Federal Prisons

In December 2015 i forwarded you guys a letter in which i informed you all that i was battling my protracted Tier II segregation through litigation. My civil action cite is Nolley v. Nelson, et al, 5:15-CV-75-CAR. The case was filed in Macon division of the United States District Court for Middle District of Georgia circa March 2015. It can be accessed electronically at ecf.gamd.uscourts.gov.

The defendant prison officials, after the initial screening process, moved for dismissal on several grounds (see docket entry no. 22 in above referenced case). The court, however, in declining to dismiss my complaint, just recently issued an order condemning the Tier II practices as an overt violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution (see docket entry no. 50, p. 29). And, judging from the court's order, my case appears to be somewhat the "vanguard" case of cases attacking the Tier II program. I say this, chiefly, because the court did not cite circuit precedent in its assessment of my claims.

Of equal interest to the favorable court ruling is the court's detailed layout of the general confinement conditions characteristic of the Tier II program. In any case, now that the court has explicitly held such conditions to be "unconstitutional." I am seriously contemplating adding Governor Nathan Deal as a defendant party to my suit. I'm thinking i can base his liability on "endorsement of state-sponsored torture" theory. What was the basis of liability for California's Governor in the Ashker v. Brown case?

It would seem as though the court's condemnation of Tier II practices amounts to headway in our efforts to expose — and hopefully abolish — the unchecked, torturous treatment of Georgia prisoners. As always, i will be diligent to keep you updated.

Our struggle against imperialism and toward communism is a long, protracted struggle. It is carried out over decades and even centuries, with long-term (strategic) planning and lifetime commitment. Many who fight for communism give up their lives, not just through martyrdom but also through a lifetime of dedication. In such a long-term project, it is dangerous to lose sight of the larger context of our struggle.

Our enemies, the imperialists and anyone who's with them, will do everything they can to wear us down. They will drag us through the mud as much as possible, in the hopes that we'll get frustrated and give up, or frustrated and sacrifice ourselves on the focoist cross.

A typical reader of Under Lock & Key has committed some "crime" (as defined by the imperialists), and is imprisoned. The social conditions that lead to imprisonment are an essential part of the imperialists' protracted struggle to maintain power. As a means of keeping the internal semi-colonies under their boot, our enemies set up any number of false pretenses for putting as many of our potential comrades behind bars as possible.

Once turned on to ULK, a subscriber might start participating in United Struggle from Within campaigns. Or ey might start learning more about Maoism: the most effective threat to imperialism shown in humyn history to date.

While participating in the anti-imperialist struggle definitely makes one's efforts at social change worthwhile, it does nothing to help a comrade make parole. It doesn't help you fly under the pigs' radar. It doesn't keep you out of the hole. Naturally, identifying with the struggle against the United $nakes government makes one a target for that government's boldest repression. Our comrades are constantly denied parole, are constantly having their cells tossed, and are targeted for forced psychotropic druggings and other methods of mental deterioration. Their food is tampered with, they are beaten, and any tactic that may wear down and frustrate our comrades is employed.

In these social circumstances, we need to consider how are we going sustain our movement. How are we to make the most of the repressed and limited time and energy we do have? How can we protect ourselves from attacks on our physical and mental health, while locked in a tiny room with complete sensory control? How can we build ourselves up, not just for the day-to-day struggle, but for the long haul?

This issue of Under Lock & Key is on the topic of survival and stamina, focusing on some things subscribers can do to better their chances of survival, both mentally and physically, and make it possible to do their most for the anti-imperialist struggle. There is much important political work to be done, and a healthy body and mind is important for long-term sustainability of our contributions to the revolutionary struggle.

On survival, there are fights we must engage in for basic rights behind bars: the fight for medical care and other needs often denied through a corrupt grievance system, the struggle for access to education, and the battle against classification in mentally and physically dangerous long-term control units. Many campaign updates in this issue provide practical tactics for these battles as a part of our overall strategy.

