Federal Prisons

On 14 October 2015 my neighbor was suicidal and the COs didn't want to let him go, so he had to break his water sprinkler. But this is not what bothers me. What got to me was when they left em in there for 2 days and Sergeant Williams was in the tower booth laughing and turning his water sprinkler on and off for like an hour.

It was so much wasted water in our cells and on the floor in the tier, that I yelled if the tax payers see where their money is going they'll be mad, then I said if the police cared so much about the water shortage why would they do this. Just one week ago the same police got on his partner's head for watering the PSU yard grass and washing the bird shit from the ground, talking about "we're in a drought and you're gonna waste water for them to live in a clean environment?" The police rather step in bird shit themselves then to let us live in a cleaner atmosphere.

I feel that we will never be safe around them unless they wore cameras on their turtle suit and all over the institution.

Nine days ago this prison was put on lockdown. Four days later the warden said it was merely our usual quarterly lockdown. But we know he is full of shit. There are too many irregularities.

The "quarterly" lockdown was done last month. Quarterly lockdowns always begin on a Sunday evening; this one started Friday afternoon. During quarterly lockdowns no one nor anything is permitted out of the cells until the cells are searched, and support staff (school teachers, counselors, etc.) bring our meals to our cells. During this lockdown we've taken our trash and our laundry out, and we pick up our trays on the pod.

An officer told us the reason. A prisoner in another building had his throat cut. The pigs are trying to keep it secret, claiming it's "gang related."

But here are the facts. This prison has been open for two years without any major issues or incidents of violence. Then, in August Warden Walrath took over and every day new policies are enforced that do nothing more than aggravate and harass prisoners. Guards start ordering us to stop rolling up our pants legs even though the legs of the pants hang four to six inches past our feet. Our beards, fingernails, and hair length is checked. Tooth brushes are confiscated on the pretext these can be used as weapons. Parallel red lines 18 inches apart are painted down sidewalks, and we are forced to walk between them. If one prisoner steps outside, all 96 men are put on lockdown. Prisoners are marched to the gym with their hands on their heads. They are forced to stand in this humiliating and painful (for some) position for hours simply to amuse the pigs. Prisoners are told they can no longer wear thermal underwear except in their cells; no wearing it outside during cold weather. Three upper level employees - a Major, a Lieutenant, and a unit manager - each check every bed to see if it is made. Their combined annual salaries easily surpass $100,000.

But it appears no one was being paid to find shanks to keep one prisoners from nearly killing another. It is a lack of wisdom and leadership to enforce policies that only aggravates an already disturbed, desperate group of people. Within two months of Warden Walrath's arrival and take over, a prisoner is nearly murdered. Apparently, confiscating toothbrushes doesn't make prisoners safe.

I ask that you embrace
the tides of the times
we are no longer confined
with binds on the mind
once we embrace
united front, scientific thought
and study for line
the long arm of imperialism
is no longer strong
when through theory and practice
we arrive at the decision
to take up arms
which is a must
if we are to defeat
imperialism's parasitic lust
with too much greed
we fail to heed
even the most basic of humyn needs
so turn the tides of the times
study correct line
and overthrow imperialism
hystory is on our side

Cowards will hit you when you're in chains.
Anger fits you, coursing through your veins.
Inflicting violence when you can't fight back.
Demanding silence or the charges will stack.
Stop resisting, I've got mace!
Was sleeping, now on your face.
Throwing grenades when you are unarmed and compliant.
Snitches, puppets and police can't take down a giant.
Most are grimy, with much snake in their blood.
The rest, evil flowers beginning to bud.
Giving us bad water and rotten food.
What the hell put them in such a bad mood?
Don't think they can get the cuffs any tighter.
Of course they will have to chain up a fighter.
Excuse me, I've done nothing wrong, sir.
Under his saddle must be a burr.
Getting sprayed after being cuffed.
Wearing a badge must make them tough.
Everyone should apply a little resistance.
Make the pigs call "Officer in need of assistance."
Like a martye against ten, maybe more or less.
Just give as much as you take, simply do your best.

Sister China
1949
Chairman Mao caught her eye
Imperialism reigns
But soon will fall
Socialism will rise
And prevail
Hammer in hand
The vanguard will swing
The capitalist pig will be nailed
The lumpen will grow its wings
We stand and fight
Instead of flight
Until the proletariat is finally free

The name of this organization is the AMBI Foundation. The purpose of this foundation is to bring prisoners to full awareness internally. Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has a way of making prisoners believe that they have no rights, but, if brought to full awareness, real eyes will realize real lies. The AMBI Foundation is under the guidance of MIM(Prisons). We recognize, understand, as well as apply the five United Front for Peace in Prisons principles. Our foundation is based on them.

