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Mic check, one, two, three.
One, two, three. Mic check, one, two, three.
Well, today, they, um, they're here doing a revival...
and everybody's just joyful.
We're gonna have fun and food and everything.
Everything's gonna be a good day at Easterling Prison.
It's a day that you really don't get in prison...
because there's not a lot of hope inside an institution.
And it has to be brought in.
I want to pray for Alabama.
- I want to pray for our system. - Yeah.
Amen.
- Yes, sir. - Amen.
And we walked through them hoods, man.
And we made a difference.
- I am my brother's keeper. - I am my brother's keeper.
It's not a coincidence that y'all came in here today.
Why do you say that?
Because they don't show you the meat that we get.
It's not nothing like this.
They should let y'all go inside the dorms.
You think it's hot out here?
Right now just imagine sleeping in a tin building
with 120-some other people.
This ain't fit for human society.
Hey, what's going on with that camera?
Y'all see him?
Heat only bring animosity.
So you just imagine what we go through in there.
Come on inside the dorms, man.
Show the dorms.
We in lockdown 24/7, man.
We locked down in the hot air. Let us go.
Hot, hot, hot. We can't go outside, man.
A lot of things that are going on in here
people in society don't really know about.
They beat me so bad
I literally
defecated on myself.
Last Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday,
there was a stabbing every day that have not been reported.
Swept under the rug.
There's something being covered up.
Who's covering it up?
The Department of Corrections.
I ain't scared to talk to nobody.
But when you come in here with these cameras
and put these folks up here,
they want us to sound like 'good old boys.'
But I ain't trying to hear that shit.
That's why everybody's going up there,
going to eat, and coming back in.
Why they won't let us out?
We're finished. We're finished. We're finished.
What are we finished with?
Filming. Filming.
Why?
We gonna lock it down. We gonna lock them out.
There's no officer with you all.
This is a prison. And you're walking up by yourself,
talking to the inmates by yourself up there.
We're finished, we're finished. I mean,
our filming is over.
Raoul?
- Hey. - Hey, how are you?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm okay.
Do you mind if I record our conversation?
No, I don't mind you recording, I don't mind at all.
They'll warn me before officers get close to me.
I'll know they're on the floor.
I'm gonna be careful.
They tell us all the time,
you know, I'm in prison
and it's because I did something wrong.
And I agree with that, you know.
I shouldn't have did some of the things that I did.
But the end result is that
whatever going on is not working.
It need to stop.
This is where we live at.
Showing y'all how it is.
Water...
flood...
It's pitiful, how we live.
It take about two football fields to get to Robert Earl.
He's in solitary right now.
They try and cut him from all communication with people.
They move him from lockup to lockup.
But guess what?
That's probably the best reason to talk to him
is because they don't want y'all to.
Hey, Robert Earl.
Hey.
We need help down here.
Everybody's life is in danger.
How's it going?
- Good. - Ah.
Thanks for talking with us.
Sure, sure. I'm glad to.
You know, I made a vow to myself years ago,
that I would never harm another brother
and allow anyone to harm a brother around me.
So, you know,
it makes no sense to me to be quiet, to sit down,
and just accept things as if they were okay
because they're not okay.
Bibb County Correctional Facility.
Look at this guy living under a table.
There go another guy on the floor, sleeping.
The Alabama Department of Corrections --
- - the ADOC --
they don't want the public to see
the conditions in here.
They don't want you to see
the slave labor that's going on inside.
How long you been here?
- How long you been here? - Thirty.
30 years, man.
I been working every day.
How much they been paying you?
- How much they been paying you? - Nothing.
30 years, working every day for free.
They cover up all
the drug addiction.
Man needs help, for real for real.
Addiction is real.
And the atrocities and the corruption.
Look at this.
The riot team,
they just beat some folks.
See that?
Man, that man bloody.
Damn, man.
When you hear "Department of Corrections,"
you think about an institution where people
are going to classes,
people are getting treatment,
people are doing things towards correction.
But that's nothing close
to what's going on behind the walls of the ADOC.
We don't know if he dead or not.
We have record numbers of people
leaving out of here in body bags.
Coroner came and got him.
We're at a humanitarian crisis level.
There's a man dead on that bed.
He is not alive.
As long as the ADOC has control of the narrative
then society will never understand or believe
what's really going on on the inside.
And me and Melvin, we've lived this for the last 20 years.
Okay.
- Melvin? - Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Hold on a minute.
- Police in here. - Oh. Okay.
It's okay, they're gone now.
Would a regular phone call be better?
No, because it does not allow us to just be ourselves.
You know, when we present our stories,
we want to present our whole self, not just our voice.
We're in these walled-off secret societies.
These are state institutions.
But it's one of the only state institutions
that the public or the media has no access to.
How can a journalist go into a war zone,
but can't go into a prison in the United States of America?
Like, I can witness a murder--
we could be all sitting here and witness a murder--
and the media can't even come on the state property.
Head warden leaving
after this bad stabbing just occurred.
Uh oh.
There goes another code.
Because the media can't come into the prisons,
more and more people are taking videos...
and if we don't have these cell phones,
we don't have a way to capture these incidents.
The public is already conditioned
not to believe a person who is incarcerated.
I'm in prison. I'm supposed to lie.
I'm supposed to make up excuses. I'm supposed to exaggerate.
That's why the administration hate the recording.
They seen a dude with a phone
and the lieutenant called a code.
Even though these officers are bringing these phones in,
selling them, you know, black market in prison...
they are still illegal.
Contraband continues to be a deadly problem
that plagues Alabama's prisons.
We're talking about cell phones.
They focus more on the phones...
instead of the incident that was recorded with the phone.
It is a fight every day.
And we continue to struggle with it.
But there's a lot of work still to be done to defeat cell phones
inside the prison system.
They have been trying over the years
to block the reception and signal.
So we know that
having access to phones can end any day.
And we have been taking
life-and-death risks
to get this information out --
while we still can.
In Alabama,
they're denying reality.
All these dead bodies, all these people that got killed.
I mean, they're just denying reality.
The reality is, Alabama doesn't have an incarceration problem.
We have a criminal and a crime problem.
It's a continuous cycle of violence,
a lack of accountability.
And without us being able to inform society
about what's happening,
these incidents are not even reported.
We're looking for Steven Davis.
We think he's in the ICU.
Go up to the ninth floor.
It's a body bag.
- It's a what? - It's a body bag.
That person is not...
Not alive.
If you could...
If you could go out to the wait room,
or I can help you by calling,
but I'd prefer you not stand in front of the room.
- Okay, sure. - Thanks.
We should find his family.
I sat and held his hand all night.
Even though you couldn't tell it was him.
I feel like I'm in a dream, you know?
I know.
We're here for you.
Don't...
He didn't deserve this.
You've got to take care of yourself.
You're gonna wind up in the hospital.
He's telling me, "Mama, I'm gonna get out of here.
I'm going to get out. I'm going to get out."
Hey, Stevie.
Who's gonna call me and bug me?
I always said, he's in prison and he called more than
the other kids.
Well, when I got the phone call,
I didn't know what really happened.
And the first thing that went through my mind is,
Steven done got stabbed, he done got beat up.
