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[Campaigns] [Civil Liberties] [California] [ULK Issue 36]
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Update on CA Grievance Lawsuits

I have filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court on the inadequacy of the grievance procedure in California prisons. I’ve also written letters to the California Attorney General’s Office, the LA County District Attorney Office, the Governor’s office and various media outlets in order to seek their assistance in forcing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) staff to honor their own policies and regulations. All of my above efforts were to no avail.

The LA County Superior Court ordered an informal response when I filed my petition. The California Attorney General’s office assumed the position of respondent to my petition and asked for an extension of time to reply to my petition, and then they failed to meet even that deadline. Before the Attorney General replied, the court denied my petition stating that I was not in compliance with the grievance procedure, despite being unable to cite a single grievance regulation that I hadn’t complied with. This judicial abdication of CDCR staff lawlessness is routine in California state-level courts.

I had tried addressing the inadequate grievance procedure in the federal courts, by way of a federal civil suit that I filed against California State Prison - Corcoran. The ruling on this was that the CDCR’s violation of their grievance procedure does not create a federal constitutional violation, basically saying that the due process clause is meaningless. The case is now pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, case number 12-17419.

My “take-away” from my efforts so far is that in dealing with these government types (da pigs, bureaucrats, politicians, government, attorneys, etc.) in general, you’re up against brazenly socioeconomically biased, unreasonable, spiteful, hypocritical, out-of-touch, legitimized sociopaths. They work together to justify clearly unlawful behavior, and are adverse to a system of legitimate checks and balances. They see barely disguised partiality, in the disposition of their duties, as reasonable and good. We see evidence of this daily. I mean, the recently exposed NSA spy program is beyond any reasonable dispute a violation of the Fourth Amendment, yet they go on unapologetically violating the same constitution that they claim to cherish, absolutely Orwellian with the “double-think.”

What irritates me even more is the public’s complacency in the face of this brazen tyranny by this nation’s power elite. The Declaration of Independence states that it is not only a right, but a duty for the people to replace a lawless government. When will we honor that duty?

Thank you for your time, consideration, and your work performed on behalf of the people.


MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with this comrade’s conclusions, and of course, we harbored no real expectations of action from the bureaucrats’ offices and courts going into this campaign. This is why we constantly stress the need to organize people around these demands. The pigs are not usually going to do something just because it’s right. They are more likely do something when they are pressured to do it. And pressure can only be applied when prisoners are organized for their common interests.

This is class struggle of the imprisoned lumpen against the bourgeois classes. When this struggle does not exist, our so-called “rights” under bourgeois democracy disappear, demonstrating that they never really existed in their own right. That is why we don’t hesitate to report this comrade’s failures, because they underline that important lesson. They also allow us to highlight the real victory in the grievance campaign, which is prisoners across many states acting in unison, sharing information and strategizing. Our strategies around this campaign need to keep the big picture of the balance of power in mind so that we do not get lost in an endless cycle of give and take with the pigs.

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[Hunger Strike] [Campaigns]
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Strikers Need to Hold On to Reach Their Goals

Revolutionary Greetings!

Today marks day 10 of the hunger/work strike - only a few of us in the entire cell block of 50+ men [in one of the Pelican Bay Security Housing Units] are still on hunger strike. Most went 7 days and a few went a couple of days more and now we are down to a few.

The prison has been telling people who go out to medical etc. that “everybody is eating.” One person was told “All of the short corridor is eating” and this was on the 4th day. Everyone knew it was bullshit. Then today on Democracy Now! we heard that many here are still striking.

Today is the 10th day and the prison has still not weighed us, they said all protocol is out the window and they are now going by what Sacramento says. Even while we listened to Democracy Now! in the middle of the program on the hunger strike the signal was mysteriously interrupted and switched over to classical music for the best part of the show when the people were speaking on our behalf but the part where the CDCR spokesman slandered us was played just fine.

Our current treatment shows that we receive our treatment ultimately from the state, the prison is just the arm or tentacle but the state makes the decisions even in regards to prisoners who are in torture kamps from California to Guantanamo and beyond.

