Under Lock & Key

I would like to give a salute to thank you MIM for the MT and its many issues. Due to it and it's very meaning, I was brought back to the experienced life I was given, or forced to live (better said). I want to express myself on this issue.

My struggle, as I came to live it, was through many twists and turns in life. I was born in 1979 in Wichita, Kansas to poorly educated migrant working parents. My father was born and raised in Puerto Rico and migrated to the U$ in the 60s to find a better life and hoping one day to build a family. The poverty-stricken conditions on the island forced him to the U$A. My mother was born in Texas in one of the country's poverty stricken regions in the Rio Grand Valley. Her parents migrated to the U$ from Mexico to find the so-called "American Dream".

To these two courageous parents, four boys and two girls were born into the struggle in different parts of the U$, some in Michigan, some in Florida, and me, Kansas. I was born into the revolution, my physical presence as a kid in the field under the hot and endless days brought rebellion into me. Throughout the eighties and early nineties I experienced pain, hate, anger, racism, confusion, puzzlement, stress, oppression, etc.

This rebellion grew in me due to my surroundings and seeing my people oppressed and stigmatized. For me to see how my parents, who I love, would suffer due to the cruel and unequal government and its corporate allies. I remember waking up at 5 or 6am to go to work at the age of 9 or 10 years old until the sun seemed to sit behind the dark blue sky with its shadowy background. This would happen during the summertime when school was out and it was not cold. When it did get cold in the winter we would travel from Michigan to Florida and start all over again. This would keep me from advancing in school and so everyone else seemed to be getting a good and healthy education.

The moral of my life story goes that the economy and the government does not give a damn who it hurts. I came to Texas when I was in second grade and to my surprise I was brought back to first grade because the Michigan educational system was not meeting the Texas educational standard. I was 10 years old and in first grade. Crazy right?!

Did I choose this life? No! This life chose me and I became a revolutionary from birth. I was born in the fields, I was born to know no other life but blood, sweat and tears. I have the understanding now of who I am. I became a part of a movement that stresses the importance of unity and communication to build and sustain a strong front: internationalism and to becoming the vanguard. To help teach our people to become leaders and not followers, in all that we do we represent one another. We must educate and prepare ourselves, for that day is near.

I am presently witnessing my parents suffering from their labor and the pesticide that was routine and sprayed on those fields. Since their births over 60 years ago they were migrant working people and contributed their energy to provide food for those upper class and rich bourgeoisie. My mother suffers from numbness over her body and this I think is due to the chemicals that were sprayed over those fields. My parents receive a monthly so-called support check. Between both of them they receive $600 dollars a month. Honestly, this is not much because the gas has gone up, and property taxes are not far behind. My parents barely can come to see and visit with me and my younger brother who is doing two life sentences. Texas is a big state and we both are up by Dallas while our parents are at the border between Mexico and Texas.

This is my struggle and my way of learning who I am and why I am and why I became who I am.

I would like to give a brief synopsis of a matter that took place about a year ago in Huntsville TX prison, but somehow is just now surfacing in the public (prison) eye. A prisoner by the name of Larry Cox died due to medical shortage of staff in 2007, but the thing is not as it seems to appear. 48-year-old Larry Cox should not have been left to deteriorate on his prison cell floor, with a broken back and in his own waste, for two days last year, before being sent to the hospital to die.

This clearly shows the negligence of the prison officers as much as the prison nurses, who have no concern what so ever for a prisoner who disrupts the institution. In testimony before the Senate criminal justice committee Dr. Ben Raimer and a colleague, Glenda Adams - both with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston - suggested a mix of factors led to Cox's death, including the prisoner's poor health due to negligence of the medical office on the unit, his tendency to malinger, and his "violent behavior."

See, that violent behavior is what caused his death. Reason being, once you interfere with the rules and regulations of the institution, you create a reputation where these guards hold anger and frustration toward you to the point, as in this case, where they will allow others or even themselves kill you. How else would he have gotten a broken back? Assistance did not come to him until after the fact of negligence by nurses, doctors and the guards.