That's the only two things it really can be.
I mean, you're in jail. You're in prison.
You walk back in the ICU,
and they had him in the very, very back of the ICU,
in a different part that had a room
so the security guards, you know, could monitor
who come in, come out.
That one guard asked me, "Do you know what happened?"
I said no. I said, "Do you know anything?"
"Nope." He knew something.
I could tell, he was a liar. He knew something.
People could come in,
but only two at a time, and we were not
to bring any phones or anything like that.
That proves right there, they were hiding something.
Oh yeah. When we seen him,
we knew what they were hiding.
Him.
They didn't want a picture of him to be out there.
Why did you take a photo?
Because I didn't know if we'd get the body or not.
You're talking about me taking a photo in ICU
when you wasn't supposed to have your phones in there?
But I took it in there when the cops were out back sleeping?
Because I didn't know if we'd get the body back.
I didn't know how the rules and stuff was, you know, with...
'Cause Steven was the state's responsibility. He was incarcerated.
I didn't know if we'd get the body and have a proper funeral.
So I wanted to take a photo for evidence.
Every last breath, I'll never get that picture
out of my face of my son.
As many pictures as I hang...
of him being happy,
laughing and stuff...
that picture of what they done to him overrides all the good.
I would just like to know, how.
I would like to know, why.
- Hello? - Hey.
No, I ain't got Birmingham news. What?
They said that Little Steven,
they opened his cell and he rushed out,
attacked the guards.
Really? They had to subdue him
and beat him to death?
Somebody pull it up.
Inmate dead after trying to attack
a corrections officer with shivs.
Steven Davis died after attacking corrections officers
at the William Donaldson Correctional Facility.
Investigators say they tried several times
to get him to put his weapons down
before resorting to deadly force.
Why are you finding this out on the news
after everyone else?
Because I called the warden,
and she has not called me back.
They thought it was better for the news to know than you?
They're disconnecting theirself, I guess, from it, by saying that--
They can't just do it that easy.
They can do what they want. Y'all don't understand.
They can actually do what they want.
I'm so sorry.
Hello? I'm sorry.
I'm on oxygen, so I had to take a minute there.
Okay. Well, I understand.
Who's this?
Don't, you know, I'm just...
I know you're grieving and mourning, and I...
but I just...
I wanted to tell you that
your son was beaten to death by an officer.
That was a murder.
You know, they sweep stuff underneath the rug
all the time about this.
I called the warden this afternoon.
An hour later, there was a statement on the news
that he rushed out of his cell
with two homemade weapons and attacked them.
A plastic knife.
They always come up with something to justify
the excess brutality and use of force.
- Right. - You can't beat a man to death.
Those guys have pepper spray.
And if somebody rushed at you,
then you could have sprayed that person.
Yeah, they broke every bone in his face.
I'm not going to say that everybody in there
is a Sunday school choirboy,
but the very fact in all of it is,
is nobody deserves to be beaten to death.
You got to get an attorney to look into this thing.
I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
Hello?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me?
Hold on.
If you hear me say, 'I hear some keys,' you gotta mute your phone.
Okay. Alright.
Okay.
So um...
the media is reporting what the prison system says.
They're saying that he came out of the cell,
he had two knives
and the officers felt threatened so they used the
force that they deemed necessary to disarm him.
But are they even asking,
'How many other people in the living area saw what happened?'
I want to see what the inmates say.
That day, I had went to a service out in the chapel.
And the dudes were saying that the officers
had whupped somebody.
Later on,
everybody go to hearing that this guy's dead.
You know, but a lot of them are really scared
to really say something.
I mean, you know...
to watch them kill somebody?
After the incident, about three hours later,
I & I [Investigative Unit] came up there
and started putting down
numbers, yellow numbers,
like a crime scene,
next to some spots of blood on the floor
and took pictures.
By that time, the crime scene is already compromised.
The officers had inmates come in and clean the floor up
before I & I got there.
Then they called the whole dorm out one at a time
and asked us, 'Who all seen something?'
They were really trying to offer us things like transfers
if we didn't see anything.
And they actually said those words?
They said, 'Well, you know if you didn't see anything,
transfer would be nice on your part...'
Things like that.
'If you do this,
we can do this.'
Hold on one minute.
It's just crazy to me.
How can we even trust them
if we know you will kill one of us
and then cover it up?
It's still wrong for that man's mama
not to know what happened to him.
And they lying?
That's just not right.
It's not, you know,
I'm sorry for being emotional.
In here, we can't show this.
I'm sorry.
Amen.
It's clear that a bunch of crimes
are being committed and covered up
by the Alabama Department of Corrections.
When you're dealing with all these inequalities,
it's easy to get caught up in the vindictiveness,
the vengefulness,
and lose sight of who you truly are.
Hold on one second.
Sometimes it be like this.
In here, I strive to stay sane.
Can you see them? My reading material.
'The Critique of European Thought.'
That's the one I'm reading now.
'Metu Neter' -- that's my spirituality.
'Mumia,' a jailhouse lawyer.
And my 'Investing 101.'
Just something to keep my mind occupied.
You know I've been in 30 years.
I came to prison young.
I was hustling in the streets being a crack dealer.
And somebody who's high on crack cocaine
was driving reckless.
He had already almost ran over two people
and I'm directly in the trajectory
of his oncoming car.
As a last resort
I shot the gun I had.
It was self-defense.
But, tragically, he lost his life.
I was sentenced to life without parole.
I turned 21 in lockup.
I was petrified.
I was really just trying
to fit in,
trying not to get killed,
trying to get money for my family.
And other inmates realized that -- 'You can get some drugs?'
So I was like, 'Yeah, I can get plenty of drugs,
what you talkin' about?'
So I participated in that in prison.
You know, I was able to
send my daughter's mother money to help her out.
I was able to pay for my daughter's
birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese...
But,
I was lost.
My fortune was that an organized, structured way
to learn about life
was presented to me.
Halifax County.
Halifax County was a self-help program
that was created by inmates, for inmates.
These were incarcerated men
who were students of the law and teaching the law.
They were part of a legacy of jailhouse lawyers.
You know, there was a lot of brothers amongst us
who had lived throughout the '60s and '70s
and had been imprisoned for their activism in that era.
And, you know, we didn't know
that you were sleeping next to a guy who was at Selma
on Bloody Sunday.
Training up under those men,
you know, people say it's a law class,
it was so much more than a law class.
It was like a rites of passage of coming into manhood.
From boys to men.
A lot of us didn't even know how to balance a checkbook.
We didn't know how to buy groceries.
Some of us didn't even have social skills, etiquette.
We just was blessed
to be surrounded by some older brothers
who wanted to prepare us to be Black men
who could defend themselves intellectually,
and not just physically.
You are given seven days
to learn the Constitutional amendments,
and recite them.
That's your introduction to being a part of Halifax County.
We had to learn the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure,
the Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure,
the Alabama Rules of Evidence.
This is how I met Robert Earl.
This is how we became friends,
this is how we became brothers.
Halifax County brought a spark of hope,
a spark of life.
We all we got, but we all we need.
I'm inside the law library.
