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In December 2024, white prison guards at a Utica, New York, prison handcuffed and beat 43-year-old Robert Brooks to death. This time, the public saw the footage. In February, six of the guards were charged with murder. That same week, New York guards went on strike without union approval.
They’re protesting solitary confinement reform, which they claim makes their jobs more “dangerous.” So far, seven incarcerated people have died. At the peak of the strike, 90% of officers walked out at 90% of state facilities.
Jose Saldaña, director of Release Aging People in Prison, believes guards are striking “to erase [public] consciousness” after the public witnessed Brooks’ lynching. Democracy Now interviewed Saldaña alongside anthropologist Orisanmi Burton, who offered historical context. “[T]he role of the guards is really to enforce domination,” Burton explained. Prisons are “a form of counterrevolution.”
It took years of activism to pass 2022’s HALT Act, which limits N.Y. solitary to 15 consecutive days or 20 out of 60 days།—a sharp reduction from precedents of “months, years, and decades.” Still, while guards protest reform, the state fails to implement it properly. Nearly two-thirds of the population in solitary is Black.
To these guards, solidarity inside and outside prison walls for safer conditions is a threat. They’re advocating for their own safety, no one else's. But, from following prison news to jail support and prison letter writing, let’s keep that threat going.