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 follow up on the problems we’ve been experiencing with
our appeals system as it relates to the mass complaint form that at
least 85 of us sent to Sacramento. I went a step further and had my
sister draft a “citizen’s complaint letter” to the Warden of RJ Donvan.
He’s required by law to investigate and respond to this letter within 30
days. This puts more pressure on the Warden’s office due to the time and
resources involved to send out responses. So, if your readers have
friends and family who can draft and submit the citizen’s complaint
en masse, I believe it can have a greater impact.
MIM(Prisons) adds: As
previously
reported, this comrade is making good use of the grievance petition
and taking on this battle creatively through the legal and
administrative system. Write to us to get involved in this campaign. We
can send you a copy of the grievance petition for your state, or a
generic version you can customize to create one for states that do not
yet have one.
by a North Carolina prisoner November 2012 permalink
In late September of this year, in a fight between a few prisoners, a
prisoner was killed and another prisoner was seriously wounded and is
still in critical condition. The incident happened at Lanesboro
Correctional Institution and we have been on lockdown since it occurred.
The administration discontinued visitation for regular population and
segregated inmates, cut telephone privileges for everyone, and regular
population was limited to ordering only five items, three times a week,
and three showers a week. Recreation was taken from regular population
indefinitely, which caused them to remain in their rooms for 24 hours a
day for days at a time.
The strange thing about this entire event is when Superintendent Parsons
was questioned on the Channel 9 news based in Charlotte, North Carolina,
about what exactly happened, he responded by saying 148 prisoners had a
“brawl” in which a prisoner was killed. The media then debased the
prisoner who was killed and devoted the entire segment to discussing how
he was shot by police in 1999 in an attempted escape. Nothing was said
about why this prisoner-on-prisoner stabbing occurred, or about the
dozens of other stabbings that happened throughout this year. Nor did
they mention the illegal and inhumane “dry cells” that were mandated by
the administration, leaving almost 100 prisoners in rooms with feces
covering the entire dorm.
As of now, all of the questionable events are being investigated by the
State Bureau Investigation Unit and Laneseboro Correctional Institution
may be looking at grave consequences. But why did these events end so
brutally? Why did it take a prisoner losing his life for the
administration, the Governor, and law enforcement to get involved? First
let’s take a look at what led up to these times we are in.
At the start of the year, the prison administration promoted the idea
that gang violence was the cause of dozens of stabbings occurring
statewide which put several close custody camps on lockdown for weeks
and even months. Here at Lanesboro, that soon subsided and things were
back to “normal.” Then early June, the Prison Emergency Response Team
(PERT) raided the prison, where nearly 100 prisoners were placed in “dry
cells” where we were in our cells 24 hours a day for a week. PERT
officers weren’t allowing us to flush our toilets, which caused them to
become clogged. aIn protest we threw our feces out into the dayroom,
leaving the entire dorm in a heap of feces. Prisoners were forced to
eat, clean our bodies, and sleep in this stench. Also prisoners were
forced to have x-rays to find drugs, cell phones or weapons. This led to
many lawsuits being filed.
What happened next indicates how much the Lanesboro administration cares
about prison life. A stabbing had occurred in which one prisoner’s neck
was cut. A prisoner involved was placed in segregation along with the
prisoner who had his throat cut. The administration then released the
assaulted prisoner into regular population after one week and placed him
in the same pod as his enemies. This set off four consecutive stabbings
in less than two hours around the prison.
They momentarily locked us down. When we came off, two days later a
prisoner was killed. Another strange thing is the prisoners who did the
killing didn’t live in the dorm where the killing occurred, and neither
did the prisoner who was killed. This means the officers had to let
these prisoners into a dorm where they didn’t live.
So we see the perpetuation of violence by the Lanesboro administration
who place known enemies in the same dorm. Obviously they’re not trying
to stop the violence. This perpetuation of violence results in lockdowns
where they take all of the prisoners “privileges” in an attempt to
further control us. It’s obvious these lockdowns did not halt the
violence. In fact, evidence shows that violence in prisons across the
country increases after a lock down (see the documentary
Unlock the Box).
