On the fire line and on strike: Collective action by incarcerated firefighters 1971–2

Abstract

California’s Conservation Camp Program, where incarcerated people work as wildland firefighters, has long been lauded as a community service opportunity for prisoners and as a critical workforce for environmental protection. However, between 1968 and 1972, several groups of revolutionary prisoners organized themselves to foster Black revolutionary critiques of the Conservation Camps Program. This article recounts the history of Black revolutionary organizing in conservation camps and centers, focusing on a series of work stoppages that serve as an extraordinary example of collective action by incarcerated workers. The four documented work stoppages in 1971 and 1972 illuminate three interrelated activities of incarcerated workers in the Conservation Camp Program around this period: communication across the porous boundaries of the conservation camps and centers, enunciation of Black revolutionary politics, and labor organizing as resistance to the structural exploitation they experienced in conservation camps.