Under Lock & Key

This report is to inform other comrades of the new law that was passed called the Keep Families Connected Act in California and to expose the sneaky tactics the state is using to bastardize it. The Keep Families Connected Act states that as of 1 January 2023 all calls between Us (the prisoner class) and our families and friends will be provided at no cost to Us or our people outside.

Here in the South Bay there was no fanfare for the Act’s passing, no bulletin from jail administration stating this, or message on our tablets, which have the phone app most use to call home. After further research, i was informed by a Lieutenant pig that Keep Families Connected Act only gives free calls in CDCr facilities, and county jails like Main Jail North are not included. Seems California doesn’t actually give two shits about keeping families connected.

The tablets we have in California are already used to record your voiceprint (individually distinctive pattern of certain voice characteristics, spectographically produced) and facial biometrics (measurement and analysis of unique facial features, especially for verifying personal identity) which to even use the tablets you must agree to as part of the Terms of Use.

As is so common the case, anytime the oppressive elite pigs give us something, it’s usually poisoned, warped, and deformed to suit their means. To utilize these free calls your people must download an app first (for iPhone it’s GTLConnect, for Android it’s GTL Phone App). As a former hacktivist in the early days of the Anonymous Collective, i believe these apps could be infected with many different types of viruses, keyloggers and spyware included. This is true for the iPhone, despite many peoples’ false notions that Apple products cannot be hacked into.

It also should come as no secret that the Amerikan government does in fact spy on its people, as was exemplified by the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, and the revelations of the FBI’s COINTELPRO of the 1960s and 1970s.

But downloading an app is not all your family and friends must do. Once downloaded they must make an account, which if they use their real information, now puts a name, date of birth (and with this DMV records can be looked up, background checks administered) and thus every recorded conversation now has a face they can put it to. This is my speculation and by no means proven fact, yet we should always be wary and skeptical of anything handed to Us from the bloody paws of the capitalist-imperialist fucks whom oppress us.

We should learn from our past experiences through study to better identify such reforms for what they really are: Band-Aids for bullet wounds.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This week President Biden signed an Act to require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ensure reasonable rates for any kind of voice or video calls made from jails and prisons in the country. To date, families and friends of prisoners have paid ridiculous prices for phone calls to their imprisoned loved ones. This profiteering discourages the maintenance and development of positive relationships in the community that are important for re-integration upon release. As such, we welcome these reforms, though they are a small drop in the bucket of the extreme forms of social isolation and torture imposed on hundreds of thousands of people in U.$. prisons.

We also share the concerns of our comrade above. Though communications into and out of prisons have always been assumed to be monitored, the technology to do so is at another level now. And instead of extorting families for phone fees, they are now strong-arming their persynal and biometric information out of them, extending the arms of the surveillance state into not just those convicted of a crime, but all who wish to relate to them. It is hard enough to get people to avoid such surveillance technology on the streets where people have choices.

In the early days of Corrlinks, we could use email to communicate with some of our subscribers. While we recognized the potential downside of surveillance, all mail is potentially surveilled as well. However, now that the model has developed they seem to uniformly charge money for electronic mail to prisoners and require the installation of spyware and giving persynally identifying information to the company and the prison. So if you’ve tried to email us through these services and we don’t respond, that is why.

We have been covering the topics of the distribution of computer tablets among prisoners in this country along with the digitization of mail that they enable. These developments strengthen the totalitarian control of the state, and often further limit communications with the outside despite the political messaging. Following in the footsteps of the phone companies, the new brand of prison profiteers are these mail processing companies like TextBehind and the old-timer JPay. As depicted in the artwork above, TextBehind has created a barrier for letters from organizations like ours from reaching people imprisoned in North Carolina.

