New York State prison guards ‘strike’ for brutality and solitary confinement

Prison guards and cops are not workers

Thousands of prison guards have staged a so-called strike since Feb. 17 in over 30 New York State prisons. All these hellholes are concentration camps for the poor. 

The trigger for these goons was the imminent charging of prison guards who beat Robert Brooks to death. The Black inmate at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, was viciously assaulted by a gang of guards on Dec. 9, 2024, while he was handcuffed. Brooks died the next day.

The murder of Brooks, the father of a son, was recorded on video and has been seen by millions. Yet it took over two months before six of the thugs who killed him were charged on Feb. 20. 

Another “grievance” of these prison guards was the Human Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act. Passed in 2021, it puts some limits on solitary confinement. Nils Melzer, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, described prolonged solitary confinement as psychological torture. 

Kalief Browder hanged himself in 2015, two years after being released from New York City’s Rikers Island jail. The Black youth — arrested when he was 16 years old — was kept in solitary for two years. Kalief Browder was never even brought to trial, and his family couldn’t afford to bail him out.

Layleen Polanco Xtravaganza died alone in solitary confinement at Rikers in 2019 while experiencing a seizure. The transgender Afro-Latina woman was thrown into the hole despite prison officials knowing that she had epilepsy.

While the HALT act is limited, it could have saved Xtravaganza’s life. The law prohibits people with disabilities, anyone under 21 or over 5, or those who are pregnant from being kept in solitary.

It says volumes about the uniformed thugs “on strike” that they want to get rid of a law that stops the most vulnerable from being kept in a tiny cage 22 or more hours a day.

Thugs and torturers are not workers

The walkout by prison guards has meant even more misery for 32,000 incarcerated poor people. They are barely being fed while not being allowed to visit with families and other loved ones.

State Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello suspended the HALT Act on Feb. 20, giving officials the right to throw any inmate into solitary confinement. This violation of human rights is an incentive to brutalize and a gift to the guards who have demanded abolishing the act.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has called up 4,500 members of the National Guard to patrol the prisons. Among those facilities is Attica prison, where state police under orders of billionaire Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, killed 30 inmates in 1971.  

Compare Hochul’s kid glove treatment of the guards with how New York City transit workers were treated when they went on strike in 2005. Transit Workers Local 100 President Roger Toussaint was sent to jail.

Super=rich Mayor Michael Bloomberg — whose fortune is currently estimated at $104.7 billion — called the strikers “thugs.” 

Later, during the pandemic, at least 177 TWU members — who were originally ordered not to wear masks — died of COVID while keeping the Big Apple moving. 

Prison guards are not workers. Neither are any cops, FBI agents, or members of the ICE deportation gestapo. All of them are mercenaries for the wealthy and powerful and are enemies of the working class.

The so-called representatives of these goons need to be thrown out of local labor councils. Cops who help break strikes have no place in the union movement.

It was disgraceful that the Attica prison guards were members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and more shameful that AFSCME President Jerry Wurf defended them.

Unions should reach out to prisoners, the poorest members of the working class. The labor movement needs to demand “Jobs, Not Jails!”

Gov. Hochul wants prisoners to be exploited by private corporations. They should be paid union wages instead. 

Solidarity Forever includes solidarity with the incarcerated. It’s Musk and Trump who need to be locked up.