Two days is a long time on the floor. I mean, these guards passed out chow, mail, and did head count for over two days. They, as much as the nurses, are at fault. I know they saw him there on the floor asking for help. It was an easy task for one of those guards to have gone and advised his supervisors.

Later, Raimer and Adams both indicated that the death of the prisoner from Houston may have been aggravated by a shortage in medical staff, including a 50% shortage of doctors, 18% shortage in registered nurses. How about the guards and their evil ways? It all revolves around the same thing, a man's death. Cox died two weeks after he had a scuffle with the prison guards at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville Texas.

The prison's independent inspector general, John Moriatry, who is in charge of monitoring the prison system, told lawmakers that on four occasions prison medical staff did not administer Cox's prescribed medication, even when he told them he was paralyzed and could not get it himself. A physician care assistant recorded that as a "Refusal to take medication."

Moriarty defended his guards stating that they hand-fed Cox painkillers, and one supposedly alerted medical supervisors that the prisoner needed to be transferred to a hospital. By then, however, it was too late. For two days Cox was left on a mattress on his cell floor, dying in his own waste.

No one was ever held criminally responsible. The two prosecutors involved, one with the Walker County District Attorney's office and the other assigned to the state's prison prosecutor's unit, recommended that "no criminal charges be filed," Despite the medical examiner's report and Moriarty's conclusion that criminal charges should be brought against at least five medical employees. But what about the guards at the Estelle unit?

This is some of what happens behind these walls of silence. We as comrades need to break this silence by using common sense and observation. We must mobilize the masses to go against this in prison and expose the corruption of this capitalist and imperialist government.

I would like to congratulate you and your staff, MIM. My respects go to each and every one who finds themselves in the struggle.

I just finished reading some of the statements and ways of living by other prisoners in similar situations to myself in Texas. This injustice prison and freeworld system goes out of its way to get at target minorities and their peers, labeling us security threat groups. Some of these captives have never been in general population and get segregated from population as soon as they hit the prison system.

I am going on 2.5 years in TDCJ and out of that, one year has been spent in administrative segregation with 18 more years to go, with no record of disciplinary cases or proper counsel to represent me in defense or to prove otherwise.

When I first got segregated in April 2007, I was on Polunsky Unit. There, Building Major John Werner segregated me for supposedly stock piling weapons. He did not give me and several people who were also put in ad-seg for the same reason, any kind of proper hearing or any kind of counsel to represent me and help with my defense. Two weeks after, we got moved to different units so now we can not prepare a proper defense together and build a successful civil suit on the state of Texas for allowing unjust placement in ad-seg.

Out of all this I was placed in ad-seg with a label that will segregate prisoners for long periods of time - security threat group (STG). I went into the STG manual and did not find the fraternity I am associated with there. But still my review papers state clearly that I am an STG. I fought that through step ones and grievances and all I have been given is the run around. But on my I-169 review paper stating reason for ad-seg, it states "threat to the physical safety of others and/or the order and security of the institution." Once again I wrote a step one requesting evidence and witnesses and counsel for proper defense and was denied. I have repeatedly submitted grievances requesting information and review. I am currently awaiting an answer and if I do not get a proper and legit answer I shall do my duty as a revolutionary and file a civil suit.

I bring this up because it is not just I who is being played but several tens of hundreds of should be revolutionary comrades. The Texas system has a program that is called GRAD (Gang Renunciation and Dissociation) that one must go through in order to be placed back into population. The Texas Senate sponsored the program instead of funding educational programs. The majority of people segregated are Latinos (90%). Some of these men have no education or way of knowing if their rights are being violated.

Texas prisoners confined in ad-seg are deprived of virtually all human contact and mental stimuli. We are housed alone and remain in our cells 23 hours a day. But lately we have been housed 24/7 due to shortage of officers. We have no access to educational, vocational, or other rehabilitative programs and we are provided with only limited access to legal materials, visitation and other privileges.

What's more, Texas prisoners placed in ad-seg for gang affiliation are reviewed just once a year and because we are deemed members of a security threat group, the State classification committee has only one option, to continue confinement in ad-seg.