Those are all important as it is the forefront of our organization.

The last few weeks at Riverbend Detention Center have been more trying than usual. Despite the usual complaints about prisons (bad food, dishonest guards, lack of protocol for inmates, etc). This facility is one of several dozen privately run prisons in this state over which there are very few governing statutes all of which are unreasonably vague. We have no protection legally from our captors. We are fed like second graders, cheated at commissary, and denied visitation. Riverbend is owned and operated by the local sheriff in a backwoods parish of a notoriously backwoods state. Money is a determining illusion in the voters decisions because there is no revenue at all. As part of his campaign, Sheriff Wydet made it his point to exploit the unused space in his jail to house DOC inmates. Like most of the poorer parishes, the prison is the primary employer. This is a result of the low educational standards (another record held by Louisiana). This summer was unusual for us because a portion of the prison (one of three buildings), which up until now was used for storage, was refurbished to be ready to accept prisoners again for this fall. Several men were put to work, all were occasionally paid scraps of extra food or a couple of cigarettes but they made it happen. Even if they did it right at the deadline set by their slave drivers (thank you 13th amendment), but DOC didn't send any prisoners - somebody else did.

After Katrina, New Orleans was constantly both rebuilding (which is still going on) and restructuring. Being a transplant to this state listening to the horror stories told by the prisoners who were in OPP during the storm (they were abandoned for a week) seems like something that couldn't happen in a Christian based land, but we all know now that it can and does. The prison, however, has been getting a makeover. Orleans Sheriff Marlon Gusman pushed for years to get funding to build a brand new 1400+ bed facility so that he could shut down the Main Jail at the Sheriff’s office. Orleans employed five separate jails when I was there in 2010. The Sheriff's office was split down the middle to create CLU and HOD. Then had tent city next door, which was literally eight military hangar-type tents. These three no longer exist in their prior functions. The other two are Conchetta (which is used for DOC) and the Old Parrish (which is in the court house to hold violent offenders and escape risks). The new prison utilizes a large re-entry program that is only a couple years old but both New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Gusman insist has lowered recidivism. September 10, 250 pre-trial inmates of every spectrum of the criminal code were moved three and a half hours away to Lak Providence. They are here now, mixed together under no variation or classification (murderers with sex offenders with pot dealers with traffic violators) and being guarded by the lowest common denominator of the states workforce. This is for an increased rate of $30 a day per head, a 20% increase from staying in Orleans to be milked from the taxpayers. Some of the guards enjoy telling us about their time in prison and how that makes them one of us.

The Orleans public pretender office is taking issue with this because they are also broke and short staffed. Traveling here to see their clients is obviously unrealistic to both the lawyers and the clients. Who are now going to be down several months longer due to missed court dates and other scheduling conflicts. A motion to forbid Gusman from moving pretrial detainees before DOC inmates was put before U$ District Judge Lance Africk, who is overseeing a federal consent decree aimed at reforms at OPP; Africk ordered Gusman to appear in his chambers to discuss these problems. The Sheriff has so far ignored all attempts to work out some other alternative, he obviously wanted this move to happen. Something tells me he'll be bringing money when he visits the judge. As Darren Sharper and Jaime Foxx have shown, prosecution in New Orleans only happens when District Attorney Leon Canazarro doesn't get paid.

The prison here is full and content not unlike a corpulent child after a buffet. No one here seems to mind and I will tell you from experience that Gusman will not do anything unless it appeals to his own personal interest.

Now, I could expound on the human cost or push the legality of access to one's lawyer but all of those things make sense. Not dollars. I've seen almost every state in this union but nothing compares to what I've been forced to witness in Louisiana. I tell you that this will be the outcome for the rest of this country and all capitalist societies. Prisons come before schools, profits come before rights and politics come before people.

I'm writing you in regards to my personal (incoming & outgoing) mail at Lanesboro Correctional Institution. Since I've been on Anson Unit (segregation), correctional staff have been confiscating my (and about 50 other prisoners) incoming and outcoming personal mail.

The mailroom staff, and Anson Unit Managers (Mr. Hatley & Mrs. Wieks) and their staff (Sgt. Allen, Officer Mack, Officer Jones, Officer Tillman, and Officer Harrington), are all conspiring to deprive me (and about 50 other prisoners) of my (our) rights to communicate. They are using all types of frivolous excuses to try to cover it up.

