Under Lock & Key

At this prison, a prisoner who is on full program who works one of their job or education or vocation schemes is classified as A1A. For an A1A prisoner the CDCR gets $45,000 a year. A prisoner who is programming and is eligible for a work or education position but none are available are classified as A2B. For an A2B prisoner the CDCR gets $35,000 a year. A prisoner who refuses to program or is in ad-seg or the SHU is classified as C-Status or D1D status. For a prisoner of C-status or D1D status the CDCR only gets $22,000 a year.

There are 37+ CDCR prisons. Each prison has 4 prison yards. Each yard has 5 buildings plus a gym full of captives. Each building has 100 cells (doubled up - two prisoners per cell). That's 200 prisoners in the cells per building. Each building also has 40 dayroom bunks and each gym has 220 bunks. All total per prison yard that is 1,420 prisoners. And multiplied by 4 yards that is 5,680 prisoners per prison. With 37 prisons that would be 210,160 prisoner captives.

Now here's where everything gets very ambiguous. The CDCR won't give a clear number of prisons. They always say 37 (plus) prisons. It's the "(plus)" that is so ambiguous. It's what ex-pres Bush called fuzzy math that only a politician could understand.

UPDATE: On 9/17/2009 the comrade who wrote this letter was killed in Attica Correctional Facility

I received the January 2009 issue #6 of Under Lock & Key, for which I was most grateful. I salute the Mexican comrade for his excellent and exemplary contribution to that issue ("Misplaced rejoicing in prisons over Obama victory"). I am a Black man, the son of an Eritrean emigrant and a descendant of First Nation peoples and Africans enslaved and transported to the Amerikas. The comrade was right on target, especially when he wrote: "... How can there be real change if the system is never changed, only its leaders? For those of us who are convinced that we are 'soldiers' ask yourself, who's soldier are you? Are you some common criminal's soldier? Do you fight and work for greed, power and lust of recognition? Or will you be the People's soldier?..." Yes. I salute the comrade for his courage and determination. Palante, siempre, hermano!

I am responding as well to your request for feedback on your assessment of the prison labor/economics situation. I have been aware of the reality of MIM's findings for some time, and am in agreement with you wholeheartedly. I perceive that prisoners' disagreement with MIM's assessment is not rooted in an analysis of the facts on the ground but rather is due to their misunderstanding and confusion regarding the nature of our enslavement.

It seems that prisoners who disagree with your findings do so actually because they fear that such assessments will confound the acknowledgment of U$ imprisonment as slavery and a capitalist enterprise. U$ imprisonment is certainly slavery and it is certainly a capitalist enterprise whether prison labor is a source of great profits or not. Forced or coerced labor is not the most defining characteristic of slavery and such labor within U$ imprisonment is hardly the source of the real lucrative profiteering that stems from U$ imprisonment in general. The depraved creatures who crafted the language of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution understood this all too well.

slave n. one owned by another: one completely subject to another or to some habit or influence;
slavery n. the holding of persons as property;
(The New International Webster's Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, New Revised edition. Trident Press International 2002)

And it is enough for the state and government to "own" us to profit from us, whether we are sweating away in their industries or not. Much of the elaboration that follows is adapted from "Prison Town", by "The Real Cost of Prisons" project:

During the 1980's and 90's many jobs and sources of income evaporated in the rural and farm areas of this country. Federal, state and local officials were then tasked with discovering a new type of "growth" industry that would revive and sustain the dying economies of the municipalities, districts and sectors they were elected or appointed to serve. Prisons were touted as a viable growth industry with significant potential. Perhaps it was for this reason that former New York State legislator Daniel Feldman stated, "When legislators cry 'lock 'em up!', they often mean 'lock 'em up in my district!'" Certainly it was for this reason that Texas judge Jimmy Galindo said:

"We live in a part of the country where it's very difficult to create and sustain jobs in a global market. [Prisons] become a very clean industry for us to provide employment to citizens. I look at it as a community development project."

Some private developers build prisons in states like Wisconsin without legislative edict from officials and then "sell" the prisons, prompting people like former Wisconsin state corrections chief Walter Dickey to declare,

"... It flatly introduces money and the desire for profit into the imprisonment policy debate, because you've got an entity in Wisconsin, a private entity, with a strong financial interest in keeping people in prison and having them sentenced to prison."

Investment banks, construction companies, private developers, real estate agencies and many others stand to profit immeasurably from prisons in innumerable ways. Federal, state and local officials are then lauded for bringing financial security and economic prosperity to their respective regions and lobbyists.

