MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
www.prisoncensorship.info is a media institution run by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. Here we collect and publicize reports of conditions behind the bars in U.$. prisons. Information about these incidents rarely makes it out of the prison, and when it does it is extremely rare that the reports are taken seriously and published. This historical record is important for documenting patterns of abuse, and also for informing people on the streets about what goes on behind the bars.
I am writing to you on behalf of myself and the prisoners of the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison - Special Management Unit (SMU). I
was beaten brutally by SMU’s cert team. My ribs were fractured and I was
denied any medical treatment. This happened in June 2012. In January of
this year I was assaulted (while in cuffs and shackles) by Lt. Micheal J
Kyle, he punched me in my face 5 times with a closed fist. This was
retaliation because I reported him for sexual harassment after he showed
me his fully exposed penis and told me to “suck it.”
Right now there are about 9 prisoners on a
hunger
strike because of the hardships being placed upon us. We are being
deprived of our property without proper due process. We face daily
ongoing hardships and abuse such as those described above. Our right to
religion is also being violated due to our windows being completely
covered, so Muslims cannot determine when to pray and prisoners like me
who study all religions cannot receive any religious material for
certain religions for reasons they will not share with us.
We are in desperate need of a change!
MIM(Prisons) adds: We are getting a lot of mail from Georgia
describing the conditions and the need for struggle and change in prison
there, especially from the Diagnostic and Classification prison. This
unity among the prisoners, and their outreach work to inform media and
work with prison activists are all good signs for this struggle. We look
forward to working with these new comrades to build the level of
political education and organizing in Georgia so that our fight against
the criminal injustice system will win both short term and long term
battles.
As a young komrad here at Red Onion, I’ve had the privilege and blessing
to run across some sharp komrades who were right and exact and were
causing an uprising here. This wicked imperialist system felt threatened
by this vanguard uprising. They used divide and conquer tactics to break
the spirit of the lumpen who were politically awakening, by shipping
certain komrades out of state to stop this vanguard movement.
United Political Prisoners Syndicate (UPPS) is a lumpen study group. I’m
striving to pick up where the other komrades left off. The basis of our
agenda is to wake up the oppressed stalag* prisoners in Dead Onion and
throughout gulags in Virginia. I believe we as prisoners have all the
power in our hands, but only if we move on the same accord can we be
successful. We can employ tactics of hunger strikes, refusing to buy
commissary from Keefe, and stalags who do some type of work all going on
work strikes. These three actions alone will have these pigs in a
serious bind until demands are met. UPPS is striving to get all
oppressed lumpen on this accord. The masses always say stalags aren’t
going to go all the way. You can’t worry about that and let that deter
you from the bigger picture which is liberation for the people. We have
the opportunity to expose this corrupt imperialist Dead Onion and Wally
Ridge for what they are!
Like Bobby Seale said “Seize the Time,” the time is at hand. When you
know and overstand how the enemy thinks it puts you on guard and helps
you in the long haul. To know and learn from history, helps dictate your
future. All power to the people.
MIM(Prisons) responds: It is a long-standing tactic of the
prisons to move political leaders around when they start organizing
effectively in one place. This is why it is so important that no one
individual takes on all the leadership or becomes a point of failure for
the local movement. We must constantly be educating new comrades,
building new leadership, and delegating tasks so that when our leaders
are locked up in control units or transferred out of state our local
struggle can continue. This is also why it’s important for everyone to
have direct contact with MIM(Prisons). Relying on others in your prison
to share their ULK and other literature may seem efficient, but
when either you or they are moved you will be unable to contact us and
will lose connection to the broader anti-imperialist movement.
Prisoners in Texas have been fighting the
recently
enacted restrictions on indigent correspondence which restricts
indigent prisoners to 5 one-ounce domestic letters per month. As we’ve
explained in
other
articles, this is an attack on the growing number of revolutionary
voices in Texas speaking out to expose the barbaric treatment and
inhumane conditions. One comrade created a grievance that prisoners can
file and a list of people to contact to demand this policy be changed.
We are now getting reports of responses to these grievances. And as
usual, the prisons are just giving us the run-around.