I have gone ten days so far on hunger strike and refused a total of 30 meals and I have not been weighed, nor have I had my vitals checked, no blood pressure check nothing! These maggots run around giggling and acting like this means nothing, pigs, nurses all these employees act the same. I have seen more concern over commercials for a dog pound.

All this tells me that in any future hunger strikes, here in Pelican Bay or anywhere in prisons, people must not set a 3 day or 1 week date as many will only do the bare minimum. One needs to always set it as go as long as you possibly can! Because the state does not understand anything else, we must deepen our commitment for justice! Nothing else will get us to the victory lane.

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[Organizing] [High Desert State Prison] [Nevada]
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Nevada Prisons Repression, Call for Resistance

Since early April there have been at least three prisoners shot, all in the head/face, and other shots fired resulting in lockdowns, two institutional lockdowns, and a number of pig assaults on prisoners including one in the seg unit I was released from and two on prisoners in the unit where I am currently housed. Most recently (last week) a Black comrade was assaulted in retaliation for exercising his first amendment right to expose pig misconduct. All of these assaults have been on Black prisoners by white pigs.

Amidst the above the food issue has been revived but has met textbook excuses - all of which boil down to:

  1. A prevailing sense of hopelessness among prisoners here
  2. A prevailing attitude of complacency among prisoners here and
  3. Fear of retaliation against prisoners here

The common factor? The state of mind of prisoners.

The Texas brothers demonstrated that victories are possible even with the grievance system, and history teaches us that: “In all ages and under all circumstances there will always exist abundant reasons not to fight but that will be the only way not to obtain victory.” (Fidel Castro)

History teaches us that our victories are always the result of the work of a few against the many. It teaches us that we will never be a majority so we must fight that much harder and with greater determination and not allow few numbers and temporary failures to terminate the struggle. At this moment there are a few of us here fighting for proper food, proper medical treatment, and an end to staff abuse, assaults and retaliation and theft/censorship of mail. We are simultaneously trying to bring unity within the prisoner class. This will not happen today, but there is always tomorrow, as our Texas brothers so accurately noted in ULK 32, we are all fighting for tomorrow.

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[Campaigns] [Legal] [California Correctional Institution] [California]
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Petition Gets Response

A while back I had sent the petition MIM(prisons) circulates to the director of CDCR, Internal Affairs, the Department of (In)justice, and the ombudsmen.

First I got a response from the third level (Sacramento), J.D. Lozano (chief), saying they received my complaint. I had checked 3 boxes in the petition for: 1) screening out appeals to delay, 2) detaching documents and refusing to process 602 due to missing documents, and 3) using dishonesty to screen out 602s. In fact one 602 filed kept getting sent back for 3 months until I had to water it down!

A while later I was interviewed by a Lt. E. Noyce. Word is he was a former IGI (Institutional Gang Investigation). Well at first he asked me about the grievance petition: where did I get this “form” and did I make it. He had never seen it before so it astounded him that a prisoner could get something like this. After this he went on a tirade saying the people who sent me this are making money and I should have sent this petition to the institution appeal coordinator instead of Internal Affairs, and how I should just ask staff to “solve” the problem. That is the problem, but he’s too deep in oppression to care. Finally he told me I am not a lawyer.

When I was returned to my cell I wrote to internal affairs again but this time I put it on an Inmate 22 Request Form. This way I can have a copy of what was said and if they didn’t act I could move forward with ‘legal’ action. Always leave a paper trail!

I wrote internal affairs and told them that Lt E. Noyce had intimidated me, chilled my right to redress or file a grievance and I’d like to talk to someone from internal affairs. Days passed by and I was approached by a Sgt. and asked if I’d like to add anything to my “citizen complaint.” I told him that everything’s on the paper.

So to wrap this up the petition seems to rattle some piggy nerves. I recommend it to be used when applicable. And at least here in Tehachapi we’re getting responses now.


