I greet you from a super-maximum security prison lockdown 23 to 24 hours a day in what is called the control unit. All the windows at the prison are treated so we can’t see out. The side of the doors are sealed with a black strip that has screws in it. There are short chains on the doors at the top. A padlock could be inserted to reinforce the doors. A padlock can be used on the food port used for feeding and cuffing prisoners. The food is put in a solid steel box that has a handle on both sides. The guards lifts the latch to the food port, he have to push open the aperture, reaches in and gets the tray. The guard lifts the box upward to close the food port and moves to the next cell.
We are confined to social isolation and sensory deprivation. Social isolation is being cut off from normal contact with people and interactive methods with them that are conducive to humanism. The majority of our contact is with sadistic guards who do not realize they are trapped too. When most people have the authority to wield power over people this becomes an intoxication that knows no bounds -- a fixation to hurt people and release one's aggressive pent-up nature.
Sensory deprivation is a loss of receptive sensory input that is crucial to our nervous system. Without these elements producing positive contact with processes to one's equilibrium and metabolism you are treading on dangerous negativity. This is a method of psychological and emotional impairment, in other words, torture.
Prisoners are viciously beaten by guards while chained hand and foot. Prisoners are slammed into walls, floors, steps, tables and outdoor yard cages. Prisoners are denied sufficient diet, showers, and so called recreation in dog-run cages when we don't cringe and bow down to their terrorism. Prisoners placed in chains in a cold cell in only under shorts, no other clothes allowed, for 48 hours or longer; all personal items taken, mattress, sheets, and blankets too; prisoners placed in five-point restraints, strapped spread-eagle to a steel slab in only underwear for days; prisoners gassed, broken bones, shattered teeth. This is guard-on- prisoner violence.
- A Virginia prisoner, May 2004
MIM responds: Publicizing the oppression of prisoners in the Amerikan justice system is an important part of our central task, and we urge prisoners to make contributions to this work such as this report. One beef: In the long run, those working as prison guards will be better off under a socialist system in which people don't demean their own humanity by participating in the oppression of others. However, for strategic purposes we should not consider prison guards "trapped" in the same way that prisoners are. They can -- and should -- refuse this work, suffering at most a loss of wages as a result.