Federal Prisons

September 2015 marked a year since the mass kidnapping of college students in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Yet very little is said about it on the national news here in the United $tates. In fact, since last year I have caught nothing of what the families of the disappeared students are up to. How are they coping? Is justice of some sort still being sought? Well fortunately we still get reports on Mexico from the Spanish news and the small community of that region has not laid down hope, nor are they sitting down with arms crossed. The state of Guerrero has made it clear that they don’t trust the Mexican government’s competence in finding their loved ones’ remains but also in bringing down those who are responsible for the mass slaying of 43 college students out of Ayotzinapa.

On 26 September 2014 many students went into the town of Iguala in shuttle busses to protest against the local government. Something they had a reputation for doing. Usually these protests would be broken up by police and the crowds would disperse, but this night was different as the mayor must have had a different method to eliminate the frequent protests from those students in Ayotzinapa college. It was mentioned in the media that the protests were becoming a nuisance not only for the mayor Jose Luis Abarca but for the rest of the population as well. The protesters were stopping traffic, disturbing businesses and constantly shouting revolutionary slogans, waving their red flags with hammer and sickles. Instead of the usual police methods of dealing with the protesters, on September 26 the police just opened fire, killing six people. And then they rounded up the students and turned them over to the local cartel to deal with.

The mayor was in cahoots with the local cartels. After an international outcry both the mayor and his wife were arrested and are still behind bars. Many police officers were interrogated by federal agents and that’s when the story along with the names of those involved began to come out.

After being turned over to the “G.U.” by police officials, the 43 students were taken to a nearby garbage dump and strangled. Subsequently their bodies were burned and thrown in bags to be dumped at the lake. This story does not add up because it’s difficult to get rid of 43 bodies just like that. The population in Iguala remain skeptical of the reports released by the government. How can they not be when it was their own mayor and police officials who were responsible for their loved ones’ disappearance! Can it be possible that there are still higher government officials responsible for the students’ death out there running the investigation as if it were a unique incident? It is plausible given the prevalent nature of corruption in Mexico.

[h]Who were the 43 students? [/h]

Collectively they were preparing to become teachers. It was going to be their way to reach the masses. Ayotzinapa rural university was founded in 1926 as part of a new revolutionary government’s ambition to educate all Mexicans, especially in the rural areas. Since opening, Ayotzinapa has served as an advanced educational privilege for the exploited and oppressed masses in the rural areas of Guerrero state. The university offers underprivileged youth opportunities other than just being rural peasants. This campus is a place where ideas are discussed around social, political and cultural issues and of course methods of how to change circumstances in favor of the masses.

It comes as no surprise that Ayotzinapa produces some of that region’s most active agitators. Revolutionary discussions are a normal thing: “Los Normales Rurales” (the normal rurals) are a product of this university that has been a boiling pot for youth who are introduced to Marxist-Leninist revolution. We see images of Marx and Engels, students walking around campus with a Karl Marx t-shirt emblazoned with a hammer & sickle, and Che Guevara and Maoist murals on campus walls. Even universities for relatively privileged youth are often a breeding ground for radicalism, so it is no surprise that higher education for the poor would feed the revolutionary movement as people become educated in the systems of oppression and the successful and failed options for fighting back.

Los Normales Rurales were protesting their local government i.e. mayor and cronies. They were revolutionary propagandists attempting to reach the masses through actions. Like Mao Zedong’s China produced the barefoot doctors to provide adequate health care to the rural areas, Ayotzinapa University is producing teachers who will eventually find locations in other rural or urban areas. They will take teaching positions, and, armed with revolutionary theory and knowledge of their national context, they are vital to organizing the proletariat, the peasantry, the students and other sympathetic classes.

[h]Responses to the massacre[/h]

The Mexican government run by Enrique Peña Nieto only made a cursory attempt to serve justice. This was the way the Mexican government handled the massacre of its’ citizens at the hands of its’ own officials. That area was infested with corrupt government officials and continuously disappeared citizens by the cartels. The search for the missing 43 students only produced the location of more than a dozen mass graves or “fosas.”

Many citizens in Iguala are too afraid to speak out and voice their grievances but not their comrades, other “normalistas” still at Ayotzinapa. They are clamoring for the masses to join their fight against a corrupt and murdering government!

The protests were captured and televised and Mexican@s all throughout the country got involved, protesting against government officials especially those of the reactionary party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) who Mexicans hold just as responsible as the cartels who carried out the disappearances. PRI is an incorrigibly corrupt party run by the nation’s big bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has its allies who can carry out their dirty work and would rather eliminate any opposition to their existence. The context in that country is ripe for a revolution! The contradictions between the masses and government is at the point of antagonism.

