History of Resistance

August 2013 - Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice founded F.A.M., the Free Alabama Movement, to protest mass incarceration, forced labor, and inhumane prison conditions in Alabama and across the nation.

December 2013 - F.A.M. began publishing videos on a YouTube channel, exposing for the first time the horrific living conditions inside the ADOC (Alabama Department of Corrections). Melvin led the effort at great personal risk by using contraband phones to document deteriorating facilities, coerced labor, and the testimonies of fellow incarcerated men.

January 2014 - Free Alabama Movement launches its first peaceful work strike, with labor stoppages at two major facilities. The strike would last 21 days.

February 2014 - Melvin publishes his book and manifesto, which lays out the facts and makes the argument for incarcerated workers to leverage their labor to push for prison reform. He also publishes the FAM Freedom Bill, a draft legislation that proposes broad systemic reforms to Alabama’s justice system in order to reduce overcrowding, oversentencing, and increase transparency by granting media access to prisons

April 2014 - Free Alabama Movement stages another work strike at the same facilities, which received national coverage. Melvin gives interviews to Salon, In These Times, and AL.com, saying, “We can’t incorporate violence… Violence is what has drawn most of us into the prisons — and that’s what we’re trying to stop.”

May 2014 - Melvin begins hosting a weekly online radio show, “Blog Talk Radio - Live From The Plantation”, which features callers from both inside and outside the walls discussing social justice issues related to incarceration. The show would continue intermittently until 2020.

July 2014 - Melvin, with the help of his mother, Antonia Brooks, organizes the first FAM rally outside St. Clair Correctional Facility to protest coerced labor and unconstitutional conditions

Free Alabama Movement began networking with prison labor organizers across the U.S., helping to form the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, the Free Mississippi Movement, Free California Movement, and the Free Ohio Movement.

May 2016 - Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice stage a May Day labor strike, affecting five prisons in Alabama. They experience retaliation from ADOC, in the form of restricted feeding schedules.

August 2016 - Prison organizers across the U.S. hold a nationwide strike on the anniversary of the Attica prison uprising. Dozens of facilities across the country experience work stoppages. The Free Alabama Movement led a strike at the Holman Correctional Facility. Melvin and the Free Alabama Movement are widely cited as the primary organizers of the nationwide strike.

September 2016 - Melvin is interviewed by Vice News to discuss the labor strike, ongoing systemic failures in the system, and his horrific living conditions.

April 2017 - Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice participate in Al Jazeera’s in-depth report on Alabama’s prison labor and Free Alabama Movement’s organizing efforts.

September 2018 - Two years after the 2016 strike, organizers stage another nationwide prison strike, advocating for restoring voting rights. Melvin and Kinetik are preemptively placed in solitary confinement, diminishing their ability to lead the strike.

April 2019 - The DOJ releases the findings of its investigations into Alabama prisons. The report lists violence, unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and understaffing as some of the contributing factors to the unconstitutional conditions.

June 2020 - As parole rates drop, Free Alabama Movement organizes a series of protests outside the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles. They are protesting for parole reform.

April 2021 - Melvin and the Free Alabama Movement partner with Alabama Students Against Prisons (ASAP) to protest Alabama’s plan to build two private mega-prisons. Pressure from them and others leads to Barclay’s exiting the deal, causing the plan to collapse. Melvin provides a statement to Forbes on behalf of the Free Alabama Movement.

September 2022 - After homicides and drug overdoses reach record highs in ADOC, Free Alabama Movement organizes a state-wide work strike, the largest in Alabama’s history. A majority of the facilities shut down, and the strike ends after three weeks of organizers enduring harsh retaliation by ADOC.

February 2024 - Melvin organizes a 90-day labor strike inside St Clair Correctional Facility, which is supported by 12 weeks of protests outside the facility, organized by activists from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.

January 2025 - A documentary made in collaboration with Melvin Ray, The Alabama Solution, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s described as “one of the most powerful exposés of the inhumanity of the American prison system.”