On November 1, several prisoners (about 10) created a disturbance in the mess hall. They had been drinking, took a case of soda from a guard and barricaded themselves into one of the dorms. They then proceeded to take a pipe from a floor fan and create a cannon with a cue ball. When the riot squad stormed the dorm, the prisoners fired the 'cannon' at them. The pool ball went through a chicken-wire enforced window of a door. The prisoners then soaped the floors and turned the fire-hoses on the riot squad.
The riot squad turned off the water and tear-gassed the ENTIRE unit. They then proceeded to beat and drag out every prisoner from the unit, despite the fact that only ten prisoners were involved. The riot squad beat prisoners so badly that OVER 20 PRISONERS were sent to the hospital. One prisoner had five teeth knocked out and had his collar bone and arm broken. He was not one of the 10 prisoners that started this.
After they had all of the prisoners handcuffed and stripped naked, they had them lay on the floor for 18 hours. Men were defecating on themselves because if they spoke they were kicked in the head. Almost the entire unit was transferred.
After this, the warden went to all of the different leaders of the communities in the prison and asked them to have a meeting, amongst themselves, to try and calm the situation down. There was talk about a work strike, but also mainly younger prisoners were heading towards serious violence. The leaders of the different communities met for hours and came out of the meeting with the decision to take back to all of the different units to have a work strike. The ONLY demand that they had of the prison officials was to ensure that the prisoners that had gotten hurt RECEIVED MEDICAL ATTENTION. That was the only thing that they wanted out of the work strike. It was really a compromise because many prisoners were so angry that the threat of a serious riot was very real.
The men at the meeting then went back to the units and held meetings. One prisoner said that out of 200 prisoners in his unit, 190 attended that meeting. He said that after 11 years in prison, he had NEVER seen such unity in prison. The men met calmly, talked about the situation and tried to resolve it to ensure that the others who had gotten hurt were taken care of.
What followed is a clear example of what prison officials are capable of. The warden immediately locked-down the entire prison. EVERY MAN who was at the meeting (the meeting that the warden ASKED them to have) was put in the hole and the majority of them were already transferred. Those who led the meetings in the units were also put in the hole and transferred. The prison has already transferred 400 prisoners and more are being transferred daily.
The riot squad would walk up and down the units at night with flashlights and pull people out of their cells. The prison was CLEARLY intimidated by the unity of these men and responded in the ONLY way they are capable--senseless violence and punishment.
There are several of the community leaders (including political prisoners) that remain in the hole in Lewisburg. Lewisburg is off of their lock- down and visits have been resumed, unless you were placed in the hole. It is important to know what prison officials do to these men. It is important to let the prison officials know that we know.
WHAT TO DO: Call, fax, and write the warden at Lewisburg. Let him know that people know what happened there. Let him know that people know how guards beat prisoners. Let him know that those still in the hole should be released back into population.
Warden J.D. Lamar P.O. Box 1000 Lewisburg, PA 17837 phone (717) 523-1251 fax 717-524-5805 --from a prison support group, Nov. 19, 1995
FOCUS ON THE YOUTH
Dear MIM, When I originally came to prison back in 1988, I was a very confused young gangbanger from Inglewood, CA. I took a deal for 12 years on a bunch of very senseless robberies. Over the past 8 years, I've grown up tremendously. Today I feel as though I'm a man who is ready to deal with what's happening out there in society ... I'm 28 now and I have less than two years to go before I get paroled.
Over the past eight years I've been taught and schooled by the best of convicts. So when I get out of here in '97, I feel as though I have an obligation to inform my young brothers of what is really happening. I've always been a very good talker so when I get out I'm going to focus on those young Bloods and Crips. And try to focus all of that negative energy that they have inside of them, into some positive channels. I look forward to working with MIM also in '97 ...
Constantly struggling. --a California prisoner, Nov. 4, 1995
BILL OF CRIME
A bill of crime, the high and all mighty want passed by the legislative body, against it will be the law and the oppressed. They say we need it to bring crime to all time low, the Public opinion agreeing right along through all it is a Propaganda Machine. The bills that have been passed Many times before are only affecting the oppressed. They say,
Build Lock and execute them
So society may be safe but in reality they want to Quiet us, for in the capitalist greedy minds are dancing dollar bills for their big old piggy-banks. --an Iowa prisoner, Oct. 16, 1995
AGGRESSIVE MADNESS
The surroundings are closing on my sane mind Next thing i know Paranoid to the bones flinch at every noise Sweating through my pores with no remorse though everyone's out to get me at once have i gone mad to only do the dance "Mental Maniac"? Ponder with such delirium only seems one way out Aggressive technique it felt so easy Cutting the water of life Whirling sensation Nothing at last finally finding the peace i so much desired from my past. --an Iowa prisoner, Oct. 16, 1995
ABOLISH AMERIKKKA'S OPPRESSIVE CONTROL UNITS
In the late 18th century, the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia, PA, became the first penitentiary in U.S. history to experiment with the use of long- term isolation. This was based on the "Quaker theory" that without social interaction, a prisoner could not be influenced by fellow inmates and that a religious conversion would occur during the years of enforced meditation and result in the individual's reformation.
