Federal Prisons

In mid-July a prisoner had an epilepsy seizure on the second tier. It took 20 minutes for the nurse to get to the control unit. The nurse could do nothing but stand at the door and attempt to calm the prisoner.

According to the standard policy of the Fourth Reich the security methods are that the keepers have to be dressed out in full riot gear, shields, helmets, bullet proof jackets, riots sticks, mace, etc. It took 15-20 more minutes for the keepers to suit up.

A stretcher was brought into the pod, the prisoner's cage was opened and he was told to remain STILL. A man having a seizure is old to remain still — that's deep. The prisoner was handcuffed and shackled in leg irons, placed on the stretcher, hauled out of the pod as though he was a piece of meat.

This was a demonstration of what the hooligans think of the dispossessed classes. Prisoners screamed and cursed, they were visibly upset.

We see the wake up calls, however, we need to desperately wake up. The prison movement has to regain the organizational functioning of unity among ourselves.

On September 3, 100 and something New Mexican prisoners were transported to Wallens Ridge State Prison. You know, the slaves cannot be separated from one to the other, however, the state will utilize every tactic possible to have the edge. If we're transferred 2,000-3,000 miles from our roots what of it? The slave-owners are doing no more than what they did during chattel slavery.

How you grasp the realities of the world makes the difference. When you don't see the realities, the ruling circle will have us at each other's throats, still killing one another for reasons which have no merits, other than our being manipulated to destroy the outcasts, whether it's for drugs, turf disputes, because of the color of one's skin, gang-banging etc. The deck of playing cards have been stacked against the poor, word.

Solidarity forever!

End the Amerikkkan Lockdown month draws attention to the barbarity of Amerikans fastest growing industry: The incarceration industry

On September 13 of this year, MIM celebrated the 1971 struggle ofthe Attica (NY) prisoners for their basic rights and dignity. On this date we also mourned the brutal murder of 29 of the Attica brothers by New York State Troopers and prison Corrections Officers — who also cut down ten of their own as they stormed the prison and ended the Attica Rebellion. On October 15, we rejoice in the formation of the Maoist Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1966. These two dates encompass MIM's first annual End the Amerikkkan Lockdown month. Throughout the month we have held educational events about the criminal injustice system and protests focusing on ending various aspects of the Amerikan Lockdown. We have been on the streets educating and organizing progressive people in the small and large tasks of assisting the struggle.

One of these tasks is drawing attention to the growing numbers of politically active prisoners who are being caged in Amerika's highest security gulags. One of the newest of the torture factories is Tamms. On March 8, 1998, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) opened a new Super Maximum security prison in the far-southern Illinois town of Tamms.(1) According to a bourgeois press report, optimal conditions at Tamms C-Max include four visits through a glass partition each month, five showers per week and one hour of solitary yard time per day. Prisoners report that under these conditions "You start to lose touch with reality. You become depressed. You become incoherent."(2) On January 7 of this year, four prisoners at Tamms filed a class-action lawsuit charging that the extreme isolation conditions there are driving prisoners insane. Three of these four plaintiffs are now facing new criminal prosecution from the State Attorney's office in retaliation for their lawsuit.(3)

Standard treatment for prisoners who speak out against the criminal INjustice system is for guards and wardens to take punitive measures against them in barely concealed retaliation for their activism. All manner of regulations govern punitive measures against prisoners by guards or wardens. But if a prisoner is moved to Tamms or placed in segregation at another facility for "administrative" reasons, no justification is required.(4,1) Many politically active prisoners find themselves under so-called administrative measures that restrict their most basic activities.

The state of Illinois' retaliatory lawsuit against these four Tamms prisoners and the existence of the Tamms facility itself are aspects of the Amerikan prison system's agenda of social control. The events at Tamms embody direct retribution for the efforts of the oppressed to make their own situation livable, and extra-legal sentencing that adds time and trouble to prisoners' sentences after they enter the gulags. MIM sees prisons in this country as part of imperialism's control over the oppressed nations confined within u.$. borders. As our first annual End the Amerikkkan Lockdown month comes to a close, we look forward to continuing our work against the u.$. injustice system throughout the year. We will continue to work with the MIM-led united front organizations RAIL and USW, and with other individuals and organizations that oppose the prison manifestations of u.$. imperialism.

Isolation, Supermax, Segregation

Bourgeois press reports have noticed that Tamms is about as far from Chicago as a prison could get while remaining in Illinois, even though the plurality of prisoners at the facility come from Cook County —the Chicago area. This placement is part of the formula for high maximum security prisons in the u.$. These prisons are built to subdue "non-conforming" captives through sensory and social deprivation. Many of these more rebellious prisoners are from urban centers like Chicago and part of their deprivation is being placed prohibitively far away from friends and family — to make visiting difficult.

