Eugene Puryear reflects on the context in the US of rebellion and the necessary questions facing the movement against police violence and for Black lives

The August Rebellion was monumental, especially in light of the Attica prison uprising just three years earlier where inmates demanded better living conditions and political rights, and which catapulted prison uprisings into mainstream public consciousness. To this day, the August Rebellion protects women prisoners from arbitrary and excessive segregation in solitary confinement. In other places such as North Carolina in 1975, women held a sit-down demonstration for medical care and to close the prison laundry that escalated into an uprising when prison guards attacked them. Such prisoner-led uprisings continue to be critical moments in the resistance to a ruthless system that thrives on oppression.

The high-security Pelican Bay prison was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, and with little due process. In 2013, 30,000 incarcerated people went on a hunger strike that spread into a feat of unity across California prisons. The Strike follows these solitary survivors who fought to abolish indefinite isolation.

In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and Louisiana. With Lydia Pelot-Hobbs , Judah Schept , Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore