The protest came in support of a nationwide prisoner strike to call attention to the low inmate wages, decrepit facilities and harsh sentences that organizers say plague prison populations across the country. Though it is unclear how widespread such demonstrations have been, activists said they had shown a new ability to reach inmates across state lines at a time when prison unrest and in-custody deaths are frequently in the news.

“Prisoners aren’t oblivious to their reality,” said Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and a longtime critic of prison conditions. “They see people dying around them. They see the financial exploitation. They see the injustice.”

Inmate protests have happened for generations, but it is only in the past few years that organizers have had success coordinating from penitentiary to penitentiary and state to state. In 2010, Georgia inmates used contraband cellphones to coordinate protests across at least six prisons. And in 2016, prisoners in several states stopped reporting for work to protest their wages.

Much of the recent activism has focused on inmate pay, which can range from nothing at all in states like South Carolina and Texas to, at best, a few dollars for a day of hard labor in other places. Prisoners frequently refer to it as “slave labor,” and organizers of this year’s strike have called for inmates to be paid the prevailing wage for the cleaning, cooking and other work they perform behind bars.

“People are starting to realize how disgusting it is how human beings can be paid pennies,” said Amani Sawari, a spokeswoman for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group organizing the strike.

Sawari said inmates in several states planned to participate in the strike, which started last week and is scheduled to run through Sept. 9. In addition to increased pay and better living conditions, strikers were calling for changes to sentencing laws and expanded access to rehabilitation and educational opportunities for inmates, among other requests.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Mitch Smith © 2018 The New York Times