Censorship of MIM Notes is a classic example of this harassing activity — MIM Notes is harassed for organizing prisoners in their own interests, and prisoners are harassed for reading and writing for a newspaper that exposes the pigs' activities. Our own experience with revolutionary comrades behind the walls demonstrates that even the harshest of lockdown conditions will not "stop the grass [of revolutionary activity] from growing."(5) In April of this year, an Illinois prisoner filed a law suit against the IDOC, arguing that the prison censors were denying him his MIM Notes subscription because of its political content — although they claimed the newspapers were a security threat. Knowing that this is true, the state has agreed that the publications are a not a threat to the institutions and have turned them over to the prisoner. "Now brothers in Illinois can receive all the MIM-related publications which you offer. They have returned all the Theory Journals that they had confiscated. My MIM Notes, my Maoist Sojourners, Notas Rojas, and the pamphlet 'What is the Maoist Internationalist Movement?'"(6)

When MIM talks about revolutionary politics among prisoners, we are talking about the idea that prisoners are people who are being oppressed by the imperialist system. Prisons in Amerika are designed to repress those who would rebel against u.$. imperialism from within. Not by accident are oppressed nationalities more than 50 percent of the prisoner population in this country. And it is no coincidence that a Wisconsin prisoner finds that "right now in the hole where I am, it is about 85 to 90% Blacks and Hispanics. When the white prisoners come to the hole, they are released within 2 to 3 months."(7) Former prison employees in other states have reported identical statistics to RAIL and MIM, and the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML) publishes the fact that most control units are 85% Black.(4)

The united snakes has always held substantial minorities of the oppressed forcibly within its borders. Settlers conducted a barbaric genocidal campaign against Indigenous peoples and confined those small groups that remained to "reservations" while stealing their land. In the case of the Black nation, kidnap victims were brought and forced to remain here so the white nation could live off their labor. Different Latino nations have been brutalized by a combination of these methods, and conscripted as sacrificial ground troops in Amerika's wars. The exploding prisons of today are a response to these nationalities' righteous movements toward rebellion against the u.$. empire. CEML quotes the Tamms warden as saying "Tamms is not about rehabilitation, it's about punishment ... some people may never leave."(1)

Former prison staff and prisoner advocates with whom MIM has spoken about the prisons in this country report that those prisoners with a revolutionary political consciousness often take the most productive approach to the conditions of their confinement. These prisoners understand deeply why they are in prison, and many spend time educating other prisoners, and organizing among other prisoners to educate people on the outside about the conditions that all Amerikans are guilty of perpetuating within the prison system. Prison officials agree with this assessment of the rebellious prisoners, as a former Marion (home of the Marion Lockdown) warden said: "the purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and the society at large."(4)

One Illinois control unit prisoner of nearly nine years has told MIM of his own organizing work among "paralegals, law clerks, and comrades confined in control units for challenging the status quo. MACS comrades engage and instigate the filing of S1983 civil complaints, mandamus actions, post conviction grievances, and civil and criminal appeals. We also write articles to expose the racist system and its docile servants. MACS fights to put an end to the methods of intense repression, kidnapping, torture and prison censorship. Recently MACS members have all been moved to the new 'Super-Gulag' in Illinois as a means to break their resistance and spirit. This new place is called Tamms, or for better words, Scams. This is another horror story that by design other comrades are living nationwide."(8)

Retribution, not rehabilitation is the purpose of prison.

"Every day in prison is but a bureaucratic routine of beatings, continuous harassment and sensory deprivation. These are techniques being used to control prison populations throughout Illinois' correctional warehouses. The key word here is 'control,' for it is now painfully clear that Illinois prison officials have forsaken all attempts at fostering a positive, potentially rehabilitative prison environment in favor of the brutal policies they claim are necessary to maintain 'control' over the prison population. Comrades ... it is not just about bad food, visits, or brutal treatment, it's more fundamental."(9)

Illinois' only Supermaximum security prison, Tamms, is part of a $73 million complex. Part of the complex is a 200-bed minimum security work camp. The beauty of locating minimum and supermaximum security facilities in the same place? The 445 IDOC employees at Tamms will not have to do any dirty work as the "work camp inmates will handle maintenance, laundry service, groundskeeping and food preparation for the supermax prison as well as public service work for area communities." "The 23-acre supermax prison compound is protected by double rows of 12-foot high cyclone fencing topped with razor ribbon. A courtroom with video conferencing equipment is located inside the prison. ... An execution chamber has also been constructed at the facility although condemned inmates will not routinely be housed at the supermax. It was designed especially for executions by lethal injection." 312 of the Tamms employees are guards, the facility's total payroll is $17 million; its total budget is $23.9 million per annum.(10)

