MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
I have some concerns about articles that are from California prisons.
Aren’t these same things going on in Missouri prisons as well? There are
Trayvons happening everyday in Missouri, but no one talks about it. In
Missouri prisons you can’t even come together for a strike or anything
else because if you do you will be put in SHU.
All I am asking my brothers and sisters of MIM(Prisons) is to please
take a look at these Missouri prisons.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s desire to see
more in Under Lock & Key about what’s going on in prisons
in h state. But this is really a call to h, and others who feel their
state is underrepresented in ULK, to send us articles. We rely
on our readers for news. Become a correspondent and send regular
articles about what’s going on in your prison and you will see more news
about your state in ULK. Ask for a copy of our writing guide to
get started.
Recently, prisoners have begun to rediscover their voice and power power
in some of the most vile dungeons in Amerika. On May 22, 2012, the
latest development has come from Red Onion State Prion in Virginia where
prisoners rose up and defied the oppressor. This refusal to be passive
in the face of brutality seems to occur more and more often these days.
Red Onion shares the same oppression as Pelican Bay SHU prisoners and
others across Amerika who face many of the same forms of abuse, cruelty
and neglect.
There are over 90
thousand people in Amerika being held in solitary or segregation of
some sort. Most of these 90 thousand are Latino or Black, making this
mass imprisonment also a manifestation of national oppression.(1) But
national oppression is also tied to the economic relations as today’s
developments with the world economies and social unrest point to the
exhaustion of capitalism. This exhaustion coupled with the changing
demographic where more than half of all babies born in the U.$. are
non-white(2) is unleashing a mass imprisonment of Latinos and New
Afrikans in unprecedented numbers. These are basically internment camps
for the internal semi-colonies.
This rise in oppression is not simply in imprisonment; there has also
been an economic offensive to go with it. Indeed, states comprising
Aztlán and New Afrika have seen a more than 20% rise in poverty between
2007 and 2010.(3) We should see that it’s not simply a case of a couple
crooked cops, or some faulty prison administrators that cause us to be
held in miserable conditions. It is much bigger and much deeper than
that. What we experience is a long legacy of oppression unleashed on the
people since the first settler stepped foot on this continent. This
legacy can now be traced up to the highest levels of the ruling class,
and sometimes reveals itself. But for the most part, the oppression we
face is drenched in secrecy and washed in legalese to the point that
laymen cannot grasp it even when experiencing it directly.
At the same time many prisoners are beginning to break through the shell
of settler propaganda to see our oppression for what it is. We can see
that when corporate media says prisoners are “gang members” they are
simply attempting to cover up our brutal treatment. When it reports on a
“riot” it is really an uprising. But prisoners, whether in California,
Virginia or even the secret prisons, are all being oppressed with the
same intent by the state: to break our resistance! This was revealed
most recently on a news program where a self-described CIA operative
Jorge Rodriguez described torturing suspected-Al Qaeda prisoners. It was
in this interview where he described psychological torture inflicted to
“instill a sense of hopelessness.”(4)
Such was the intent of the solitary confinement: leaving prisoners
naked, physical abuse, and the use of what he called “dietary
manipulation,” which is starving a prisoner with skimpy trays or rotten
uncooked food – sound familiar? This was all done intentionally to
instill this sense of hopelessness in order to force the prisoner to
cooperate with the state. These methods are not materialized
spontaneously but are designed from years of study in military and
intelligence schools for psy-warfare. What we are experiencing in
Amerika’s superman prisons is a long legacy that is drenched in blood.
Yet we are not victims, but survivors of capitalism. Our survival
baffles the oppressor who cannot grasp that the people don’t need profit
to propel us, to motivate us on our path to freedom. Our drive is
mysterious to the oppressor whose only action is brought on by profit.
