Under Lock & Key Political repression in NY prison [...] Speaking of censorship, this is one of the most repressive tactics administered by the pig administrations within prisons. Censorship is more about keeping us miseducated than it is about securing the safety of the facility. This is a proven fact due to DOC's soldiers being bent on confiscating educational materials. This censorship system breeds corruption. Although there are policies and regulations, supposedly in accordance with the first amendment, governing censorship -- by designated administrators -- the security staff (a.k.a. pigs in uniform), conduct their own censorship campaigns during cell searches. The pigs seize reading material they think is politically or socially offensive. These incidents are contradictory actions. If we are permitted to receive certain publications through the mail, it is obvious that censorship of the materials should not happen later. The uniformed flunkies act as if they have their own personal constitutional agenda. They even take it to the extent of confiscating photographs of family and friends. They then issue misbehavior reports under the pretense of "unauthorized organizational activity." Though all incoming mail is censored by designated employees, we are burdened with [tiers of] censorship. For example, I received a photograph in the mail of my brother posing with an innocent hand gesture. It was allowed in by the mail administrators. However, when I was transferred to another facility, it was confiscated by korruptions officers during a cell search. The confiscating officers labeled it "gang-related" material and issued me a misbehavior report. The fact that they issue so many misbehavior reports leads me to believe that they receive a commission from the mandatory $5.00 surcharge for any guilty dispositions on a monthly quota. I was convicted of unauthorized/organizations activity and placed on thirty days keep, locked with mandatory disciplinary surcharge in the amount of $5.00. The hearing officer was biased and partial. There was absolutely no substantiating evidence other than a uniformed pig's statement. I later appealed the "superintendent's" designated person's decision to the commissioner of DOC. The decision was affirmed. Consequently, I filed an Article 78 proceeding, which is a petition that challenges the decisions of the department of correctional services. After conducting some legal research I came across a similar case (235 A.D. 2d 887). Although I have not received a decision from my petition the circumstances are indeed similar. "Inmate brought Article 78 proceeding to review determination by correctional facility that inmate violated standards for inmate behavior. The supreme court, Wyoming County, Dadd, J, transferred proceeding. The supreme Court, Appellate Division, held that evidence did not support correctional facility's determination that inmate possessed unauthorized organizational materials or unsigned in violation of standards of inmate behavior. Determination annulled. Prisons "key" 13 (7.1) Correctional facility's determination that inmate possessed unauthorized organizational materials or unsigned supported, in view of evidence that photographs in question were packed by personnel of inmate's previous correctional facility and seized upon arrival at his current facility. -Ref. McKinney's Civil Practice Law and Rules 7801 et. Seg.: NY Comp. Codes R. and Regs. Title 7. 270.2(B)(6)(iii)." To reiterate, many uniformed flunkies operate under their own personal constitutional agenda to mete extra repressive censorship. Nevertheless, armed with the proper education we can counter-act and lift some of the burdens of prison life off our backs! All power to the people! -- A New York prisoner, 27 November 1999. Ohio: Turning up dead in new prison This prison opened in 1998 and people are already turning up dead. The Correction Officers (C.O.s) shot this guy in here. They say it was "rubber bullets," but there is a lot of stuff going on in this Supermax prison and we need help to bring it to light. They dog our phone calls so we can't let people know what's going on. We don't get fresh air, have lockdown 23 hours a day and 24 hours a day on the weekends, tight hand cuffs. We'll be out on a visit in a glass cage, handcuffed and chained up from head to toe. There are no windows in this place except a little one in the rec. room and we have an 85% chance to get tuberculosis and all the other diseases in the air. They are really doing us bad. -- an Ohio Prisoner. Prisoners dying in Florence The merciless and imperialist scheme that rips off taxpayers in the name of federal Bureau of Prisons is killing prisoners at the ADX Supermax at nearly 2 per year. Since the opening of this man made hell, death camp, in 1994, mysterious deaths linked with medical negligence have killed E. Grey; Coffman, who injured his own head during an epileptic seizure and was permitted to bleed to death while staff stood and watched; Henry Evans, who had a mysterious heart attack in his cell; Leroy Martin; D. Jones, who became ill in his cell, was taken out around 4 a.m. by prison officials and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. And now there is the most recent mysterious death of Wilson, who was pronounced dead of suicide in his "suicide proof" cell! -- A Colorado Prisoner, 1 August 1999. 'Til the Death of Me by a New York Prisoner I'm holding on to my sanity It seems like oppression is steadily killing me Like so many ancestors in the cemetery So many chain-gangs and psychological slavery So many rivers of blood for liberty Trying to stand on my own two feet But slipped and fell to the "Belly of a Beast" Slapped in the face by a pretense Of reality I waged war on poverty My own family can't afford to feed me I can't comprehend those political policies It makes me wonder why police Always bother me So many years of "Black-stick" brutality The media painted me a public-enemy In a court of repressive law, Society convicted me Found guilty of rebellious energy Of revolutionary ideology found me in a penitentiary And when I stand to make 'em Hear me I don't agree with the way [they] Treat me I get arrested again and thrown into solitary Confined and away from the solidarity Surrounded by steel and cold concrete For another week All I see is gray clouds lingering over me And [they] call this a "correctional facility" [They] don't even know me, so How can [they] rehabilitate me? All I want is liberty, justice, and equality Instead of imperialism's death-grip On my family Any of my friends' families, and their families What have we done to deserve this Horrible inequity? It makes me wanna stand and fight 'til the death of me! Anti-racist prisoner gives historical context of rebellion I was here at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) during the 1993 prison siege. The riot lasted 10 days and cost many lives. Most of those murdered during the April 11 through 21 prison siege were enemies of the state. They were prisoners who filed federal civil rights lawsuits concerning the conditions they were forced to endure here at SOCF, the toxic waste dump. The administration at SOCF knew about the impending riot on April 11, 1993, but took no action to prevent the uprising. Actually the state of Ohio Department of Corrections (DOC) encouraged it and used Aryan Brotherhood (AB) gang-bangers to promote and incite it. Let me note that AB gang-bangers are racist hate mongering neo- Nazis and pro-Ku Klux Klansmen. The reason for the state DOC to promote the prison riot is simple: it would give the DOC of Ohio justification for accessing its emergency funds account and spending millions of dollars. Around $60 million were spent in modification here at SOCF after the 1993 riot. They built a $480 million Supermax concentration camp in Youngstown, Ohio, and hired more staff police to patrol more than 37 state prisons here in Ohio. Prisons are big business here in Ohio and the contractors who do the work building and modifying these prisons give big money kickbacks to the state employees who decide who will get the state contract. The state has been using the AB gang-bangers here at SOCF to hurt, cripple, and kill inmates for quite a while and continues to do so. In April 1998, I was attacked on four separate occasions by AB members. These were very vicious and violent encounters. Then in May while I was working in the kitchen here, an AB gang-banger snuck up behind me and my neck still suffers from the beating. After this beating, the administration employees here said I was the cause of the attacks. They put me in isolation and let my AB attacker return to general population. They kept me in isolation until after I saw the parole board twice and was given four more years of time to do. The Aryan Brotherhood members hate me because I would not join when they tried to recruit me. I like people of color and I am anti-government, unless that government is for the people and by the people. There is no room in this world for tyrants and vampires who suck the blood of the poor and people of color. To all of you Nazis and neo-Nazis and KKK Christian Identity scum out there, you had better find another world to go live in, because this world isn't big enough for you and me to live in. The pain and suffering you have inflicted on my brothers and sisters is what you are going to get back in return with compound interest! There is no other recourse we can take to correct this blight that afflicts so many. Lead poisoning is the only long term solution to the capitalist empire and its followers. Deal death to the pigs and all who will side with them. If you are not for me, you are against me, and thus you are my enemy. You must die so we the people of the revolution can live and thrive. U.$.A, you declared war on the people, so now take your medicine like the swine you are, and all aboard now. We will be departing soon. I'll take your ticket and bon voyage! -- an Ohio Prisoner. MIM responds: We print this letter as an example of the possibility for Amerikans -- those born into the most repressive imperialist society on the planet -- to commit national suicide and throw their weight to the side of the international proletariat. To all those who ask "Does MIM hate white people" we encourage you to follow the example of this comrade and forthrightly renounce national chauvinism and side with the anti- imperialist, anti-militarist struggle. MIM seeks to distinguish friends from enemies, and in this we recognize that white Amerikans as a group have a strong economic interest in supporting imperialism. But we welcome all individuals who want to work against imperialism and militarism to join an organization of the MIM-led united front. As we work to clearly answer Mao's question "Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?" we must also keep in mind that political allegiance -- like any other character trait -- is not fixed or immutable. Mao also made clear that "people's heads are not like leeks, when you cut them off they do not grow back again." Lead poisoning or other methods of execution should not be the Communists' first answer to dealing with the oppressors. Human beings have limitless potential; this includes the potential to understand the error of chauvinist and oppressive politics. We look forward to the international proletariat having the power and opportunity to change over many former oppressors into productive contributors to building socialism. Beat Down: That's the Common-Go-Around [In July] in the Michigan Snake's Prison System, a MIM supporter was abusively escorted to the administration segregation unit because he stood up for what he felt was the right to his own possessions. Upon returning to the general population housing unit from the chow hall, a prisoner had noticed the moment he was locked up in his cell that someone had been rambling through his personal belongings and left his foot locker in a ramshackle. When questioning the unit guard in concern to this aimless wandering in his cell, he was provoked into a petty assault, which was afterwards charged against him through a major misconduct report. But the complaint never stated that the on-duty guards (several of them) who bum rushed him, attempted to personally execute him by throwing him over the gallery and perhaps justified the cause by claiming it was accidental because he had struggled. Yeah right. But being that there were eyewitnesses of other inmates in the area at that time, the guards instead body slammed him to the floor of the gallery, rolled him over aggressively and cuffed him behind his back extra tightly. This resulted in brutal cuts around the skin and swelling in the tissue ... and even from all this he was still not treated with the proper medical attention. -- A Michigan Prisoner in the Struggle with the USW. Repression and consciousness