This phenomenon was complemented by another phenomenon, namely the "mandatory sentencing", "three-strikes-you're-out" and "rockerfeller-type drug" laws introduced by legislators during the same aforementioned period of rural economic decline. It is no secret nor is it debated that such legislation contributed to a 370% prison population growth since 1970. Small wonder, then, that there are more prisons in America than there are Wal-Mart stores.

Thus it matters little whether the imperialist slaveowners can glean profits from our work on their institutional plantations. Their ownership of us prisoners ensures a diverse profit source, whether by accommodating the labor aristocracy or enriching corporate entities.

Thanks to MIM(Prisons) for providing a venue where revolutionary-minded prisoners can connect and exchange ideas. Among other things, Under Lock & Key certainly accomplishes that. I hope that the information in this letter will be useful towards compiling the upcoming issue on prison labor/economics.

MIM(Prisons) adds: As we explain in the introduction to this issue of ULK, we prefer Marx's definition of slavery to the one found in Websters and so conclude that imprisonment is a system of oppression distinct from slavery. We agree with this prisoner's discussion of the ways that corporations, labor aristocrats, and Amerikan imperialism benefit from imprisonment. In addition to the points discussed by this comrade, the lockup of oppressed nations by the U.$. prison system also prevents the self-determination of those nations through their own labor. So, while capitalist profits are not generally extracted from the 2.3 million locked up, that is a huge chunk of labor that is being denied to the oppressed that otherwise could utilize their people locked up to further the development of meeting the needs of their respective nations, and the oppressed people of the world in general.

My mail is being illegally withheld. I have to hold on to my mail and mail it out whenever I go by the mailbox myself. This is only when I'm taken out to the mail hall for reasons that suit the corrupt administration. The mailroom supervisor, Glenda F. Vandiver, gives my mail to the titular officers. The unit OID Jeffery W. Armstrong also works along with the administration and has told me this.

I've been beaten up four times since I sent those grievances out [to MIM last month]. I was beaten up on 11/17/08 by 2 titular officers, Hicks and Hopkins. I sustained a blackened left eye, swollen shut; swollen left cheekbone; knots and bruises all over my face; and cuts on my left upper chin. RN Mary Gribble saw all my invoices and refused to report it. OIG Armstrong sat face-to-face with me as I filled out a witness statement about the violent attack and beating. He told me the titular officers who attacked me are his true friends and that he's going to protect them, and not report what he saw. Sgt. Betty J. Myers, "Safe Prisons ACA Coordinator," refused to take photos of my face, but took photos of my back while I was fully dressed. They are conspiring and covering up a criminal assault. They're all working together to hide and conceal the criminal activity, and the cruel and unusual punishment they subject me to daily.

My food is being contaminated with a noxious chemical. An officer told me that every one of my food trays is being laced with windex or ammonia. The officer no longer works here; he told me this before he quit. The chemicals in this windex cause me to lose consciousness, pass out. I have excessive vehement vomiting, dizzy spells, migraine headaches, blurred vision, starvation. I am deprived of showers and recreation.

I have reported all of this to the following staff countless times, and these ranking officials call me "cry baby" or "nigger bitch" to name a few: Wardens Dawn E. Grounds, Devery W. Mooneyham, and Kenneth L. Dean; Capt. Richard Pillot, Lt. Donna S. Jennings, "Compliance Sgt." William E. Lyon, Sgt. Dan Griffin, Lt. Kurtis Pharr, Lt. Robert M. Presto, Lt. Oriando Flecha, Lt. Steven W. Schumacher, Stg. Steven L. Harris, Sgt. Morrison, Sgt. Michael Kluck, Sgt. William A. Burroughs, and Sgt. Brian Pollock. More over, they are the orchestrators and authors of all my problems: the death threats, beatings, starvation, deprivation of recreation, medical. The aforementioned employees are the very crooks who make it possible for the non-ranking staff to do all these terrible, inhumane, evil, unconstitutional things to me daily.

When anyone calls this unit, they all claim to "look into it" or "investigate." They're not going to "investigate" themselves; no one will. The Director of OIG, John Moriarty, and Executive Director Brad Livingston, and Chairperson of TDCJ Christina Melton Crain, and [TDCJ Administrative Review] Ombudsman Kathy Cleere can have me transferred if the right pressure is applied. I have a huge stack of grievances to prove that I've contacted every office in TDCJ all the way to the Executive Directors. I'm not being protected in any way, shape, form or fashion and therefore need transfer to a completely different prison unit in this system because this is cruel and unusual punishment.