Prisons will continue to have uprisings as more and more are now
conscious and aware that things don’t have to be the way they are, and
torture does not have to be tolerated. Marx summed it up when he said
“mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since,
looking at the matter more closely it will always be found that the task
itself only arises when the material conditions for its solution already
exist or are at least in the process of formation. At the same time the
productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the
material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.”(5) What this
is basically saying is once the productive forces develop to a point,
they will naturally enter the next stage in social evolution. I think
prisoners are at the stage in social evolution across Amerika and this
is reflected in the uprisings we are seeing develop as never before.
The folks in Red Onion are a link in a long chain that reaches from
concentration camp to concentration camp and the Brown Berets - Prison
Chapter stands in solidarity with them in our common march towards human
rights!
I was transferred to Lansboro CI on May 27. Lansboro is said to be the
“most dangerous prison in North Carolina” and next on the list is
Scotland. Recently, on June 6, the Prison Emergency Rescue Team (PERT)
raided the prison 200-300 deep and ripped it apart. Their main purpose
was to find drugs, weapons and most of all cell phones. They really
wanted the cell phones to shut off any chances of communication from
prison to prison. Their goal was to eliminate any chance of a future
mass movement and current communication from top rank “gang” leaders.
In all, there were about 70-100 people who were nabbed. The PERT team
brought with them a sensor detector (an enhanced metal detector used at
airports) that they forced everyone to walk through. This detects drugs,
weapons or cell phones. The people who set the detector off were then
taken to “dry cell”, in which the prisoner had nothing in their cells
but their boxers, shower shoes and mattress. They were made to stay
there for 48 hours until they used the bathroom - in which the officers
would search the feces for contraband.
In their search for cell phones (which prisoners had hidden in their
rectum), they also put the entire prison on lockdown until all
contraband was confiscated. In the midst of the confusion, the PERT team
confiscated some of our hygiene, threw prisoners religious items on the
floor, personal pictures in the toilet and trash and even assaulted a
couple of my brothers - all just as harassment.
These 70-100 prisoners have been sitting in an empty cell with feces in
their toilets for 2-5 days; most of them have no contraband on them.
After they have defecated, they will be forced to go through an x-ray
machine, which the prison needs the prisoners’ signed permission for,
and they do not have it.
Our human rights have been violated by these oppressive prison officials
and it must be resolved by the prisoners first. We must take a stand
against this bullshit they think they can pull on us. Out of all 70-100
people they nabbed, they have only reported to have found 10-20 cell
phones and modicum amounts of drugs and weapons. Their lack of effort to
resolve the situation and get on with confiscating instead of leaving
prisoners in their cells with feces is not only inhumane, but a
prolonging of having the prison on lockdown. We have been on lockdown
since June 6.
Segregation pods are already overcrowded to the point where they have
prisoners on dry cell in the receiving area. They have to transfer
prisoners due to so many receiving long-term isolation sentences
(between 6 months and 1.5 years.) Prisoners here must turn our
frustration and anger against our oppressors instead of each other. But
I can say it is very difficult to do when you always have to watch your
back because someone may stab you or your brothers at any moment - which
is rampant here. It is possible, but it will take a hellava push by
tribe members, who control this prison! Let’s get to work!!!
MIM(Prisons) responds: We echo this prisoner’s call for unity
among the Lumpen Organizations (LOs) in prison. Many individuals and
organizations have signed on to the
United
Front for Peace in Prisons to move the struggle against the criminal
injustice system forward. The first principal of the UFPP 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.”
Often we hear or read quick quotes which are taken to mean something, or
infer something different from the intended meaning. Marx’s quote on
religion is just such an example.
We have all heard or read Marx’s “statement” that “religion is the
opiate of the masses.” This is not an accurate quote of what Marx wrote
in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.”
This quote has given rise to the belief that Marx did not take the issue
of religion seriously and dismissed it as folly. This is not true.(1)
Let’s review in context what Marx did write about religion:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress
and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the
spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is
required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions
about conditions is the demand to give up a condition that needs
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the
criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism
has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will
wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will
shake off the chain and cull the living flower.