Through our knowledge of the law
we were able to see more clearly
things going on around us that were not right.
You know, what happened with Steven's death?
This ain't nothing new,
that they're using excessive violence against us,
you know, excessive force.
As they saw us filing grievances and filing lawsuits
when our rights were violated,
then it became, "Oh, the library's closed today.
Y'all can't go in there today."
I mean, the Department of Corrections was opposed
to Halifax County in every way possible.
There came a point where we had enough and we had to do more.
We had to take our cases to the court of public opinion.
Free Alabama Movement,
inside Alabama's Department of Corrections.
This is the movement, y'all.
The movement is official.
We are addressing the issues of mass incarceration.
I could never have created
Free Alabama Movement
without Kinetik.
It took both of us.
The combination of both of us
is like a perfect algorithm.
The same thing you can say in two sentences,
Melvin can turn into a five-page report.
Very thorough, very analytical.
Kinetik, he's the guy that you need
to deal with the prison environment.
In a sense.
My background is dealing with street dudes,
so I began organizing.
And I told the brothers, I said, 'Hey,
they love to see us divided and fighting one another.
And their biggest fear is to see us come together on one accord.'
We have to come together and make a stand
that our life is worth something.
Our labor is what funds this system.
We gotta take our power back.
And it wasn't just me and Kinetik.
Guys throughout the prison were posting...
And we started organizing our family members.
They were all at the state capitol
or at the Governor's Mansion.
They couldn't get us out of the news.
A movement is growing
from inside prison walls here in Alabama.
We were working to
make sure that the Department of Justice
was aware of our ongoing situation.
You know, we were a force against the administration.
So what did they do?
They attacked us for it.
Cuff up.
Cuff up!
Y'all can see the
damage to my head on both sides.
That's where they were pounding on my head at.
Because we were encouraging
people to demand their human rights...
they charged me and Melvin with
the disruption of
orderly operations,
which is a security threat.
And then they put Melvin in my file as my enemy.
We can't be around each other in the same institution.
One of us had to be transferred.
We did about five years each in solitary confinement.
Because we had the thought to be free,
they punished us for it.
ADOC tried to hold us incommunicado.
But it was too late.
We got through to the federal government.
Right now, the U.S. Justice Department is launching
an investigation into conditions within Alabama's prison system.
In 2016, when the Department of Justice decided
to actually conduct an official investigation,
this was the breaking of the shell.
When they showed up in the prison system,
we didn't look at them like knights in shining armor.
We was looking at them like, "Okay, what y'all gonna do?"
At this point,
everyone has a boatload of information
because of what we've been able to put out there.
We know that the DOJ has the power
to step in and take control of the prisons.
Our hope is that the government, the United States government
will come down here and hold Alabama accountable.
At the tone, please record your message.
When you--
The frustration's just overwhelming.
It's just been walls.
I called the Department of Corrections.
They don't answer.
So I keep calling.
I called I & I, got disconnected.
Or hung up on, probably.
They're the ones who are supposed to be investigating
what happened with Stevie.
But then I realized how it was all put together.
I & I, Department of Corrections,
they're all within...
they're within the same building.
I mean, they're all together.
You've got to have someone totally independent investigating.
I mean, it's corrupt. That's all you can say.
Sandy came to me after her son Steven was killed.
What she wanted most of all
was for the folks that killed her son
to be held criminally responsible,
which is what happens when you murder people.
The DOC hasn't shared the information with Sandy.
It's a black box.
So I've set up lawyer calls with inmates
so they can speak freely
about what happened.
Hello?
Hello. My name is Hank Sherrod.
I represent the mother of Steven Davis.
I'd rather not get into that, sir.
I didn't see anything, because the cell I was in,
I couldn't see that, sir.
Right, but--
That's why I said I would rather not even...
Is there-- Is a--
Are you by yourself?
No sir, uh, uh, I got an officer standing right here.
So this is supposed to be an attorney call--
I can end this call at anytime?
There wasn't supposed to be an officer in there.
Can I end this call at any time?
Nobody can make you talk to me...
Okay.
Let me ask you this.
I don't really want to speak on it.
I really don't want to do no talking for real about
nothing going on up here.
If this motherfucker beat a motherfucker to death
then how would you feel about testifying against him?
You don't feel like your life would be in danger?
Excuse me, there's an officer peeping in here.
They cracking the door.
Listen, I came to prison in 1985
and I know what these folks will do.
I can totally understand why somebody
wouldn't want to get involved.
I mean, there's no benefit to them.
But hopefully somebody will speak.
The only reason I'm coming forward with this is because
I feel like it will happen to me.
They didn't have to beat him. They didn't have to kill him.
You know, what had happened,
this inmate was telling people
that Steven was, uh, gay, and...
Steven had the right to protect himself, right?
God dang every inmate here now
got to have a weapon on him.
When the officer told him to get down on the floor
he got down on the floor.
He laid his weapon about 15 feet away from him.
He did the exact thing he's supposed to have did.
Are you comfortable saying who killed him?
Three officers was involved in the death, but
Officer Gadson was the one that killed him.
Hit him with his metal stick in the head,
picked him up, throwed him down.
He stomped the dude with his size 15 boot.
Stomped the guy's head on the floor
and the guy's head bounced like a basketball.
Everybody was gathered around looking
while the officers unmercifully beat that guy to death.
That's crazy.
I'm hoping his people get justice.
Thank you so much.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Take care.
Yes, sir.
Bye-bye.
He seems credible to me.
Um... He seemed to really care.
I mean, I didn't hear anything that set off any alarm bells,
you know, regarding what happened.
Now, if there are seven or eight people
who pretty much say the same thing,
I think it's the Department of Corrections
that's going to have to answer some questions
from Sandy Ray about what happened to Steven Davis.
The officers tell the man to put the knife down.
He throwed the knife on the floor and laid on the floor.
Then you had inmates screaming, saying,
'What y'all gonna do, y'all gonna kill him?'
So Big G [Gadson] said, 'Fuck it, I'll kill him.'
Big G [Gadson] came in and started
picking him up and dropping him.
Saying, 'Stay down, quit resisting.'
There wasn't no resistance at all from him.
It's messed with me real bad, you know, mentally.
If it happened to him, it could have happened to any of us.
In prison, shit rolls downhill.
The officers oppress us, so we turn around
and oppress someone who we feel like is weaker than us.
So in regards to Steven, you know,
if someone calls you gay,
and you're not gay,
if you don't straighten that up
he may be beat, may be raped, may be tied up.
He probably decided
to try to defend himself and...
officers took this as a license
to beat and kill him.
I spoke to many witnesses.
The gist of what everybody said
is that Steven was wanting to put on a show of aggression.
But when corrections officers told him to stop,
he got on the ground, and then the beating commenced.
That's the gist of what everybody said,
except for Mr. Sales.
Officers told Steven Davis to let go of the weapons,
but the demeanor towards the officers was threatening.
His demeanor?
Yeah.
'Cause the weapons as they were, were tied to his hands.
He couldn't let them go anyway if he wanted to.
They were tied to his hands?
Yes, sir.
With what?
Uh...
like a sheet... like sheet string.
What was Gadson doing during the incident?