Survival behind bars also requires the struggles for peace and unity among prisoners to build a situation of mutual respect, aid and cooperation. Several articles remind readers that this fight against repression requires united action. Building unity will help us win victories to improve our organizing conditions while we build the longer-term struggle. California prisoners write about the struggle to maintain the Agreement to End Hostilities, while the essay on lumpen class consciousness points to broader strategies we need to employ to unite lumpen organizations (LOs) for both survival and advancement.

There is also work that individuals can do to improve their outlook, education and use of time while behind bars. This is addressed in articles on how to be disciplined in your day-to-day life, focusing on study and organizing rather than watching TV, educating yourself, and fighting alienation and individualism. Education in particular is critical to survival in prison as it opens eyes and minds to the reality of prison conditions and the broader struggle that can unite and give purpose and direction to prisoners' lives. As a Pennsylvania comrade wrote: "The pigs try to stop real education in the gulags, because they know that when we have a true education and know the truth about the way things really are, they are defeated."

A life of survival without political struggle is just survival of the status quo. The most basic survival and stamina tactic is always understanding the connection between our lives, as anti-imperialists, with the lives of oppressed people all over the world. Our struggle is made of many actions over a long period of time, and every contribution has value. If we can maximize these contributions by taking care of ourselves and each other as best we can, our internationalist struggle will be all the better for it.

This month the Brown Berets - Prison Chapter (BB-PC) honors Mary Crow Dog, born Mary Blue Bird. She was a resident of a town called Saint Francis on the reservation of Rosebud during 1973 at the siege of Wounded Knee.

In 1971 Mary joined the American Indian Movement (AIM). During the siege at Wounded Knee Mary was tasked with organizing the women to do the cooking, cleaning and communications. She organized food running and getting in and out of Wounded Knee to get much-needed supplies. The siege lasted 73 days, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) using armored personnel carriers and Huey helicopters. Mary helped keep morale up among everyone at the camp. Her bravery and courage is why my family in Pine Ridge and Rosebud have the freedoms we do today.(1)

MIM(Prisons) responds: The BB-PC sent us these words on Mary Crow Dog, along with some notes on the documentary on the Black Panthers that we reviewed in ULK 49. We thought it appropriate to print something on the AIM in this issue, as they are very relevant to understanding the conditions in the United $tates during the time of the Black Panther Party. While the BPP can brag of having most of the FBI actions of the time targeting them, this is probably due mostly to the size of the New Afrikan nation and their mass base, compared to the First Nations who have been decimated by genocide. And while Panthers engaged in long shoot outs with police, nothing compared to the U.S. Army invasion of Wounded Knee:

"In the first instance since the Civil War that the U.S. Army had been dispatched in a domestic operation, the Pentagon invaded Wounded Knee with 17 armored personnel carriers, 130,000 rounds of M-16 ammunition, 41,000 rounds of M-1 ammunition, 24,000 flares, 12 M-79 grenade launchers, 600 cases of C-S gas, 100 rounds of M-40 explosives, helicopters, Phantom jets, and personnel..."(2)

Churchill and Vander Wall document the details of the intensive war the FBI led against AIM. They write about the pursuit of AIM founder Dennis Banks as having "garnered the dubious distinction of becoming the most sustained attempt at a federal prosecution in the history of American jurisprudence."(3) While on the run from the state in 1976, Banks is reported to have been hidden by Chican@ leader Corky Gonzalez, and members of the Crusade for Justice working with local AIM members. Later that year, Corky Gonzalez was falsely accused by the FBI of possessing "a rocket launcher, rockets, M-16 automatic rifles, and hand grenades," intended to use in combination with AIM and others to kill police.(4) Such rumors were part of the FBI's public relations war against liberation movements, attempting to distract from the fact that the U.$. government is the real perpetrator of violence.

The American Indian Movement was formed in 1968, in a rising movement for national liberation among First Nations that paralleled that in New Afrika. Forming two years after the Black Panther Party, like many, they were inspired by and modeled themselves after the BPP, though not taking up the explicit Maoism of the BPP or the Young Lords Party. Like the Panthers, AIM saw chapters pop up across the country soon after its founding. And like the Panthers, AIM promoted armed self-defense of its people and territory.

It is worth noting the different conditions faced by First Nations compared to other internal semi-colonies. The threat of annihilation, and the clear recognition of territory rights, lead to a more advanced national consciousness and more advanced conditions for national struggle. While we take lessons from the BPP's ultra-left tendency to pick up the gun too soon, the conditions of the time — from the First Nation reservations in the United $tates to Vietnam to China — makes their decision much more understandable than it would be today. Even today, we recognize the objective conditions among First Nations overall to be more advanced and armed struggle to be a correct path for them before it would be in other parts of the United $tates.

Agent provacateurs' glued to my cell door
i can smell they stench on my vents
They strategically placed snakes
Opportunist of the information age
Institutional Gang Investigators screening my mail
For intelligance files on Maoist Study Group cells
Screening my phone calls, collecting my convo
FBI spy satellites in the heights
i hate this "Matrix" we enslaved in
Communalist ambitions got them worried
5.62 mm rounds thrown in flurries
So they plans to get us buried
Liberation in a hurry; about to Enlighten my mind
In amerikkka it's a crime and a fine
Doing little petty shit to make me push up my time
Not even aware of our destiny to tear this shit down!

Here at the McConnell Unit things have been real tough for us prisoners. In January 2016 an inmate died of an aneurism after being denied medical attention. During the investigation they blamed on the inmate that he refused medical attention. That's a lie because the inmate is the one who requested medical attention.

I myself on 28 January 2016, at around 1 p.m. all of a sudden almost blacked out while I was in the dayroom. Immediately my whole body broke out in a sweat, fever, trembling, chills, broke out in fever blisters on my fingers, real bad nausea, on my feet broke out in red patches, and my eyesight would get very blurry on and off. I was allowed to go to the infirmary. At the infirmary I was first seen Nurse Vicky Crumbliss, who, after looking at my ears and throat, was very alarmed. She said that they were very very red. It looked like I was coming down with something. But what I'm about to tell you is what's most shocking of all.

The nurse then tried to convince me that I was a diabetic. When she couldn't convince of that, she went and brought another nurse by the name of Ms. Snyder. When they couldn't convince me that I was a diabetic (which until this day I'm not) they went and got the P.A. Echavarry (who's got a grudge against me because I've 2 different complaints with the Texas Board of Examiners in Austin, TX). Well, to make a long, long story short, I was forced to take 500mgs of Metaformin for 4 days because supposedly I was a diabetic. But on February 1 I was seen by another P.A., Ms. Corbett. She took me off the meds. She said, straight out, "you are not diabetic!" She didn't know what I was sick of but yet refused to do any lab work to determine what I was sick of.

But on February 3 after one of brothers called to complain that I was being denied the proper medical attention I again saw P.A. Echavarry who was very pissed off, and supposedly scheduled me for some lab work (that was not done until this past March 17, 2016). Which is kind of too late now because I've gotten better from whatever had me sick which started on January 28 and lasted for almost a month.

On a daily basis prisoners are written up on bogus disciplinary cases. For example: A friend of mine got written up a bogus case that allegedly he painted his cell table and window red and blue. Even though his cell mate spoke to Assistant Warden Putnam and confessed that he had been the one who had painted the table and cell windows, my friend still got written up and punished and they gave him restrictions on commissary, recreation, suspended contact visits, and dropped his line class status.

I helped him file both Step 1 and 2 grievances and we submitted evidence of his cellmate confessing at the disciplinary hearing. Both my friend's Step 1 and 2 grievances response stated that "there were no due process violations and that punishment was within agency guidelines."