MIM(Prisons) responds: It is interesting that the interview of the prisoner included a criticism of him for not being a lawyer. That’s the point of the grievance petition: it makes these battles accessible to prisoners who don’t need to know the details of the law. This is a key contribution that jailhouse lawyers participating in the Prisoners Legal Clinic can make to United Struggle from Within organizing work. If there is no petition for your state, write to us to get a sample that you can customize for use there.

We know these individual battles to address grievances will only gain small victories, at best. But the fight to improve conditions for prisoners, especially conditions that impede prisoner’s ability to organize and educate themselves and others, is a critical part of building the anti-imperialist movement. Through campaigns like this one we plug new comrades into broader education and ultimately build communist leaders.

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[SAMAEL] [Control Units] [United Front] [Nevada] [ULK Issue 32]
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Expanding the California SHU Struggle to Nevada

Recently a fellow prisoner told me he had heard that Nevada was the only state in which a CO had never been killed. Knowing that I have more than 3 decades in this system, he asked if this was true. I looked back and had to admit despite hundreds of assaults, attacks, hostage situations, takeovers, etc., I could not recall one CO being killed, ever.

Up until Nevada State Prison (NSP) closed (2011-12) it was the oldest prison still in use in the united states. The building in which the first experimental execution with gas occurred (on a cat) still stands as a testament to the gravity of the statements above.

In the early 1980s NSP received attention on “Good Morning America” as the most dangerous prison in the continental united states. This was true for prisoners only (apparently), who’ve died by the score.

I arrived in 1979 and the two dominating prison-formed organizations were well established, all other groups were extensions of existent street organizations. These two prison-formed orgs were based on racially charged genesis mythologies of defense from other prisoners.

The COs tended to “turn a blind eye” to, or participate in, prisoner-on-prisoner violence out of fear of retaliation or through “negotiation.” Prisoners also turned a blind eye to, or participated in, guard-on-prisoner violence/oppression in return for concessions, creating an environment which thrived on the victimization of prisoners facilitated by guard/prisoner cadres. This relationship still exists in Nevada, though less visible.

Many prisoners have been killed, assaulted and raped at the hands and/or instigation of COs, myself included.

The point of this is that, historically, Nevada prisoners organize on one of two opposing platforms: 1) persynal defense/safety 2) profit. Some combine these two and others degenerate from the former to the latter. This approach inevitably results in a contradiction of defense vs. predation with the consequence of a self-perpetuating condition of disunity among prisoners, due to the self-replicating nature of these positions.

In Nevada this is an entrenched proxy of the prison political landscape which must be dismantled.

Alongside the two groups above, there have formed new organizations whose lines continue to define fellow prisoners as enemies or potential victims. In such a climate, racial polarization is inevitable in the defense camp and predatory capitalist expansion is inevitable in the profit camp.

These philosophies embrace, advocate and promote a prisoner vs. prisoner paradigm, a mirror image of the Amerikkkan/prison paradigm used to oppress the masses and to prevent organizing among prisoners. By making prisoners impotent, it facilitates their continued oppression and the violence and exploitation visited upon them, their families, and community by the state.

It was against this background that SAMAEL emerged in defense against the state and it is against this background that Nevada prisoners are oppressed today. It is time for Nevada prisoners to wake up to the reality of our mutual conditions. We reject the prisoner vs. prisoner paradigm out-of-hand and refuse to cooperate, facilitate, or participate in our abuse, oppression and genocide, or that of others. We are calling on all Nevada prisoners to join us in:

  1. Organizing for our mutual defense against our mutual enemy, the state, by opening dialogue and forming alliances with all fellow prisoners to address conditions of confinement as a single body.
  2. Ending all inter-tribal disputes by adopting the agreement to end hostilities as proposed by the PBSP-SHU short corridor collective. This should include all facilities in Nevada and all custody levels in these facilities striving to expand this initiative beyond prison walls and into our respective communities.
  3. Rejecting all racial, gender, sexual, religious and custody divisions as counter-revolutionary distractions. The enemy does not limit its capabilities based on these distinctions and we must stop allowing these distinctions to be an exploitable weapon against us. Our weakness is their strength.
  4. Ending prisoner-on-prisoner predation. While Nevada prisoners are victimizing and exploiting each other, the state is fomenting and capitalizing on this disunity to further abuse and oppress us. Do not assist this process through inaction or abuse and oppression of fellow prisoners.
  5. Breaking silence: when a CO mistreats you, grieve it. Put it on paper and into a public forum. When a CO mistreats a fellow prisoner, step up and back their play. Put it in writing and get it into a public forum. The COs back each others’ play without question and we must do the same. We will only be oppressed further by enabling them with silence, and they are exploiting this reluctance to speak up. Every voice counts (see addresses below)
  6. Back up the California comrades. It is not just their struggle – many prisoners in Nevada have been segregated/tortured for decades and their voices are not being heard. We must speak for them because all prisoners are united by captivity, suffering and oppression.