Clearly Marx is not discussing the seriousness of religion, or the role
it plays in the lives of oppressed peoples. Marx realizes the power of
delusion that religion holds over people. I disagree with MIM(Prisons)
that religion “is simply a belief in authority.”(2) Perhaps that is true
for some people. But I believe it is a panacea for woe and oppression –
a search and hope for a better life than the one believers currently
lead. It is the oppressed’s answer to the question of existentialism.
Due to the anxieties of existence – anxieties people experience as the
result of natural causes like floods, famine and earthquakes, or
man-made causes such as enslavement, exploitation or oppression – that
make people feel powerless, they often resort to magical thinking, or
beliefs in supernatural agents as a plea for the anxiety to end. Thus
was born religion, its roots in anxiety.
Religion is a potent tool of capitalism and imperialism. To eliminate
one, all must be eliminated if the people are to experience true freedom
and liberation.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Overall, we have great unity with what
this comrade writes about religion and Marx’s view of it. But eir
disagreement with something we wrote is a bit of a strawpersyn argument.
First, it is ironic to use Christopher Hitchens to criticize us as too
dismissive of religion. Hitchens was popular for his atheist ideas among
the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie. His attack on so-called “Islamo-fascism”
was better received than his allies on the left (led by Bob Avakian) and
right (epitomized in David Horowitz). All three represent the spectrum
of white nationalist thinking that uses religion as an excuse to attack
the oppressed nations, primarily in the Islamic world today. In this attempt to critique, we think this comrade takes the quote
from the
Fundamental
Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
out of context. The article presents the religious view in a discussion
on science, correctly stating that it is simply a belief in authority,
rather than a belief in one’s own ability to study reality and find
truth.
The MIM article also discusses pre-scientific thinking, addressing
religion’s role as a “panacea for woe and oppression.” In pre-capitalist
times, such thinking was the norm and religion was more than just an
attempt to deal with the bad times, it was an attempt to explain all
aspects of reality. Once scientific thought was developed and
popularized, it has been the class interests of the oppressors that have
kept religious ideology alive to serve their interests, as this comrade
alludes. But that doesn’t mean everyone who is religious is a dupe.
Muslims are currently striking some of the greatest blows against U.$.
imperialism, so they must have a pretty good grasp on how to actualize
their own interests in a world that throws many horrors in their
direction.
Comrades, I’m white and I hate white people not because they are
white but because they love themselves too much more than
anyone else more than anything else more than all else I love
all else my mom’s white my brother’s white father and sisters
white and I hate white people not because they are white but
because they are killing my people and my planet all for green
paper and towering white steeples I’m a traitor who grew up in
a trailer I branded cows in my youth ninety miles to the
south the nearest traffic light we pissed off the porch poached
deer - ate rattlesnake comrades, I’m white But don’t hold that
against me because I hate this motherfucking country to
death my pen’s my weapon my blood - my breath my planet - my
species above all else
I myself fully understand as well as live the principles the brother
from Jersey as well as New York are speaking of in the Under Lock &
Key article
Time
for Peaceful Revolution. Both brothers bring up valid points. There
are 3 stages to that life within that LO and both of these brothers seem
to be third stage brothers.
Now the origin and founder of this lumpen organization differs by who
you speak to. But I believe the focus needed is to get the brothers from
primitive stages to third stage. All these issues are intertwined but as
leaders one can’t speak for the whole (LO), no man can do that, that is
why there is a chain of command in all LOs. The body moves everything at
the end of the day. So it is one thing to tell these brothers to strap
up or go on a hunger strike. They very may well follow orders. But once
you’re separated the fire will dwindle till it no longer exists!
Now if we take those brothers in the true cause of all LOs, which for
the most part all have revolutionary roots, from such parties as the
Young Lords, Black Panthers, etc. If we educate the body of the LO as a
whole, then they will know what they are fighting for. That will be the
difference between a few minor victories and the whole war. People need
to know what they’re fighting for. Then it will be a lot easier to get
leaders of LOs to sit down and work towards our common goals while
maintaining orders on our terms in these day kennels.
