Biography
John Perotti was a militant jailhouse organizer and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who spent much of his life in the Ohio prison system, largely at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (Lucasville). A relentless prisoners'-rights activist and jailhouse lawyer, he was repeatedly beaten and thrown into isolation in retaliation for organizing against prison conditions and guard brutality, and filed numerous brutality lawsuits; in one incident he stabbed a guard who attacked him. The prisoner-support movement regarded him as a political prisoner for the retaliation he endured for his activism, though his original imprisonment was not for a political offense. He kept organizing from behind the walls for decades.