One prisoner got a response to his grievance stating: “TDCJ as an Agency
revised Board Policy 03.91 in August of 2013 affecting indigent mail.
Those decisions are not made at the Unit level, merely enforced. No
further action warrented.”(sic)
Further, several prisoners have received form letters from the TDCJ
Ombudsman’s Office telling them that they Ombudsman will not be
responding and they should contact the “appropriate unit staff” instead.
“Issues regarding unit operations, disciplinary disputes, property
issues, mail or any other matter relating to conditions of care or
supervision may be formally addressed through the Offender Grievance
Procedure…”
So basically the Ombudsman’s Office says prisoner’s must take up this
issue via a grievance. And the unit staff respond to prisoner’s
grievances saying they can not address this issue because it is a
state-wide policy. The original campaign urged people to contact a
variety of TDCJ leaders and Texas politicians. To date we have no
reports of any response from them.
This campaign is an important battle to ensure the voices of Texas
prisoners can be heard. Limits on correspondance mean we will be unable
to get regular reports of abuses behind bars, and unable to maintain
study and communication with politically active comrades. We must
continue the pressure and demand more than just form letters and
dismissals to our protests.
In addition to minimum wage studies, what about maximum wages? I think
when we raise the minimum wage in the U.S., we are really just
inflating. Unless we cap each and every person in the top six-digit-plus
earning categories, there will be no end to the misery. I won’t go so
far to say we cap every salary at $25,000, but I would cap at $98,000.
And maybe put a Texas prison in Cambodia and Bangladesh, and send
prisoners there who are caught saying “I’m bored” more than twice. “Sure
you are!”
MIM(Prisons) responds: This writer is responding to the article
in Under Lock & Key 36“Raise
the Minimum Wage to $2.50”. In that article we point out that “The
proposed minimum wage of $10 per hour would … put the lowest paid
Amerikans at 50 times the pay of the lowest paid Bangladeshi if we
account for cost of living.” And so our call for a global minimum wage
is not in the material interests of the vast majority of people in First
World countries. But it is strongly in the interests of the majority in
the Third World.
A maximum wage is an important component to implementing a global
minimum wage. We are fighting to close the dramatic difference in wealth
between exploiters and exploited. Starting with a cap of $98,000 per
person per year is quite generous to the exploiters. As we have
explained previously,
Amerikans
are already in the richest 13% of the world. So if we re-distribute
the wealth equally to all people of the world, we won’t see anyone left
with salaries of $98,000. But it’s certainly a start to place any cap on
maximum wages.
As for putting prisoners of the United $tates into Third World prisons,
we strive to draw connections between U.$. prisoners and the Third World
masses because of the extreme oppression they face. We do not wish to
worsen those conditions. And while many come into prison with spoiled
Amerikan perspectives, prisoners in the United $tates have legitimate
complaints that must be prioritized strategically. It is critical that
we keep an internationalist perspective in all of our work. When we
fight to improve conditions for individuals in prison, we need to keep
the privileged status of Amerikans in mind and always ask ourselves if
the reforms we demand will harm others in order to benefit ourselves.
Getting video games for prisoners, which are made from materials mined
by brutalized proletarians in the Congo would be an obvious example.
Internationalism is fundamental to everything we do, and the economics
of global imperialism is just one aspect of the global inequality of
imperialism.
Thank you for sending me the essay titled Let’s ‘Gang-Up’ on
Oppression by Owusu Yaki Yakubu.(1) Having become a “reformed” gang
member, this essay was extremely enlightening and solidified what I
already knew: that the government fears the unification of gangs and
their unified opposition against oppression. They also fear any gang
member or other lumpen street elements developing a socially conscious,
politicized, and revolutionary mentality.
I became politicized in the early 90s during my second year of
captivity. I took a long and hard look at myself as a so-called “gang”
member and I came to realize that I was being manipulated by the
powers-that-be, through the process of psychology and socialization, to
commit genocide against my own people. So I cut my gang ties and came to
embrace Revolutionary New Afrikan Nationalism.
In his essay Owusu speaks about the New Afrikan Independence Movement.