This theory had monstrous effects upon those incarcerated between its walls. During that time a considerable number of prisoners fell into a madness, even after a short confinement. Some fell into a semifatuous condition from which it was almost impossible to arouse them. Others became violently insane, some to the extreme of committing suicide. Those who underwent these isolating conditions were generally not reformed. In most cases individuals did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any service to the community.
It would seem that after such experimentation, that this type of treatment would be eliminated by prisoncrats. Though after two centuries, the practice of confining prisoners to small cells for long periods of time is still in full force.
In modern times the U.S. penitentiary at Alcatraz became notorious for holding the most dangerous criminals within the U.S. penal system. In reality it became the first "control unit prison" used as a mechanism to enforce control over prisoners and society. In the early 1960's, three prisoners achieved the "impossible" and escaped from the island. At the same time, a new high-tech federal penitentiary had just finished construction, so Alcatraz ceased operation.
Now the super-max penitentiary in Marion, Illinois became the new "End of the line" for both state and federal prisoners who prisoncrats considered to be "institutional problems" or "too dangerous" to be housed in any other institution. Because of appalling conditions in October, 1983, a riot broke out and two guards were killed. This gave the prisoncrats the excuse to lock down the entire prison population. This meant that prisoners were confined to their cells for 23 and a half hours a day and all visits were suspended. Until a court order was enforced, even attorneys were denied access to the prison.
Eventually the lockdown eased in some areas, but stringent and restrictive policies remained largely in effect. Months after the riot an emerging pattern of brutal repression against the 350 inmates became apparent. 60 additional guards were brought in from other parts of the federal prison system to systematically beat and brutalize scores of prisoners.
The idea of Marionization spread rapidly throughout the Amerikkkan prison system because prison officials cried that their institutions were unsafe and control over the convict in every way possible was desperately needed. The truth behind the reasons these control units are needed is they are a means of political, economic and social control of a whole class of oppressed and disenfranchised people. These include especially African, Latino and indigenous people who are a disproportionate part of control unit populations.
These torture units go beyond the usual constraints of maximum security prisons. Better defined as a prison within a prison, these control units are used to defeat prisoners' revolutionary attitudes, organization, militancy, legal and administrative challenges; and anything else the prison administrators deem objectionable. These control units have various names such as: Adjustment center, security housing unit (SHU), maximum control complex (MCC), administrative maximum (ad- max), intensive management unit, and administrative segregation (ad-seg). Every prison possesses the label control unit status if long-term punishment and/or isolation are used.
While conditions vary from prison to prison, the goal of these units is always to achieve the spiritual, psychological and physical breakdown of the prisoner. Once prisoners are confined to a control unit, gross human rights violations take place on a daily basis. With minor differences, these control units share the following features:
Prisoners spend years of isolation in tiny cells, usually 6 by 8 feet for 22-23.5 hours a day. The short time that they do spend outside their cel within a cement or chain link "dog pen" that lacks any kind of equipment and proper space to for physical exercise. Participation in programs including religious services, educational/work/job training, congregate dining and exercise are strongly prohibited by the administration. Also greatly limited is access to medical and psychiatric care. In some facilities, prisoncrats save time and money by locking up mentally ill, AIDS, HIV positive and Tuberculosis infected prisoners instead of treating them.
The most damaging aspect of control units is the physical and mental torture that is imposed upon their victims. First the methods of how physical torture is inflicted: Forced cell extractions by militarily attired, baton-wielding guards are constantly used without cause or warning. These guards violently beat, choke, and kick already- shackled prisoners. Sometimes these cell extractions are so abusive that prisoners require extensive medical attention. Devices such as tazer guns, pepper spray, maces and manacles are used and four-point restraints and hog-tying are routinely overused, despite the fact that such instruments have caused bodily harm and death.
