USA: video call to action from inside Angola prison

The person in the video represents a group of incarcerated individuals known as “Decarcerate Louisiana” whose goals are to organize incarcerated people against the racist and exploitative nature of the prison system and society as a whole..

On June 20, 2018 this video was released from a prison rebel inside of Louisiana’s Angola prison. The person in the video represents a group of incarcerated individuals known as “Decarcerate Louisiana” whose goals are to organize incarcerated people against the racist and exploitative nature of the prison system and society as a whole. This video and call to organize comes on the heels of Juneteenth and as momentum begins to build toward the national prisoner strike August 21-September 9.

Greetings brothers and sisters, I am a revolutionary, social change organizer, and freedom fighter currently incarcerated behind enemy lines at the Louisiana state prison in Angola.

I want to explain to you what Decarcerate Louisiana is and what Decarcerate Louisiana is not. Decarcerate Louisiana is not a prisoners’ rights organization and we do not see ourselves as criminals, convicts, inmates, or anything short of a human being. For good reasons and as you will see, Decarcerate Louisiana is a human rights movement, advocating for human rights and human dignity of people inside and outside the prison system. The right to higher education, community, mercy, and compassion are fundamental human rights that are god-given, not man-made. The right to liberate ourselves from ignorance, poverty, ghettos, and environments that oppress is likewise a god-given birth right. It is for these reasons that we are anti-slavery and are organizing to transform our ghettos into communities, and our jails and prisons into places of human redemption, healing, and higher learning that will enable us to be productive in our communities and wherever our feet touch the land.

In order for any of us to be productive and prosper as a people, poverty much go, slavery must go, all conditions and practices, laws and policies that would deny or interfere with our higher development and growth and progress must go. Poverty level wages that make us poor, keep us in debt, make us beggars, make us desperate must go.

A crime is being committed if we are denied higher education, and wages and support systems that is not enough to buy and own a home, an automobile, a computer, and any other life necessities that prevent crime and keep us out of prison. Unsustainable development practices that give us poor development of the land and lack of resources must be stopped.
A crime is being committed if the places where we live is not developed and designed with support systems to integrate each and every person in such manner as to ensure every step of the way of our successful achievement. Laws like the 13th amendment that abolishes slavery but then turn around and make an excuse to oppose slavery if a person is convicted of a crime must go.

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