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Incarcerated people, having paid their debt to society, are returned home to work, pay taxes and with a scarlet letter in their pocket, denied their right to vote.

Prisoners and their families have been complaining about the horrible living conditions in the jail. They have told stories of inadequate and inedible food, black mold growing on cell walls and extensive use of solitary confinement. Also, access is limited for medical services for both pre-existing conditions and illnesses acquired inside the jail.

Aramark serves pre-cooked, freeze-dried, dehydrated, processed and mechanized meals and uses the DOC offenders to operate its company with free labor. The offenders cook, serve and clean under DOC’s supervision and Aramark maintains a skeletal staff of less than five employees in total, and one at any given time. The prison recently had an audit, which it failed in its food service department.

After running an historic campaign to be governor of Georgia, former House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams addressed members of the media and her staff just before Georgia certified election results on Nov. 16. In her remarks, Abrams outlined the gross injustices Georgians faced when trying to cast their ballots during this election and launched Fair Fight Georgia. This new PAC will pursue accountability in Georgia’s elections and integrity in the process of maintaining our voting rolls.

Kamau Sadiki’s daughter Ksisay has issued an urgent call for help: “Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP) wants to amputate my father’s foot. He needs a wound specialist, not amputation! What started as a wound the size of a penny spread from lack of medical care and has caused his foot to get seriously infected. He has requested a wound specialist for some time, but the prison administrators have repeatedly denied him this care. My father is asking folks to call the prison and write letters.”

Good evening, Georgia. I stand here tonight grateful to the thousands of you who have joined me on this drive to history. We are writing the next chapter of Georgia’s future. Where no one is unseen, unheard or uninspired. A Georgia where we prosper – together! And I know, for the journey that lies ahead, we need every voice in our party – and every independent thinker in the state of Georgia – energized and by our side to succeed, so I hope you will join our fight for the future.

I’m writing to you on behalf of myself and ALL of the other brothers who are sharing my same struggle as a captive of the Georgia Department of Oppression. Georgia is a “hate state,” so we have no “progressive” media outlets here in the state and we need to bring attention to our plight with hopes that the publicity will garner us some help in one fashion or another.

The Georgia Department of Corrections is operating a behavior modification torture program designed to break a prisoner’s mind, body and spirit in order to instill fear and docility into each prisoner placed in the program. Prisoners are deliberately denied proper nutrition, media access, medical services, religious and political expression, access to the courts etc. There is nothing positive about this program.

Not quite a month ago, I wrote that we at Black Agenda Report had received word of a new self-organized hunger strike among prisoners in Georgia’s notorious Diagnostic and Classification Prison at Jackson. A second communication says eight prisoners are still refusing food and are on the receiving end of abuse and threats from correctional officers at Jackson. The note also sheds some chilling light on the reason for the prisoners’ self-organized action.

On Feb. 9, 2014, prisoners in the special management unit of the Georgia Diagnostic Correctional Prison began another hunger strike to protest conditions. Some of the prisoners have had enough of the oppression and decided to take a true stand in fighting for their rights. Most of the prisoners participating are some of the same prisoners from the Dec. 9, 2010, and the June 11, 2012, hunger strikes, and these prisoners are again refusing to eat until conditions change.

I am scheduled to go to court on a fabricated charge put in place to protect the correctional officer who assaulted me with the hammer. This South Georgia district attorney has chosen to ignore the law and protect a good ol’ boy who has broken the very law he swore to uphold! Just goes to show you that the KKKonfederates still live in Georgia.

A prisoner at Georgia’s Special Management Unit Prison in Jackson, Georgia, was found unresponsive in his cell days after he had been engaged in a heated argument with staff. The prisoner, Charles (Charlie) Moore, a mental health inmate known for being argumentative and outspoken, was being housed at GDCP SMU for behavior that is incompatible with General Population Guidelines.

The deplorable beatings you’re witnessing occurred on New Year’s Eve, just before midnight, on Dec. 31, 2010. It’s taken two years and nearly eight months for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to release this video. A very persistent family member of one of the victims finally persuaded them to give it to her, and Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, a strong advocate for justice for prisoners, posted it to YouTube for the world to see.

In December 2010, Sgt. Christopher Hall led an emergency response team at Macon State Prison in central Georgia responding to a fight between an inmate, Terrance Dean, and a guard. Hall’s team broke up the fight, handcuffed Dean and took him into the prison gym. Dean emerged with a massive head injury, comatose and clinging to life.

“It has been 33 days since these men have eaten. We must move swiftly or people are going to start dying,” writes Delma Jackson, wife of Miguel Jackson, the prisoner who was beaten with a hammer in retaliation for his role in the December 2010 mass sit-down strike protesting slave labor and other atrocities.

The entire penal system of Georgia is a national disgrace and a shambles. Did you know that in Georgia one in every 13 of her citizens is in prison and of the ones who are not, one in six is in law enforcement! Georgia has the largest number of persons doing “life” and most have been locked up for the past 20 years. All these men and women will or are starting to grow old at the same time, with little or no medical support.

Since June 10 an undetermined number of Georgia prisoners have been on a hunger strike. Some of these men are the Jackson State prison strikers. After two weeks, according to the families of Miguel Jackson and Preston Whiting, they are weak from hunger and subject to fainting spells. But they seem to believe they have little to lose. They are, a letter from one of them asserts, “starving for change.” We must demand justice for Miguel Jackson and other Georgia state prisoners who are being targeted and brutalized for exposing their inhumane conditions and standing up for their most basic human rights.

What is wrong with prisoners asking for better living conditions and pay for work? What is wrong with prisoners requesting better educational programs, better religious programs, better rehabilitative programs or any useful programs at all instead of the current ones in place, which we hardly are even allowed to attend?

Two days after the lockdown at Hancock State Prison was lifted, my father was placed in lockdown for making and leading congregational salaat (prayer). He was then told that he would never walk the compound again and they would assault and tear gas the Muslims if they continued to make congregational prayers.

A year ago this month, Black, White and Brown inmates in a dozen Georgia prisons staged a brief strike. They put forward a set of simple and basic demands – wages for work, decent food and medical care, access to educational and self-improvement programs, fairness and more.