Another cruel practice is "caging". This is where scantily clad or naked prisoners are held in outdoor cages for hours in cold and rainy weather. The systematic use of firehosing shackled prisoners while in their cells, with high-pressure cold water, then leaving standing water in the cell, usually accompanies a prisoner being put in "strip cell status." While frigid temperatures make it impossible to sleep or even lay down, a bright light shines upon the cell 24 hours a day.
For those who can endure the physical cruelty, the mental torture can surely affect one's sanity. One example of this is sensory deprivation. This is when the prisoncrats forbid prisoners to have books, televisions, radios and contact visits, including those with lawyers. In some control units it is impossible for prisoners to communicate amongst themselves. Verbal harassment containing derogatory or racial statements are made by the guards. Mail is misplaced, delayed, destroyed or censored. Threats are made against family and visitors. The passing of false confidential information to foster paranoia and fights between convicts is utilized to weaken any unionization between prisoners.
Legal access is another area that is greatly violated. This includes the censoring of lawyer and court mail, guards monitoring attorney-client phone and visit conversations, and the hindering of access to legal books and materials. These oppressive prisoncrat policies only amount to cruel, barbaric and inhuman conditions that must be ended at all cost!
Currently there are more than 38 control unit prisons around the nation. The new control unit at the federal prison in Florence, Colorado will join the new breed of dungeons like the ones at Maximum Control Complex (MCC) in Westville, Indiana and Pelican Bay prison in Crescent City, California, as the newest super high-tech torture chambers. They are designed to administer the very most in sensory deprivation and dehumanization of inmates. Currently Iowa is building a control unit with the same features as Florence. This writer faces the possibility of being transferred because of my political and rebellious attitude toward the capitalist system. Essentially control units serve only one purpose, and that is to control society. All control units must be abolished, and the victims of these dungeons treated as survivors of torture.
--An Iowa prisoner, Oct. 18, 1995
SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSIONER ORDERS LOCKDOWN OF ISLAMIC PRISONERS
I am a prisoner in the Lee Correctional Institution here in South Carolina. I hope this letter will be accepted in the degree of sincerity that it is written in. As I am in the lock-up unit here, I only have certain access to the proper writing materials. It is very necessary that I write to your movement at this moment because of the limited mail rights we get on lock-up for those of us who are in a financial bind. I am writing to your movement because we share in the views of Nationalism as a people and I hope we maybe able to correspond with one another in view and respect ...
Here in this lock-up, I have acquired an appetite for materials that help me better understand my position in this prison and the societal position of our people. You see, I am a member of the Nation of God and Earth and since I devoted myself to Islam and Knowledge of Self, I am constantly met by opposition. The director of the Department of Corrections, who is Michael Moore, who came from Texas is now the Commissioner of South Carolina. He has arbitrarily ordered the lock-up of all members of the 5% Nation of Islam and the Nation of God and Earth here in South Carolina. This happened on April 28, 1995, I and four others are left here on lock-up because we refuse to sell out.
--A South Carolina prisoner, Nov. 1, 1995
SAVE BROTHER KHALFANI
Khalfani Khaldon (s/n McQuay) was serving a 25-year sentence that was given to him back in 1987. He was scheduled to be released in September of 1997. Yet he was charged with the murder of a colonial officer. The guard's demise came five days after the murder of Gregory Resnover (Ajamu) who was also accused of the murder of an Indianapolis racist police officer.
On December 13, 1994, Khalfani was transferred to the Supermax at Westville, Indiana and was eventually framed on this murder charge. The prison investigators/Indiana State Police have been trying to get Khalfani on something for about five years. In August of 1994, Khalfani was run up on a bomb plot by prisoncrat Karl Swihart and an agent named Claud Bigsby, who was sent to Khalfani by Swihart in hopes to set him up by getting him to agree to help smuggle a bomb into the prison. Swihart already had the bomb inside the prison and wanted his agent to get Khalfani's prints on it. Knowing Khalfani's position as a revolutionary and his politics, he thought Khalfani would go for it.
The plan didn't work, still Swihart had Khalfani fingerprinted. It is clear how much they wanted Khalfani, now they pick him out of 200-some people and say he killed this guard. Khalfani has been wrongfully charged and we must serve notice that we demand Khalfani's charges be dismissed and that he be released on September 10, 1997 promptly. We must fight back and we need your help and support to insure this brother's freedom from these injustices.
We demand! (1) A new investigation into the case for brother Khalfani. (2) That all evidence from alibi witness be weighed in the outcome of Khalfani's case. (3) The discrediting of witnesses that have been paid by the state to place Khalfani at the crime scene. --Khalfani Khaldon, Oct. 30, 1995
PIG LIES AND PRISONER SUFFERS
I am just writing to tell you about an incident that ultimately finds me on the Disciplinary Segregation (DS) unit for 3 years and 7 years added to my sentence.