There's a little over 4,200 prisoners at this institution. About 200 or more of these prisoners are level one. They are housed outside the gun towered perimeter, in what they call the minimum support facility. All of these prisoners have jobs consisting of laborer positions, from warehouse workers to clean up crews and landscaping, their wages are at a maximum of 13 cents an hour. Other jobs include dump/garbage truck drivers and car/truck maintenance. These other prisoners cannot earn more than 32 cents an hour. The rest of the population is level IV prisoners housed in A, B, C and D facilities, and two ASUs (D facility is SNY). With the exception of facility D, which has a joint venture program where about 100 prisoners earn the minimum wage. There are no other type of jobs in any of the other facilities, with the exception of support services positions such as yard clean up crews, kitchen, chow hall and a few clerical positions in education, program office, canteen, and law library. There would probably be somewhere around 150 job positions per facility with only about half of these positions being pay numbers earning anywhere from 8 cents to 32 cents an hour.

Yes, pay numbers are a joke throughout California prisons, and yes, we are being exploited to a certain degree, but not in the way that you may think. Profits are being made not so much from prisoner labor but from filling up the bed space in all of these prisons. Each prison creates more than 1,000 job positions with prison guards and medical staff being the highest number and receiving payment at about close to $50 an hour plus overtime. And it is my belief that besides the heads of the CDC, it is the prison guard's union that is profiting the most from our incarceration.

It is no wonder they always spend millions of dollars to kill every proposition or assembly bill that goes on the ballot concerning reduction of prisoner sentences or amendments to modify their biggest accomplishment, the three strikes law. Many people benefit from crime (police officers, public defenders, district attorneys, judges, etc.), and from incarceration in state prison, the matter at issue here. All these people in turn spend money and contribute to the imperialist economy. Then, there come the contracts each warden has with many different food suppliers where a lot of money is being handed down under the table. Also, the contracts with the phone company and package vendors where a lot of kick backs go to wardens or other head officials within the CDC. So as you can see, everybody's a winner in this game except us of course. With the biggest winner being the imperialist government, followed by CDC head officials and the prison guard's union being the ones getting the biggest piece of the pie.

I have been accused of this gang allegation but actually it is the prison guards at the prison, especially ISU and IGI, who are a gang, always oppressing and beating people up at their desire. I’m not sure if you have heard about how ISU operates at this place. In an attempt to catch prisoners off guard when they’re about to search for contraband, they rush into buildings and go straight to specific cells with huge pepper spray canisters on hand. When they reach their target they first start emptying out their canisters at the occupants inside, then ask questions later.

Now, when they do these raids they’re not supposed to enter the cells, but wait until the prisoners themselves put their hands out through the food port to be handcuffed or get down prone on the floor. Then they can open the door and pull them out. (They are not supposed to even use their pepper spray cans unless somebody’s safety is at risk or in immediate danger but they do it anyway.) This is a CDC policy throughout California’s prison system but it’s not what they do at this prison.

Right here they just barge in and after beating down the prisoners and cuffing them up, they literally drag them out of the cell. Also, while they’re restraining them, they always yell out loud for everybody to hear “stay down, quit resisting!” when they’re not resisting, in an effort to excuse their excessive use of force.

Later on you can hear them bragging about their abusive actions or making fun of how the prisoners were screaming. Needless to say, at the time they file their reports they always omit the part where they barge into the cells and beat down the prisoners. This is exactly what happened to me and my cell mate at the time back in December 2007, but when I filed a formal complaint against ISU they shot me down saying I took too long, that I only had 15 days to file.

The fact is, I did take longer than 15 days. It was several months actually. However, the appeals coordinator has the discretion to accept a late filing on a showing of good cause. When I explained my reasons (fear of retaliation, among other things) they simply responded that my appeal had been reviewed by the chief deputy warden in accord with AB05/03, and further suggested that I “research this in the law library” knowing full well that prisoners in ASU do not have law library access unless they have a court ordered deadline. Just another form of oppression by higher ups…who is actually the gang in this picture?

But they want to cover up their wrongful acts by locking us away indefinitely, in spirit breaking lockup units until we parole, die or become snitches. The worst part of all is that the so-called gang allegation doesn’t even have to be proven at all. All they need is “some evidence,” under their own standards, which they often fabricate. Or like in my case, use someone else’s on somebody they want to get rid of for any reason. It’s a convenient tactic they have been using for many years and since it has given them results, it doesn’t seem like they will be changing their ways any time soon.