But the puzzling part is when they take away our “privileges,” we gladly
accept it instead of resisting. There were only a few people filing
grievances, filing lawsuits, taking progressive actions against the
beast, but there were many complaining.
Why do these violent acts continue to occur? To understand the simple
answer you just have to look at conditions here. We have to wait 90 days
to receive a job, even unit jobs. They’re denying some of us from even
enrolling in school or extra-curricular activities. They barely even
offer any extra-curricular activities. All we have to occupy our time is
TV, yard and gym. Prisoners have no activities to engage in, and so just
hang around the dorms. With the state building medium custody facilities
right beside the close custody facilities, the administration says all
“good” jobs (kitchen workers and other important jobs) will be taken by
medium custody prisoners. This will ultimately have more of us in our
dorms unable to work, and so prevented from getting gain time and being
shipped to a “better” facility. It will destroy morale and cause some to
lash out and perpetuate the prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
So why do these events continue to happen? Because the administration
wants it to! They perpetuate violence. They don’t care about prisoners’
lives, and they are never going to solve the true problems. Therefore,
it is up to us to remedy our own situations by uniting and never
splitting. We need to take the rebellious actions against these
oppressors and force them to recognize their policies aren’t working. We
must come together and get an understanding and peace with one another
so they won’t have to enforce any policies anyway.
We don’t want them to do their jobs because their jobs are to repress,
suppress and oppress us, to hinder us from uniting and fighting the true
injustice. As superintendent Parsons lied to the public media, they lie
to us as well. And we have to show them we won’t tolerate it any longer.
Unite and resist and our conditions will get better because “We” will
make them better!
In the shadow of the recent presidential election, MIM(Prisons) takes
this opportunity to explain some of the many reasons we don’t
participate in elections under capitalism. We reiterate the MIM slogan:
Don’t
Vote, Organize!
Granted, communists might participate in local elections when they find
an opportunity to make change that will better facilitate their
organizing work and goals, but these instances are few and far between.
Consider someone running for City Council proposing to facilitate the
distribution of free literature and posters in a city, while their
opponent wants to outlaw the distribution of communist literature. We
might join this battle on the side of the free speech advocate because
it is very important that we have the opportunity to organize and
educate people. Because the legal power of a City Council is pretty
limited, these battles tend to be clear cut and we can support one
candidate without jumping on the imperialist bandwagon.
In contrast, Congress and the President are fundamentally reactionary
just by nature of their role in the capitalist system. It is their job
to support and promote imperialist policies of global aggression.
Sure, there may be surface differences between imperialist candidates.
One might deny the existence of global warming while the other offers
platitudes about how we need to help the environment, but neither can
significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions because doing so threatens
the profit system. Or one might advocate shipping all migrants back
home, while the other wants to grant green cards to people already in
the United $tates. That’s something with a real immediate impact on the
lives of the oppressed. But the U.$. has a long history of bringing in
migrant labor and the kicking them out, particularly from Mexico. And
ultimately, both of these candidates will have to support enforcing the
imperialist borders, and exploiting cheap Mexican labor.
Even if we try to explain that we are only picking a candidate based on
their position on one question, how do we justify giving support to
someone who backs the existence of the prison system that locks up the
most people per capita in the world? Or someone who supports invading
Third World countries to ensure their puppet regimes are friendly to
Amerikan capitalist interests?
There is no real choice under imperialism. The majority of the world’s
people suffer under the rule of Amerikan imperialism, but they don’t get
a vote in the elections. Amerika has streamlined the elections to just
two parties, with very minimal differences between them. And the
majority of the Amerikan people, bought off with imperialist
superprofits given to them as a birthright, are perfectly fine with
these “choices.” Both candidates represent the material interests of
Amerikan citizens. It is the imperialist system that ensures sufficient
superprofits from exploitation of Third World people to keep the First
World citizens so well off.
The election of President Obama four years ago should have been the best
possible lesson for “anti-war” Amerikans. Many so-called progressives
got behind the Obama campaign, excited to finally have a Black man in
power, and believing the minimally progressive rhetoric they heard from
Obama. But putting a Black face on imperialism didn’t change
imperialism. Before Obama was elected we
wrote
about his campaign as a good representative of imperialism in
ULK 3. Under Obama, Amerika has continued its role as global
oppressor, invading Third World countries to install or support
U.$.-friendly governments, enforcing strict imperialist borders at home
to keep out the oppressed, and maintaining the largest per capita prison
population in the world.