Recently during elections in Guerrero many students along with the masses wearing ski masks destroyed government offices. A concise response to who they wish to elect! The masses in Guerrero have become politicized like the masses in Michoacan state. Forming their own self-defense militias. The masses in Guerrero are on a likeminded path and still searching for the 43 normalistas, and finding more and more “fosas” with bodies. A leader of one of these self defense groups was just found murdered recently! The loved ones of the 43 normalistas are still agitating as strong as they were a year ago.

The Mexican government wants to sweep the incident from almost a year ago under the rug. Not the masses. It may seem like enough for Enrique Peña Nieto, but the Ayotzinapa campus has now become more intense in their revolutionary struggle. For the 43 fallen comrades and the population as a whole the protests persist and the masses have become more receptive to revolution in Guerrero than ever! None of this is reported by English news outlets and while the Spanish news downplays its reporting, revolutionaries in the United $tates must keep up with current events in the international context.

Many comrades in [i]ULK[/i] have expressed solidarity with Palestine, Syria, and Iraqi muslim fighters because of imperialist aggression towards them, yet we have a growing crises happening in Mexico that gets scant attention because it’s the norm down there. And there’s little mystery on why there are so many undocumented Mexican@s in the U.$. to acquire better employment opportunities and escape that country’s social crises. As internationalist revolutionaries we should advocate and support Ayotzinapa’s current struggle to liberate its community from oppressive forces like the Mexican government and drug trafficking groups. USW conveys its revolutionary solidarity to Ayotzinapa!

I hope this letter finds you and your family in good health and high spirits. I received the information on how to form a study group and a copy of Fundamental Political Line of MIM(Prisons) you sent. Thank you. It has been very helpful. I also received Under Lock & Key No. 45.

The study group I started only has three people involved so far. It’s difficult because we are currently being housed in administrative segregation, so we basically have to yell back and forth to one another. But it’s not all bad. Having to yell to one another might get others involved in our discussions because they might hear something that touches base with them.

The material we used in our first study group was ULK 45. After passing it around we discussed some of the articles. One of those articles was “UFAO Links Up with UFPP [United Front for Peace in Prisons].”

The comrade in the article did some good things, like setting up a “poor box” and doing tournaments, but we feel that he stopped making progress when he waged a war against officers and a lumpen organization (LO). The comrade said that by a member of one LO breaking into the boxes of two other LOs, somehow his treaty was broken. I’m curious, did the comrade investigate the incident to determine whether the theft was sanctioned by the leadership of the one LO? If the theft was just an isolated incident then it should not have had any effect on the treaty. That’s assuming, of course, that the treaty in question was a peace agreement reached between the leadership of each LO in that particular barracks or at that particular unit.

We believe that if it was just an isolated incident then the comrade should have let the leadership of the LO the thief belonged to hand down punishment. However, since the comrade is the leader of the UFAO, he could have called together a “committee” to determine how the situation should be handled. We feel that if the comrade would have just prevented the thief from participating in, or benefiting from, UFAO function, he would still be in population pushing the cause forward.

We’ve learned from the comrade a lot of positive things we might try out in the future, like the poor box, but we also learned to never rush a decision, especially one that could possibly result in a “war.” We believe that all decisions made should be in line with the progress of our cause, and any decision reached should be a collective effort to ensure the best path forward is taken.

MIM(Prisons) responds: In our response to the UFAO article that this Arkansas study group is responding to from ULK 45, we asked others to share tactics for how to handle a breach of a peace treaty without resorting to violence if possible. Everyone’s conditions will be different, and what works in some facilities might not apply to others. This writer’s suggestion of approaching the leading members of the treaty-breaker’s organization is one potential option.

Even though the specific agreements you adopt will vary, it’s a good idea for everyone forming a peace treaty to discuss this question in advance, before an actual breach of the treaty happens. That way you’ll already be in agreement about how to handle a situation like the one explained by UFAO in ULK 45 where the peace treaty was thrown out the window, a “war” was initiated for retribution, and the leader of the peace treaty ended up in solitary confinement.

We hope to continue this discussion of how to make our efforts to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons as fruitful as possible. Send in tactics that have worked in your peace-building efforts to maintain course when it seems to be going off the tracks.

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix
Emancipated from the fetters of oppression
O, the beauty of freedom!
Imperialism is the absolute adversary
And capitalism the daunting sin
I was branded a rebel
Because of my revolutionary stance
This was a nightmare
From which my only escape
Was to awaken

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.