California Prisons

The time has come
to pick up that gun,
in your mind.
Leave the petty differences behind.
Utilize your mind
to find that ideological line,
or shit will never change
in here
or out there.
It's all the same.
Prisyners to confusion and mass distribution.
Pollution of the mind.
So take the time,
to take a look around.
Ask yourself,
who's the real clowns?
Us or them?
Pigs united
are hard to be divided,
but the masses united
will never be divided,
or defeated.
So come together as one.
Leave the stupid shit behind.
Find that ideological line.
If you're really a rider,
prove it.
Ride that ideological line.

You ain't a soldier!
You's a poser!
What you soldiering for?
Fame and glory?
That story's getting old.
What's that man really talking bout?
Spouting consequences to stupid nonsense.
He's only kidding,
while you're doing his bidding.
So what's he really talking bout?
What's his politics about?
Fame and glory?
That same story!?
Homey please!
Tell you what?
Pick up those books,
and get a hook.
Ain't nobody talking about revolution,
except the Maoist Internationalist Movement,
and the United Soldiers from Within,
because the Movement move men,
to bigger better things.
The mission?
Prisyn liberation from within.

Children colored by a different sun,
then 500 yrs under the gun.
Hystorically speaking,
we are all the same.
If you will use your mind,
then you will find,
that our hystories are intertwined.
We've all been enslaved,
and we've all been colonized.
We've all been exploited.
Are we not still slaves
to their relations of production?
Are our peoples still not exploited
for their class consumption?
Hystorically speaking,
from a materialist viewpoint,
we are all the same.
So, Brown and Black
we must all attack,
the division amongst the masses
so there can be
no division amongst the masses
only two classes.
Us vs. them.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responds here to a comrade's petition for the proper handling of grievances in California. This governmental body may be helpful in pushing our campaign forward if they receive several petitions from different participants, enough to "determine whether a pattern or practice investigation is warranted." Participants in the grievance campaign should mail copies of their signed petitions to each party listed on the campaigns page so that we are maximizing the effects of each signature.

When we succeed with a campaign under imperialism, we are making more room for revolutionary organizing. When prison administrators, courts, and the DOJ obstruct or are non-cooperative in achieving our campaign goals, we have still drawn attention to an unresolvable problem with the status quo, as well as brought more people into the struggle against oppression. Whether the DOJ becomes involved in this battle or not, it is still important to spread the campaign as much as we can under this unjust system.

When I first came in to the CDC, a guard's job was simple: unlock us in the morning so we can function and lock us up at night. The rest was living simple and every once in a while someone would get stabbed or jumped, but the violence ratio was 10 times lower 25 years ago. But now times have changed. For example, a few weeks ago, a prisoner was being yelled at by 2 corrections officers. As the non-English-speaking prisoner was sitting on the bench, trying to understand what they were saying (they wanted to know his name), without any cause or reason, the 2 COs started spraying him with large canister sprayers of pepper spray, soaking his entire body, and then started beating him with little telescopic-like batons with a lead ball on the tip (very painful). Afterward, he was kicked while he was lying on the ground, and placed in handcuffs and escorted to a vertical coffin-like holding cage. I stood at my cell window and observed this, among many other incidents.

When I was in Salinas Valley, housing unit number 5 (also known as "the dirty nickel"), the COs would yell racial slurs, profanity, and anything disrespectful towards the prisoners over the intercom. When I was there I counted 115 acts of violence against prisoners by COs and on one occasion I observed a CO tell one prisoner to assault another prisoner or he would tear up his cell. The prisoner complied out of fear of reprisal.

I am writing this to educate you and hopefully many others of the mistreatment and abuse of the COs, currently named the "Green Wall" due to the fact that all of the correctional officers wear green uniforms. The main gist of the Green Wall is to keep total control over the prisoners by encouraging them to maintain violence and animosities with each other. The Green Wall will use any and all tactics to maintain that control. Sometimes a prisoner may try to stand up for what is right, but no one will join him or support his cause because the majority of prisoners are in constant fear of getting property (photos of family) torn, damaged or destroyed.