The State of Puerto Rico
While we didn’t campaign around any electoral politics this year, nor
vote, the results can be interesting to us as the largest scale polling
of the Amerikan population and its internal semi-colonies. While the
exploited people of the world did not get to vote for the President of
the Empire, historically oppressed nations with U.$. citizenship did. As
we work to expand our analysis of the internal semi-colonies’
relationships to imperialism, we can look at elections as a relative, if
not absolute, measure of assimilation. The most explicit example of this
came in the 2012 plebiscite on the status of Puerto Rico among Boricua
voters.
While inconsistencies in the format of previous plebiscites make it hard
to decipher trends with a cursory assessment, it does appear that a
majority rejected the current commonwealth status of Puerto Rico for the
first time. The government is counting the statehood option as the
victor with a 61% majority of those choosing an alternative to the
commonwealth status. But really, only 48% of those who voted chose
statehood, with 26% of voters choosing sovereign free association and 4%
choosing independence.(1) About 22% didn’t select a new status. Since
46% voted to remain a commonwealth, it seems that many of them chose a
new status as their second choice. Originally the two votes were to
occur separately, which would make interpretation of the results easier.
The option of “sovereign free association” was new in this plebiscite,
and seems to reflect the more bourgeois nationalist among the
neo-colonialists. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want
more freedom to act independent of the U.$. while keeping the financial
benefits of U.$. social services that they receive today as a
commonwealth.
The 2012 plebiscite did have the largest turnout yet, with 79%
participation.(2) This adds a little more weight to the small shift from
a plurality favoring commonwealth to a plurality (at least) favoring
statehood. At the time of the last plebiscite, in 1998, MIM reported
strong assimilationism among the Boricua population due to economic
interests tied to accessing the superprofits obtained by the U.$. from
the Third World.(3) While MIM never believed that the meager 2-5% vote
for independence was genuinely representative of the Boricua people,
neither is true self-determination on the immediate horizon despite
nationalist rhetoric from many political parties. A survey of the
desires of Boricuas for self-determination is not valid until real
self-determination is actually an option on the table. Unfortunately
real self-determination won’t be possible until Boricuas are organized
against Amerika and its lackey leadership in their homeland.
Some have hypothesized that the economic downturn helped increase the
statehood vote as Boricuas felt the crunch and wanted closer economic
integration into the United $tates. This makes economic sense. So it’ll
take much more extreme crisis before economic demands become
revolutionary for the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates.
Chicanos and New Afrikans Vote
Trends in Black voter participation in the last two presidential
elections indicate that the neo-colonial effect is real as Blacks have
come out at higher rates, with Black youth being the most active voter
participants. While Latinos were also brought out by Obama in the last
two elections, Latino youth voting and “civic engagement” has lagged
behind Black and white youth, yet they were twice as likely to
participate in a protest than their counterparts of other nations
according to a 2008 report.(4) In 2008, Black voters closed the gap with
white voter participation, which averaged around 10% in the previous
five presidential elections. This year, Obama brought similar rates of
Blacks to the polls. In the same period, Latinos and Asians have
diverged from Blacks in their voter participation, who they have
historically lagged behind already.(5) For Latinos this divergence
corresponds to an increase in the percentage of people who are not
citizens, and therefore can’t vote. We do not have data showing whether
the same is true for Asians. While the non-participation may be
enforced, rather than by choice, the Pew Hispanic Center also found in a
recent survey that most Latinos identify with their family’s country of
origin and not as Amerikans.(6) There is little doubt that the vast
majority of Blacks identify as Amerikan. The connections that Latinos
and Asians have to the Third World are a significant factor in their
political consciousness and how they perceive the United $tates, their
relationship to it, and their participation in it.
Prison Reform?
