Since NYC power brokers have decided that they would rather build jails to lock up New Yorkers than invest in our communities, we’ve decided to issue our own stop work order on the Brooklyn jail construction site.
We clogged the locks of construction site entrances with cement, smashed their card readers, and locked the gates at multiple locations operated by the jail’s concrete supplier, SRM.
The $3 billion Brooklyn jail is part of the city’s $16 billion borough-based jails plan. In addition to Brooklyn, new jails are being built in Manhattan, Queens, and The Bronx. The city is propagating the lie that in order to to close Rikers by 2027, it needs to open four new jails. Given that the city has already admitted that it can’t meet its legally mandated deadline, that the building plans for these new jails already anticipate overcrowding, and that the number of people arrested by the NYPD has doubled since 2020, we’re calling their bluff. More cages won’t close Rikers or make our communities safer. If they build it, we will burn it!
We act in solidarity with abolitionists inside and outside of prison walls, with those who riot against corrections officers and ICE, and with those trying to save their family members state-sanctioned premature death. Every struggle against racism, fascism, zionism, colonialism, xenophobia, and cisheteropatriarchy must also be a struggle against the carceral state.
To the city: decarcerate now, and build affordable housing instead. Do something that will actually benefit our communities.
To SRM Concrete: drop your contract for the borough-based jails now.
To our fellow New Yorkers: join us in action and make your voices heard. No new jails. No more deaths at the hands of the state.
Submitted anonymously.