My hopes are for everyone to be on notice. Be vigilant, be aware, and let's stop being entertainment for the Green Wall. Let's start figuring out a way where all the prisoners can come together. The mainline GPs [General Population] are outnumbered by the SNYs 3 to 1 because the GPs are inventing new reasons to attack their fellow brethren and make them run to the SNY (Sensitive Needs Yards). All I'm asking is that all come together and repair and change what the Green Wall has caused. All it takes is that one voice to get it started!

I have sent MIM(Prisons) a letter of grievance for use by CDCR prisoners. Its purpose is to petition the Director of Corrections to investigate the purposeful failure of the 602 procedure [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation grievance process] within California State Prison - Los Angeles County. This is something somebody put together for the general population here on C-yard. It is our intention to flood the Director's office with these petitions in hopes that it will shed some light onto the illegal acts in which these pigs are willing participants. We are being forced to file these petitions due to the unfortunate fact that the vast majority of our 602s are not being filed or properly heard.

The idea is to distribute this petition to all CDCR facilities and to have as many people sign and mail the petition to the Director's office as possible. Once all parties receive their responses concerning the petition, all responses along with contradictory paperwork should be sent to the Prison Law Office (which is specific to CA), the Office of Internal Affairs, etc. Our goal is to expose CDCR, its administration, and facilities as tools of repression and the lengths that they will go to to cover their crimes.

If correctly done, this action can be one in which quite possibly hundreds or thousands of prisoners will have the opportunity to make their voices heard and their wrongs known. It will be very hard for the Civil Rights Division of the Dept. of Justice and other agencies to ignore us. At worst, if we still fail, then we will at least have further proven that this "justice" system is not for us but against us.

My hope in sending this to MIM(Prisons)'s legal aid clinic is that you will redistribute this petition to those working with MIM and explain the concept to our comrades struggling from within so that we may all work together as one in a concerted effort to expose and hopefully create favorable conditions for the masses concerned in whatever they may be struggling for. I think that what I'm proposing here with the coordinated form of "legal attack" is of course a good use of MIM's legal aid clinic time and it would benefit all prisoners, not just in California.

In order for the rest of the prisoner population held in different prisons to correctly use this petition, they will of course need to change the name of the facility to that of their own. They will also have to look up their own "Departmental Operational Manual" citations in order to be in compliance. Someone will also have to take the lead for everyone in their facility, individual yard, etc.

MIM(Prisons) Adds: We see this campaign as a great use of our resources because our ability to fairly have our grievances handled is directly related to preventing arbitrary repression for people who stand up for their rights or attempt to do something positive. Spreading revolutionary literature, including Under Lock & Key, is a huge part of MIM(Prisons)'s organizing work. We support this petition in light of our anti-censorship work and anti-repression work in general.

We have sent this campaign to our United Struggle from Within and Prison Legal Clinic comrades in California, but this is an issue that should be spread to wherever it is relevant. Prisoners outside of California facing similar problems may be able to re-write the petition using their state's citation and policy numbers. [Ed.- A comrade in Texas has already translated the petition for use in the TDCJ system.] You will also need to research which administrators the petition should be sent to in your state. Write to us if you want to work on this campaign in California or elsewhere!

To my people of the free communities of Babylon, as of January 2006, a new phenomenon of fascism has been introduced into the Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California via the creation of a new "Communications Management Unit" (e.g."C.M.U.") program (affecting Housing Units D1 thru D4). The disciples of Adolf Hitler (our kaptors) have taken the extremes of fascism to a whole new level!! The construction of Pelican Bay's "Communications Management Unit" program is a prototype of the models that have been created in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois of the Federal Prison System. Pelican Bay's new "Communications Management Unit" program has largely been kept secret from the free public, because the implementation of this C.M.U. program was done on an arbitrary & illegal basis, to where our fundamental constitutional protected human rights and freedoms (e.g. "speech, expression, association, etc.") are being violated without any cause for concern on their part. Normally, whenever there is a new program, policy, or rule change, the free public is made aware of it through the "Regulation and Policy Management Branch" (e.g. "Notice of Rule Change") as mandated per the "Administrative Procedure Act" (A.P.A.). But ask yourself this: "why all of the secrecy now, if this new C.M.U program is being implemented in accordance to law?"