Similar to supporting someone for City Council, discussed above,
propositions are another relatively clear-cut realm of elections where
we may organize around a particular issue. To look at more concrete
examples of how this usually plays out, we turn to two propositions this
year that addressed California’s prison population: Propositions 34 and
36. Proposition 34 was presented to abolish the death penalty, which
sounds great at first. But in this case, death row prisoners actually
recognized that the law was opposed to their interests in that it would
prevent them from proving their innocence in court. They launched an
active campaign to oppose Prop. 34 and it did fail. The weakness of the
proposition was inherent to the limitations in the system to address
justice in a real way.
Proposition 36 is a reform to the Three Strikes law, and it passed.
MIM(Prisons) welcomes the prospect of less people going to prison in
California, and supposedly even current prisoners being released
earlier. Yet, Three Strikes itself still exists. The reform will right a
few egregious wrongs, but leaves Three Strikes, not to mention the whole
criminal injustice system, in place. Even abolishing Three Strikes
altogether would be merely a quantitative change in the oppression meted
out by the injustice system, without changing the substance of it at
all. Prop. 36 was promoted by those who want to reduce state spending on
prisons, and clearly promoted the use of Three Strikes for the majority
of prisoners it has been applied to. To campaign for Prop. 36 was to
promote this position or to say that this is the best we can hope for.
It did not serve the interests of the prisoner class as a whole, but
threw some carrots to a few.
Since there are only so many hours in the day, to spend them on
organizing around these small changes means slightly less suffering in
the short term, and much more suffering in the long term as imperialism
marches on unchallenged. Reforms do play an important role while
organizing in our current conditions, but we choose which reforms to
support very carefully, weighing how they impact our organizing efforts
against imperialism, what class interests they serve, and how they
relate to real conditions on the ground.
Electoral Politics and Strategy
Our line is that imperialism cannot be reformed. Our strategy is to
build institutions of the oppressed which are separate from imperialism
in order to build up our own power, while agitating around issues that
highlight the horrors of the imperialist system that exists. At times
campaigning around an electoral campaign could be a useful tactic in
that strategy. But strategically we are not trying to get elected in a
popularity contest, or be on the winning team. We are struggling for
liberation and an end to all oppression!
As M-1 of dead prez put it on Block Report Radio the morning after the
recent “presidential selection”: “I’m not thinking about today. And I’m
not thinking about four years from now. And I’m not thinking about
smoking marijuana. I’m thinking about 50 years from now being able to be
the self-determining people who are raising a nation that’s based in
stability.” Spoken like a true revolutionary, this is the type of
thinking that we promote to develop an anti-imperialist political pole
within the belly of the beast.
Telling people to vote for one imperialist candidate over another is
suggesting that we can make significant change by working within the
system. As we already explained, the scale of the election and the scale
of the change is key: for a local city election the impact is much lower
and our opportunity to actually explain to people why a particular local
law is important to communist goals is much greater. But in a national
election, telling people to support a candidate who is fundamentally
pro-imperialist, both in words and deeds, is misleading.
by a North Carolina prisoner November 2012 permalink
In May of 2012, when I was at my previous prison, the “Prison Emergency
Response Team” (PERT team) did a full facility shake down. These are
regular corrections officers who have been certified to be a member of
this “special” group. They wear black t-shirts with “PERT” spelled on
the front breast and upper back, with camouflage pants that are tucked
into black military boots. They have no name tags, so there is
absolutely no way of identifying any officer.
They make you strip naked, squat and cough. Then, in nothing but your
white boxers, they handcuff you, and escort you through a metal
detector, while other officer tears your cell apart looking for any form
of “contraband.” If you return to your cell before the search is
complete they make you stand facing your cell door. You cannot watch
them search your cell! If you try to watch, your get verbally assaulted
and/or sometimes physically man handled to the position they want you
in.
During the search of my cell a personal property item of mine (electric
shaver with trimmers) was broken into 3 pieces. When I asked for the
names of the officers involved in the cell search, I was told it was
“none of you fucking business.” So, I filed a grievance. The first
response was that I did not list the names of the officers involved, and
there was no proof of the condition of my shaver. (Though they had
current paperwork of the personal property that I had and what condition
it was in.)