When it comes to NCDPS Division of Adult Corrections "mail policy & procedure" it doesn't specify who's to deliver or pick up the mail. The mailroom staff doesn't deliver our mail, but in actuality they should, because they are solely responsible for it. When the mail is picked up from the post office, by the mailroom staff, they sort it out, place the prisoners "housing unit" & "cell number" on the letters, then they send the mail to each housing unit, for the officers on each unit to pass out. By doing this the burden shifts towards the unit managers and their officers. But anytime I or any othe prisoner inquire about the mail delivery problems, unit management or their staff tells us to write the mailroom. So, what's happening is that they're shifting the burden back and forth to where the problems are never getting resolved.

It is with these hystoric words once shouted by Chican@ revolutionaries a hundred years ago that we proudly echo this sentiment today as we announce the completion of Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán, on this anniversary of the Plan de San Diego. A hundred years ago, so-called "bandits" and "heathens" in the conquered territory of the United $tates, known as Aztlán, declared their war of liberation from Amerikan imperialism. And just as the Plan de San Diego grew out of heightened national oppression both on a domestic and international level, so does Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán come out of the depths of Amerika's dungeons at a time in which the Chican@ nation, and indeed the world, risks being swallowed whole by various imperialist factions; principally Amerikan imperialism.

Those once thought to be our old guard have come closer and closer to unity with our oppressors than to our own people, yet the Chican@ lumpen pushes through, rises to the challenge and presents us with the most correct political analysis to the most pressing questions facing Aztlán today. Vendidos (sell outs) might say that revolutionary nationalism is an ancient and dead phenomenon no longer relevant in a "globalized world." But it is exactly because of this "globalization" (i.e. imperialism) that this work is more needed than at any other time since the last round of national liberation struggles inside of U.$. borders.

Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán has been in development for well over three years and is a collaborative effort between Chican@ revolutionaries from northern and southern Califas-Aztlán and MIM(Prisons). Our comrades on the outside facilitated, guided and made possible this manifesto. This work is an example of the political unity between both major regions of Califas-Aztlán that must come to bear by the imprisoned Chican@ lumpen on an Aztlán-wide basis before we are ready to put this ideological unity into practice.

Throughout the creative process of this book there were indeed many times in which we found it difficult to continue this collaboration. This was due not only to the same old tired divisions amongst Chican@s in California that have been keeping the imprisoned Raza from uniting as one, but due to ideological and political immaturity as well. However, through all of this, Chican@ revolutionaries from both major sections of Califas-Aztlán managed to resolve our differences through the tools and weapons refined for us by the great protagonists of oppressed peoples' movements everywhere: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. But above all, the reality that bound us throughout this work was not only our common oppression but the want and need to one day see our people free. And so, largely through the method of unity-struggle-unity and the dialectical materialist frame of thought did we finalize this important task. And as great as this work is, and as much of a watershed moment we are celebrating, we remain very much aware that this is just the opening shot to the quickly flourishing revolutionary nationalist movements within Amerika's prisons.

This book is in service to the imprisoned Chican@ lumpen in order that they may finally have a general framework from which to build ideological unity and from which to politically grow and wrest state power from Amerikan imperialism and the white settler nation.

Just as author Benjamin Heber Johnson makes the statement, "In fifty years the projected ninety-six million Latino residents of the United States would, if considered a nation, follow only Brazil and Mexico as the most populous country in Latino America" so will it probably take as long to see the fruits of our labor.(1)

The Chican@ nation is comprised of oppressed Raza and it forms a part of Latin@ America. Chican@s Unite!

MIM(Prisons) adds: Get your copy of Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán today! We are hosting a one-time study group with the authors, so ask for the book ASAP so you'll have time to participate.

Sitting in a Texas Pen
Fed like it's 1908
For we are given skimpy trays
So we have to lick the plate

They try to say we are well fed
I tell you that's a lie
Tortillas to hide our scrambled eggs
Make grown men want to cry

One hot dog on our largest part
Slot two slices of bread
The last three slots will stop your heart
So you might just wake up dead

I've eaten better homeless
And I'm not too proud to say
I've had more food out of dumpsters
Then what Stiles puts on your tray

I came here weighing 222
I now weigh 151
The only way that I'll get more food
Annie get your gun

No these are not my greatest words
But I'm about the starve to death
I've seen people feed more to birds
But in Texas, I'm out of breath