    Nevada prisoners must unite against our captors and stop enabling and assisting in our own destruction.

    Expose abuses to:

    NV-CURE, 540 E. St. Louis Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89104
    Jonathan Smith, Chief, Civil Rights Div U.S. Dept of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave N.W., Washington DC 20530


    MIM(Prisons) adds: Also send your reports on abuse to MIM(Prisons) for publication in Under Lock and Key!

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[Middle East] [U.S. Imperialism]
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Combat Warmongering Propaganda Against Iran

no war on iran
According to Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.), all signatory member nations possess the “inalienable right” to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”(1) As a signatory nation, the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to this most basic right, just like any other nation. However, the United $tates and its allies are seeking to infringe upon and limit Iran’s right to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes, asserting that the Iranian government is using its civilian nuclear program as a smokescreen for an alleged covert nuclear weapons program.(2) These assertions are backed by no credible evidence, just the assurances of the U.$. and Israeli governments respectively. It is further insinuated that once Iran develops nuclear weapons, it will certainly use them to “wipe Israel off the map of nations,”(3) presenting an existential threat to the Jewish people.

Despite the belligerent public tone of the U.$. government, however, its intelligence community has consistently reported to Congress that Iran’s military strategy is strictly geared towards “deterrence, asymmetric retaliation, and attrition warfare” (emphasis mine).(4) Even the U.$. National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, recently admitted to Congress that “we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons” and implicitly confirmed that Iran is not presently seeking to do so because if it were, such activities would certainly be discovered by the “international community.”(5) In spite of all this, President Obama maintains that “all options are on the table” to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, with a military attack on Iran taking place as early as June 2013.(6) As we shall see, the United $tates is merely using Iran’s nuclear program as a pretext to justify further military intervention in the region in a larger effort to redesign the landscape of the Middle East in order to secure the continued global hegemony of the U.$. empire. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United $tates remained standing as the world’s lone superpower. In 1991, President Bush declared the establishment of a “New World Order,” that is, a unipolar global system completely subjected to the imperial dictates of the United $tates and its junior partners.(7) Foreign policy experts and government policy think tanks immediately began mapping out blueprints for a new century of what can be called trilateral imperialism (the United $tates, Western Europe and Japan).(8)

To this end, the Bush I administration called for “the integration of the leading democracies into a U.$.-led system of collective security, and the prospects of expanding that system, [to] significantly enhance our international position and provide a crucial legacy for future peace.”(9) Within this collective framework, the United $tates would act to “preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the United States and our allies.”(10) In other words, the First World should unite under the leadership of the United $tates to dominate and exploit the resources of the Third World (cheap labor, oil, cobalt, etc.), while preventing any other power from emerging which could disrupt this neocolonial relationship.

At the time, Russia was deemed to be the only military power capable of potentially deterring U.$. imperialism. Thus, during the late 1990s Council on Foreign Relations member and Clinton foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski advised that Russia “ought to be isolated and picked apart” in order to extend “America’s influence in the Caucasus region and Central Asia,” both formerly under Russian control.(11) In doing so, the United $tates could secure its domination over Eurasia, long deemed to be the strategic “heartland” of global power.(12) The NATO-led “humanitarian intervention” in the former Yugoslavia during the late 1990s must be understood in this light.