I am currently at Cameron County Texas Jail/Detention Center. There are more prisoners here than this facility is equipped to hold, making it harder for many by having to sleep on the floor. The water is terrible and I believe it has added bleach and/or salt. The food is lousy and even when the food is decent we always get a small serving. We are made to pay taxes even though we're in prison and when we complain we're told that the citizens are paying for our food and housing. When I mention that I too pay taxes I am laughed at or mocked. We are denied a special diet tray for religious purposes and for vegetarians, etc. There are no rehabilitation programs and the community complains when so many prisoners come back again and again.

Here the mail officer censors whatever he wants, it is at their discretion to deny anything: letters, photos, books, etc. Worse yes, there is no appeal process in place to fight this, this is a violation of our prisoner's rights. Though we are incarcerated, we do not cease to have rights, though they are less. I have brought some issues up to the Texas Jail Standards (where complaints are sent for Texas jails only) and they seem to go with whatever is decided in the facilities.

I have seen officers mace a guy more than once when there was no need to, and use force excessively to take their anger out for having to get up out of their chairs and do some work. Here it is mostly a sitting job except for those bringing and taking out people to wherever they need to go. This does not help to rehabilitate and that was what I thought these kinds of places were for.

UFD stands for the Ujamaa Field Dynasty. This article describes more of what it's all about. MIM(Prisons) solicited contributions for this Peace Issue of ULK from many comrades both in prison and out. We are aware of many efforts to make peace and take on the real correctional tasks that none of the capitalist run "DOC"s seem capable of or interested in. UFD stands out among these projects as it is explicitly part of the anti-imperialist United Front. This is so important, because ultimately we know there can be no peace without an end to oppression and injustice. We also know that capitalism only benefits the worlds minority, most of whom live in the imperialist countries. All the job training programs in the world can't change the fact that capitalism requires a concentration of capital that sucks every resource it can from the majority of the world.

Q. How would you describe UFD, what is its purpose?

A. I describe UFD as it states in our code, “…a counter-gang of ex-gangbangers, ex-hustlers, ex-prisoners and prisoners, and youth committed to collectively raising up each other to become conscious and prosperous New Afrikans.” Our purpose is stated in our mission, “[t]o serve as a positive and constructive alternative to gangs street and prison life, especially for our youth, who we focus on bringing into our movement through UFD, and to build a brotherhood and sisterhood through which our ndugu can improve themselves and their circumstances while making a better life for themselves and their families.”

Q. How does UFD relate to lumpen organizations (LOs), commonly known as gangs, and how do these LOs relate to UFD considering that UFD’s purpose seems to seek to undermine them?

A. Look, UFD isn’t in competition with any LO. Unlike some of them who fall victim to the divide and conquer tactics of the Establishment, we don’t view other oppressed people as enemies just because they rock different colors. Plus, we have a law that states, “Avoid conflicts with others and dead beef: before they get physical…” For the most part, the LOs our ndugu are around have been cool toward us. We don’t actively try to recruit their members, but nor do we hide our purpose. Those who choose us, we accept them. Those who don’t, we work to teach and help them.

Q. But part of your code says “UFD is devoted to leading others away from gang …life…” Don’t you think certain elements within an LO may take that as meaning you’re after their members?

A. Maybe, if they don’t understand our meaning. To lead one away from gang life doesn’t have to mean we seek to coax them out of their affiliation. By UFD doing right, we set an example for the LOs to follow as a whole. If our only means to lead one away from gang life is to get them to leave their affiliation, then we’re ignoring our greater purpose – to serve the people. As much as we disagree with some of the bullshit LOs get caught up in, they’re still oppressed like us.

Q. What efforts can UFD make to bring peace between LOs?

A. Once we’ve established ourselves as a positive and constructive force here to stay, and ourselves avoid the trap of warring with LOs, we’ll garner a certain respect in the prisons and on the streets. At that time we can counsel LOs to consider the damage they do to themselves by warring among themselves. Through UFD’s success, we get to show them their potential strength in doing better.

