DOJ sues ADOC https://www.npr.org/2020/12/10/944879818/justice-dept-sues-alabama-over-prison-conditions

 After years of work taking complaints from those inside to Karen Mason and Amy Solomon during President Obama’s administration and Presidency. We are finally seeing some light shed on the inhumane conditions men in Alabama prisons have been suffering for eons. 

The Free Alabama Movement which is a group of those incarcerated. Formed and organized the first Peaceful Prison Strikes to ever go across this nation as a national movement. Inspired by the Dec 9, 2012 prison strike that went across to 10 different prisons throughout Georgia, then the hunger strikes within the California prisons. FAM wanted to make it National across state lines and did. Beyond all obstacles that existed such as race, religion, and the overwhelming fact of being locked up, some of the leaders in solitary confinement at that. 

They reached out to their chosen representative who they had known of because of his criminal justice and voting rights work in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. They seen what he had just done in Georgia by leading the fact finding committee that went into the Georgia prisons to investigate all the ills that caused the Dec 2012 prison strike in Georgia. 

Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow would meet via phone with the leaders of FAM to get their complaints and information on what was going on inside the Alabama prisons. Being that Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow was already going to Washington D.C. every 3 months and on conference calls with the Federal Reentry Interagency Council monthly. Discussing how to change the narrative of directly impacted people, and then speaking in their own language. Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow and  colleagues at that time took 4 demands to the DOJ and ended up getting 5. Housing, Education, Voting, Employment, and got the language changed from calling us ex felon, ex convict, and ex offender, on the DOJ website as well as all of their paraphernalia. 

They started an investigation on the Alabama Department of Corrections finding all of the allegations to be true. The DOJ was interrupted and administration changed, so we thought that our work was lost. However we continued the grassroots efforts and had the 2016 and 2018 National Peaceful Prison Strikes. Led by those inside who really pointed out and highlighted free slave labor as it still exist today. 

Now here 4 years, almost 5 years later the DOJ has filed a lawsuit against the ADOC which shows our work has not been in vain. Exposing the fact that the ADOC have been treating those incarcerated inhumane. This leaves Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow in question of those that say that they are wholeheartedly supportive of Black Lives Matter. How could people, black and white say they are for BLM but do not want to address the most contributing factor to disrupting and destroying Black Lives. Furthermore, how could the Church that should defend, advocate, and redeem those incarcerated. Say they are for pro life, even life before it comes into physical existence. A fetus before it is born, and not be shouting from the rooftops, and every pulpit about this inhumane treatment. 

This is only the beginning, it is not the end by far. With the Governor Kay Ivey trying to build 3 new mega prisons to house thousands of our family members. Alabama has taken a stance to fight the lawsuit like it is frivolous. Further proving to us in this state and abroad that our lives do not matter.