He tried to render aid and assistance to his, um, co-worker.
To subdue Steven Davis.
He provided aid and assistance.
Yeah.
What do you mean by that?
Um,
I guess whatever it means, man.
According to their procedures
they dealt with it the way they were supposed to.
Do you know the procedure of when an inmate has a knife?
I don't.
When an inmate has a knife and an officer is involved
the officer is, right then, at that moment,
able to use lethal force with a baton.
And what lethal force is, is strikes to the head.
Where'd you learn about that?
208.
208 is -- administrative regulation number 208 --
Employee Standard of Conduct and Discipline.
Well, let me ask you this.
Look, we can go around and around about this
in a circle.
I go home in February.
Yeah, that's not too far away--
I don't need the problems that this is bringing.
You understand?
You've got a lot at stake, don't you?
Me speaking with you today can cause me to get harmed.
I & I pulled me out a total of
six times about this situation.
Every time, I put myself on the line.
So you've been pulled out by I & I six times?
Yes.
I told the I & I woman that I was told by Captain [redacted],
whatever I do for his officers, he's gonna do for me.
Meaning, if I sink one of them, they're gonna sink my ass.
I feel for his mama,
but if she expects me
to put my life in jeopardy
to vindicate her son...
then she's sadly mistaken 'cause I'm not going to do it.
Listen, I can't imagine looking at having freedom
and being asked to jeopardize that.
And nobody should be put in a position
where they have to choose between--
Look, if his mother wants to talk to me I'll tell her when...
So once you get out of prison,
you would talk to Steven's mother?
I will not lie to that woman in her face.
But I can't do nothing for her in prison.
This is their world, bro.
I've heard what you said today,
and I will share with his mother
your willingness to speak to her.
- Alright. - You take care and be safe.
Yeah.
Wow.
So clearly he's being fed the...
the officers' narrative.
They just need one inmate backing up their story
to keep this from ever going to court.
We live in constant fear
not knowing
if the officers are going to shake us down, beat us up,
or kill us...
Officer Gadson,
he's a member of the 'Wrecking Crew,' they're called.
They're like a gang. They really are.
They've broke some of these dudes' arms,
they've stomped their teeth out.
They got a green light to jump on guys
and they got addicted to physical brutality.
I worked at Alabama Department of Corrections
for eight years,
and I feel like no person
should go through the situation
that's going on in the prison right now,
as we speak.
Correctional officers should be the most reliable, trustworthy.
You really want people that will do the right thing
when nobody's watching.
But in Alabama, you don't have that.
Every day I thought I shouldn't be participating in this.
There's just so much stuff happening in there.
So now there's a lot of officers leaving.
Sometimes, we have one officer for 200, 300 inmates.
With the low staffing, and the mandatory overtime,
you've got officers that look like zombies.
Look at this man in the cube, asleep.
That's the cube.
Ain't no police in the cube. None.
Ain't no police in the dorm.
Nowhere in the dorm.
How do we get help?
Because they're so desperate for officers,
they just hire anybody that's going to do this job.
So there's a lot of people that seek these jobs.
They're wanting to be controlling and dominating.
They were that kid picked on through school and
they stamp that ol' badge on their shirt
and now,
they're that bully.
They're that bully.
All the officers, they told me straight up,
'Anything these inmates do, you got the green light.'
'They kick on the door, beat their ass.'
'They talk crazy to you, beat their ass.'
'Anything they do out of line, beat their ass.'
And that's what they did. Beat their ass.
This is supposed to be rehabilitation.
What you rehabilitating?
You can't rehabilitate a man by beating the hell out of him.
It's not just a couple of bad apples.
This is a norm.
It goes on in every prison.
There is an extensive history
of pro se lawsuits we filed for decades
against the same officers.
The "pro se" means "for self."
We're filing it ourselves,
without assistance from attorneys.
They're not taking up this litigation. We are.
That's what we were taught at Halifax County.
There is enough paperwork done
for people to understand
just how wide of a scale this is.
All you have to do is go to the federal courts
and look for the pro se litigation.
But because there is no regard for our lives
there is no consequences for their actions.
Twenty lawsuits filed against you.
Pro se lawsuits.
It's like a pattern there. You see that?
I see what they're alleging.
Do you recognize that document?
No, I don't.
Can you read that?
"These officers then used open hands, closed hands,
feet, sticks, and a shield to beat me.
Stomping, kicking, punching, slapping,
and hitting me with a stick, and shield.
I stated several more times
that I was not resisting.
Once again, my pleas were ignored."
That doesn't ring any bells for you?
Doesn't help you recollect anything?
No, it don't.
I ain't finna tell you that I ain't never used force
'cause I'd be lying to you.
I ain't never used excessive force.
You never used excessive force?
No, sir.
Another man was put into a medically induced coma
based on the beating that you and your squad gave him.
You're saying that's necessary force.
You can be placed in a medically induced coma
if they're doing surgery on you.
I'm just ask-- I'm just saying.
"Officer Gadson grabbed me, picked me up,
and slammed me into the concrete floor
while in handcuffs."
That doesn't mean anything to you?
I mean, what...
That's all them alleg--
It's allegations. I mean...
So you're a victim of frivolous lawsuits?
Hey.
If that's what you call it.
When an officer has a lawsuit pending on them
a lot of them look at it as if
'Aw man, I got my cherry popped.' You know what I'm saying?
If you wrote your statement and you did your interview with I & I
and they cleared you of it,
once you get to court that's an open and shut case.
Every lawsuit that I've been involved in,
an inmate ain't never won.
But you settled some of those lawsuits, haven't you?
- Who, I have? - Or your attorney on your behalf
has settled those lawsuits.
I don't know which ones they settle.
Have you ever personally had to pay a settlement
because of one of these lawsuits?
I haven't.
The state pays their legal bills.
If they lose, the state pays the settlement.
It's a whole state apparatus that we're litigating against.
It's not just the COs, or the sergeants,
or the lieutenants.
It's the captains, it's the wardens,
the Commissioner's office,
and the Attorney General's Office.
Understanding that the state
is settling one lawsuit after another.
Beating someone, beating someone,
beating someone.
And these people did not get fired.
They did not get suspended.
An inmate got more rights than I got.
- How so? - You know.
That's why you're defending them.
Somebody's defending you too, right?
Right.
Welcome back to The Jeff Poor Show
on FM Talk 1065.
I want to kick it off with the prison problem.
The Department of Justice, kind of keeping an eye on them,
watching it very close.
Here's how it works, guys.
Federal government could say,
"You can't get this problem solved.
We'll solve it for you."
What if that happens here?
New tonight, the Justice Department files a lawsuit
for conditions in state prisons.
A Justice Department investigation
found conditions throughout the entire Alabama prison system
are unconstitutional.
Alarming new report from the Justice Department
details horrifying conditions
and regular occurrences of murder and rape.
According to the DOJ,
an excessive amount of violence, sexual abuse,
and prisoner deaths occur on a regular basis.
ADOC appears unable to prevent drugs in its prisons.
And unlawful uses of force are common.
During a beating, nurses heard an officer yell,
"I am the reaper of death, now say my name."