The article titled
Terminology
Debate: Black vs. New Afrikan, in No. 35 issue of Under Lock
& Key, also speaks about New Afrikan Nationalism. I am in the
process of starting an organization called My Brother’s and Sister’s
Keeper (MBSK), which embraces Revolutionary New Afrikan Nationalism
as its political mass line, or guiding principle. This ideology calls
for the establishment of an independent socialist New Afrikan republic
in the Southeast (USA), specifically in the Black-belt, the destruction
of the North Amerikkkan imperialist state, the liberation and
unification of Afrikan nations worldwide, the construction of a New
Afrikan society, and the building of a new world order.
A New Afrikan is an Afrikan born in north Amerikkka. The name and
concept “New Afrika” reflects our identity, purpose and direction. “New
Afrikan” reflects our identity as a nation and a people - a nation and a
people desiring self-determination. “New Afrikan” reflects our purpose
as we desire freedom, self-determination and independence. By stating we
are New Afrikans, we clarify we want to be independent from the
Amerikkkan Empire. We want land and national liberation. We no longer
want the ruling class of the amerikkkan Empire to determine our
political, economic, socio-cultural affairs. MBSK sees that a people who
do not control their own affairs is subject to genocide. When we control
our own destiny we can determine our political, economic and
socio-cultural affairs in the interest of our survival and development.
“New Afrikan” also speaks to our identity because that’s what we are.
Our nation is primarily a racial, cultural, social fusion of various
Afrikan ethnic and national groups - Iwe, Yoruba, Akan, Ashanti, Fante,
Hausa, Ibo, Fulani, Congolese and several others - into a unique people.
Even though our homeland was in Afrika, our people developed historical,
economic, and spiritual ties to the New Afrikan National Territory,
which consists of the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South
Carolina, and Louisiana. These states together are part of the
historical Black belt birthplace, and the North Amerikkkan homeland of
the New Afrikan nation. The struggle to free this land is called the New
Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM). To state we are New Afrikan
recognizes our continuing aspirations to “free the land.” “Free the
Land” is the battle cry of the NAIM. When we say “free the land,” the
New Afrikan national territory is the land we are talking about freeing.
“New Afrikan” also recognizes our direction to build a new society based
on new values. We want to create a revolutionary, progressive, humane
society where exploitation of humans by humans is eliminated and all can
live in dignity, peace and respect. As conscious New Afrikans, we work
now to transform ourselves and our nation from decadent death-style of
oppression to lifestyles of liberation.
MSBK embraces and upholds the
United
Front for Peace in Prisons statement of principles. we oppose any
Willie Lynch-style divide and conquer tactics the fascist prison
authorities (pigs) use to cause division amongst the revolutionary ranks
and amongst the races or oppressed nations.
The essay Let’s Gang-Up on Oppression re-affirms what we
already knew: that we need to develop unity within and amongst lumpen
street organization and re-direct their aggression and radicalism to
wage the real war: revolution.
Again, I thank you for sending me your material. I made copies of the
essay and the UFPP statement of principles and passed them out among the
younger brothers here affiliated with lumpen street organizations.
On 9 February 2014, prisoners at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification State Prison Special Management Unit (SMU) lockdown began
another hunger strike to protest conditions. The hunger strike is to
address abusive conditions, bugs being served in food repeatedly, sexual
harassment, sexual assaults, beatings by officers while in handcuffs,
being thrown on strip cells without food, feeding prisoners only 1500
calories daily when we are supposed to be given 2800 daily, refusing
E-Wing yard call, refusing access to law library, and staff trying to
poison prisoners. We are facing threats by staff that if prisoners
remain on hunger strike they will die under their watch and it will be
covered up.
Prisoners in the Georgia State Prison SMU have had enough of the
oppression and decided to take a true stand to fight for our rights.
Prisoners in the strike include many of the same prisoners from the 9
December 2010 and
11
June 2012 hunger strikes, and these prisoners are refusing to eat
until conditions change.
