. Also that such struggles broke down the false stigma that officials projected against us that we are less than human and unworthy of equal consideration to those in society. That through principled struggle we can win broad public support and unity with our struggles against inhumane conditions and treatments.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you make of the coverage of the Sept 9, 2016 strike – both corporate media, local/regular media and alternative media outlets?

RASHID: It was huge and extraordinary.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you make of the social movement/radical media (and use of social media) in relation to the strike?

RASHID:That it was also huge and extraordinary. But it was also used by some outside white leftists to coopt our prisoner-led movement to abolish prisoner slave labor and to amend the 13th Amendment and convert it into a vague and amorphous “Abolitionist” movement.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you make of the broader public response?

RASHID: It verified my prior belief that prisoners can build the huge public support against our oppression and exploitation by engaging in principled struggles.

JAMES ANDERSON: What did you think was the biggest impact of the Sept 9, 2016 strike?

RASHID: It humanized us and showed that we are people with whom outside workers must unite to advance their own struggle against wage slavery and economic exploitation by the capitalist bosses.

It also set a precedent for greater struggles that continued after 2016, which I and our Party were able to help organize and participate in, including the 2017 Florida statewide prison strike called Operation PUSH and the 2018 countrywide prison strike.