On March 27, 2006 the MV staff gassed me (pepper spray) to take from me my sealed, outgoing legal mail. That gassing nearly killed me. And it was obviously a violation of the law - as well as TDCJ's use of force plan. That's when MV started blocking all of my outgoing mail and most of my incoming mail. And the TDCJ mucky-mucks I could reach through the very flawed grievance process did nothing to stop it.

MV is way out of control - with many folks having their mail blocked; and many folks (like myself) having our visits blocked because staff like Warden Black herself were lying to our visitors that they couldn't come see us. Even lawyers were leaving their visits blocked - but, you can't count on lawyers to do a damn thing! And you can't count on cops anywhere to do a damn thing right - just to be misogynist, racist thugs.

Texas institutions are playgrounds for the imperialist and their drones. The sexual abuse scandal of the Texas Youth Commission exposes how immoral just one of its branches is. Here on the Eastham Unit we are subjected to daily forms of psychological abuse, stress torture, atrocious harassment, and threats, deprivation of basic necessities and violence. I am on an ad-seg line. The pigs constantly turn off our water, without telling us, warning us to get water before it's off. It's always the same excuses, i.e. the pump, a pipe, or they're fixing something. The pigs only cut off ad-seg water supply while general population remains on. Under the no-water ruse, ad-seg can not shower or go to rec. The pigs don't do anything but sit on their ass. They bitch about having to serve us our trays at chow time. The no-water ruse isn't a once in a while occurrence. No, at least every other month we go a week or more without water. Some days the temperature is 95 degrees outside but 112 degrees inside.

The discrimination doesn't end with water. While general population gets full portions of food at meal time. Ad-seg inmates are severely rationed. The pigs instruct and direct inmate kitchen workers to shake-the-spoon (half spoon serving), cut smaller portions, leave off food segments or side items, and substitute ad-seg meat entree with processed pork substances. While general population has beef ribs, we get pork sausage link. GP gets ice cold juice, we get watered down diluted piss water, usually at room temperature or hotter.

There is a policy to do nothing for ad-seg inmates. We have to protest, argue and complain (PAC) to every shift supervisor to get clean laundry. We have to PAC to get porters to clean our showers, sweep and mop the line and have them keep their hands off our food trays. We PAC with maintenance to get running water, light and power or for them to fix the toilet that's been flushing for over two months. We PAC about the spiders and roaches and mice, about the bird crap that's caked up on the rec yard. We have to PAC for our mail, shower, rec, meals and medical. The only time the pigs do any of this on their own is when the American Correctional Association is inspecting.

I see that the United Front has broken down on the issue of migrants, or what some term illegal immigrants. All I can say is those who call themselves Marxist-Leninist or Maoist should read their works on this issue. What is going on now is nothing new that the imperialists are doing, Lenin, Mao and Stalin all dealt with this. Besides, if you really claim to know the history of Amerika you'll know that this nation was started by who? White Settlers! Or illegal immigrants, because I've never seen the documents granting them tribal citizenship by the five nations, or what was once northern Mexico. So get past your chauvinisms so-called anti-imperialist revolutionaries.

As for myself, I still sit languishing in the Texas state prisons' version of control units. We call them "High Security Buildings." And this is all because I won't and refuse to become part of their program GRAD: Gang Related Activity Desensitizing. You know the game that the federales play, if you wanna get out you renounce your affiliation to whatever family you are a part of and you become an informant for the administration. No thank you, I'll pass.

So I'll sit in this cold ass building and study, plan and grow mentally, physically and spiritually. If these prisoners before me that were kept isolated for their beliefs could hold up with no let up ten and twenty years strong. I would be doing my ancestors in the struggle a grave disservice by becoming weak for an opportunity to get an extra tray at chow or watch a football game out in the dayroom among others. How could I be amongst them and call myself a man knowing I'm snitching for the man. They can keep those bullshit illusory privileges. Remember if we keep pulling, snapping and twisting, we'll eventually break this damn chain of imperialism. We have nothing else to lose.