Greetings, brothers and sisters, from my concrete cage. Recently some violence occurred at the Snake River Correctional Institution. Due to differences between some inmates, it created a situation that could have been avoided. It is for this reason I would like to address the great need for unity, and what unity through the ages has done for small groups of people.
Everyone knows, or should know, that the whole justice system isn't properly presented to the public on television or in most books. The justice system in this country nowadays bases its decisions largely on community opinion. If a decision to be made by a court might be right and just but contrary to popular ideology, more often than not, the court will rule in light of what commercial society would think.
The reason the prison population isn't noticed as a force of intelligence is because a portion of this population is more concerned with looking good to their friends, getting caught up in the rumor mill, and extorting from the weak. Most of those involved in this are more intelligent than that, but let peer pressure take over their common sense and their depth of humanity.
Those who are oppressed by other inmates are usually highly intellectual people with the knowledge and resources to assist the inmate oppressors in areas important to their (and our) cause. The extorted don't fear the ability to help others, rather they crave it, but instead fear the extorters' actions after a completed task. Without unity the officials of the prisons, cities, states, and the country will forever oppress the little man.
Throughout world history, smaller bands of people have united together to form one mighty force to impress upon the tyrants of the era their human need to be heard and treated as a people equal to that of any other in the world. . . Brothers and sisters, it is time to put away childish ways of thinking and see who the real battle is against. It is time to become a new kind of society. Each one of our prisons has within it a community of its own. The Amerikan government wants prison reform? Let's give it to them. It doesn't take violence, not in our lifetime.
Prisoners can use their minds to achieve a goal, as long as they know what that goal is. We have a goal, people. How long are you going to sit on your hind ends and let others decide what time you go to bed, wake up, and shower. Contrary to what many may be thinking, it doesn't have to be done with violence against each other.
Many people feel angry about some of the immoral crimes some have done to the point of hate for those people. You might ask yourself how you are to deal with that in these times. Hate is an emotion/feeling that takes a lot of mental energy. These energies can be put to better use in other areas. The point is that hate for other inmates could be what is keeping a lot of our warriors in chains. At first it is hard to put into practice, but, like other abilities, it gets easier and easier.
Violence against fellow captives is what the autocrats want. They depend on this to show the unknowing public how 'dangerous' their 'jobs' are. When, in truth, they are nothing more than glorified George Jetsons who push buttons to keep our daily lives controlled. It doesn't have to be this way. Oppression is right in the faces of every locked-up person banned from society.
For those at SRCI, one inmate who became upset because those in charge of scheduling television viewing kept forgetting to schedule his favorite program, wrote to the Oregonian newspaper when the institution was going to show 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Now SRCI can only host PG-rated movies. Our anger towards each other is pointless while being held within. There will be other times for violence. While in prison it only defeats our purposes for the rights we seek. There will be a time for the actions that one may feel violent and just. But, for our goals, it is not now. This is your call to arms where the weapons are pens and intelligence. That is, unless you like being thought of a stupid misfit shunned by an uncaring capitalist society.
--An Oregon Prisoner, October 2004