Tamms' budget works out to well over $34,000 per year to control each prisoner, not including the $73 million the state reports spending on building the dungeon.(10) Tamms' cost per prisoner is more than three times the $11,006 estimated cost of living for a University of Illinois student at the Urbana-Champaign campus.(11) A year at Tamms even costs more than a year at the elite Northwestern University and University of Chicago.(12)

Prison regulations are an additional, hidden punishment for prisoners

"So cruel is the Tamms Correctional Center that a prisoner who tried to hang himself with a makeshift rope was charged the cost of the bedsheet he ruined to make it, according to the action to be filed this morning in federal court in Chicago."(3)

MIM has argued for years that many prison regulations amount to an additional sentence — meted out by guards, wardens or the state legislature instead of a judge. At Tamms, prisoners are 'home' in "8' x 10' concrete cement cells, which contain concrete beds, and stainless steel sinks, toilets, and mirrors."(1) The cells are building blocks of a sensory deprivation experience designed to abort a humyn being's normal thought processes. For this reason, prisoners argue that the prison is making them crazy; also for this reason, they are correct.

Sensory deprivation at Tamms includes: regulation against prisoners placing phone calls, limited contact with each other and staff, and no physical contact with visitors. Prisoners at Tamms may not smoke, and are "handcuffed and shackled whenever they are out of their cellblock, and recreation will be allowed only individually with recreation equipment."(10) A prisoner reports new restrictions on reading material: "Tamms has issued a malicious book policy that limits a resident here to having only 25 books and/or magazines combined together as their own personal property. Tamms will not store or exchange personal books or magazines in their personal property storage. ... This book policy is a cruel and unjustifiable punishment; reading is one of the few positive activities we have here at Tamms."(13)

Michigan prisoners have recently been subjected to a new property policy that places similar restrictions on reading materials. Prisoners in the highest security facilities in the state are allowed no more than ten books or magazines — many aspects of this policy are under legal fire from prisoners and their advocates. This is one of many situations in which we do well to compare prison policies and prisoner responses across state lines. See article in the next issue of MIM Notes for more on the conditions of SuperMax confinement in different prison systems.(14)

These conditions of legalized brutality directed at prisoners' minds and bodies in tandem are designed to break down resistance, to gain submission from the oppressed through terror. But as Mao said of the marauding Japanese army that overran much of China in the 1920s and 1930s, such systematic disruption of the people's lives "educated the people and quickened their political consciousness." Through rapid development of a disciplined proletarian party in opposition to the Japanese invaders, China became powerful enough that the Japanese came and apologized for their barbarity. Mao thanked them for doing so much to help the development of the revolution.(15) In the united snakes, the situation is the same — it is an historical fact that repression breeds resistance. Amerikkkan prisons are a school of national oppression for the nearly two million people caged behind their barbed wire. Such education serves only to foment national liberation struggles and socialist revolution.

MC12 contributed research to this report.

Notes:
1. Walkin' Steel. "Illinois opens "SuperMax" Control Unit prison
in Tamms." Fall 1998.
2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 27 December 1998.
3. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 7 January 1999.
4. MIM Notes no. 83, December 1993.
5. See poem, www.etext.org/Politics/
MIM/aa/articles/text.php?railfile=controlunits.txt
6. MIM Notes no. 186 15 May, 1999.
7. MIM Notes no. 194.
8. A Tamms Prisoner 5 April 1999.
9. A second Tamms Prisoner 6 November, 1998.
10. IDOC description of Tamms
www.idoc.state.il.us/institutions/adult/tam/
11. www.oar.uiuc.edu/current/tuit.html
12. The schools' web sites, www.nwu.edu www.uchicago.edu
13. A third Tamms prisoner 8 June, 1999.
14. MIM Notes no. 160, MIM Notes no. 167, MIM Notes no. 168
15. Paraphrased from a 9 January, 1965 interview. Edgar Snow, The
Long Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 198-9.

.... I am locked down in the control unit of Red Onion State Prison 23-24 hours per day. Prisoners have been maced, assaulted, and placed in five-point restraint. I refer to Red Onion as a concentration death camp. For the outcast, being in five point restraint in only your underwear and a cold cell - this is torture, everything is taken from you besides your underwear when you are placed in five point restraint. Five point restraint is tied to the steel bunk spread eagle. This is a 48 hour punishment.