On October 10, 1995, I was in the chow hall with the rest of the cell house. We were waiting to go back to the cell house and were standing by the door, when Lt. Mace came up to the door and told everyone to "move behind the rail." Everyone moved back except me. I just took a few steps back and was standing by the tray window. He asked me to move from the tray window, so he could see the window; and I moved away from the tray window.
Then the pig asks me if I had a problem and I said, "Yeah, I got a lot of problems." He asked me for my ID and started to reach over at me. I jerked back and gave him my ID. He then started to order me around. He told me to "get over by the tables, behind the rail....Get over there now!" So I told him, "Fuck that! I ain't doing shit, just because you want me to..."
I was then escorted back to the cellhouse. About 30 minutes later I found out that the pig wrote me up for a Class A Battery. The pig lied on me, and even though I had witnesses saying that I didn't even touch the pig, I got 3 years lock-up and 7 years tagged onto my outdate!! And this is not the first time I was sent to lock-up either, on a falsified conduct report. It happens all the time. Especially if you don't like to be ordered around.
--an Indiana prisoner, Nov. 12, 1995
THE STRANGE DEATH OF DONALD WOODS
...Remember the September 1990 death of Donald Woods at the Waupun Correctional Institution? There was no video, the media did not do a front page story on the broken bones and extensive wounds inflicted on Woods, but the fact remains, he died as a result of the actions of the Waupun staff.
On September 8, 1990 at 6 p.m., five correction officers forcibly removed Woods from his cell for disturbing other inmates in his block with "bizarre noises." This was accomplished by cornering Woods with a plastic shield, handcuffing him and gagging him with a towel. Woods was gagged because Woods was tested HIV positive and allegedly spat at officers in the past.
Once out of his cell, Woods was thrown into a laundry cart, like a sack of dirty clothes and transported to the "Adjustment Center," where he frantically struggled against the officers trying to place him in restraints. Their adrenaline pumping from the heat of battle, the officers lifted him on the bed and began the process of subduing the inmate. One officer applied pressure on the towel over his mouth to keep his head in place, while a 200-pound officer dug his right knee firmly into Woods' chest, preventing the manacled inmate from arching his back. Stripped of his clothing and placed tightly in restraints, Woods urinated on himself and slowly drifted into unconsciousness.... At 3:30 a.m. he was found dead.
A four-month investigation by the Dodge County District Attorney concluded that there were no grounds for criminal prosecution against the Waupun staff because they did not "knowingly" contribute to Woods' demise.
The bottom line is that Woods died of asphyxiation brought by the restraining methods of the state, therefore someone has to answer for his death....
Certainly this is not the Middle Ages. We don't throw human beings into laundry carts or leave an unconscious man unattended in a cell for seven and a half hours. People are incarcerated to be rehabilitated. The state had better re-evaluate prison policies to make sure there are no more abuses and no more deaths, so Donald Woods will not have died in vain.
--from The Spanish Journal, April 1991, submitted by a Wisconsin prisoner
RCG1 RESPONDS: Prisons may claim that they exist to "rehabilitate" prisoners but pigs incarcerate people as a means of social control.
Unfortunately, Amerikkkan society hasn't progressed much beyond the Middle Ages when it comes to dealing with crime. Sure they don't cut off fingers for stealing--instead they may imprison, isolate, abuse and even kill people for stealing. Amerikkka does not address the real cause of petty "crimes" like shoplifting, nor does it lock up the true criminals: the imperialists who cause poverty and national oppression.
A Wisconsin Prisoner adds to the article from the Spanish Journal: This document represents the death of a prisoner by correctional officers who were not charged. They suffocated this prisoner, murdered him and got away with it!!!
Pigs need to learn they have no right to take another life--or even mistreat lives. However, a great percentage of Pigs like their job as it is their legal way to relieve their hate. Prisoners are merely "Hate Rocks" for society--for those who cannot portray hate in their personal lives. We are the Hate Rocks, a route for their negativity to flow!
Here in Wisconsin prisons the only things that protect an officer is the 10 years for the crime, 6 more years for the repeater law, then another strike towards three strikes and you're out. Surely Pigs don't think they themselves protect one another? They're foolish, so they likely do.
Pigs must stop their actions. Some of us just can't keep holding back, time after time, year after year. We don't want to hurt anyone...
--a Wisconsin prisoner, Oct. 23, 1995