Under Lock & Key

My, how all this time has changed my ways of thinking and viewing things.
Some time ago I saw airplanes, but never the skies that held the planes.
Subjectively going with the way things flowed,
I objected to progression and all things not known.

Now I’m more developed and the picture’s much more clear.
You can see the way I conduct myself, knowledge resides right here.
I calculate my steps, making sure I recognize
the man who watches his speech and acts is truly the man who’s wise.

No longer a child, I think for myself.
When without the answers I ask for help.
Aside with my pride, no ego to rise,
I’m eager to better myself from inside.

Gone are the days where anger controls,
Deciding my future and all that it holds.
This for I know as my past is a ghost.
Life is the party, and I am the host!!

(RC)= These materials are Revolutionary Copywritten. The copying, using, re-publishing of such material for anything other than the anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist movement is a crime punishable by the people.

Suppressed are the thoughts of an encaged man,
Like an animal held captive being broken from the land.
I speak with no sound as I move within the bounds
to a beat of the people with a light unyet found.
He doesn’t understand so he locks me in a cell,
Causing me to understand that the key is to rebel.

Incarcerated is the being, of an educated mind.
Heart of steel, word of stone, only truth I wish to find.
Forever will I push and strive, although oppressed and held inside.
The belly of the beast will fry
Being burned by flames I hold inside.

Power to the ones of you who seek to take command.
And down with those who have control and rule through exploit and demand.
The day will come when we shall find the rights that we deserve.
And when that day does come around these rights we’ll have reserved…

To Rise…

(RC)= These materials are Revolutionary Copywritten. The copying, using, re-publishing of such material for anything other than the anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist movement is a crime punishable by the people.

Above is a response from the Prison Law Office (PLO) to the petition for proper handling of grievances in California. Without addressing the systemic reasons for oppression, the PLO’s efforts to fight against parole denials and revocations is futile on the group, and especially international, level.

The PLO “represent[s ] all California prisoners who have ‘a major mental illness’ under the class action lawsuit known as the Coleman case.” In effect, Coleman v. Schwarzenegger led to the conclusion that “severe” overcrowding of prisons is the reason why most prisoners have no access to mental health care, and nominal efforts are being made to reduce the prison population. However, we know that imperialism, capitalism and national oppression are why mental health resources are inadequate within CDCR, and why prisons in Amerika lead to mental health issues in the first place. Prisons in China under Mao led to greater social awareness and responsibility, not mental illness.(1)

We challenge single-issue organizations to broaden their perspective. Parole assistance may lead to “freedom” for hundreds or even a few thousand individuals. But if we are organizing as internationalists, we can affect more people in a more profound way, and for a longer period of time. We do this by building communism. The least the PLO can do is recognize the importance of the grievance campaign and join it.

Revolutionary Greetings to all those who struggle to remove the infestation of capitalism-imperialism from it existence on our mother Earth. From one humyn to all humyns, power to humynity…

Kern Valley State Prison has been forcing prisoners in ASUII (and who knows where else) to consume spoiled milk, rotten meat, rotten fruit, moldy bread and small rations. I’ve filed multiple 602 appeals (class action), but have only had them screed out by the Appeals Coordinator.

The staff say the conditions are due to [Governor] Arnold’s budget crisis. But I ask, what is the price that you put on humyn life? Because after this is all said and done my family might need one.

I have begun on the day of 2/27/2010 (Saturday) not accepting any of the food that they claim to offer - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t eat or drink anything!!! Because the food they are serving is bad.

I will continue this until we receive humyn justice and are fed like humyn beings.

MIM(Prisons) adds: As Under Lock & Key 13 goes to print we have not heard from this comrade since they began their hunger strike. We hope they are well, and hope to hear from them, or anyone else at Killer Kern soon with an update. As we expected, among the privileged citizens of the united $tates, it is the oppressed nations and the lumpen who increasingly feel the crunch of economic crisis in terms of real life necessities.

Hunger strikes are a tactical approach to protest that can get attention with only a few participants, but it relies on the party being protested actually being concerned about your life. They don’t need to subjectively care about you, but they must feel some pressure to prevent you from dying for their own interest.

The time has come
to pick up that gun,
in your mind.
Leave the petty differences behind.
Utilize your mind
to find that ideological line,
or shit will never change
in here
or out there.
It’s all the same.
Prisyners to confusion and mass distribution.
Pollution of the mind.
So take the time,
to take a look around.
Ask yourself,
who’s the real clowns?
Us or them?
Pigs united
are hard to be divided,
but the masses united
will never be divided,
or defeated.
So come together as one.
Leave the stupid shit behind.
Find that ideological line.
If you’re really a rider,
prove it.
Ride that ideological line.

You ain’t a soldier!
You’s a poser!
What you soldiering for?
Fame and glory?
That story’s getting old.
What’s that man really talking bout?
Spouting consequences to stupid nonsense.
He’s only kidding,
while you’re doing his bidding.
So what’s he really talking bout?
What’s his politics about?
Fame and glory?
That same story!?
Homey please!
Tell you what?
Pick up those books,
and get a hook.
Ain’t nobody talking about revolution,
except the Maoist Internationalist Movement,
and the United Soldiers from Within,
because the Movement move men,
to bigger better things.
The mission?
Prisyn liberation from within.