But nonetheless, since January of 2006 Adolf Hitler's disciples (our kaptors) have begun rounding up prisoners in your atypical "slave catcher" fashion, and then began moving us into the new C.M.U. program without us prisoners ever being told, given a reason, or a notice, as to why we have been designated chosen to be housed in the new C.M.U. program. Neither were we accorded a hearing regarding our new classification & housing change. This act within itself has violated our substantive & procedural due process rights, as well as the equal protections of the law as warranted in Wolff v. McDonnell 418 U.S. 539 (1974); and C.C.R. Title 15 Section 3375. Months later, it was revealed to us prisoners the reasons for us being designated/chosen to be housed in the new C.M.U. program. It was because the Pelican Bay State Prison administrators felt we were "real gangstas" with influence in our alleged gang affiliations, to which we were supposedly utilizing to control, intimidate, and influence other prisoners so they could commit unlawful criminal acts on the behalf of that prison gang. But again, we prisoners were not allowed the ability to defend ourselves, as we were not provided with a hearing, or given notice about the wanton allegations being made against us. Meaning that these diabolical monsters are utilizing a "blanket approach" to charge/convict whomever, regardless of whether that prisoner has, or has not been previously found guilty in allegedly utilizing his influential ties to a prison gang, to control, intimidate, and influence other prisoners.

There are several notable contradictions that have become manifest within Pelican Bay's C.M.U. program that amount to First Amendment constitutional violations of speech, expression, association, etc. such as:

1. Stopping & stealing all our incoming/outgoing mail under the false premise of us promoting gang activity;
   
2. Arbitrarily charging/accusing our families, friends, and loved ones of being involved in & promoting unlawful criminal activities (e.g. "gang activity"), which is done as an intimidation tactic to subvert, disrupt, neutralize, & sabotage our relationships with the free communities;
   
3. Any form of communication (e.g. "talking") between prisoners is automatically assumed to be a form of gang activity;
   
4. Not according our families, friends, loved ones, or us prisoners a hearing, in instances when we are collectively charged/accused of being involved in our promoting gang activities; and
   
5. Not reporting incidents of unlawful criminal activities (e.g. "gang activity") to the criminal & postal authorities as they are mandated to do whenever our mail is believed to be involved in unlawful criminal activities as is required, per. C.C.R. title 15 Section 3132(a.)

I could continue listing several more contradictions as it pertains to Pelican Bay's new C.M.U. program, but these five contradictions relate primarily to our current social conditions in the C.M.U. program. I have also written a couple of pamphlets entitled: "Resisting the Subversive Extremes of Political Persecution"; and "Evidence of Corruption, Genocide, & Neo-Colonialism within Pelican Bay's C.M.U.", and the secondary contradictions thereof. If interested, you may write to the following address to obtain a copy of these pamphlets:

ATTN: So. Chicago ABC Zine Distro
c/o Anthony Rayson
P.O. Box 721
Homewood, Ill. 60430

MIM(Prisons) adds: After overturning the illegal ban on MIM mail within the California prison system in late 2008, Pelican Bay began returning all mail from MIM once again in the middle of 2009. As this comrade points out there are no rights for the oppressed in amerika and the continued expansion of control units to repress the oppressed nations is the best example of this.

Escrito por un preso en el estado de California

Yo estaba leyendo ULK 10 de nuevo cuando encontré el artículo "El combate liberalismo de Mao muy pertinente en prisiones de PA." Ese artículo fue escrito por un prisionero y se refirió a ULK número 5 del mes de noviembre en el año 2008. Con respeto este artículo puedo decir de toda corazón que compadezco completamente con el autor, porque yo mísmo y unos otros aquí en el Centro Correccional conocido como Richard J. Donovan (RJDCF) en San Diego, California aguantamos el mísmo tipo de chingaderos.