I appealed this response. The second response said that the first
response answered my grievance. I had no names of officers, and no proof
of the condition of my property before the search. “No further action is
needed.” I once again appealed the response. The last and final response
I received was: “This examiner has reviewed this grievance and the
response given by staff in the DC-410A response. My review of this
grievance reveals no violation of applicable division of prisons policy
nor does it show any evidence of disrespect or abuse of authority by
staff. Therefore, this grievance is dismissed for lack of supporting
evidence.” So my grievance was turned down because I had no names of the
officials that changed my property. But there is no way that I could
have gotten their names in the first place!
MIM(Prisons) adds: This is yet another example of the failure of
the prison grievance system to address abuses and legal violations by
prison staff. Grievances are little more than a formality where the very
people violating policies and laws are the same ones reviewing the
complaints. They back each other up and dismiss grievances based on
criteria that they know are impossible for prisoners to meet. This is
why the grievance campaign is spreading across the country. North
Carolina has a
grievance
petition customized for that state, as do many others. Write to us
for a copy of the petition for your state, or for a generic petition
that you can customize if we don’t have one already.
Every four years Amerikans are given an opportunity to vote for a
new representative to lead the country as president or re-elect the one
who already holds office. This year Amerikans have two options on who to
elect, either Obama or Mitt Romney. Weighing the options, who is it that
will more likely bring change for the oppressed? In this case it’s
neither, both Obama and Romney are imperialist representatives and both
share the primary concern of how to better serve the interests of
capitalism/imperialism. So why should U.$. citizens vote for one
oppressor over another? The answer is simple, they shouldn’t!
The oppressor class will always sell high dreams and prospective futures
to the oppressed to gain their vote. For instance Obama and the
Democratic Party only recently proposed “Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals” (DACA). DACA pretends to offer non-citizens who arrived in the
U.$. as children the opportunity for legal residence. But lets look at
it for what it is. DACA is not actually a law but an executive order
that can be revoked at any time by whoever is president. The
qualifications for DACA are narrow and for those qualified they will
only receive a temporary work permit. What about the others who applied
and were rejected for one reason or another? Well they willingly gave up
their information along with that of their families and will now be in
the “ICE database” and could be rounded up and deported. It is a
re-election tactic the Obama administration utilized as a ploy to get
the Latino vote. But this is not in the interests of the
undocumented.
“People always were and always will be the foolish victims of deceit and
self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of
some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social
phrases declarations and promises. The supporters of reforms and
improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order
until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and
rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling
class and there is only one way of smashing the resistance of these
classes and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, and
to enlighten and organize for the struggle the forces which can - and
owing to their social positions must - constitute the power capable of
sweeping away the old and creating the new.” - VI Lenin On the Three
Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
The electoral system is not nor will it ever be the means to bringing
real change, as long as there is an imperialist as president there will
be no progress for the oppressed. There are those who say Obama is a
better choice than Romney because Romney is a racist Mormon and his
extreme conservative policies will bring further devastation to Amerika
or wage more wars. But weren’t these the sentiments towards the end of
the Bush administration? People got fed up with Bush’s deportation of
immigrants and warmongering agenda. They had hope in the first Black
president. But we have seen Obama has gone farther than Bush in
violating people’s fundamental rights in “the war on terrorism.” His
2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) law gives the president
full authority to detain anyone who the government deems a terrorist
indefinitely, without charges or a trial, and the terrorist label can be
vague and will more than likely be thrown around like candy.
Obama has deported more immigrants than Bush, he also ordered more drone
strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan than Bush. Obama’s
warmongering resulted in 284 drone strikes on Pakistan alone. And under
Obama’s leadership the United $tates., along with Israel, threatens
imminent war on Iran. Let’s face reality, Obama and Romney will only
serve the interests of the big bourgeoisie and maintain the status quo.
As prisoners we need to consciously participate in politics that serve
our interests. In ULK 28 someone mentioned the
penal
system in Nevada; a prisoner anticipated reprisals by fellow
prisoners for exposing the warden for culinary and laundry violations to
the health department. These prisoners acting on behalf of the prison
administration to attack this prisoner is counter and reactionary to
what he was trying to do by bettering the quality of food and laundry
for the prison population. This goes to show what
Mao
Zedong once said about lumpen: “brave fighters but apt to be
destructive. They can become a revolutionary force if given proper
guidance.” We all know doing favors for the pigs like that mentioned
above is going a little too far and would merit a negative reaction from
the prison population.