This comes more than four years
after the DOJ opened investigation
into the state's prison system.
State officials are pushing back.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
Let's leave no doubt behind.
What the Department of Justice wants to do
is to be able to take over
the Alabama Department of Corrections.
That's not the remedy that we believe is appropriate.
We're going to defend Alabama's interests.
Hey there.
We're celebrating the fact that the DOJ filed that lawsuit.
Like, this is what's actually happening.
This ain't our version,
this is a third party, independent investigation.
The only thing I'm worried about is
you already saw what
the Attorney General Marshall said,
'Feds don't tell us what to do,
they're not going to run Alabama.'
It's already a fight.
The evidence in the lawsuit is overwhelming.
How can you defend this?
Say you didn't know, Steve.
To learn that
I represent a state that this is going on
and my position is,
'I'm going to use all the resources at my disposal
to defend this...'
then it speaks volumes about
the state of Alabama.
You have to remember
this is the heart of Dixie.
This is where the capital of the Confederacy was at.
Everything that Alabama has done in regards
to justice and equality,
they were forced to do it by the federal government.
From the Civil War, to ending chattel slavery,
to stopping segregation.
They don't believe in letting nobody outside dictate
how they deal with their people.
You know what I'm saying, "We gonna have an Alabama solution."
It's got to be an Alabama solution.
We cannot tolerate the alternative,
which is having the DOJ take it over, turn folks loose.
It's our problem, we got to own it,
we got to fix it.
Hey.
Hold on one second.
So, uh, how I feel about Alabama right now ain't very good.
Because the DOJ investigated
and they ain't doing nothing about it.
And now
ain't nobody making parole.
Records show the number of paroles granted
in Alabama has plummeted to a new low.
In just three years,
parole rates have fallen
by a staggering 72%.
Alabama's parole rate is so low,
it doesn't offer any hope to prisoners.
I've been locked up since I was 16
and I've been here 33 years.
I've been up for parole three times.
So what kind of state of mind am I supposed to be in?
Am I just supposed to just sit here and say, 'Well,
they might let me out after I do 50'?
But I'm not gonna act like I don't understand
the other side of the crime.
Some victims have really been through hell.
And I can't soften that none.
But you mean to tell me that
none of these dudes deserve a second chance?
It hurts when I think about it.
I've been on drugs, I've been...
I've been through the whole cycle.
It's, it's just a coping thing.
It don't help nothing.
We try and block out the things that cause us pain...
the pain of never getting out.
And I ain't gonna lie.
I haven't been a model prisoner.
I sold drugs,
shit that wasn't good, you know...
But
the officers, they play a big part in it.
The volume of drugs that come in comes from the officers.
If you're an officer that's willing to bring it in,
you know, it's not like a free market enterprise.
It's more like a monopoly.
So you could bring in drugs.
Oh, easy. Very easy.
There's no checkpoints out at the front.
There's no dogs anymore.
So they're not even going to be paying attention.
I just wonder if they're afraid they'll catch somebody too
and have to fire them, because we're so shorthanded.
So which is worse, somebody bringing in drugs?
Or that person not being there anymore?
This dorm I'm in
is supposed to be a rehabilitation treatment center.
And when dudes come in here
most of them want help.
It's a federally funded program since '99.
The money -- it ain't coming to us, that's for damn sure.
There's no program to help you with drug treatment,
there's no relapse prevention...
Nobody in here helping us with shit.
What happened was, our counselor,
he had been working here for nine years.
He turned in a resignation.
Before he left, he pretty much
told me how to do everything.
And right now I'm in charge of the treatment.
I facilitate the classes.
I'm making a list of the pre-treatment,
the active treatment, the aftercare...
Helping a brother get in here, man.
Here we go.
I mean, I can tell a dude,
you know, what I did to rehabilitate, but
I'm pretty sure that there's more ways than I know
that are available to people
that want to try and, you know, kick this habit.
Especially one that's killing people at an all-time rate.
I mean... it's just
constant.
This morning a dude just OD'ed.
We found him on the toilet.
He OD'ing, there ain't a police in here.
- Hey! - Hey!
Hey, hold him up. Hold him up.
I don't want to watch people die.
You gotta get it out of him, man.
We got a laundry cart,
we'll run them to the infirmary.
We'll be the ambulance.
And some of them make it and some of them don't.
You keep seeing people die,
seeing people OD,
I only know so much, you know what I'm saying, uh...
It's kind of hard because you get to know them.
You know, they're regular people just with a problem.
So is there anything we can say
about the nature of criminal behavior?
I think there are evil people in the world,
and I think there are individuals
that have absolutely no regard for human life.
Is the prison system close to working?
Does it require a massive overhaul?
I think we have a strategic plan in place.
There's an argument that there is some systemic problem
within all of our facilities,
and I wholeheartedly disagree with that.
"We dare defend our rights."
That is a motto of this state that I think matters.
We have the opportunity to push back against
what we think is an overreach of the Department of Justice.
We don't necessarily embrace the fact that Washington, D.C.,
has all the answers.
We want to be able to do it ourselves in ways
that we think make sense for Alabama.
And in fact, the governor's plan demonstrates that.
Her Excellency, Kay Ellen Ivey.
A lot to tackle.
Lawmakers are under an edict
from the federal government
to solve ongoing issues in the state prison system.
Here now, the governor, live from Montgomery.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Please be seated.
You heard me say this before, and I'll say it again.
This is an Alabama problem
that must have an Alabama solution.
I look forward to working with each of you to solve it.
I've asked Commissioner Dunn to build three new prisons
that will transition our facilities
from warehousing inmates to rehabilitating people.
The governor's plan calls for replacing 11 major prisons
with three regional mega-prisons.
That's the best you can do in the state of Alabama
and people are dying?
People are being killed?
And the best you can say is, "We got new prisons coming."
This won't address
the state's overcrowding problem.
There'll be the same issue since there will be the same number
of beds in the Department of Corrections.
Is that correct?
Pretty much.
The governor estimates the cost
for the new prisons would be around $900 million.
- $900 million. - $900 million.
Building new prisons has nothing to do with the DOJ mandate.
It's strictly about issuing out contracts
to people to build these new prisons.
There's a lot of people with their hands in the pot.
So the building of three mega-prisons
is a big, big, big money scheme.
We're gonna build those prisons because we need those prisons.
No one around here understands.
He was beat to death in prison by a guard.
By a guard?
Well, what did he do to go to prison Sandy?
He was with a couple and the guy that was with him shot someone.
So Steven was with him,
so he got charged with murder too.
Has your boy ever been, uh,
on dope or alcohol?
At a time, they've all done it, you know?
A lot of people are cold.
They say "They deserve it. They're in prison.
What do you expect?"
They don't care how they're treated.
But, you know, I never thought I would be in this situation,
that I would have to care how someone was treated in prison.
I'm just waiting for Stevie's roommate,
James Sales, to get out so we can talk.
Because right now he's just too afraid,
which I can understand.
Steven's not the only one that's been beaten.
He's not the only one that's gonna be beaten.
They deserve to be kept safe.
It's a little more tense and a little more stressful than usual.
The administration believes that
I brought the DOJ here.