Can you believe that? Here at the McConnell Unit we need someone to advocate for us. Our civil and constitutional rights are violated. I just helped my friend file a citizen's complaint. Hopefully that will help get back his line class. I could go, on and on. I thank you, for all of your help!

I have enclosed copies of letters a comrade wrote to secure his position, ensure his safety, among many who are undergoing a mass hunger strike thie 23rd day of March 2016, to fight perpetually against the injustice we are receiving here at Lucasville. I will pass out your address to the rest of the brothers who will be fighting as well. I will remain on the compound to be the legs and voice to services and family on the streets of the brothers undergoing this battle.

Our basic human rights are being denied here! A shortage in food from Aramark. Our religious accommodations are being refused. Medical attention is being refused to those in dire need. And the majority of the minority population is being discriminated against and abused. Together we take a stand and organize against the administration today.

I'll write to keep you updated and give awareness. Expect much more letters.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We have not yet received an update on this hunger strike, but these comrades are taking a correct tactical approach. Engaging in such a protest as a unified group, and engaging outside media and supporters, have been shown to be important aspects for the success of hunger strikes in the past.(1) We are eagerly awaiting more information on the progress of this protest.

As the comrade states in eir letter, attached to this article, ey do not want to go on a hunger strike. Ey is being compelled to put eir life on the line because ey has tried all other avenues available, to no avail. The attached letter contains the demands of one prisoner. In negotiations with the state, it will be important to develop a clear list of demands that represent the entire population at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF). The comrade who wrote to us, the "legs and voice" on the unit, outlined some clear complaints which could be made into specific demands of the administration and prison staff. Without this clarity, the unity of the strikers may be compromised, as it leaves the group vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics.

We do hope this strike brings needed remedies for prisoners held at SOCF. The state has shown time and time again that agreements it makes with prisoners (or even its compliance with established laws) is unreliable, so the strikers should be prepared to defend any victories tooth and nail. In the end, whether the administration cooperates or not, using this struggle to build long-term unity amongst prisoners at SOCF is the real prize. Strengthening unity amongst prisoners will bring much more long-term remedy than a few token individuals who are permitted to receive medical treatment. Clarify your goals, unite around them, and prepare to defend them!

Other publications routinely and completely banned are: Black and Pink (newspaper), Community Church of Boston (we grieved the rejection, now get 1 or 2 then start over again), and Prison Legal News newsletter is banned outright.

Although ULK48 is still officially rejected, it was delivered to me today. Note: the petition about Florida grievances you provided to me was sent to all provided addresses and have been ignored. Any hints as to what's next?

MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this update from one of the many comrades in Florida who have tried to use the petition to demand their grievances be addressed. We are unfortunately not surprised to hear that there has been no response to these petitions. There is no real justice in an imperialist system that locks up oppressed nations and resisters while giving big payouts to the criminals who run the government and corporations. The system is not set up to provide rights to prisoners. However we can sometimes gain small victories by using the imperialists' laws and regulations against them. And in this case, with campaigns like the demand for grievances to be addressed, we can also use this opportunity to educate people about the system that we are fighting.

Because of this we do not expect instant results, and in fact can not expect that campaigns such as this one provide relief to people after just sending in a few protest letters. However, the collective force of many people sending these to the same addresses might have an impact on conditions prisoners actually face. We ask our comrades to send us an update in every state where we have a grievance campaign so that we can assess if there is further action that can be taken. If anyone else in Florida has had success, write in and tell us what you have done so that this comrade and others can learn from your experience. If you have received no response, let us know that as well. And if you have other ideas about next steps for this campaign, please share them with us so that we can continue this fight.

It has been over 90 days since I filed an appeal over ULK 47 and I have received no reply. I filed the appeal for ULK 48 on 29 February, also receiving no reply. As for the theory journals, they have not been delivered nor have I been notified of their rejection. It seems that at this facility communism of any form is heavily censored.