Looking at it from a bigger picture, under Obama/Romney mass
incarcerations will continue. The U.$. has the highest incarceration
rate in the world today and let’s not forget the police brutality that
has swelled across the country since Obama’s been in the office.
Our action of not voting for one oppressor over another should be
consciously voiced. When I explained this to a fellow prisoner he
responded: “well who else is going to be your representative
nationally?” My answer to that was simple: “we can represent ourselves,
we don’t need yankee representatives!” The oppressed nationalities need
their own independent representatives who will serve their interests,
not sell them out, and institutions that help them rather than strip
them of their identity and culture. Reforms or amendments will never
bring about genuine change for the oppressed nations, only communism
will.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The author above originally quoted Karl
Marx as saying:
“Every few years the oppressed are authorized to decide which members of
the oppressor class will represent and crush them in parliament.”
However, this does not accurately represent the conditions in the United
$tates where the oppressor nation has the majority say in who represents
the government that oppresses and kills more people worldwide than any
other country [UPDATE: white Amerikans ended up being 72% of the voters
in the 2012 national election]. The people most oppressed by U.$.
imperialism have no say in these elections that affect them very deeply.
Rather than encouraging prisoners to organize in their own interests, we
challenge them to think more broadly, in the interests of the oppressed
people of the world. This is important because the imperialist system
has stolen tremendous wealth and brought it home to Amerika where all
the citizens share in the spoils. While prisoners are clearly oppressed,
they share in the Amerikan mentality of looking out for their own wealth
at the expense of the world’s people.
This summer, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) released the
fifth printing of their pamphlet “Survivors Manual: A manual written by
and for people living in control units.” There were some good additions
to the pamphlet, such as an excerpt from Bonnie Kerness’s presentation
from the STOPMAX Conference, some of which is featured in the
documentary “Unlock
the Box”; and a summary written by Bonnie of her years of experience
working with and witnessing prisoners in isolation.
Because MIM(Prisons) stands for justice and equality for all humyn-kind,
in direct opposition to the capitalist-imperialist power structure, many
of our comrades are targeted for placement in control units. This
greatly minimizes their ability to organize others, communicate with
comrades on the outside, and maintain a healthy mind and body. Others
are targeted for isolation simply for attempting to learn the history of
their people or help others with their legal work. So clearly, much of
the information contained in this pamphlet is invaluable to our
readership who are constantly threatened with, or are currently facing,
time in the hole.
The AFSC is a liberal progressive group, and there is some information
in this pamphlet that we think is quite bad advice for our readers. At
least one article says to avoid the prisoncrats if at all possible. The
authors’ purported goal is to get to general population or released, and
to maintain some form of happiness. If the goal were to get to general
population or released in order to be a more effective revolutionary
organizer, of course we would agree.
We don’t advocate people go out looking for trouble, and we need to
choose our battles wisely. But for prisoner activists, filing grievances
on staff misconduct and unhealthy conditions is a primary method we use
to defend ourselves and our fellow prisoners. Unfortunately, oftentimes
these grievances lead to repression from the pigs. But we would not
advocate that people shy away from this important work for the sole
individualistic reason of self-preservation and happiness. The
individualist approach is the bourgeois approach; in other words it’s
the approach that allows the bourgeoisie to win. Only by coming together
can we protect each other and ourselves with real certainty.
We are going to add this manual to our list of literature we distribute,
but will only distribute a portion of it. We chose to not include the
individualistic content above, and other content suffering from
liberalism in one form or another: defeatist poetry; dating tips; and
strategical advice that is in conflict with our lines on security. We
left out other pieces due to redundancy. Of the content we did leave in,
much of it we think is great advice that we would recommend everyone in
isolation pick up for their own self-care. But do not take inclusion in
this modified pamphlet as a 100% endorsement of each article; we did
leave some content that we hold minor disagreement with.
