Inmates to refuse work assignments in action over use as unpaid labor, which one human rights activist says is a case of state forcing ‘work at gunpoint’ 
 
 Inmates of Florida’s prisons are planning to use Monday’s Martin Luther King Day holiday to launch a statewide strike over conditions they say amount to modern-day slavery. Then, in August, in response to prison activists’ calls for another show of dissent, Department of Corrections officials placed the entire state system — 143 facilities and 97,000 people — on lockdown, an unprecedented move. In response to questions about the planned strike, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections wrote in a statement to The Intercept that “the department will continue to ensure the safe operation of our correctional institutions.” 
 
 “Slave Labor” and Price Gouging 
 
 Florida prisoners work both inside the prisons — doing laundry, cooking, maintaining the facilities, and growing food — and on outside “community work squads.” According to the corrections department, in 2017 the latter group alone performed 3.15 million hours of work valued at more than $38 million statewide, including cleanup work after Hurricane Irma. “Our goal is to make the governor realise that it will cost the state of Florida millions of dollars daily to contract outside companies to come and cook, clean and handle the maintenance,” the unnamed prisoners said in a statement posted on the website of the inmates’ advocacy group Fight Toxic Prisons. “This will cause a total BREAK DOWN.” 
 
 Prisoners are demanding compensation for their work as opposed to “the current slave arrangement,” they wrote, in which they are paid in time deducted from their sentences. “We want to create an environment where someone can do their time, be rehabilitated, and enter into society with some type of hope.” 
 
 “That would be helpful for society instead of creating a revolving door where you lock people up and just set them up for failure so that they keep coming back.” 
 
 Prisoners are also calling for fairer pricing of goods they can purchase in prison — claiming, for example, that a case of soup that costs $4 on the outside is sold for $17 by prison commissaries (the DOC disputed that claim and provided the following list of canteen prices). “This is highway robbery without a gun,” the prisoners wrote. “There’s a word for that, it’s called slavery. It’s our families who struggle to make ends meet and send us money, they are the real victims.” 
 
 Advocacy groups and friends and families of inmates have organised solidarity rallies outside several prisons and department of corrections offices on Monday, including in Miami and Tallahassee. Among those killed in custody was Darren Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner who was scalded to death at Dade Correctional Institution in 2012 when guards locked him in a hot shower for two hours. Following Rainey’s death, a devastating investigation by the Miami Herald detailed more unexplained and brutal deaths, as well as system-wide neglect and abuse and efforts to cover up prison officials’ wrongdoing.
– Many Americans aren't working on Martin Luther King Day; others are protesting work that they describe as slave labor. The Guardian reports on an "unusual" protest organized by prisoners throughout the state of Florida that kicks off Monday. The primary grievance: that they're forced to work and paid nothing—not even the nominal 15 cents an hour some prisoners see in other states, for instance. They're seeking a fair wage and hope to arrive at that end via the monthlong Operation PUSH, during which they plan to not show up for work assignments. Said the prisoners in a statement, "Our goal is to make the governor realize that it will cost the state of Florida millions of dollars daily to contract outside companies to come and cook, clean, and handle the maintenance. This will cause a total breakdown." As for those millions: The Intercept, which reports at least eight prisons have inmates who plan to participate in the protest, notes that in addition to the work done in the prisons, "community work squads" logged 3.15 million hours of work—worth $38 million, and which included Hurricane Irma cleanup—throughout the state in 2017.