President Abraham Lincoln is credited with ending slavery — but even he knows that slavery hasn't truly ended. In a historic moment, Lincoln returns to acknowledge the mistake he made in supporting an exception in the 13th Amendment and urge us to end it. Watch his presidential address.

After years of advocacy, Worth Rises and its local partners passed a bill making all communication free in Massachusetts state prisons and local jails, including phone calls, video calls, and electronic monitoring. The bill is the first to cover all prisons and jails in a state, and will save incarcerated people and their families in Massachusetts over $14 million annually. Read more about the big win!

Worth Rises gathered over 70 prison phone justice advocates, including impacted people, in Minneapolis for the first Connecting Families Conference. The program include powerful talks, informative panels, and critical training for advocates fighting to make prison and jail communication free in their communities.

In a quick battle that represents the momentum of the connecting families movement, Worth Rises and its local partners passed a bill making calls free in Colorado’s state prisons. The bill covers all state prisons and will be implemented over three years with calls becoming fully free on July 1, 2025.

Worth Rises and Color Of Change released a Policy Blueprint for Ending Carceral Profiteering that calls on the Biden-Harris Administration to stop corporate profiteering off of incarceration and gives the Administration a concrete roadmap to doing so. Corporate exploitation throughout the carceral system harms people detained on the inside, families and communities on the outside, and taxpayers and public safety at large. It’s time to put an end to it. Read the full report here.

After pressure from Worth Rises, FDRsafety has terminated its contract with Alabama to approve the safety of a new nitrogen gas protocol for death penalty executions. The announcement came hours after local faith leaders delivered an open letter and more than 3,000 signed petitions expressing moral outrage. Worth Rises also successfully moved Airgas to forbid the use of its nitrogen gas in the executions.

After decades of advocacy, advocates, including Worth Rises, passed the federal Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communication Act to increase the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory authority over prison and jail calls. The bill mandates regulation of all phone calls, authority that was previously restricted to roughly 20% of all calls, and video calls, which the agency had never regulated. It also establishes many disability rights related to communication. Read more about this win!

In September 2021, after months of pressure from Worth Rises and other advocates, Alabama halted its plans to build two new mega prisons and terminated its 30-year lease agreements with CoreCivic. We are excited to join our coalition partners in celebrating this milestone victory for the people of Alabama! We plan to stay vigilant as the state considers other options to expand its correctional system.

On Juneteenth, Worth Rises joined over 70 organizations in launching #EndTheException, a national campaign supporting the Abolition Amendment to end the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment that allows slavery as punishment for crime. The event featured powerful poetry and remarks from sponsors Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Nikema Williams. Watch the replay!

In a powerful TED Talk, Worth Rises Executive Director Bianca Tylek pulls the veil off the guarded prison industry and explains the opportunity we have to dismantle it, using telecom and the prison phone justice movement as a case study. Watch now!

Worth Rises Executive Director Bianca Tylek and our partners Diane Lewis, Jewu Richardson, and Brian Sullivan appeared on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in May to share about our work to make prison calls free in Connecticut and challenge prison profiteers like Tom Gores. Check it out!

The Prison Industry: How it Started, How it Works, How it Harms delves into the history, business, and impact of the prison industry and all its corporate players, as well as offering powerful first-person narratives from people who have been directly harmed by the greed of private corporations.

After months of disappointment in dialogue with Tom Gores, owner of the largest prison telecom corporations in the U.S., we sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) calling for his removal from the board. Days later, artists echoed our call in their own letter to LACMA. Under the pressure, Gores resigned!

Alabama is developing a new execution protocol to kill people on death row: nitrogen gas suffocation. But they can’t do it alone — corporations have stepped in to do what doctors have refused, supplying gas, masks, and more. The death penalty is unethical, profiting off of it is morally incomprehensible. Sign the petition to stop them and block the roll out of the nitrogen gas protocol.

Today, millions of incarcerated people are forced to work for private corporations, state-owned corporations, and correctional agencies for little to no pay. Those who refuse to work are often beat, denied visits and calls, and put in solitary. Tell Congress to end the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment that allows slavery as punishment for crime by passing the Abolition Amendment. No slavery, no exceptions!

Owner of the Detroit Pistons, Tom Gores, also owns one of the nation’s largest and most predatory prison telecom corporations: Securus. Despite being forced off the LACMA Board of Trustees, he continues to exploit families struggling to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones by charging egregious call rates. Sign this petition to tell the NBA to force the sale of the Detroit Pistons unless Gores reforms and sells Securus — he can’t keep both!

Families are fighting for free access to communication with their incarcerated loved ones. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when visits were suspended in facilities across the country, communication was even more important than ever. Visit ConnectFamiliesNow.com to find a campaign and take action for national, state, and local prison phone justice.