in Minnesota I am writing concerning your organization. I was referred to you by another prisoner and I'm very interested in knowing how I can share my horror stories of maltreatment. More importantly I want information on your group and want to be brought to more awareness about this barbaric modern day plantation system. The prison system is geared toward creating negative personalities, violations of fundamental guarantees, constitutionality's, poverty schemes of passing secret laws that punish further. They use psychological warfare of pitting one racial group against another which is a part of their control movement mechanics, while they make billions of dollars with these sweat shops which pay only twenty-five cents an hour. At the same time prison authorities charge well over normal retail price for prison store bought items, plus taxes. I thought prisoners were not suppose to be taxed because they can't get tax returns. Did you know in the Minnesota State Constitution they have an article which legalize slavery and slave labor when a person is thrown in jail/prison? In Minnesota a prisoner does 100% of his or her time, parole time is considered "good-time" and MN DOC has the authorities to take away as much good-time as they want with fabricated incident-reports. There is a policy here that DOC workers must support each others decisions and reports (even if its found to be fabricated) so prisoners may be written up about 99.9% of the time all are convicted. The system is fabricated by factions who breaks up families, violate rights, human and civil. Point the finger at the judicially found guilty persons while they violate and still proclaim to be innocent. They are objective criminals and terrorist to an oppressed people, under abstract laws. I struggle daily to be free from these people. In the face of my struggle I have filed claims in the federal District Courts Parker v. Hanson and Dept. of Human Rights Pasha v. MN DOC each time I have been retaliated on with reports of threatening staff. The previous or latter case earned me 7 counts of terroristic threats against staff with supported fabricated statements from all 7 staff members get this a year from my scheduled out date. So there is no protection for people doing time in america's prison system which is focused at locking down any and all so- called African-American male young or old as well as Hispanics. Don't get me wrong there are a population of caucasian-americans locked down but the majority of these males are employed at the prisons or work with the administration so they get favored treatment compared to the rest. [...] Through all this I have maintained my sanity educate myself! Educate myself! Educate myself! Through higher education programs, financial books and informational books to which I have found that self-education and self-programming pisses off any DOC franchise, because a person that does so professes to be catagorized as a gangbanger or some other stereotype. Doing so only earns ones the label of trouble-maker. I hope you will help further my education of new horizon. --A Minnesota prisoner, 5 December 1999. Talk is cheap I'm not interested in writing anything for Under Lock and Key because I'm weary of reading all of the fine sounding rhetoric of politicized social prisoners who do nothing but complain while they are in prison, and don't do anything to correct the injustices that they were subject to upon release!! Here, I'm not just speaking my opinion, I'm speaking fact that history can attest to over the years! I'm not impressed with a lot of the fine sounding revolutionary rhetoric that is voided of social service programs in the communities of the downtrodden! Maoism is not a factor in the communities of the disenfranchised that I have knowledge of! The late Marcus Garvey put it best when he said "You can't just tell black people, you have to show them." This science just don't apply to black people -- it is not applicable to all people who are sick to death of hearing endless revolutionary rhetoric that has no meaning in their "everyday lives" of woes and more woes! My experiences have taught me people aren't going to commit themselves to a life and death struggle just because of some grand ideas someone might have floating around in their heads. I feel that people will commit themselves to a struggle that they can see meaningful and tangible changes on their everyday lives!! I mean, talk comes cheap, and I know that there is nothing really going on out there in terms of real struggle! -- A New Jersey prisoner, 18 December 1999. MIM responds: We first address this reader by asking what he considers a "real struggle." The Amerikan government makes tangible changes in the lives of many people every day as they put forward their welfare and homeless programs to try to pacify the people. MIM's Serve the People Programs are certainly not as well- funded or as large as the government pacification programs -- but we are serving both the short and long term interests of the oppressed with the ultimate goal of ending oppression entirely. MIM does work that daily impacts people's lives, but we place a priority on the work to build a revolutionary party that can overthrow imperialism. The greatest impact that we can have on the most people's lives will be through successful revolution. Change cannot occur overnight, rather time must be spent on education and planning to liberate all the oppressed. Maoism is not about grand ideas floating around in peoples heads. It is about revolutionary theory that comes from practice. Maoism has a history of successfully making tremendous tangible changes in the lives of a quarter of the world's people. The Black Panther Party was Maoist and it earned the support of the Black nation in the u.s. because of its correct leadership -- which included what you would call rhetoric. The Black Panther Party, just like MIM, had to state the clear path forward. The BPP served thousands of people each week WITHIN the context of building revolution. We encourage this reader to examine MIM Notes #203 which addressed these issues. MIM challenges this prisoner and all other readers who think Maoism is just about rhetoric to lay out for us your more successful practice and point to a more successful history that supports this practice. We are confident in laying out this challenge because we know Maoism has the most successful history of revolutionary change.