Yo estaba puesto injustamente en la Segregación Administrativa de RJDCF por casi 18 meses por culpa de otro prisionero quien me acusó del intento de extorcionarle la mercancía de la tienda aunque yo no lo hice. Aquí, he visto exactamente como la mayoría de los prisioneros se dan las espaldas para no pelear contra la corrupción desenfrenada y opresión por parte de los puercos porque en el momento no les afecta a ellos. Pero cuando las cosas cambian, y la corrupción les toca, ellos de repente empiezan gritar, y exigen la unidad de todos.

Para mi, las personas que evitan combatir contra la corrupción cuando les conviene son iguales que los puercos. Es muy patético como ellos solo son preocupados con si mismos. Yo al contrario, por los últimos 16 meses he estado peleando uña y diente contra todos los actos corruptos y opresivos de los puercos. Aunque soy lo que se llama SNY (Yarda de Requisitos Delicados) conocido también como Custodia Protectora, peleo por los derechos de todos los prisioneros sin importar sus afiliaciones, sean SNY o activos de la yarda principal. He hecho bastante apelaciones y he presentado unas cuantas demandas en las cortes. Hago esto aunque todo regresa para perturbarme en la manera de retaliación por los puercos en autoridad. Pero para citar una expresión común de la famosa película Gone With the Wind en inglés o Perdido en el viento, "Francamente querida, me importa un comino."

Creo que no hay más que las autoridades puedan hacer para castigarme o hacer mi vida más miserable. ¿Cómo pueden hacerlo? He sido asignado a la segregación administrativa por 18 meses por asuntos no sancionados porque se acaba de descubrir que yo realmente no extorcioné nada de nadie, sin embargo me mantienen aquí por 18 meses por "preocupaciones de enemigos." He estado esperando un traslado no adverso por la mayoría de los 18 meses, por 16 meses más o menos. Los puercos que son más corruptos que nunca siguen andando por aquí como si fueran casi invencibles . Me dan porciones escasas de comida, friegan con la comida y el correo, e intentan callarme con mentiras. Constantemente estas autoridades intentan crear odio y hostilidad entre mi y los otros prisioneros. Pero hasta ahorita yo he tenido la ultima risa. Los prisioneros saben que yo les apoyo y peleo por sus derechos. Ellos entonces no les hacen caso a los puercos. Los prisioneros me brindan su apoyo aunque no todos pelean por si mismos. Además he ganado casi todas mis apelaciones, y las cortes están fijandos en estos asuntos. Por eso, yo no me les arrodillaré jamás a estos puercos sadicos masoquistas y sus metodos de opresión. Aunque sea dificil pelear contra estas fuerzas, a mí nada ni nadie me van a detener.

Estos puercos hacen tan buen trabajo en tenernos peleando entre nosotros mismos. Pero aun hay unos de nosotros que sin tener en cuenta su propia estatus custodial, SNY, yarda principal, raza, religión, crimenes, etcétera, quieren dar tanto para tras, sino más, de lo que nos dan.

Como ya he dicho, represento el SNY. Yo veo presos activos de la yarda principal peleandose entre ellos mismos. Estos conflictos ridículos contribuyen a su propia opresión y facilita el trabajo de los puercos. La yarda principal considera a los presos SNY como si todos ellos fueran lo más bajo como abusadores y asesinos de niños/as. Y aun hay más unidad en el lado SNY de la cerca. Nosotros ponemos la politica prisionera tonta a un lado. Para mi, es la cosa madura que hacer. Los presos le hacen favores a los puercos con pelearse entre ellos mismos. Y los que no pelean entre ellos mismos les besan el culo a los puercos para recibir favores como drogas, teléfonos celulares, y otras tonterías. Pero cuando algo sucede, estos mismos presos colaboradores exigen unidad que ellos mismos no demuestran. Antes, yo era igual a ellos pero he cambiado. Hasta ahora les ayudo a esas personas porque esta acción todavía es pelear la batalla buena. Conozco unos cuantos que harían lo mismo pero son muy pocos.