On 25 January 2014, prisoners received trays at the SMU lockdown with
bugs in the food. And after the bugs were pointed out by the prisoners
to staff, they were told that either they eat the food or don’t eat at
all. Then when the prisoners tried to keep the trays to show the proof
to the warden they were threatened by the daytime Officer in Charge,
that if they didn’t give up the trays he was going to suit up with his
Correctional Officers and gang rape the prisoners. The prisoners still
refused to give up their trays and were threatened again the next day:
if they didn’t give up the trays they were going to be refused their
tray meals for that day. The prisoners had to go two days without eating
just to show the warden the bugs in their food. And when the prisoners
finally got a chance to show the bugs in the food, the warden only
replied that it’s nothing but a little bit more meat to add in their
chili. This is not the first time that bugs had been served in food, but
nothing has been done about this issue. Even though we file grievances,
nothing but denials.
These prisoners have even been beaten by staff while in handcuffs.
Nothing has been done about these employees’ abusive actions. There is a
coverup by Warden Bruce Chatman, Deputy Warden June Bishop, Warden of
care and treatment William Poinel, Cpt. Micheal Nopen, Lt. Michael J.
Kyles, aand even down to medical staff Mary Tsore and mental health
staff Mr. Whitmoore.
Georgia prisoners are being denied access to the law library as
guaranteed by the Georgia and U.S. law. Prisoners are only allowed two
court cases per week to be delivered at their door on a piece of paper,
and no books.
Medical staff are refusing to take notice of the hunger strike even
though SOP VH47-0002 guarantees strikers health service.
The legal system refuses to respond, grievances are ignored or
destroyed, and there is very little that Georgia prisoners can do to
fight for their rights. Our only choice is to put our lives in danger by
refusing to eat, and plead for some outside support.
MIM(Prisons) adds: The past few years have seen a sharp increase
in prisoners using food refusal as a tactic to demand some improvements
in conditions. Considering the powerlessness of prisoners, and the
complete failure that is the grievance system in many states, it is not
a surprise that people feel their only option to demand basic rights is
to starve themselves.
We print many reports on these strikes in the pages of Under Lock
& Key, and we know this inspires others to learn of similar
struggles across the country. But we also encourage everyone to study
these actions and learn from their mistakes. In
Illinois,
prisoners were manipulated by the pigs to end their strike prematurely.
In
South
Carolina lockdown coordination problems ended their strike. In
Nebraska
prisoners failed to make clear demands and gained nothing after a two
day protest. Even in
California
where prisoner unity is remarkably high, the response to the massive
hunger strikes has been little more than lip service and program name
changes. We must be prepared for such lack of response from the state
with a long view of how to make change.
The underlying lesson in all of these struggles is the need for stronger
education and organization before taking action. Greater unity will be
achieved through education, and organization will build a solid system
of communication and a strong and winnable list of demands. One quick
lesson for all: when sending information to the media about your strike
include something clear that people on the outside can do to support
you. It can be a number to call or place to write to register their
support.
I have been to three prison camps this year alone. This month makes it
18 months that I’ve been incarcerated. Riverbend was the first prison I
went to. After an incident happened between and officer and I, I wrote a
grievance on him and there was an ongoing investigation. But before it
could get anywhere they transferred me to Jenkins. I was at Jenkins for
three weeks before I got transferred. While I was there I had a verbal
altercation with an officer and he wrote me up but he exaggerated the
incident, so to defend my character I asked his supervisors to review
the cameras, but they refused. Then while I was on administrative
separation I kept getting written up (about three times) for things that
they didn’t know who did them. I had a roommate with me at the time and
when something went down they wrote us both up instead of finding out
who did what.
Now my issue is that all those disciplinary reports (DR) that I got were
not investigated, furthermore I didn’t get a chance to go to DR court to
defend myself. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the DR process but
when you get one, a DR investigator is supposed to meet with you and
discuss the incident. Afterwards you can take a plea or go to DR court
where you’re either found guilty or innocent, and that’s the official DR
process. These steps were not taken on any of the DRs I got.
After I was transferred from Jenkins I was sent to Jackson State Prison,
to a program called Special Management Unit (SMU). When I got here they
told me it was a program for prisoners who have a record of assaulting
officers and behavior problems. I only have two DRs on my record that
were concluded. The disposition for the first was dismissed and I was
found not guilty on the second. So with that being said, I feel it was
injustice to place me in this program.