Q. Do you honestly think it’s possible they’ll hear you?

A. UFD takes political direction from the New Afrikan Maoist Party being that the Party politically leads the New Afrikan Liberation Movement. Our parent organization, the New Afrikan Ujamaa Dynasty, is a part of this movement. We tend to agree with the Party’s assessment that, until there is a revolutionary change within urban subculture that is dominated by the colonial/criminal mentality of which George Jackson spoke, LOs will themselves not fundamentally change. But UFD can play a significant role in decreasing the conflict between LOs by first being a good example and second, by educating those who’ll listen to us.

Q. When will that revolutionary change take place?

A. Hard to say, UFD is poised to lend its hand when the time is upon us. For now we’ve focused on doing all we can to help our ndugu change and better themselves and do what they can to uplift their families which in turn empowers our communities.

Q. How can interested youth join up with UFD?

A. Either by hollering at one of our ndugu authorized to bring them home or by contacting our executive assistant Taraji Vuma at New Afrikan Ujamaa Dynasty, PO Box 40799, San Francisco, CA 94140.

Q. How does UFD deal with the repression of its incarcerated members?

A. NYSDOCS [New York State Department of Correctional Services] has charged a couple of our ndugu with possessing unauthorized organizational materials. This is bullshit because UFD isn’t an unauthorized inmate group and the ndugu charged weren’t accused of using our literature to recruit other inmates to an unauthorized inmate chapter of UFD. We have a federal lawsuit in against NYSDOCS over this issue. They’ve been repressing members and supporters of the different NALM-affiliated organizations like ours since at least 2004.

Q. If UFD isn’t an unauthorized group, then why does NYSDOCS discipline its members for possessing its literature?

A. Because NYSDOCS is reactionary like any other state bureaucracy. It seeks to protect its existence. UFD represents more of a threat to NYSDOCS not because we advocate violence or disobedience (which we don’t), but because we have the potential to do what NYSDOCS can’t do effectively: correct the behavior of our incarcerated ndugu. Could you imagine the public relations nightmare for them? Some obscure, fraternal group comes along, recruits prisoners in large numbers who actually reform themselves. Hell no! There are other implications involving the exposure of corruption and abuse only an organized group can expose. The less common identity and unity prisoners have, the easier it is to abuse them and cover it up. Just having a growing number of prisoners who join an outside organization not subjected to NYSDOCS control, even if its prison members aren’t organizing among themselves without permission, is a threat to prisoncrats' cover-up abilities. So, prisoncrats will do all in their power to discourage prisoners from joining up.

Q. Would you say this affects the ability to bring peace among LOs?

A. Definitely. NYSDOCS officially doesn’t recognize gangs. Stupid, because they exist. Humans are social beings, we clique up for the bad or good. As steel sharpens steel and people sharpen people, so too groups sharpen groups. In other words, if you suppress positive and constructive groups, you destroy the very thing that can encourage groups on the wrong path to choose a better one. The positive and constructive groups NYSDOCS does approve are kept so isolated and ineffectual that they might as well not exist at all.

Q. What message do you stress to your UFD ndugu?

A. Do better, be better, and know better and push and challenge each other to do the same. The establishment, law enforcement and prison officials in particular, along with even some regular folks, will call us a gang just because some of us are ex-lumpens (that is, used-to-be gang bangers, hustlers, etc.) and some of us are in prison. Many have come before us claiming how positive they were only to fall right into the trap of the colonial/criminal mentality. This always seems to happen. In our case, it CANNOT! Though we must accept the bad with the good and recognize that none of us can be perfect, we need to be more good than bad, suppressing the bad at every turn. We need to break old habits that aren’t productive and learn new habits. If not, we will fail and become just another group hanging onto a banner, doing nothing productive, and deceiving ourselves that we rule or are almighty while under the foot of law enforcement and prisoncrats. This is absurd! And I’m not prone to embracing too much absurdity, though I fall short, too. But this is why we’re together. Each one help one! We have a better chance at succeeding together than alone.

Q. Any final words?

A. Yeah. To my UFDeez, many will doubt you, some will hate you, but we must earn the respect of all by living up to our ideology and laws. To do this we must have faith in ourselves, in each other, and in our leadership. Be strong and resolute. Love the people and they’ll love you. UFDeez, Dynasty Forever!!

I am the author of the article “Psycho-sexual Warfare vs. Political Prisoners” that appeared in Under Lock & Key (September 2008). There are a few issues that I forgot to include in that article that a lot of comrades could learn from. We all know that guards regularly pay for access to prisoners' sexuality in a variety of ways, but there is another “prison game” that goes on behind these walls involving the dehumanizing and exploitation of prisoners by the medical staff. Let me explain.