The Middle East has long been assigned a very narrow role within the imperialist world system, being seen as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”(13) This is of course only because of the region’s massive natural gas and oil reserves, which the United $tates considers to be vital to its national interests. U.$. foreign policy in the Middle East in the post-war period has been geared towards three main objectives: 1) securing and maintaining “an open door” for Western companies to the region’s vast oil and gas reserves; 2) maintaining a “closed door” for potential rival powers (i.e., Russia and China) to Middle Eastern oil; and 3) preventing Middle Eastern “radical and nationalist regimes” from coming to power that might use their oil and gas resources for the “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and development for domestic needs.(14)

In the bipolar world of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was able to counter U.$. ambitions in the Middle East, supporting various secular nationalist regimes relatively hostile towards U.$. imperialism. After the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent isolation of Russia, however, the United $tates was in a position to fundamentally alter the political map of the Middle East so as to “ensure that the enormous profits of the energy system flow primarily to the United States, its British client, and their energy corporations, not to the people of the region” or potential rival powers.(15) It is in this light that we must view the recent wave of “humanitarian interventions” conducted by the United States and NATO in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the current confrontation with Iran.

In 2000, the Project for a New American Century published a report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,” which was extended and adopted as official national security policy in 2005. Drawing on the themes of the first Bush administration and Brzezinski, the report recommends that U.$. military forces become “strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”(16) As noted above, there was nothing new in this goal of American hegemony per se, but what was new was the emphasis placed on “transforming” the political landscape of the Middle East. Due to the rise of Islamic terrorism and the stubborn existence of “rogue states,” the “stability” of the Middle East, North Africa, and their oil reserves were deemed to be essential objectives of U.$. national security and foreign policy.

Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a pretext for this grand imperial project, the Bush administration outlined a list of seven “rogue states” targeted for regime change in order to secure de facto U.S. control over global oil supplies. Those seven countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.(17) Of course, Iraq was invaded, occupied and “democratized” by the United $tates in 2003. The threat of Hezbollah in Lebanon has been satisfactorily neutralized as a result of Israel’s 2006 invasion, the Jamahariya government of Libya was utterly destroyed by NATO and Al Qaeda in 2011, the Assad regime of Syria is on the verge of collapse today as it is under attack from NATO and its Islamic mercenary forces, while there are ongoing covert military operations being conducted against Somalia and the Sudan. Only Iran remains intact as a nation-state out of the seven countries targeted by the U.$. imperialists for regime change.

The current U.$. propaganda campaign would have us believe that the United $tates is targeting Iran because it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons with which it will destroy Israel. As we have seen however, U.$. intelligence – that is, the agencies responsible for obtaining such information – does not have strong evidence to prove that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Further, in its assessment, Iran’s military strategy is not geared towards aggression or the offensive, but strictly deterrence and defense. Therefore, there must be some other reasons why the United $tates is gearing up for war against Iran.

In light of U.$. policy objectives to dominate global oil supplies and to subvert or overthrow “nationalist regimes” that seek to use their natural resources to benefit their domestic populations or to promote independent development, it should be fairly obvious that Iran is a target because its oil is nationalized and it pursues a program of independent development. Indeed, when Iran first nationalized its oil in 1953 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the CIA and British MI6 quickly organized a coup d’etat to overthrow Mosaddegh and reprivatize Iranian oil.(18) The oil industry wasn’t nationalized again until the 1979 Islamic revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, which quickly set Iran on a path of independent nationalist development.

Also of grave concern to the United $tates is Iran’s growing commercial and economic relations with Russia and China. Iran exports 22% of its oil exports to China,(19) while it has cultivated a strong economic relationship with Russia on various fronts, especially in military equipment and nuclear infrastructure.(20) The Iranian regime’s independence from Washington has afforded Russia and China a foot in the door of the Middle East, which hinders the ability of the United $tates to completely dominate the region and prevent the rise of potential rival hegemons in the world system, perhaps the greatest threat posed by Iran.

