A Strike at the Heart of the Prison-Industrial Complex
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that banned slavery but included a loophole allowing it "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted": 13th
Number of states where prisoner actions will be taking place as part of the strike, including Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia: at least 20
Anniversary of the uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, a watershed moment in the prisoners' rights movement, that the strike's start date marks: 45th
Date on which organizers with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union and other groups held a demonstration outside the jail in Durham, North Carolina, to draw attention to the planned prison strike: 8/10/2016
Number of members of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, the IWW's prison organizing group: about 800
Year in which prisoners at the N.C. Correctional Institute for Women staged a sit-in strike at what was then the state's only prison laundry facility and were consequently assaulted by guards: 1975
Year in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, held that prison inmates do not have a First Amendment right to join a union: 1977
Year in which inmates in at least six prisons across Georgia went on strike to demand better pay and conditions: 2010
Month in which strikes took place at at least seven prisons in Texas: 4/2016
Month in which strikes took place in prisons across Alabama, organized by the Free Alabama Movement: 5/2016
Year in which Melvin Ray and Robert Council, the founders of the Free Alabama Movement, first organized strikes at two of the state's prisons: 2014
While employers pay the minimum wage for prisoner labor in Alabama, percent of a prisoner's income the state Department of Corrections is authorized to take to offset the costs of incarceration: 80
Minimum hourly wage for prisoners in Georgia and Texas: $0
Estimated annual value of goods and services produced by inmates in state and federal prisons nationwide for companies ranging from Wal-Mart to Whole Foods: $9 billion
Rank of the U.S. among nations with the highest incarceration rates: 2
Factor by which the South's incarceration rate exceeds the Northeast's: almost 2
While African Americans and Hispanics make up about 25 percent of the U.S. population, percent of the prison population they represent: 58