They feel like I'm trying to get them fired.
They feel like it's in their best interest
for Free Alabama Movement to get snuffed out.
With us buried in a cell or something like that.
I try to keep two, three people with me at all times and
try not to get caught up in an isolated spot.
Shit, all the goddamn mace and shit, man.
Look at this shit.
They just jumped on Robert Earl, man.
The police just did this shit, man...
Look at this shit.
Turn the light on.
Look at all this blood, man.
They drug him out of here.
Lord have mercy.
They keep saying, 'Robert Earl won't move.'
He hit him with the stick across the face, he's on the ground.
He hit him again. When he was already down.
I'm standing in the door.
I watched them drag him out by his feet...
with his face on the ground,
just leaving a trail of blood all the way out the door.
His cellmate called me.
The guards,
they thought they had killed him.
They dragged him face down
by his feet
to the shift office.
When they were trying to clean up the blood
some kinda chemical spilled.
That's what woke him up.
And that's what made them realize
that he was still alive.
They're really keeping it on the hush up.
Everybody's just being like, 'It never happened.'
Sorry. There is no operator available
at this hour.
Record your message at the tone.
They won't let you know how your kid's doing.
You've got to go to bed and sit there
and just wonder, "How is he doing?"
They wouldn't tell nobody nothing.
I want to know what's going on.
I want to know how can we stick together
and help and give him the justice that he deserves?
And if anybody ever cared about Robert Earl,
this is the time for them to stand up.
This is the time for them to protest for justice,
for the injustice system.
There's nothing right about this.
- Alabama legislators! - Enough is enough!
- DOC! - Enough is enough!
My dad was locked up since I was a baby.
But he's been the most impactful person in my life.
Prisoners are humans too.
My dad is a human.
He's a great human.
And he deserves better treatment.
All the prisoners deserve better treatment.
Enough is enough!
- Enough is enough! - Enough is enough!
Protesters calling out what they describe
as the prison system's inhumane treatment of inmates.
While the demand for action is happening outside
of the statehouse, a meeting to address those concerns
was happening inside.
Governor Kay Ivey created a study group
to examine the issues. That group met today.
Now that we've outlined the rules of this meeting,
let's begin.
Now, of course, the way to assure absolute
and total protection of the public
upon conviction of crime
would be execution of all who are convicted.
However, conscience
and the limits of the U.S. Constitution
do not tolerate such extreme consequence
of wrongdoing.
So we live with the reality
that most of those who are convicted of crime
will someday again walk the streets.
With that, it's time to get the program underway.
Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn is here.
That's my son, Steven Davis.
I have still yet to hear from the prison system
to find out what happened to my son.
All I've heard is what they have released in the press,
that he was beat by officers.
A dog wouldn't be treated this way.
I hope you will do justice and give me answers.
Somehow or another.
Please take your seats.
We have a limited amount of time to deal with this.
I can't speak to specifics.
It's an ongoing investigation,
- and I pledge to you that-- - It's still going on?
It is still going on.
And we are going to pursue it, based on the facts,
to the fullest extent that we're allowed.
You told me I can call the DA's office?
- Yes, ma'am. - And find out?
Yes, ma'am. That's correct.
They said they didn't have Stevie's name.
Well, I can't respond to what they may tell you,
but that's the actions that we took.
- It's good to see you. Okay. - Good to see you.
Nothing. Nothing.
You know, they don't want that picture to be seen.
I know they don't.
But I want to show the world what they've done,
why I'm out here screaming and hollering.
And you know the prisoners are scared.
They're seeing all this go down and nothing,
no justice being done.
Don't you know they're scared they're liable to be killed too?
I would be, if I was next door and they beat my buddy to death.
They just found inmate James Sales dead in his cell.
I was told by nursing staff
he was bleeding from his rectum, mouth, and nose.
He was Steven Davis' cellmate
when Steven was beaten to death by officers.
Since then, he was convinced
that the Department of Corrections
was trying to kill him and begging to be transferred.
He was scheduled for release less than a month away.
The day shift found him.
Sales was stiff as a board and white as a sheet.
It's common for guards to pass guys cigarettes and candy
to keep them from banging on the door, to keep them calm,
stuff like that.
The runner back there told us specifically,
'Man, officers told me to give this to Sales,
I can't sell y'all this, this go to Sales.'
I don't know what all was on that cigarette.
Who knows what they put in there.
In prison, inmates call that a 'hot shot.'
This is James Sales' autopsy.
Young guy. No drugs. No injuries.
Cause of death: undetermined.
Somebody this close to release, this young,
no other health problems just suddenly drops dead,
just doesn't sit right with me.
He's like a poster child for how fucked up,
how totally fucked up this system is.
Mr. Sales committed a minor crime,
breaking into an unoccupied building.
Didn't hurt anybody,
doesn't even appear he necessarily even took anything.
And then he gets 15 years?
And then he's put in the highest security prison
in the state of Alabama?
This guy needed rehabilitation.
He didn't need to be put in the worst hellhole
in the Department of Corrections system.
And then he had to witness
Steven Davis get murdered right in front of him.
He told me one time that
he wouldn't mind talking to Steven's mom,
but he didn't know if any of the number of officers
who works in that unit
would come back to get him.
I told him, just hold what you know until you get out.
Most of the coincidences I run into
don't turn out to be coincidences.
I've been here 11 months.
In segregation.
Unjustly.
I believe the Alabama Department of Corrections
attempted to assassinate me.
I had no weapon, presented no threat...
when three officers carrying batons
assaulted and attempted to kill me and left me locked in a cell
for several minutes face down in a pool of blood.
I've already lost sight in my left eye as a result.
Now they're attempting to hold me in solitary confinement
indefinitely.
I keep my food in a laundry bag hanging from the bars.
Then they write me disciplinaries for hanging things from the bars.
But if I put it on the floor,
they'll get it.
Rats.
Eleven caught in one night.
Then you look in my toilet, you see them swimming.
This is like psychological torture
on top of the assault that I'm dealing with.
It's getting to the point now where
I'm getting tired of doing lawsuits.
No matter what I do, they continue to
abuse their authority without any consequence.
So in these situations when I, you know,
get sprayed, get jumped on, get locked up,
my initial thought is
to be violent.
You know, you always revert back to what you
were conditioned to.
In my younger years, we spoke in a language of violence.
Not too many people bring nonsense to you when they
know that there's gonna be a swift, violent reaction.
Maybe I'm going about things all wrong.
Maybe it's going to take a whole lot of bloodshed
for people to say, 'Hold on, this gotta stop,'
and really intervene.
It's been almost three years since Stevie died.
We finally have a meeting
with the Attorney General Steve Marshall's office
to let us know if they're going to press charges
against the people that killed Stevie.
I want to hear how they can explain stomping him.
How that's not murder.
How he deserved that. You know?
Tell me how he deserved being stomped to death.
It's the cruelty of it all.
They all met with me.
They said they're not filing charges.
Point blank. It's over. He said they're not filing charges.
He did explain to me how they...
Hang on...
How they, uh...
How they...
I need air.
How they...
How they investigated.
They told me the story, from their view,
with their investigators.
They told me why he died.