We greatly appreciate Prison Watch Project of the American Friends
Service Committee for compiling and distributing this guide to the wider
prisoner audience. But in order to make it relevant to our work as
revolutionary activists, we have selected the portions that we find
useful. To contact the AFSC or Bonnie Kerness for the full version and
other resources, write to:
Bonnie Kerness Coordinator, Prison Watch Project American
Friends Service Committee 89 Market Street, 6th Floor Newark, NJ
07102 bkerness@afsc.org
Two days ago I watched a white male sergeant named Curtis Jordan pull a
Mexican male out of his cell violently and slam his head against a wall,
and continue to smash his head against the wall and he looked up at my
cell where I was watching and said “Tell that, Bitch!” I wrote a
detailed affidavit to Senior Warden Cody Ginsel of Estelle Unit
requesting that he review the video. This was an unprovoked use of
force! Believe it or not, major David M. Forrest ordered the brutality
against this innocent Mexican prisoner, who has some mental health
issues. These racists target the weak, elderly, and mentally ill
prisoners who can’t fight back.
Comrades, I need your help in exposing these swine. Here is a list of
the “Clique.” My goal is to break this “good ole boy” clique up and
possibly improve the living conditions in this slave pen of oppression
for all.
Assistant Warden Steven T. Miller, in charge of the High Security Unit
at Estelle – extremely vindictive, and promotes inhumane treatment of
prisoners.
Major David M. Forrest – Eight years ago was a Senior Warden, was
demoted to Lieutenant after being involved in the murder of a prisoner.
This is our Chief KKK grand wizard! We must destroy him!
Lieutenant James H. Kent – His father is a Deputy Directory. In the past
six months the prison watchdog service, con-care service, received 16
prisoner complaints from prisoners housed at this High Security Unit.
Kent was a main actor in five of the 16 complaints. He is cocky,
arrogant and believes he is invincible.
Lieutenant Deward Demoss – Big racist. Made a death threat against me in
May 2012. I filed a complaint with DOJ.
Sergeant Curtis Jordan – An unapologetic racist. He will tell you to
your face “I hate niggers and wetbacks. I’m a redneck.” Too many wrongs
to list.
We have two house negroes on the payroll. They are flunkies and
dupes: A. Sergeant Terell Beverly – A sado-masochist with a history
of abuse aimed at prisoners. B. Sergeant Brooks (“the snake”) – A
young Black man who is so wicked and brainwashed it sickens me.
I know that there is no specific race or ethnicity associated with
oppressors, and it is a huge mistake to think if we traded all these
white men in for “brothers” all problems would cease. That is idealistic
bullshit.
Unit Grievance Investigator Allen Hartley is the Senior Grievance
Investigator. He is super corrupt and in league with these racists. The
grievance system is so broken. The main problem is the grievance staff
do not practice objectivity or operate with any integrity. There just
isn’t any incentive for them to mete out justice and render fair
decisions. People have been killed because they fail to do their job
properly. Hartley’s modus operandi is cronyism, nepotism,
misplaced comradery, and obstruction of justice.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Exposing structural relationships like this
highlights the continuing importance and need for national liberation of
the internal semi-colonies. As this comrade points out, replacing all
the white men with Black men (integrationism) would not change anything.
Similarly, replacing them with more progressive-minded people in general
would not lead to significant change because the fundamental problem is
the criminal injustice system. It is set up so that police, courts, and
prisons serve as tools of social control, and the individuals working
within the system can do little to change that.
This is why we must put our battles against individual oppressors and
policies in the context of the fight against imperialism as a system.
Without liberating the oppressed nations from imperialist oppression we
will never make fundamental change to the criminal injustice system that
attacks us. So we must take up these smaller battles as agitational
tools to mobilize the oppressed and as battles to exert the will of the
oppressed in small ways that benefit our ability to educate and organize
together.
For the past 6 months I have been attempting to shed light on injustices
perpetrated by Texas Department of Criminal Justice correctional
officers and administrators against prisoners housed at the high
security unit on Estelle Unit located in Huntsville, TX. I have written
numerous Step 1 grievances, however, the same Unit Grievance
Investigator (UGI) continues to impede, obstruct, and sabotage my quest
for justice.
Estelle Unit UGI Mr. Allen Hartley has operated from the stance of
nepotism, cronyism, and misplaced comradery. Instead of establishing an
objective stance in his handling of my grievances, he has actually
entered into a collusive and conspiratorial relationship with prison
staff and administration in order to minimize, marginalize, and downplay
my claims of injustice.