Iran itself is deemed as a threat to U.$. interests in the Middle East, as it is devoted to “countering U.S. influence” and becoming a regional dominator.(21) To this end, Iran has been fostering political, economic and security ties with other actors in the region, appealing to Islamic solidarity and resistance to imperialism. Iran has become influential in both Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining U.$. objectives in those countries, and has maintained its support for the Assad regime in Syria, thwarting NATO’s efforts there.(22) All of these factors make Iran a formidable obstacle to U.$. objectives in the Middle East, halting Washington’s ability to totally redesign the political landscape of the region.

Iran also gives financial and military support to various politico-military organizations in the region. As the United $tates considers many of these organizations “terrorists,” Iran is then a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Most of its support is channeled to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both of these groups are opposed to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and to U.$. imperialism in the region more generally. Through Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran is able to exert its influence in the Middle East, creating political “destabilization” in Lebanon and Palestine.(23) The continued existence of such armed groups is considered a threat to U.$. objectives in the region and is another main reason why the United $tates is seeking to attack Iran.

When we place the current threats towards Iran in their proper geopolitical and historical context, it becomes clear that Iran’s nuclear program is not the real reason why the imperialists are gearing up to attack it. In fact, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program is merely a propaganda fabrication designed to garner popular support for the immanent invasion of Iran, similar to the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. In truth, Iran was targeted for regime change at least ten years ago, but because of its resistance to the “Washington Consensus,” its economic nationalism, its growing commercial and economic ties to Russia and China, its potential to become a regional authority, and its support of politico-military organizations opposed to the United $tates and Israel, not because of its nuclear program.

The drums of war are now beating in the United $tates as Washington prepares to launch the final phase of its grand strategy to remake the Middle East. This plan is merely one component of a much larger plan to maintain the world system of trilateral imperialism. In order to maintain the global supremacy of the West, the United $tates and its junior partners are determined to prevent the rise of Russia and China to hegemonic status. Thus, an attack on Iran will surely be viewed as an indirect attack on both Russia and China. A war on Iran may very well quickly escalate into a global military conflagration, consuming other states in the region, as well as Russia and China. To prevent such a scenario from unfolding, academics and intellectuals must dispel the propaganda about Iran’s nuclear program and expose the imperialist ambitions behind the U.$. government’s agenda to the Amerikan people.

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[Censorship] [Legal] [California]
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CA Gov. Brown Threatens to Further Curb Prisoner Lawsuits

Jerry Brown CCPOA
As all oppressed nations within the U.$. injustice system know there is no such thing as justice or rehabilitation, let alone rights!

In prison is where we see fascism getting out at its harshest.(1) Recently governor Jerry Brown spoke about how prisoners’ lawsuits are costing the tax payers (parasites) money.(2) We should know better than this as it’s a coverup to implement more restricted measures in prison. Not only is he seeking support to curb lawsuits but now Brown wants to implement policies limiting what prisoners can actually sue about. Like an enemy telling his combatant he can only shoot at the ground. Perhaps the recent events of prisoners waking up has caused prisoncrats to put a gag order on us. If tax payers really want to save money they should realize how much more officers (pigs) get paid for working in the SHU (ASU, PSU) than working in general population.

As a comrade wrote in ULK 30 about a case concerning the suppression of Black Panther literature, (Tani Toston v. Muchael Thurmer et al. no#10 cv 288) “The ruling is a joke and more about suppression and control.” Here in California the state apparatus is gearing up for repression and suppression of our so-called “freedom of speech.” This time they are attacking our right to redress a grievance. Prisoners should be aware of the consequences this plan can have on our fight against repression. Once this policy is implemented it’ll be much more difficult to rectify issues we face. Of course when push comes to shove the state will not hold back to silence the resisters, as the Attica prison rebellion has shown us.

Time should be taken to study and realize the hows and whys. Giving them an inch will only do us harm and further sink us into the hole of doom. Combating the issue of censorship should be one of the top issues we fight right now.


Notes:
1. MIM Theory 11: Amerikkkan Prisons on Trial.
2. CBS Evening News. 2/11/2013.


