When we teach truth, we reap freedom
As educators, you shape how the next generation understands justice, labor, and freedom. The classroom is a crucial ground in the fight against systems of cruelty and exploitation, including the system of prison slavery upheld by the 13th Amendment.
Like many of you fighting for adequate pay, safe schools, and the right to teach the full truth, we organize against systems built on coercion and inequality. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) motto that “an injury to one is an injury to all” applies directly to our shared struggles. When the labor of any group is devalued and exploited, including teachers and incarcerated workers, it undermines dignity and justice for everyone.
The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee invites you to use your unique skills and role in your community to help us build an informed, engaged public that understands and supports the movement to end forced prison labor. Your profession equips you to translate complex truths into powerful lessons that foster solidarity.
Pathways for Educator Solidarity
For All Educators:
- Bridge union solidarity: Within your union, propose resolutions in support of incarcerated workers’ rights, drawing the direct line between defending public education and opposing prison slavery. We can help you with model resolutions.
- Amplify prisoner voices: Use your platform to share articles, artwork, and campaigns created by incarcerated people, ensuring their direct testimony reaches wider audiences.
- Model critical engagement: Foster classroom environments where students learn to critically analyze systems of power and recognize abuse of authority.
For K-12 Teachers
- Seeing your students: Mentor students with incarcerated parents, siblings, or who have experienced state violence themselves in finding their voice and developing themselves as freedom-loving, knowledgeable individuals. Help other students to understand and empathize with these experiences.
- Deliver & share curriculum: Let us help you distribute and implement accessible, age-appropriate lesson plans, discussion guides, or reading lists that explore the history of the 13th Amendment, forced labor, labor rights, and transformative justice. Your pedagogical expertise is invaluable, and these lessons will help keep all our communities more safe and free.
- Plan “Know Your Rights” workshops: Help us plan, design, or deliver basic workshops for students and community members on civil liberties and workers’ rights, providing crucial tools for empowerment. All too often, we do not learn how to stand up for our rights when we are young. This is a major problem that you have the ability to help correct.
For University & College Faculty
- Incorporate IWOC perspectives into curriculum: Use primary sources, statements, and analyses from the prison labor movement in courses on Sociology, History, Labor Studies, Law, Political Science, Ethics, and Literature. Host a Speaker or Workshop: Invite IWOC members (formerly incarcerated organizers or outside solidarity members) to speak to your class or campus. (Note: We can provide guidance on virtual events or in-person visits dependent on travel funding).
- Support student research: Mentor undergraduate or graduate students conducting thesis research or independent projects related to prison labor, social movements, and abolition. Connect them to credible sources and frameworks.
- Leverage institutional resources: Advocate for your department or library to subscribe to more radical publications, host public teach-ins, or use campus spaces for events like book tours or movement art exhibitions related to incarceration.
Let’s Connect
We know your time and energy are precious. This form helps us find the most meaningful and manageable ways for you to contribute.