Prisión sería un lugar mejor si la gente parara de oprimirse a si mismos o a los otros, encima de la opresión de los puercos. Tenemos que dejar las tonterías para trás por una vez en nuestras vidas. Dejar al lado el racismo, el odio entre SNY y yarda principal, las actitudes egoístas, la mentalidad de "todo yo." Necesitamos madurarnos ya chingado. Unifiquense y peleen contra la opresión, contra los puercos, peleen por sus derechos verdaderos. Si no lo hacen, no son nada más que esclavos, títeres, putas. No estoy abogando violencia contra los puercos. Prefiero que lo hagan educandose ustedes mismos, apropriadamente, no con las pendejadas que estas autoridades quieren que aprendan. Historia auténtica, politica genuina, realidad cierta, si existe.

Nos enseñaron en las escuelas americanas que el comunismo es un terrible modo de vivir. Cuando las personas que eran comunistas difaman el comunismo es solo porque uno de ellos, normalmente exiliados u otros que fueron castigados, huyeron de la responsabilidad, entonces ellos lo calumnian. Y aun he conocido muchos otros que tienen puras cosas buenas que decir sobre el comunismo. La gente nunca será verdaderamente 100% felices. No todos. Pero la mayoría puede estar bien. Hasta el mismo Mao reconocía sus errores. Si la gente aprende de los errores, estaría estupendo. Demuestra madurez y responsabilidad. Si no, son unos tontos, así de fácil. Nuestros errores son muchos. Rápidamente hemos aceptados un cierto modo de vivir. Fijensen a donde eso nos ha llevado. Nuestra rehabilitación en la prisión es una broma. No estamos rehabilitados, estamos segregados. Y es porque lo hemos permitido cuando lo aceptamos como si fuera la manera genuina. Pero no es así. Despiertense. Fijense entre las líneas. Estamos miserables porque lo hemos permitido.

Unifiquense. Echen la mierda para trás en la basura. Eduquense. Parense en sus propios dos pies y peleen en la batalla verdadera.

MIM(Prisiones) agrega: El movimiento prisionero al fin de los 60s y el comienzo de los 70s fue fuerte gracias a la unidad de acción alrededor de temas que afectaban a todos los presos. Necesitamos implementar ese tipo de estrategia y no solo concentrarnos en el individuo como este camarada reitera. Está en líderes de ir al frente y dirigir en su enfoque pero ha cambiado. Entre más líderes vayan al frente, más gente cambiará y verán unidad en acción como una realidad.

Yo personalmente he tenido complicaciones de salud los ultimos dos años, specificamente infecciones estómacales (dos veces). Me diagnosticaron con H-Pylori (Helico Infección Bacterial) que basicamente viene de comida sucia en los cubiertos. Se sabe que esta infección causa cáncer estómacal si no es tratado apropiadamente. Adicionalmente he estado sintiendo quemazón en las areás privadas, en cual la prisión del estado de Florida y la union correción institución ha continuadamente corrido los mismos examenes, nunca intentando otra forma de tratamiento en cual solo causando que sufra más.

Repetidamente me han cobrado $3 por ir a ver el doctor solo para ser negado tratamiento adecuado. El personal medico igual que el personal de seguridad (los guardias) sigen actuando como que los reclamas de mi enfermedad medica es un problema mental y no un problema fisico, hasta que recientemente despues de dos años fui visto por el urologista y solo por el apoyo de mi familia y de continuadas quejas me dijeron que tenía calculo renal. Solo quiero decir que quien seas y donde estes todos podemos contribuir a la lucha para derechos basicos y con determinación podemos obtener o lograr nuestras metas y conquistar.

This is a response from Warden B. M. Cash at California State Prison, Los Angeles County to a participant in the campaign for proper handling of grievances. In this response, Warden Cash avoids addressing our comrade's petition, effectively supporting the illegal activity of his staff.

The Warden received this petition from several prisoners, not just one, and s/he still doesn't see a need to conduct h own investigation. This is just one example of the lack of redress afforded prisoners within the imperialists' bureaucratic runaround. It is proof of our need for a new society; one where writing a letter to an administrator in charge of dozens of employees who are actively perpetuating your oppression leads to at least an investigation!