DEFEND PRISONERS
Payday continues to support many collective and individual campaigns by prisoners. We have joined with Legal Action for Women (LAW) and other organisations (run overwhelmingly by women) to oppose the death penalty, miscarriages of justice (including Joint Enterprise), prison conditions, prisoners' economic exploitation and slavery and above all the cruel and inhumane use of solitary confinement - a policy used to punish rebellious inmates.
Prisoners in the US and UK are disproportionately people of colour coming from poor communities where they have suffered racism and discrimination even before those of us who are not white face the racism of the criminal justice systems.
It is generally recognized that the vast majority of women in prison have committed crimes of poverty often in an effort to feed their children. Mothers in prison face the extra excruciating punishment of separation from their kids who they have spent their lives protecting.
And women – partners, mothers, sisters, daughters of prisoners – have been the most resolute campaigners against prison injustices, always supporting their loved ones inside. Whenever we could, we have campaigned internationally, opposing the prison systems in the US, the UK and elsewhere.
With organisations in Global Women Against Deportations, we have campaigned to close immigration detention centres everywhere.
By Carlos Soledad, El Salto
229 immigrants detained inside the Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma, Washington, continue their hunger strike in response to the death of Trinidadian Charles Leo Daniel for unknown reasons.
By Global Women Against Deportations & Payday
Please support the hunger strike inside and outside the detention centre, protesting the death of Mr Charles Leo Daniel, in solitary for almost 4 years, and against detention conditions.
By Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee
Imprisoned Indigenous elder Leonard Peltier is in urgent need of medical care. Peltier was falsely convicted and imprisoned and has been kept there as revenge for his community daring to resist. He has withstood decades of torture in US prisons, taking a terrible toll on him physically.
By Oakland Abolition & Solidarity
Since December 26, 2023, up to 30 prisoners in solitary confinement at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison have been on hunger strike to protest the continued use of torturous long-term solitary confinement.
By Keith Lamar on death row
The governor has issued a reprieve, meaning that the projected execution date has been moved to January 13th, 2027. Let’s keep moving forward everybody. Let’s keep demanding justice.
By Yen-Tung Lin and Luke Baltay – solitarywatch.org
On July 8 and 9 2023, solitary survivors, their families, activists, and scholars gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of the 2013 hunger strike in the Pelican Bay State Prison, which became the largest prison hunger strike ever held in the United States.
By Supporters of Kevan Thakrar
Kevan Thakrar was told by the prison that he would be allow to mix with one other inmate, thus breaking his ongoing segregation. An important victory. Read Kevan’s supporters’ press release.
By Supporters of Kevan Thakrar
On 25 and 26 April 2023, Kevan Thakrar, a young Muslim man, is bringing a legal challenge in the High Court against his prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement in prison segregation.