This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
California forces all prisoners into "gangs"

The DOC is violating prisoner's civil rights left and right. I'm ready to do everything in my power to expose these evildoers. The DOC is as dirty as they come. My ethnicity is Hispanic. When I arrived in the DOC I was asked by a C.O. if I was "a Northern Hispanic or Southern Hispanic", I said "I don't know what you mean." Then I was asked what city/town I was from, I stated Salinas, CA. It was then that I was classified as a Northern Hispanic. Now I'm labeled as a northerner, which is a gang member from the prison/street gang Nortenos. At that particular point in time I had no idea what that was or what I was about to experience behind these walls. The Southern Hispanics are classified/labeled Surenos, another prison/street gang. The DOC currently has the Northern and Southern Hispanics on a 24 hour, 7 day a week lockdown. We are getting no visits from our families, no exercise outside our cells, and no state issued hygiene.

-- a California prisoner, January 2004