WESTVILLE, INDIANA, April 28—An impromptu call to action via a Facebook event led to about 80 cars circling the Westville Correctional Facility today. Antiracists decorated their cars with demands for better living conditions and medical care for imprisoned workers. Brazen disregard and torment from the prison’s guards has resulted in 92 percent of imprisoned workers  testing positive for Covid-19 and one death (Chicago Tribune, 4/22). This deadly system does not deserve to exist.
These conditions only serve as another example as to why this terroristic capitalist system has not and will never serve the working class. While the organizers of the protest laughed and made friends with racist kkkops, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) displayed revolutionary messages such as “capitalism kills” and “a better world is possible”  and connected with workers who have loved ones inside the prison.
Capitalist inequality makes workers sick
Prisons offer no opportunity for social distancing and the racist guards who run the prisons know this. Imprisoned workers have been reporting to their families on the outside that they do not have any access to personal protective equipment (PPE) nor has there been any attempt to sanitize the prison. Even worse, we spoke to a mother outside of the prison who received a report from her incarcerated son that the guards are intentionally disciplining members of our class by placing them in areas with a high concentration of imprisoned workers with Covid-19. We cannot continue to allow this system to dehumanize and murder our class.
Liberals will never liberate us
While the action was a crucial show of solidarity with incarcerated workers, the organizers of the action made sure to tow the capitalist line. When we arrived, we were given a prayer sheet that included a “thank you” to law enforcement for “putting their lives on the line” while they threaten the lives of our working class brothers and sisters. Others even gave kkkops peace signs in a show of solidarity. Such passive tactics spread illusions about what’s possible under capitalism. No matter how we paint it, law enforcement enforces the racist laws that serve capitalism. They are no friends of the working class.
PLP pushed the limits by honking our horns and being as loud as possible so that imprisoned workers could hear us. Imprisoned workers were holding bedsheets out of their cell windows with “SOS” written across. We must make ourselves heard to those who are being most downtrodden by this system. Despite being asked to stop honking our horns, we continued to push the limits. Our class depends on our collective liberation to survive and that means that we continue to fight back against liberal concessions.
Mass incarceration traumatizes children
Some cars in the caravan were not participating; they were parked on the side of the road with signs in support of it. We decided we would pull over to talk to these workers with physical distance between us. We were able to get them our website and social media information and talk to them about the conditions inside of the prison. Two women had sons inside the prison and were terrified for their lives. One woman’s son has cancer and the last time she spoke to him, he told her that they were not giving him his medication. She told us she has not spoken to her son in a week. Every time she calls, they hang up on her. She informed us that despite water contamination, imprisoned workers have not been given bottled water. What’s worse, she has a five-month-old grandchild who has never met her father. Now, with his life in danger, it is possible that he will never meet her. The conditions capitalism creates for working class families are traumatizing.
It is up to our class to make a better world for us and our children. Only a communist world created by and for the working class with PLP leadership will cure this virus that is capitalism. Join us!