I did get your guide to fighting censorship and I reference the case law and the gang definition in each appeal I file over a rejection of ULK. It has been most useful, however, it has done little to curb the level of political and religious censorship happening here at River North Correctional Center.

I was told that ULK 48 was rejected due to gang material being found on pages 8 and 18 but no further description has been provided. Being that gangs are typically imperialistic in their actions where related to violence and criminal actions I suspect that any anti-imperialist group wouldn't promote gang activity.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This censorship of Under Lock & Key in prisons with the justification that it promotes gang material is becoming more common. And of course it is very difficult for prisoners to appeal this censorship when they have no access to the material to disprove the "gang material" claim. This comrade is correct to point out that the biggest gangs are the imperialists, who carry out organized violence and criminal actions around the world. What the prisons claim is promoting gang activity is in fact MIM(Prisons) promoting a United Front for Peace in Prisons, urging lumpen organizations and their members to come together and end the struggle between prisoners in favor of unity to fight the injustice system. Those in power will always come up with labels to put down those who resist, whether it is "terrorist" or "gang member" or "criminal." But we know that the real terrorists and criminals are the imperialists. Write to us for a copy of our guide to fighting censorship.

I'm writing to request information and a guide to challenge TDCJ's medical co-payment. I am dealing with them trying to retaliate against me by charging me for services that are clearly exempted, i.e. falling from the top bunk and seeking medical attention for my knee and head right afterwards. I've been serving time for over 21 years and never really needed to know how to file anything against them properly until now.

I'd also like to ask if you know of anyone, yourself or other organization, that can help me in filing a 1983 lawsuit against TDCJ for their deliberate indifference and negligence in treating me. I wrote a Step 1 grievance on January 28 telling them that I was having trouble getting in and out of the top bunk, having fallen and hurting myself a number of times, and that there was no safe way to climb up (there's no steps or ladder in these old units) and requesting a bottom bunk or to be moved out to the camp. On February 10 I fell again and wrecked my knee and slammed my head into my fan.

I sought medical attention (for which I'm being charged) and was seen as a walk-in and had an accident report done. Then was told I'd be referred to the provider and be seen in 2-3 days. They refused to give me a bottom bunk then, even though I could barely walk and couldn't get up into my top bunk. After talking to various rank and being told only medical could give me a bottom bunk (and the nurse said it had to be swollen or broken before they'd do that), and to figure it out, I took a fall that night and spasmed my back, locking it up so that I couldn't sit up or even walk. Medical assumed I was faking and told me to get up and go back to my cell and again refused me treatment. I was locked up and disciplined for three weeks and subjected to a variety of retaliations.

After I wrote all of this up and sent letters to the Warden and Office of Inspector General, they finally let me see the provider and she ordered x-rays. The x-rays showed my ankle is fractured. Although so far I'm only being treated for one, the other ankle and shin feel the same way. They've put me in a walking boot and referred me to Galvaston, and put me in a bottom bunk as far as possible in the pod. So I'm forced to climb up and down four flights of stairs multiple times a day.

I know very little about the law or proper legal issues. I'm trying to learn right now, but could really use some help. I've given up asking these writ writers in here cause they can never agree on anything. From what I can find, this is a simple, cut and dry case. I've been keeping copies of everything I've written so far, but I don't know what else to do. I don't care about "getting paid," I just want them to fix these cells like they're supposed to. There are 116 units in this system and this is the largest, yet most all the others have steps and handles and tables to get up and down the top bunks. Guys like me who are big (I'm 6'5'' tall and weigh 280 lbs - I was over 315 lbs last year) are at risk and hurting themselves and it seems like nobody cares.

Can you tell me what the basic needs that a prison must provide you with? I'm asking because I was recently locked up in solitary confinement (PHI) for 4 days without toilet paper, light, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, or writing material. I had to eat any food with my hands, and I had never had a hearing of any kind. I was not found guilty of any infraction. Nor was I told why I was being locked up in pre-hearing detention/solitary confinement, until the 4 day when I was released from these conditions .