Here in the Southport Correctional Facility, which is the oldest SHU in the state of New York, the medical staff including nurses, provide medical treatment to prisoners based on non-medical factors like money, looks, favoritism and sexual favors. There is a group of nurses who only provide medical treatment and attention to their so-called “jailhouse husbands” which they select based on how much money the prisoner has, looks, and the willingness of the prisoner to comply with brainwashed behavior by providing sexual favors such as masturbating in front of the nurse, hand jobs and even to a lesser degree blow jobs.

This might sound minor and even funny to some people, but let me explain why this form of psycho-sexual warfare “game” might be the most serious of them all.

There is a group of about 10 nurses here in Southport, including nurse Jil Jilson and nurse Angela Gorg who actually go around this prison picking and choosing which inmates they want to exploit and receive sexual favors from, as if they are picking which slave to own, and whatever prisoner they decide to choose, will be the prisoner that they give top priority to when providing medical attention and treatment.

Now, sit back and think about this for a second. There are 800 prisoners in Southport, each of these 10 nurses have their own “jailhouse husband” who they give top priority to when deciding who to provide medical care to. That means only 10-15 prisoners out of 800 prisoners actually have their medical needs addressed on a daily basis. All of these nurses work closely with guards and top ranking officers to gain access to prisoners who meet the sexual, exploitation and brainwashing objectives.

This also means that over 90% of prisoners will have their serious medical needs go unaddressed for a long period of time because they don’t meet the “criteria” of these gender oppressors which also means that over 90% of these prisoners will have their medical conditions worsen over time and some even suffering permanent injuries due to the deliberate indifference of these nurses which is supported by top ranking prison officials and medical staff.

This is a deadly game that is played in most prisons and is another form of exploitation, manipulation and coercion that these gender oppressors use to further degrade prisoners and reinforce their which supremacist ideas.

I currently have a federal lawsuit pending against top-ranking staff in the Southport medical and dental department, which I hope will fully expose these type of psycho-sexual warfare/gender oppression games.

Imagine losing your fucking mind from being confined behind dollar signs
Imagine the times I’ve cried
The times I’ve tried
Imagine me alone in a dark room dying inside.
But can you imagine me locked on the block?
One more shot
Jumpin’ back hot like hollow tips from a glock
Rippin' the spot
Grippin’ a knot
If they ain’t shittin’ getting em off the pot.
Imagine after a decade of space
Me showing up at my ex-girls place
Imagine her face
Imagine her mouth’s taste
As she wishes she could erase the day she went astray
And the way I was betrayed
Imagine me not having anything to say and just walking away.
Yea, imagine me hittin the streets again
Reheatin’ beef’s again
Breaking limbs off of the family tree and friends that sinned
Imagine me back after just doing ten.
Imagine hate being so strong it becomes one man’s home
The beat in his heart, the strength in his bones
The seed in the garden that grows all his wrongs.
I imagine getting one more lot to cast
For all things new and things passed
I imagine puttin’ a flame to gas
An aim to the blast
Imagine me telling the whole world to kiss my ass
Yeah, imagine that
The system stealing your life ‘til you’re old then saying you can have it back
Stuck in a box like a savage jack
And expected to pop back to society like an average kat
But I can’t imagine that
Imagine my eyes being the last ones you see
My expression being the last one you read
The last time you breathe
Imagine the need
Imagine being me!

I have had enough of being denoted a nigger or nigga or whatever the hell they wish to call my people. No more of the racial backward politics, the hands that rock the cradle of oppression!

Even as a fellow Afrikan brotha sits in the White House, which is, let us not forget, stained by the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors who were forced to build it, Amerikkka remains the nasty, hateful, oppressive, greedy, unconscious government that it always has been. There has been no real change for my people, the disenfranchised of the nations of people who constantly fall at the hands of imperialism. All that has changed is the man who holds the whip. My brothers and sisters, did not some of our own brothers enslave us on this land? Whip and shackle us?

I encourage the brothers of the motherland to learn who they are, their true origins and essence. Come on into the movement of Maoism, only then can we find a proper vehicle through which to attain assistance for true freedom in this land. I believe in the cause of justice and freedom, of the principles of love, truth and peace, and in socialism we can pave the road to a form of communism that would allow us all to accomplish our primary objective which is, and let this be clear to all, liberation from this damn government.

I've noticed that there has not been one Wisconsin captive's writing published, and I would like to change that. Not only change that but also get more Wisconsin prisoners involved in the movement.