I respect 100% my brothers from Jersey as well as NY. We need to educate
ourselves, so a rebirth of the mind is needed. But in a split second we
need to be ready to turn it up if we have to.
In May the Department of Corrections in Radgowski Correctional
Institution tried to shorten our visits and decrease the number of
visitors allowed in the visiting room. So I organized a good amount of
brothers to put pen to paper and the response was immediate. Some of us
were shipped out of the jail and some to other parts of the jail. I
myself was moved from the privileged part of the jail to the assessment
drums.
A move is only done when you catch a ticket which I had not. I refused
housing and went to the box. Since then drugs have been planted on
prisoners as well as false positive urines. Now I am a level 2 prisoner
but I am being housed in level 4 (max). I have basically just got the
run around about my transfer. I am writing to the commissioner now with
no hopes of a positive or righteous response, more so just to exhaust
the administrative remedies.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Grievances are not only ignored by prisons
but filing them often results in punishment, like what is described by
this comrade as happening in Connecticut. Yet each state bureaucracy
will go to lengths to explain the “systems” they have in place for
prisoners to address any abuse they face on their watch. A campaign to
demand
grievances be addressed was initiated in California and has spread
to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas. It
is needed in every state because there are prisons in every state. We
need volunteers who can modify the petition to work in their state.
Write to us for a copy of the petition.
I was born of a womb of a mother who smokes grew of age in a
concrete tomb choking on I-15’s exhaust smoke my veins I must
stretch to feel at ease This is what my life is like from
conception to the grave unable to breathe quit what it is you
hate while you still hate it three quarters done with my
sentence hoping someone’s still there to say “You’ve made
it” Considered depressed and despondent since the age of
five that’s when I learned to pledge allegiance age five they
taught us loyalty to one’s country as I smuggled cans of copenhagen
and snickers to my daddy in prison age five I was born of a
country Built on and maintaining DOC brutality Pledged allegiance
to a flag that destroyed my family So, you see this is what my
life is like from conception to the grave Still unable to
breathe
Outside Adams County Correctional Facility during the rebellion
On May 20 prisoners at the privately run Adams County Correctional
Center in Natchez, Mississippi, rose up in protest of the violence,
abuse and neglect at this prison for non-citizens incarcerated for
re-entering the United $tates after deportation and for other charges.
Prisoners took control of the facility for over eight hours before SWAT
teams took back the prison using pepper spray grenades and tear gas
bombs among other weapons.
The prison administration is claiming the violence was a result of
prisoner-on-prisoner conflicts but one prisoner involved in the struggle
called a Jackson TV station and clearly articulated that the riot was
due to mistreatment of prisoners: “They always beat us and hit us. We
just pay them back… We’re trying to get better food, medical, programs,
clothes, and we’re trying to get some respect from the officers and
lieutenants.” The prisoner confirmed his identity by sending photos from
inside the prison.(1)
In recent years the U.$. has hit 400,000 deportations a year, the
majority Latino nationals. Pre-deportation Detention Centers are the
site
of widespread abuse as the prison guards are accountable to no one
and the prisoners are among the least valued people in Amerika by those
in charge.
As we reported in a 2009 article
“National
Oppression as Migrant Detention”, migrants are the fastest growing
prison population and they face significant abuse behind bars: “The
American Civil Liberties Union says that the conditions in which these
civil detainees are held are often as bad as or worse than those faced
by people imprisoned with criminal convictions. These detention centers
are described as ‘woefully unregulated.’ The ‘requirements’ that they do
have about how to treat people have no legal obligation, reducing them
essentially to suggestions.” So it should be no surprise that these
prisoners in Mississippi are fighting back.
