Biography
Robert Earl Council is an Alabama prison organizer and whistleblower featured in the documentary The Alabama Solution. A January 2026 report by Katie Rose Quandt for The Appeal, reproduced by NYC ABC, describes his work exposing brutality, forced labor and dangerous conditions through footage and interviews from inside prison. It reports that he and two fellow organizers were moved to extreme solitary confinement in an isolated Kilby Correctional Facility unit in mid-January after a nonviolent work strike was announced. Attorney David Gespass said they had been given no reason for the transfer and feared for their lives. The report identifies Council and Ray as co-founders of the Free Alabama Movement in 2013 and quotes their accounts of about five years each in solitary following that organizing. It also reports a January 2021 guard assault that left Council unconscious with severe injuries.
Robert Earl Council is an Alabama prison organizer and whistleblower featured in the documentary The Alabama Solution. A January 2026 report by Katie Rose Quandt for The Appeal, reproduced by NYC ABC, describes his work exposing brutality, forced labor and dangerous conditions through footage and interviews from inside prison. It reports that he and two fellow organizers were moved to extreme solitary confinement in an isolated Kilby Correctional Facility unit in mid-January after a nonviolent work strike was announced. Attorney David Gespass said they had been given no reason for the transfer and feared for their lives. The report identifies Council and Ray as co-founders of the Free Alabama Movement in 2013 and quotes their accounts of about five years each in solitary following that organizing. It also reports a January 2021 guard assault that left Council unconscious with severe injuries. Reported retaliatory extreme solitary confinement at Kilby following prison organizing and whistleblowing, transferred in mid-January 2026. No new criminal sentence or exact custody endpoints documented; underlying ordinary conviction is not classified as political by this report.