Children colored by a different sun,
then 500 yrs under the gun.
Hystorically speaking,
we are all the same.
If you will use your mind,
then you will find,
that our hystories are intertwined.
We’ve all been enslaved,
and we’ve all been colonized.
We’ve all been exploited.
Are we not still slaves
to their relations of production?
Are our peoples still not exploited
for their class consumption?
Hystorically speaking,
from a materialist viewpoint,
we are all the same.
So, Brown and Black
we must all attack,
the division amongst the masses
so there can be
no division amongst the masses
only two classes.
Us vs. them.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responds here to a comrade’s petition for the proper handling of grievances in California. This governmental body may be helpful in pushing our campaign forward if they receive several petitions from different participants, enough to “determine whether a pattern or practice investigation is warranted.” Participants in the grievance campaign should mail copies of their signed petitions to each party listed on the campaigns page so that we are maximizing the effects of each signature.

When we succeed with a campaign under imperialism, we are making more room for revolutionary organizing. When prison administrators, courts, and the DOJ obstruct or are non-cooperative in achieving our campaign goals, we have still drawn attention to an unresolvable problem with the status quo, as well as brought more people into the struggle against oppression. Whether the DOJ becomes involved in this battle or not, it is still important to spread the campaign as much as we can under this unjust system.

When I first came in to the CDC, a guard’s job was simple: unlock us in the morning so we can function and lock us up at night. The rest was living simple and every once in a while someone would get stabbed or jumped, but the violence ratio was 10 times lower 25 years ago. But now times have changed. For example, a few weeks ago, a prisoner was being yelled at by 2 corrections officers. As the non-English-speaking prisoner was sitting on the bench, trying to understand what they were saying (they wanted to know his name), without any cause or reason, the 2 COs started spraying him with large canister sprayers of pepper spray, soaking his entire body, and then started beating him with little telescopic-like batons with a lead ball on the tip (very painful). Afterward, he was kicked while he was lying on the ground, and placed in handcuffs and escorted to a vertical coffin-like holding cage. I stood at my cell window and observed this, among many other incidents.

When I was in Salinas Valley, housing unit number 5 (also known as “the dirty nickel”), the COs would yell racial slurs, profanity, and anything disrespectful towards the prisoners over the intercom. When I was there I counted 115 acts of violence against prisoners by COs and on one occasion I observed a CO tell one prisoner to assault another prisoner or he would tear up his cell. The prisoner complied out of fear of reprisal.

I am writing this to educate you and hopefully many others of the mistreatment and abuse of the COs, currently named the “Green Wall” due to the fact that all of the correctional officers wear green uniforms. The main gist of the Green Wall is to keep total control over the prisoners by encouraging them to maintain violence and animosities with each other. The Green Wall will use any and all tactics to maintain that control. Sometimes a prisoner may try to stand up for what is right, but no one will join him or support his cause because the majority of prisoners are in constant fear of getting property (photos of family) torn, damaged or destroyed.

My hopes are for everyone to be on notice. Be vigilant, be aware, and let’s stop being entertainment for the Green Wall. Let’s start figuring out a way where all the prisoners can come together. The mainline GPs [General Population] are outnumbered by the SNYs 3 to 1 because the GPs are inventing new reasons to attack their fellow brethren and make them run to the SNY (Sensitive Needs Yards). All I’m asking is that all come together and repair and change what the Green Wall has caused. All it takes is that one voice to get it started!

I have sent MIM(Prisons) a letter of grievance for use by CDCR prisoners. Its purpose is to petition the Director of Corrections to investigate the purposeful failure of the 602 procedure [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation grievance process] within California State Prison - Los Angeles County. This is something somebody put together for the general population here on C-yard. It is our intention to flood the Director’s office with these petitions in hopes that it will shed some light onto the illegal acts in which these pigs are willing participants. We are being forced to file these petitions due to the unfortunate fact that the vast majority of our 602s are not being filed or properly heard.

The idea is to distribute this petition to all CDCR facilities and to have as many people sign and mail the petition to the Director’s office as possible. Once all parties receive their responses concerning the petition, all responses along with contradictory paperwork should be sent to the Prison Law Office (which is specific to CA), the Office of Internal Affairs, etc. Our goal is to expose CDCR, its administration, and facilities as tools of repression and the lengths that they will go to to cover their crimes.

If correctly done, this action can be one in which quite possibly hundreds or thousands of prisoners will have the opportunity to make their voices heard and their wrongs known. It will be very hard for the Civil Rights Division of the Dept. of Justice and other agencies to ignore us. At worst, if we still fail, then we will at least have further proven that this “justice” system is not for us but against us.

My hope in sending this to MIM(Prisons)’s legal aid clinic is that you will redistribute this petition to those working with MIM and explain the concept to our comrades struggling from within so that we may all work together as one in a concerted effort to expose and hopefully create favorable conditions for the masses concerned in whatever they may be struggling for. I think that what I’m proposing here with the coordinated form of “legal attack” is of course a good use of MIM’s legal aid clinic time and it would benefit all prisoners, not just in California.

In order for the rest of the prisoner population held in different prisons to correctly use this petition, they will of course need to change the name of the facility to that of their own. They will also have to look up their own “Departmental Operational Manual” citations in order to be in compliance. Someone will also have to take the lead for everyone in their facility, individual yard, etc.

MIM(Prisons) Adds: We see this campaign as a great use of our resources because our ability to fairly have our grievances handled is directly related to preventing arbitrary repression for people who stand up for their rights or attempt to do something positive. Spreading revolutionary literature, including Under Lock & Key, is a huge part of MIM(Prisons)’s organizing work. We support this petition in light of our anti-censorship work and anti-repression work in general.

We have sent this campaign to our United Struggle from Within and Prison Legal Clinic comrades in California, but this is an issue that should be spread to wherever it is relevant. Prisoners outside of California facing similar problems may be able to re-write the petition using their state’s citation and policy numbers. [Ed.- A comrade in Texas has already translated the petition for use in the TDCJ system.] You will also need to research which administrators the petition should be sent to in your state. Write to us if you want to work on this campaign in California or elsewhere!