There is intimidation and the threat of bodily harm. The majority of the keepers at the stalag are caucasion. I have heard the cops ... use the words nigger, tar baby, sambo, spook, buckwheat, coon and monkey man. Racism is thick here. The medical collaborator, maintenance, and other staff members are just as racist. The area Pound, VA could have been named Racism Town, USA. I have seen prisoners denied their small ration of food because they were insolent, according to the guards, some prisoners challenged the racist cops although there is a possibility of being attacked by the lynch mob.

When prisoners complained to a sergeant or lieutenant, it's always, well, the officer said you refused the food. Cops have said they will poison the food, urinate in your food. The psychological warfare is in depth here. The prison camp opened in August 1998 or thereabouts. ... We are served very small rations of food. Semi-starvation — the control units nationally have the same brutal force. The tactics to instill fear....

In the trenches,

To build is to win.

Here at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, our tormentors have started a new policy where prisoners in control units have to be handcuffed and shackled just to walk back and forth to the shower. When we complained the administration responds by claiming that this is for our own safety and the safety of the officers. But the officers are the number one threat to prisoners' safety. Handcuffing and shackling us puts us in a more precarious position. Plus, it seems, that if they were truly worried about the officers' safety, the would have left the old policy in place where the officers could simply open our cell doors from the safety control booth then lock us in the shower from the same position. But instead they now have to escort... And in an attempt to cut back on spending (at least on the prisoners), those of us who are in control units are not longer being issued clothing. So no matter what you have, irregardless of how raggedy, you best be luck that you got it. And this same thing goes for all supplies. Sometimes it is the little things that mean so much. And in the control units here you better value something as little as toilet paper like its gold, because you'll only get one a week if that. It's not like the prison officials don't realize that we have to use this toilet paper as paper towels, napkins kleenex and toilet paper. They would just rather see us go without then give us an 'extra' roll.

...I'm a Prisoner in the Maximum joint. I'm Puerto Rican and have been in this toilet for fifteen years. Right now these low-lifes [guards] are hitting the Latino people hard. 90 percent of all Latinos are being accused of being a gang member, so they made four special blocks for the Latino people. You come out of your cell one hour a day, not everyday. Three showers a week. One hour a week in the yard, outside.

The racist low-life cops just harass everybody, and most dudes don't even speak English. No jobs, no nothing. Now we can't even take their so-called education program. We get two hours a week in the law library. There are no Spanish-speaking people down there to help anybody out.

This started back in April of 1995. I was there [Latino Segregated Block] for two years. Then I was transferred to DDU [Disciplinary Detention Unit]. You know the DDU is much better than those Plymouth Blocks.

I just filed a lawsuit, but I can't even get the right help. I don't have access to anything. I'll keep you posted on things. Y'all stay strong....
In the struggle!

...On March 13, 1998, about 80 prisoners were transferred from Rahway and shipped here to Northern State Prison to a new gang unit. Here they are housing Latin Kings, Netas, 5%ers and some white hate groups. They have us all separated and want us to deny any membership before letting us out of this unit.

I as a member of the Latin Kings refuse to do such a thing. Therefore I will remain locked down in these new kages. These Pigs are only trying to break the band of Brotherhood, which will not work. And the reality is putting us all together they only make us stronger....
Our Struggle Continues

Dear MIM, ... I have not received anything since March. Being in D.D.U., I would have guessed that my mail was being help up or turned away. But I have a bit of a story for you.

On July 2, 1997, I was released from D.D.U. at 9:00 am. I was assigned a cell out in population. I cleaned this cell's walls, floor and the toilet before I fixed up my stuff in the places I wanted it to be placed.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, I was done. And no sooner had I sat down than 7-10 officers were at my cell door ordering me to cuff up. I asked why and was ignored. I asked to see the captain and was denied. After a while, I cuffed up and I was brought back to D.D.U. for no reason, with no explanation. That's how dirty they are here in Walpole State Prison.

In Struggle,
— A Massachusetts Prisoner

P.S. I even got the same cell back in D.D.U. (How nice)

S.C. Prison Administrators clandestinely seek to convert old death row unit into state's second control unit!

Revolutionary Greeting Comrades: Be advised that SCDC [South Carolina Department of Corruption's] Officialdom is in the process of modifying the old death row unit here in the Broad River Prison Colony, entitled Edisto Unit, into what appears to be the state's second control unit.

Because ever since the doydens transferred all the death row prisoners to the Liebra Prison Colony, major alterations continue to be made. Including the application of mesh wiring to most cell doors and the erection of beams and walls - apparently for separation purposes.