MIM(Prisons) adds:
Jerry Brown knows how to rally the Amerikan tax payer against the imprisoned lumpen. Not a difficult task we might add. The federal government already passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act in 1996, which severely restricted prisoners’ ability to file lawsuits. Yet Brown claims California still can’t afford the lawsuits that make it past these restrictive measures. He claims lawyers are just scouring prisons looking for problems. Well, MIM Distributors was officially banned from sending mail to prisoners locked up by the CDCR for years, a ban that still comes back to haunt us every so often, by bureaucrats who didn’t get the memo that it ended in 2008. Yet no lawyers came out of the woodwork to fight for our constitutional right to free speech (Brown claims these constitutional issues are easy money). And we’ve got a long line of prisoners with serious grievances, of not just censorship but physical abuse and neglect, who would love to talk to these lawyers looking for this supposed easy money. We’d be happy to put them in touch.

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[Abuse]
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Resistance to Staff Manipulating Prisoners Against Each Other

My security level was recently lowered and I was immediately assigned as an inmate orderly, to my chagrin. It is like a trustee who works on an assigned cell block, and I know of all the pigs’ malicious intent of using certain prisoner orderlies as tools. Tools used to hurt other prisoners.

I got my block assignment and was given the usual lecture about all the things I could not do – basically anything that would ease my fellow prisoners plight/suffering. I politely related to this sergeant, while maintaining every intent to help those confined on this segregated cell block. I was not too long ago confined behind the door, so it was an obvious obligation to do so.

Anyway, that was Wednesday. By Sunday, another shift tried to enlist me as a complicit to starve an individual prisoner, to which I declined. But, the other orderly slaving with me agreed to help. Through intimidation I was able to persuade this orderly to do otherwise.

I warned the target of the pig’s intent and, days later, the other prisoner about the plot against them. Well, this orderly informed the pigs that I was alerting all targeted prisoners. So the pigs tried, through aggressive body language, to scare me. The pigs claimed that I wasn’t playing with the team, blah, blah. Took all my property and locked me down pending trumped up disciplinary charges.

A few days later, the other punk ass orderly gives another inmate an empty food tray. This prisoner did not take it lightly. The target became disorderly – and rightly so. This led to the individual being administered chemical agents. And he refused to tap out after several rounds of being gassed. Dude forced the pigs to run the cell extraction team, which beat this man stupid. Eight on one.

All because of a stool pigeon.
Shit crazy.

Even more crazy, I receive a kite from someone who was my neighbor before classification made me an orderly. The kite informed that the day after I left the cell block, a white shirt and four officers popped up at the cell with a minicam. Long story short, the pigs were coming with the intent to inflict bodily harm. The veracity of the event was confirmed by an affiliate.

They missed me by one day!

My belief is this was planned because I was part of a core group which gave voice to the rampant pig violence towards prisoners.

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[Campaigns] [Estelle High Security Unit] [Texas]
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USW Grievance Petition Wins Battles in Texas

Well comrades after months of trying to get the grievance department to produce a grievance that they insisted was returned, the truth has come out! In June 2012 I was housed on C-wing on Estelle Unit High Security which is located in Huntsville, Texas. At the time, my cell and many others were infested with roaches, every meal was served cold, and the smell of sewage was extremely pervasive. I and a fellow comrade filed a Step 1 (I-127) grievance.

Unit Grievance Investigator Mr. Allen Hartley lied to me, his co-worker Ms. Monica Nichols, and numerous other TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) employees and insisted that he returned my Step 1 with response on August 22, 2012. However, I never received it. A TDCJ employee told me that Mr. Allen Hartley has a “special relationship” with the prison administration on the High Security Unit in which he has agreed to destroy any offender grievances which may shed a negative light on the High Security administration.

On October 22, 2012 I sent a grievance petition courtesy of USW-MIM(Prisons) to Senator John Whitmire who happens to be the Chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee in the Texas state legislature. I requested that the senator have someone investigate my “mysterious” disappearing grievance. I also addressed the cold-substandard meals served on the entire unit, rampant racism among officers, and administration, as well as the collusive and conspiratorial relationship that exists between unit grievance investigator Mr. Allen Hartley and Assistant Warden Steven T. Miller and Major David M. Forrest (bonfire Klansman extraordinaire). The USW Grievance Petition does an excellent job of articulating the true nature of the problem here in Texas. Our due process rights are being trampled on and we can’t get fair and unbiased resolution of our grievances under the current system (period).