Stevie was attacking them to kill them,
so they had to kill him.
There's a law
that if someone's trying to kill you
and you kill them back, you kill them,
it's a Stand Your Ground law.
He says Alabama has a Stand Your Ground law
that we adopted from Florida.
They told me the whole horrible story.
What they say happened.
I'm still having surgeries and procedures on my eye.
It look good though, cosmetically.
But it's blurred where it ripped, bunch of scar tissue over it.
It's been humbling...
I've read and wrote
for almost 30 years. That's been all I've done.
Now I have to learn to
do all that with one eye.
It was one of the biggest struggles of my life
to maintain my sanity and
peace of mind and my outlook on life
without taking a detour and going
a completely different route
with my anger and frustration.
But I got my mind right.
I'm on the phone with brothers at every institution.
Because
there are still more body bags leaving out of the ADOC
than people on parole,
a lot of brothers are starting to say,
'Well what are we gonna do about it?'
There are 11 participants
in the conference.
It's Kinetik. It's Robert Earl.
Robert Earl, good morning Robert Earl.
Can I say something?
If you search through history, there has been
no group of people that have won true freedom
without bloodshed.
Once they become violent, then you have a right
to defend your life.
Yeah, I know that's the most common
position we should take...
that we should stand up and defend ourselves at all costs.
But I don't think that it helps our cause.
Yeah.
I think we should make sure that things are
done in an intellectual way and not
a emotional way.
Okay.
Y'all really think that a peaceful protest
will change all the laws
without there being no type of violence?
When you look at the options --
violent, non-violent, work strikes, boycott --
what's the absolute best way
to hit the system where it's gonna hurt the most?
You hit them in the pocket, that hurt way more than
hitting them in the mouth.
Correct.
The only thing that's gonna work for us
is to stop the machine from running.
To stop producing goods.
Stop giving services.
We got a official copy of
everybody who actually works in the prison.
All three shifts.
To get them on board.
We've always understood that our labor
is what this is all about.
They give you a job.
It doesn't matter if the job is dangerous.
It doesn't matter if you're sick.
You can be written a disciplinary
for refusing to work
and placed in solitary confinement.
And it's not just prison jobs.
A lot of prisoners
are being leased out to corporations.
Or to do state work.
I work for the Department of Sanitation
every day in the communities.
And I only get paid $2 a day.
Downtown Montgomery,
they have inmates working there.
Even the Governor's Mansion, where Kay Ivey's at.
Kay Ivey being so afraid of prisoners
being so dangerous, and all the murderers
and rapists, you don't want them in your community.
Well, you got a group of them
that's walking around your mansion every day.
I have a clear record
and every time I go up for parole
they deny my parole.
They trust me to work in the community,
but they don't trust me to grant me parole
to get out and go home to my family.
In your mind, can people be
genuinely rehabilitated?
I don't know that I can speak to that specifically.
I mean, look, I think anybody can have a change of heart.
I'll say that. I think God can invade somebody.
I believe in the concept of grace.
But grace itself doesn't mean release from prison.
Grace means that you're relieved from the burden of your sin.
People in here are starting to see
that we have been thrown into a slave camp
where we're being told, 'You're gonna work for us for free
until you die.'
If they insist on running an unconstitutional prison
then they can run it themselves.
I wrote a couple things
to get people prepared,
letting them know what the shutdown is all about,
how to conduct yourself.
We're on this phone all day and night, you know,
talking to brothers at Fountain, at Ventress,
at Easterling, Staton, Donaldson, death row...
This is what it's about.
Right.
We can beat you not working for your ass.
We can beat you like that.
We can't get violent or get stupid,
so we just trying to show what's going on by striking.
We have a beautiful opportunity right here
to bring over 20,000 prisoners together
for a statewide shutdown.
This is to force Alabama
to address this humanitarian crisis right now.
Not when a judge rules on a lawsuit. Right now.
We dying right now.
Any work done by any incarcerated individual
is prohibited from this day forward.
Alabama inmates are on strike.
It is affecting every major prison facility in the state.
The unprecedented system-wide
worker stoppage sending a message to lawmakers.
Some are saying this protest has been a long time coming
after the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit
against Alabama over its prison conditions.
Inmates have refused to show up for work in the kitchen,
doing laundry, or anything else.
We have officially shut down.
The impossible, as they say.
What's up family?
Let me show you the energy up in this block.
Unity.
Real unity.
Black, white, Mexican, everybody.
We together up in here.
It's an undescribable peace.
People united behind a common cause.
And we praying...
I got Jesus on my mind
In truth, yeah, we praying
I got Jesus on my mind
It's a stone-cold groove right now.
It's a stone-cold groove.
Fourteen prisons go down,
that's never happened before.
Inmates in Alabama are demanding
the U.S. Justice Department intervene
and put an immediate stop to,
quote, Alabama's systematic denial
of human and dignity rights.
The Governor's Office said that the demands
are, quote, unreasonable.
As far as the demands, they were reasonable.
It wasn't, "Let me go or I'm gonna kill somebody."
It was just, "Here are some things
that we'd like you to look at.
And we're protesting because of that."
The governor of Alabama has
not responded to
over 100 some people being murdered,
suicides, drug overdoses,
in the last year alone.
But the Governor had to respond to us on Day One.
It gets people to understand,
you know, their own power.
We know the injustices and the corruption
that's going on in the Department of Corrections.
Today in Montgomery, family members rallied
on behalf of inmates, saying they won't be working
until the Alabama Department of Corrections
makes changes and improvements.
They beat up Robert Earl Council.
They locked up Melvin Ray.
But the Free Alabama Movement is what pushed this.
Listen man, everybody listen to me man.
The momentum is on our side.
The media on our side.
Everybody watching everything.
No violence, no threats, no harm...
We just got to stay the course. Keep it steady.
We stand in solidarity for this strike
and this shutdown.
ADOC officials scrambling
to come up with a plan to manage operations
if inmates refuse to work.
Your conference will begin momentarily.
Robert Earl!
You know what they fed them for dinner?
One pack of chocolate cream cookies.
No lunch at Fountain, man. Repeat, no lunch at Fountain.
Was that all they gave?
That's all they gave for us?
All they gave us, bro.
They've started 'birdfeeding'
in order to try to starve us into submission.
ADOC says the changes are logistical,
but a correctional officer who spoke with us off camera,
fearing retaliation, believes that administrators
are intentionally dragging out the feeding schedules
so at times, inmates are waiting
up to 14 hours between meals,
as a way to break this strike here.
We've been saving up food
for the folks that might need some food.
So that folks know that they're not in this alone,
we're all in this together.
These are all elderly people.
People that been in prison 20 years.
- I did 37. 37 years.
He did 26 years.
Older guys... so we do the best we can.
We're going to feed the whole community up in here.
The superior Black man,
as well as the white man, is being fed.
Look at them brothers down there serving.
Everybody lined up to eat.
We gotta come together and unify.
Gotta look out for each other.
It's the only way we win.
Day three no chow.
Day Four!
Day Four, yeah it is Day Four.
Weekend visitations at prisons
all across Alabama are canceled.
The administrators are trying to put the pressure
on some of the inmates to make them go back to work.