The economic motivations of the private company that runs Adams County
CC, Correctional Corporation of America, is directly counter to the
humyn rights of prisoners. Again from the 2009 MIM(Prisons) article:
“The Correctional Corporation of America, a private prison management
company who controls half of the detention facilities run by private
companies, spent $3 million lobbying politicians in 2004. They want
stricter immigration laws so they can have access to more prisoners,
which will bring them more money. In turn, ICE is able to pay 26% less
per day to house prisoners in a private versus state-run facility. This
is possible because of the lack of public as well as governmental
oversight at private facilities, where they reduce costs by getting rid
of everything that would help prisoners, including necessary-to-life
medical care. One reason state governments shied away from private
prisons for their own citizens was the scandals that they quickly became
associated with. In the year 1998-99, Wackenhut’s private prisons in New
Mexico had a death rate 55 times that of the national average for
prisons. The migrant population’s lack of voice allows these
corporations to get away with their cost-cutting abusive conditions when
contracted by ICE. This is another good example of how capitalism values
profit over humyn life.”
The distinction between legal and illegal residents of the United $tates
is a clear example of the enforcement of imperialist wealth and poverty
using borders. Those who happen to be born on the north side of the
artificial border to Mexico have access to many resources and
opportunities, and most of those born on the south side live in poverty
with very limited opportunities. The United $tates can’t let migrants
through the border because that would open up jobs to all who want to
compete, rather than keeping them for the well off labor aristocracy.
Instead the imperialists set up corporations to suck the wealth out of
Latin American countries, devastate their economies with loan programs
and puppet governments, and benefit from the cheap labor that results.
Prisons are just one aspect of the imperialist oppression of
undocumented migrants. We support the prisoners in Mississippi and
across the country who are fighting back against inhumane conditions. We
need more reporting directly from the prisoners involved in these
protests. Help us spread the word by sending your stories to Under
Lock & Key and request MIM lit in Spanish to spread our
message.
I have been incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corruption since
1997. Over these many years I have been confined to seven different
“camps” within the state of “Missery.”
I have seen prisoners maced and beat severely at Potosi Correctional
Center in the late 90s. Officers there would routinely chain prisoners
up “hog tied” like and leave them lying in their cells. Rather than move
prisoners that didn’t get along or otherwise weren’t compatible they
would make them fight and in two instances I know of, prisoners were
murdered by their cellmates.
All over the state it is common practice to place completely
incompatible people in a cell together. Guys with life without parole
being celled with prisoners with only a matter of months left in their
sentence.
At Crossroads Correctional Center I saw a sergeant kick a “chuck-hole”
closed on one prisoner’s arm. Another sergeant grabbed a prisoner in a
reverse headlock and dropped said prisoner on his face using all his own
body weight. Prisoners with asthma or other health problems are sprayed
with pepper spray.
All over the state it is common for prisoners to be “free-cased” for
violations or crimes they had nothing to do with because a scape-goat
was needed in a hurry to save face or out of animosity issues between
staff and prisoners.
At South Central Correctional Center prisoners were “free-cased” for
another prisoner’s murder because the institution needed scape-goats to
cover up their own incompetency in running a safe and secure ‘camp’ and
insufficient security equipment.
All over the state there are prisoners on a status termed “long term
mandated
single-cell
confinement.” This security status has no set end, no guidelines and
no governing policies or any unit set aside for such a special security
status. There are men on this status who have been confined solidarity
for over ten years.
At South East Correctional Center things are to a point where at the
time of this writing there are prisoners eating foreign objects such as
ink pens, screws, and any item obtainable (in one case the ear stem of a
pair of eye glasses) to express the need to be transferred away from the
tyrannical oppression found in this backward run facility.
All over the state prisoners are housed in single-man cell units with
prisoners with severe mental illness so they are subjected to round the
clock beating on walls and sinks, yelling and screaming, smearing and
throwing feces, urine, etc. Lights are left on or shut off per the whim
of the officers.