Anyways, the most current issue is that I have been here since 23
January 2014 and I have not received any of my property. Recently I’ve
been asking for my mail and writing materials, (i.e. paper, pen, etc) so
I can contact my family and my attorney. I’ve spoke to the unit manager,
the Lieutenant, the counselor, and the property manager about this at
least twice and not one of them will tell me where my property is or why
I haven’t gotten them yet. There are several others with the same
problem. If anything can be done to get this problem resolved please
help.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This trick with the false disciplinary
reports, especially on prisoners who write grievances for guard abuses,
is common across the criminal injustice system. The campaign demanding
that our
grievances
be addressed needs to be expanded into Georgia so that prisoner’s
there can take up this organized struggle. We are looking for a prisoner
in Georgia who can modify a general grievance petition to the
state-specific rules and situation in Georgia. Let us know if you can
volunteer and we will send the information.
This is just one example of the system of oppression in this country
that puts bad marks on the permanent records of oppressed nation youth
starting in grade school. From there they are put into gang databases,
given sentences, parole, plea bargains and in prison they receive
disciplinary reports, STG status, etc. This is the state-sponsored
burueacracy that keep the First World lumpen in its place. They are
excluded from the economic system and many other benefits of imperialist
society, and these discriminatory and often baseless labels help make it
acceptable to the Amerikan public.
Prisoners here in Georgia are being harassed by the wardens and their
administration. Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) has a new
program it calls the Tier Program, and many prisoners are being thrown
into the Tier 2 program for 9 months for petty disciplinary, reports,
which is against the U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment banning cruel and
unusual punishment.
Prison officials are also using food as a tool of cruel and unusual
punishment towards prisoners. Only half of the population here in prison
can afford to go to the store commissary. The prisoners who can’t afford
store goods are robbing those who go to the store. This creates violent
conditions because 90% of the prisoners here are gang-related. And when
the gangs go to war it goes down at every prison in Georgia. And some
prisoners die in the gang wars. GDC created this problem so they can
have a reason to lock all the prisoners down.
I put a 1983 civil suit on Valdosta State Prison here in GA and as a
result Deputy Warden Orr tried to have me killed numerous times. On 7
December 2013 I was beaten badly with weapons by 15 prisoners, and I was
sent to the free world hospital for 2 days. When I returned to the
prison I was placed in lockup where all my property was stolen and the
prison officials refused to replace my property. The Warden place me on
Tier 2 program with 9 months in lockup as punishment for being attacked
and seriously injured while my attackers went unpunished.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We are seeing a lot of reports of
repression and resistance coming from Georgia recently. This comrade
underscores the need for unity among both individuals and lumpen
organizations. It is easy for the prison administration to pit prisoners
against each other when they are focused on the fights between their
organizations. But the real enemy, the one that is keeping everyone in
prisons, denying adequate food, and throwing people in lockup, is the
criminal injustice system. This is why we urge prisoners in Georgia to
focus on building the
United Front
for Peace in Prisons. The UFPP’s first principle is Peace: “We
organize to end the needless conflicts and violence within the U.$.
prison environment. The oppressors use divide and conquer strategies so
that we fight each other instead of them. We will stand together and
defend ourselves from oppression.” This is critical to every prison, but
in Georgia the recent reports suggest even more urgency to this point.
Chicano youth Andy Lopez, whose 13-year-old life was cut short by a
Santa Rosa pig, has yet to obtain justice. This was a concrete example
of what it means when people say that Aztlán is occupied under a settler
state. Our colonization is expressed in many ways and our youth being
shot dead in the street is one of the in-your-face OVERT examples, which
even the bourgeois Chicanos cannot pretend not to notice.
When the white Deputy Sheriff Erick Gelhaus executed Andy on 22 October
2013, comrades here discussed what should be done in response to these
attacks on the Chican@ Nation. Our conversation on the subject was
pretty heated. One topic that kept coming up was the example that the
Black Liberation Army provided back in the day when the Black Nation was
under heightened attack from the lethal COINTELPRO. Everywhere in the
world where a people are under attack and being murdered by the
occupying state, at some point the people will fight fire with fire.