This unit was open as a regular lock-up component on April 19,1997, but on July 1, 1997 Supermax procedures come into effect here. Last week five high security prisoners (ML5) were brought in from surrounding Ad-Seg. [Administrative Segregation] Units. I was selected for placement here in April 1997 despite the 2 years of repression i endured at SC Maximum Security Control Unit at [location]. So all aggressive agitating militants, paralegals, anarchists, Black Nationalists, Anti-Imperialists, Theoreticians, Propagandists, Revolutionaries and Communists, BEWARE!

i can remember first reading about the above policy and practice in the California prison system employed against captives who were identified as "gang" members. After being so identified, captives would be tossed into Administrative Segregation or an SHU [Segregated Housing Units]. Here they would languish until they either "paroled, debriefed, or died." I recall thinking how diabolical this scheme was. How it could be used - twisted-to be a tool of political repression.

I was still in the fetus stage of my studies when I first read about the situation in California prisons. I hadn't then realized that the repressive policies and practices were designed form the start to neutralize political activism behind the barbed- wire. The disguise of `fighting "gang" activity' was used for legitimacy. If exposed to the public, the people would support it. Who doesn't want an end to the high rate of crime and violence that is commonly associated with "gangs"?

Since my first exposure to STG ("security threat group") policies and practices in the California prison system, I have learned that it has spread to prisons across the u.s. And as of December 16, 1996, the state in which I am held captive had enacted its own political policy: 04.04.113, "Identification and Management of Security Threat Groups and Members."

Comrade George [Jackson] taught Us that "Power responds to all threats. The response is repression." Have We learned from history? COINTELPRO, NEWKILL, etc. If We are not prepared to deal with the Paper Tiger, then it will force its claws deeply into Our efforts at educating to liberate.

STG can be defeated. We ain't got to be forced into a corner with Our only option being to either debrief, to denounce Our political associations, or fact repression. However, the only chance We got to defeat STG is to end Our isolation. We got to reach outside these kkkoncentration kkkamps into the communities from which We came and of which We represent in our organizing and educating efforts. When the Paper Tigers attempt to attack, We got to have an outside base of support. Do Our people on the outside know Us? Do they know what we care about? Or, will they be left to believe whatever spiel the Paper Tigers wish to say about Us? If because We have no roots on the outside We are left vulnerable to unbridled repression, it is no one's fault but Our own!

Myself and others in Michigan want to expose the STG Phenomenon. However, We want to do so based on how it has spread across the u.s. We are asking for captives from any state in amerikkka that has some form of STG policy and/or practice to forward information and documentation to Us.

I am a prisoner confined in the state of Massachusetts at
M.C.I. Walpole State Prison and has been confined in the
state as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons since October
27, 1974 for various crimes. When I was first sent to M.C.I
Walpole in 1974 I thought [...] it was one of the worst
prisons in the country along with San Quentin, Attica,
Michigan, etc.

There was nothing but rebellion against the oppressor (the
guards) who was assaulted, maimed, and forced out of the
prison by way of injury acquired on duty or retirement
because we as solid convicts could not be controlled.

In August 1979, Ax-Handle Fenton who was the warden at the
federal prison at Marion and Lewisburg was found guilty of
beating prisoners off the bus at Lewisburg. He became a
consultant for the Department of Corrections and thereafter
locked up the whole prison and shipped out a lot of the
incorrigibles, un-desirables and not wanted convicts to
other state segregation units and as far as to various
Federal prisons. This tactic of shipping convicts out of
Walpole state prison on four (4) separate periods within
1979, 1980 and through 1995.

[...]The way it is now Massachusetts has a control unit
which is called the Department Disciplinary Unit (DDI) and I
would like to hear if there is any other state or federal
control unit where convicts is not allowed to purchase any
canteen with the exception of stamps. We are not allowed to
purchase food from the canteen, and the maggot officers is
the only ones who passes out the food trays. And due to the
facts convicts be working out in the cells or has to eat
what little food they are given. The swines is taking it
upon thereself to adulterated our food trays with spit, mice
droppings, human feces, un-authorized medications (this is
only being done to certain convicts) in retaliation because
there might be grievances filed against them, assaults them,
or the reasons of the placement in the DDU. There is some
inmates, prisoners, convicts that is aware that these swines
officers is tampering with the food and some of the
responses is that "oh it aint happen to me" well how would
you know? If there is a swine that dont like you or be
accident given anyone the wrong tray then you got it.

Its time to stop and allowing tub swine cops to do whatever
they want and nothing is not being said or done. They
already had took the contact visits, personal cloth, canteen
items, yard- recreations. Its time to wake up and stop the
maddness that there doing because it affects us all.