Comrades I am glad to report that the food service department at Estelle Unit - High Security has been issued “Hot-Carts” which really keep our food hot/warm! The portions have improved a little and so has the quality. We even get salt and pepper once a week. This may not be fantastic in some prisoners eyes but it is progress. I believe it was a collective effort by a small group of motivated comrades who got tired of being treated like sub-humyns.

In reference to the grievance problem, the central grievance office wrote me and stated that the grievance in question has been “lost.” They offered me the opportunity to re-submit the grievance. However, they failed to address the main root of the problem and that is Mr. Allen Hartley’s blatant disregard of the U.S. Constitution! This is not the first time that these prisoncrats have played this game. This is an ongoing problem. Their actions have rendered the grievance process ineffective. So with that being said, I have filed a complaint with the Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division - utilizing the grievance petition as my guide.


MIM(Prisons) adds: We currently have grievance petitions for many states. Write to us for a copy and if you are in a state not currently covered by the grievance campaign, we will send you a template for the petitions and you can look up citations and policies specific to your state for reference. If you do this research and send us what needs to be rewritten for your particular state, we will gladly send an edited, accurate copy back to you.

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[Theory] [Organizing] [ULK Issue 31]
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Expanding the Debate over the Political Prisoner Label

I’m responding to ULK 29, “Less Complaints, More Agitation and Perspective.” While most of the position is on point, I believe that important considerations were left out by both this comrade and MIM(Prisons)’s response.

I agree with the broad definition of political prisoners as announced in MIM Theory 11: Amerikan Prisons on Trial (article “Political Prisoners Revisited”) precisely because courts are maintained as a tool of political oppression and inseparable from political oppression. Thus the political component is inseparable from those who become further oppressed by imprisonment. The hierarchy of society, cops, courts and state is one of a functioning cadre in this country.

I also understand the distinctions this comrade makes between inmates, convicts and the rest – an inmate is the prison version of the “sleeping masses,” but whether or not these people recognize their oppression does not determine whether they are oppressed. And we can’t forget that distinctions such as inmate, convict, POW, PPOW, PP, PS, GP are meaningless outside of the prison context, rendering these issues inapplicable to society.

In terms of the bigger fight for prison revolutionaries, these labels are also somewhat moot outside of a strategic context as well; everyone will get the benefits brought about by revolutionary action or they will simply be “washed away when the dam breaks.”

What was missed is part of a larger problem (largely analytical). Whether one is or is not a political prisoner speaks directly to the conditions which led to one becoming a member of their class (under the broad definition), but not the class perception and what it means, nor what to do as a member of that class. The political conditions of our confinement being a given, our focus, especially insofar as making revolution is concerned, should not be on whether or not one is a political prisoner, but rather if one, as a prisoner, is political (i.e. moved to political action). If we must distinguish between members of the same class (i.e. prisoners), and to a certain extent we must in order to accurately assess conditions on the ground, then let it be a functional distinction which advances the revolution as a whole.

Subcategories of class must be used in such a way that it produces knowledge, not conjecture. Even an “inmate” can be turned to use. Further, people change and there’s no way to know the moment of awakening of political consciousness in others without objective observation. By assigning static labels and categories, we limit our objectivity.

I wholeheartedly agree with this comrade: there are many tactics which can be tailored to circumstance but the labor of these tactics is necessarily dispersed to many people of differing skill sets and levels of political awareness; some are dupes, others are not, some are soldiers, others are tacticians and printers.

Finally, I believe a common mistake we all make as revolutionaries is to become solipsistic. We forget that not everyone wants change or revolution; some are satisfied with their condition. In prison or out, this distinguishes one as counter-revolutionary. This distinction is functional and applies to society without getting bogged down in specific labels. It is part of the equation we must, as revolutionaries, deal with, but in the end, revolution depends on maximizing our resources, exploiting the weaknesses of our enemy and most important, unification of the people.

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