In November 1970 prisoners at Folsom State Prison launched a work strike. For the next nineteen days, more than twenty-four hundred men—almost the entire prison population—refused to leave their cells or participate in any way in the routine functioning of the prison. At the outset, the men released a "Manifesto of Demands and Anti-Oppression Platform" which consisted of thirty-one demands covering a wide range of issues from daily conditions to the structure of confinement itself. The manifesto's demands pertained to individual liberties (access to adequate legal representation, medical care, and reading material); political reform (fair parole policies, an end to the rampant and racist abuse of prisoners, payment and union representation for prisoner labor); the right to organize; freedom for political prisoners; and prisoners' ability to offer financial support to their family members.