They came to my cell,
I submitted to their strip search.
I said, 'Can y'all run this prison with the staff y'all got?'
He said, 'Man, you know we can't.'
I said, 'Why don't y'all tell the truth?'
'Why y'all keep pretending 'cause they give y'all a check?'
Day five of the Alabama Department of Corrections protest continues.
Special response team
is actually inside Limestone
right now doing a major search.
The team is traveling to each of the prisons.
They're doing what any
counter-intelligence agency would do.
Man, as we speak, they locking dudes up everywhere.
Let me explain something to y'all.
Alabama is the most arrogant people on the planet.
And they're gonna whip us,
'cause they refuse to let some prisoners
make them do anything.
But I promise you
that the money that they're losing every motherfucking day
is way more than what Kay Ivey's let on.
They just locked Robert Earl up.
They say the riot team choked him out.
Let everybody know what's going on.
We're starting to lose a bit of faith
because we feel like the voice that represented
a majority of us on the inside has been separated from us.
That's the oldest trick and tactic known to man...
divide and conquer.
But now is not a time that we can give up.
Now is not a time that we can say, 'I quit.'
Live and local, Talk 99.5.
Alabama prisoners are refusing to work.
Eventually, they'll get tired of the food
that is being prepared by the handful of employees,
- and they'll get back to work. - Yeah.
You're not in any position
to make any demands. You're in prison.
Continue to serve the meals, continue to do the laundry.
Look down at your legs.
Are there shackles? Not really in a position
to do anything about it. Sorry about that.
It's now week two of the Alabama state prison
inmate work strike.
Everything's still operational.
There's no disruption in essential services.
They starving us out.
We dead hungry and it's for real.
A hungry man is a dangerous man.
And it makes you dangerous.
Because it makes us desperate.
They know what they're doing.
They turning us against each other.
Everybody attitude on the edge.
We in here nasty, dudes trying to wash their clothes
like a Third World country.
And then they got mental health outpatients
out here in the population with the regular inmates.
And they don't understand nothing.
They don't want to hear nothing about no shutting down.
So we got to be careful with them
and make sure that they don't get hurt or hurt somebody.
I'm told by current staff members
things have stayed pretty nonviolent
inside these prison walls.
But they say that this just cannot keep going
the way it is right now.
There's just too much stress on this system
without the inmates helping out and doing those jobs.
Hold on for a minute.
See this...
You know,
ever since Robert Earl is out of contact,
we ain't been organizing as a unit for real.
He know how to inspire people to have us all working as a group.
Calling all the prisons,
connecting different people together that can make it happen.
No, I have no clue where he went.
I just called Fountain and
dudes' gonna tell me, 'I'm tired of this shit.'
What you mean you tired of this shit?
You should be tired of getting mistreated.
You get hungry? So fucking what.
The object of this Movement is sacrifice.
Somewhere between 20 and 30 people
broke the picket line.
I swear to God, that shit's so embarrassing
for dudes to fold up like that.
I apologize and I'll never fold.
Work stoppage is slowing down,
with inmates at only a handful of prisons
continuing their protest.
If we don't go through with this,
then five, ten years from now,
we'll still have the same foot up our ass.
I don't want us to give up.
I want us to do whatever we need to do.
Work stoppage by inmates
at Alabama prisons is fading.
There are now just five lockups affected.
Man, these dudes folded.
They went back to work.
Laundry workers, kitchen workers...
State prison officials say
only two facilities
are now experiencing stoppages.
I want people to understand, I got something to say.
That y'all got something to say.
Quit playing with all these little urges and cravings.
You can't go a day without a full meal,
but you can go 20 years without your family?
They break every rule, they lock anybody up,
targeting people,
whatever, just 'Get them back on the plantation.'
An entire state
has disregarded the well-being and the health and the safety
of thousands of people.
There is no accountability.
But everybody around here waiting on --
'When y'all gonna go back to work?'
Prison operations are back to normal
after a three-week-long inmate protest.
Inmates had hoped their protest
would spur some action by lawmakers and ADOC leaders.
But that didn't really happen.
You are a prisoner.
You did commit a crime.
You're in prison. It's prison.
It's supposed to suck.
Shipshape. Let's go. Chop, chop.
You sure showed the man.
Well done.
We've seen it on the news. We've seen the national coverage.
Where the people of Alabama at?
They ain't outraged by this?
It's Inauguration Day in Alabama.
Steve Marshall with his family there with him.
Gov. Kay Ivey will officially be sworn into office.
A landslide victory for Kay Ivey,
galvanizing her two terms here
as governor in the state of Alabama.
The primary function of all levels of government
is to keep our citizens safe.
Just last week, I signed an executive order
to ensure violent criminals remain off the streets.
I was really, really optimistic during the strike.
Maybe naive thinking that
it would force the DOJ to
take over the prison system.
And start the process of trying to rectify
some of these things that were wrong.
It's easy to justify doing a lot of bad things
if the money right.
The state of Alabama continue to thrive on the bodies of
Black, brown, and poor white people.
The institution of slavery is real.
You can change the name of it
but the undergirdings of it are the same.
Exploitation.
And they're getting rich all the way to the bank.
And they're laughing at us who are talking
about truth and justice.
Everyone who is here is standing
with the family members that we have lost
in Alabama's prisons.
These inhumanities...
they're not just in Alabama.
Since the strike,
we've been hearing from brothers
from states all across the country.
This is E.M.C.F., correctional facility.
The Louisiana State Prison in Angola.
What's up, man. We need y'all's help, man.
Let me be clear when I tell you
that the things that you see taking place in Alabama
and worse are taking place in your state,
and in your name.
It's not beneficial to anyone.
Not to the jailer,
not to the people who were harmed,
not to society.
No one benefits from this version
of what they call "justice."
We all ask you guys to help us
push for prison reform.
They might try to put me in 'the hole'
but share this shit,
spread this shit.
Whatever your opinion is about this film,
it would not have been possible
if we didn't violate the rules to get the story out.
And because of that
you're able to see
the truth about a reality
that they're gonna tell you doesn't exist.
I've had enough experiences
throughout this struggle to know
it's going to take a lot of soul-searching
to change the mentalities of
300 and something million people.
A person does the same thing over and over
expecting different results,
it's insanity.
But
I believe in what we're doing, so
maybe I'm insane.
Let's just see what it look like out there.
The light coming through like the light of truth.
Come here, kitty.
Do you know who this is?
No.
No, I don't.
I don't. No.
Hey.
How are you?
Hey, I'm alive, shit, I guess that counts.
Hey, Papa Smooth.
This is Papa Smooth.
Papa Smooth, you don't want to be on no video, do you?
Now that's Papa Smooth, he really, really grouchy.
- Hold on. - Okay.
Hold on one second. Don't talk. Don't talk.
The cost of a new Alabama prison
is up to one billion dollars.
At this rate, the price of all three
of the new prisons could triple the original estimate.
Governor Kay Ivey is suggesting
state lawmakers use money from the education budget.
You're literally robbing our children
to pay for these new prisons.
And are you still supporting the $100 million
going to the prisons from the Education Fund?
Sure.