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by Termaine Saulsbury
I would like to share my thoughts and some solutions to inmate pay. More and more people need to start filing grievances, doing legal work and writing state legislators in regards to our pay – peacefully.
What has happened to me in the 20 years since our pay was last increased? Tobacco has gone up 600 percent, the average costs of food has gone up 300 percent, the price of TVs have doubled, more money is being made from the tablets, and the sizes of products have gone down while the prices go up.
For those of you new to the system, the Department of Corrections doesn’t pay us. We actually pay ourselves. Five percent of all commissary sales – minus the 25 percent maintenance fee – goes into our Inmate General Welfare Fund (IGWF) account. That is what we get paid from.
More and more people need to start filing grievances, doing legal work and writing state legislators in regards to our pay – peacefully.
So whatever happened to the cost of living? While the guards’ wages continue to rise and they make millions off of overtime, we get left behind. And then when your family sends you money to survive, the DOC takes a cut for your court costs. Since when was my family ordered by the court to pay my fines?
And why isn’t there an independent third-party overseeing the IGWF and adjusting our wages? The pay scale should range between $0.58 and $1.02 – double from the decades-old $0.19 – $0.51 – and that’s at the bare minimum.
If the money – our money – isn’t coming back to us, then where is it going? An investigation into the handling of our money is long overdue and a mass work stoppage is the ultimate sanction.
Kill corporate kapitalism at the foundation. We ain’t gotta hurt nobody. No riot. No violent protest. All we gotta do is “do nothing.” We as prisoners, as men and women – whatever you wanna call yourself – have been oppressed, exploited and dominated too long.
If the money – our money – isn’t coming back to us, then where is it going? An investigation into the handling of our money is long overdue and a mass work stoppage is the ultimate sanction.
Private corporations are investing in prisons in droves to reap fortunes off our cheap slave labor. This gives the corporations additional motives to have the government set up even further the mass imprisonment of people of color and give them even longer sentences to create a greater supply of slave labor on which to amass even greater fortunes.
The time has long since arrived where prisoners have no choice but to go on a nationwide work stoppage to break this vicious cycle. All prisoners have to do is “do nothing” – lay down and refuse to work.
The government will react harshly but, in the end, it and the corporations will have to withdraw their siege on our communities, both inside and out.
The time has long since arrived where prisoners have no choice but to go on a nationwide work stoppage to break this vicious cycle. All prisoners have to do is “do nothing” – lay down and refuse to work.
History shows that this racist, kapitalist system cannot be reformed or adjusted to make it work for all people. When resistance gets too costly, it only changes its methods; then it continues down the same path – the unbridled pursuit of riches through world domination of people of color and the poor.
The entire system must be destroyed. It has failed humanity miserably. And even now it’s rushing headlong down the path of world destruction.
The greatest fight that young people can take today is the fight to save yourself, your people, other oppressed people and the world itself. You do that by fighting to destroy this racist kapitalist system.
In solidarity,
Termaine Saulsbury
Send our brother some love and light: Termaine Saulsbury, GP 3965, SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370.