It’s been four months and still there has been no indictment of the pig
in question. But then when do we ever see the state prosecute its own
when the oppressed are murdered in our occupied streets? We cannot allow
Andy’s death to be swept under the rug. So many within the Chican@
nation have begun a perverted romance with imperialism. The super
profits that are extracted from the Third World seem to have intoxicated
many in our nation to the point where when our youth are turned to swiss
cheese by a pig, it’s conveniently ignored. Revolutionary Chican@s need
to work to detoxify the people and put Aztlán back on a revolutionary
path. Our work should start with mobilizing Aztlán around acquiring
justice for Andy Lopez.
There are plans for a march on 2 June 2014 in Santa Rosa to build
awareness of this tragedy and to commemorate what would have been Andy’s
14th birthday. Let us spread the word and gain momentum on the justice
that we need to obtain. We support this march and will continue to
develop ways to properly respond to the occupation of Aztlán. Andy’s
death should be seen as not only a rallying point but a juncture where
we usher in a new wave in the Chicano movement. Aztlán libre!
On 4 February 2014, a five page
Notice
of Proposed Regulations disseminated among prisoners warehoused in
the death row Security Housing Unit (SHU) known by it politically
corrupt misnomer “Adjustment Center” (AC). The notice states in part
that any person may submit public comments regarding proposed changes.
That’s an open invitation to everyone reading this (including all
prisoners disenfranchised by the state) giving us an opportunity to
advance the struggle. Lately it’s been like talking to the walls.
I’m a “person” on Calincarceration’s death row who is currently
warehoused on the first tier of this secret torture unit at San Quentin
(SQ) State Prison called the AC. Per order of the oligarchy overlords
who comprise the “Institutional Classification Committee” (ICC) my
appeal submitted 2 December 2013, which provides documented evidence
that their decision to continue to warehouse me here is based on false
disciplinary history and a capricious misapplication of local
operational procedures, is being ignored. Even the CDCR 22 requests
making status inquiries to Appeals Coordinators M.L. Davis and R.
Baxter, and the former LIEutenant S. Fowler, now a counselor and ICC
lackey (full member), return nothing except their deliberate
indifference.
That excerpt of my individual situation is only one example of how
California’s most dangerous Security Threat Group (STG) gets down and
dirty. Mine is not an isolated incident either. It’s only one of many
weapons of mass corruption the
CDCR
Pilot Program has utilized to minimize, obscure, and censor the fact
that they really are torturing prisoners in a way that’s no different
than what Phillip Garrido did to Jaycee Dugard – minus the sex crime
factor. CDCR’s goal is to take more hostages, build more torture units
in back yards across the state, and their hideous
Pilot
Program is a bait and switch attempt. CDCR’s main STG Pilot Program
objective
continues to be to crush, kill and destroy their hostages’ ability to
organize in a peaceful protest against no touch torture and other
inhumane conditions of confinement.
Expanding the definition of “disruptive groups” by adopting several new
terms is really the bastard children produced by CDCR unions. It’s the
sick minded schemes of bourgeois pigs behind the scenes of the
Calincarceration Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the
Amerikkkan Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCRME)
and others affiliated with the CDCR who would in fact reap a profit as
the additional lackeys get hired to guard the torture units popping up
like 7-Elevens everywhere! Yes, that’s right. All in the name of PEACE
officers AND job SECURITY (which is paid for by your taxed income).
What makes the CDCR STG “the most dangerous” is the fact that they all
know what’s really going on, and know that they’re torturing prisoners.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has clarified that only
15 days in solitary confinement constitutes torture. I’m going on two
years and some here have more than 10 times that. Here, in the secret
torture unit at SQ, the STG Pilot Program is still being cooked up – and
with “specialized” ingredients for an even fouler taste. The AC is a
sort of ground zero for testing policies, a variety of no touch torture
methods, and a twist on the death penalty experiment only depraved
criminal minds could have concocted. SQ death row SHU prisoners
shouldn’t have to be the disposable human guinea pigs getting tortured
to death in the CDCR STG Pilot Program. If the state is allowed to
continue its medieval oligarchical practices resulting in another word
game amounting to “de mock racy” then the public must not have realized
California’s most dangerous STG is the CDCR!
send your comments to: CDCR Regulation and Policy Management
Branch PO Box 942883 Sacramento, CA 94283
Make use of the grievance campaign by attaching your comments to
copies of the petitions (see page 12 in ULK).