This is nothing new, comrades in Texas and California have been
reporting on this type of behavior for years. MIM(prisons), USW, and
some extremely dedicated comrades have come up with a weapon and
strategy to combat these corrupt individuals. The
grievance
petition crafted by a USW comrade in California has been also
adopted and utilized by Texas prisoners. I personally have sent a copy
of the petition to the Texas state legislature.
The legislative session starts the 2nd week of January 2013. I encourage
all comrades in Texas to write the legislature and request that all UGIs
in the Texas prison system are fired and that a new streamlined,
efficient, and fair grievance department be created. This new system
should be managed by the Office of the Inspector General and oversight
should be provided by the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights
Project (TCRP).
The point of the matter is this: the grievance procedure in Texas
prisons is a farce and a sham. Unit Grievance Investigators are stealing
tax payer dollars and violating the public’s trust. Comrades are being
degraded, humiliated, and abused in Texas every day and no-one is being
held accountable for their actions except prisoners! Time and time again
I have watched as TDCJ employees commit every crime against humanity you
can think of, including murder, and nothing is done. This is bullshit!
Please join USW and help get rid of these authors of obstruction.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is proposing an interesting
change to the grievance system in Texas, with oversight from independent
organizations (ACLU and TCRP). Leaving the grievance process in the
hands of the government means it will never truly serve the needs of
prisoners, while establishing independent oversight would certainly lead
to more accountability and less ease at outright fraud and lies serving
the prison employees.
Although fighting for grievances to be addressed is only a reform to
gain more livable conditions and organizing space for comrades in
prison, it is a campaign that can demonstrate to others our ability to
come together to fight for the rights of prisoners. No reform of the
grievance system will end the injustice of the prison system in Amerika.
These are just the early steps in building a movement for humyn rights
in U.$. prisons.
by a North Carolina prisoner October 2012 permalink
I was taken out of my cell one day and brought to the Security Threat
Group (STG) Officer (AKA the gang officer). He tried everything to get
me to give him some gang information, and when I would not he got mad
and told me he was going to validate me as a STG member for a gang
tattoo I was written up for in 2008. Since I would not give this man
some gang information and put my life on the line for him, he is going
to STG me. I have not had a gang charge in over three years, and as I
said the charge for the tattoo was four years ago. This is crazy and it
needs to stop now!
Comrades, keep your heads up and don’t stop fighting these pigs and this
oppression. One day it will end! MIM(Prisons), thanks for all you do!
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is just one example of a common
occurrence that exposes the emptiness of the term “Security Threat.” The
“STG” label is a tool of national oppression, nothing more.
This comrade also wrote us about the censorship of MIM Theory 13:
Revolutionary Culture and Under Lock & Key 27, which
he appealed to no avail. The administration justified it by saying the
literature encouraged “disruption of operations.” We wonder if that can
be construed as a bad thing given how they operate.
Enclosed is a document which has been generated for circulation within
the Nevada DOC. The purpose of this correspondence is to raise awareness
and begin a resistance campaign which transcends all lines drawn. It is
to respond to the Nevada Department of Corrections’s increasing
inhumanity, malevolence and brutality being forced upon prisoners.
They are starving and abusing us on a record scale. There have been more
than 11 prisoners shot since January 2012 in Protective Segregation
alone. I know of several more in surrounding units with at least one
fatal. Prisoner-on-prisoner violence is rising due to forced housing
even amongst enemies. We also suffer from sexual assaults by pigs on
prisoners, and coordinated retaliation and attacks on prisoners at the
behest of the hats. Is this what we will allow ourselves to be reduced
to?
This petition addresses the inadequate, contaminated and sometimes
nonexistent food we are being served in Nevada. It is already in
circulation where I am. Originally the petitions were sent to the
facility Warden and Director. A few of us sent copies to the Department
of Justice and Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC referred me to
the Nevada Health Division. The Warden, to create an illusion of
propriety, referred the matter to the Nevada Department of Corrections
Inspector General. I contacted the Health Division who apparently also
contacted the Inspector General within two weeks of notice of referral.
An investigation was begun and is ongoing. In addition to these above
noted, a copy was also sent to Nevada CURE and the United States
Inspector General.