As the assassination date of our redeemed comrade Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. approaches (December 13th), this will mark 17 years that our beloved brother, comrade, and C.R.I.P co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. was deliberately assassinated by the U.$. imperialist’s “Correctional Institute (Colony) Repressive Penal System.” It is our esteemed comrade Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams Sr. along with comrade Raymond Washington who founded the C.R.I.P.s in 1969. Stanley Big Tookie Williams ran the West Side Cribs (“Cribs” eventually became “CRIPS” by 1971) and comrade Raymond Washington ran the East Side CRIPS. There was a small neighborhood community after school center on the East Side of Los Angeles, California where comrade Raymond Washington and his friends hung out after school playing pool called the “Community Resource Inner City Project Service” (C.R.I.P.S).

From this Community Resource Inner City Project Service the “CRIPS” would form into a bastard party of the former remnants of the Black Panther Party (a community based nationwide Black nationalist organization who operated free breakfast programs in the poor disenfranchised sections of the ghettos and Brown barrios and promoted “self defense” against U.$. terrorist government sanctioned racial violence).

Originally when Raymond Washington and Big Tookie Williams joined up the East Side and West Side CRIPS were about protecting their communities against other “white” gangs who came into Black neighborhoods to start trouble and violence against Black people in general. The C.R.I.P.S. (Community Revolutionary Inter-Party Soldiers) promoted Community Revolution in Progress (C.R.I.P.) yet over the years ended up becoming a “self destructive” force which ended up being consumed by Black self-hatred and non-political violence.

Eventually Comrade Raymond Washington was murdered in the streets of East Side South Central Los Angeles. He was assassinated by a car of unknown assailants, in 1979. Comrade Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams was wrongfully framed by the U.$. government on gruesome murder charges that he did not commit (and in which he maintained his innocence up until his dying day). Big Tookie was falsely convicted by a racist court system and jury which ended up landing him on California’s Death Row at San Quentin State Prison in the early 1980’s.

Ten years prior to Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams’ arrival, San Quentin State Prison was the assassination scene of the bold, brilliant and beautifully courageous revolutionary activist, author and revolutionary theoretician Comrade George Lester Jackson on 21 August 1971. Jackson was moved to the Adjustment Center in San Quentin on murder charges of killing a Soledad correctional officer. 25 year old Officer Mills was beaten to death and thrown over a 30 ft. tier in Soledad Central “Y” Wing Facility. There was a note in Officer Mills pocket that said “One down 2 to go” in reference and in retaliation for 3 Black prisoners shot and killed in cold blood by a racist Soledad prison guard name Officer O.G. Miller. One of the dead convicts was W.L. Nolen, a close friend/mentor of Comrade George. In February 1970 George Jackson, John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo would formally be charged with the murder of Officer John Mills. Since Comrade George already was serving sentence of one year to life, death on a non-inmate under California law at that time meant an automatic death penalty for Comrade George, even though the state had no evidence that George Jackson, John Clutchette, or Fleeta Drumgo (who become known as the “Soledad Brothers”) killed Officer Mills.

George Jackson was an activist and revolutionary advocate of the prisoner class revolutionary movement, “Black family”, and August 7th movement founder – a movement he founded in remembrance, honor and in tribute to the death (murder) of his little 17-year-old brother Comrade Jonathan Jackson whom on 7 August 1970 took a bag full of guns into a courthouse in Marin County (not far from San Quentin State Prison where his brother Comrade George was housed). Brother Jonathan Jackson Sr. calmly took over a courtroom where three Black prisoners were on trial. Jonathan gave the three guns then took the Judge, District Attorney and 2 Jurors hostage demanding that the “Soledad Brothers” be released immediately in exchange for the hostages. Sad to say Jonathan never made it out of the parking lot as over 200 shots by Marin County Officers were unloaded into Jonathan’s Hertz rental van. Jonathan was murdered immediately.

The only sole survivors in the van with Jonathan was one of the three Black prisoners (Comrade Ruchell Magee - whom is still incarcerated to this very day despite his deteriorating health) and the District Attorney who was permanently paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

A year and 2 weeks later on the 21st of August 1971 prison authorities concocted an outrageous story to justify the assassination of George Jackson. San Quentin Prison officials claimed that Comrade George tried to escape leading six other prisoners out of the adjustment center allegedly slicing three prison guards’ throats and killing two snitch prisoners. They claimed George Jackson had a gun and the guards assassinated Comrade George from the Gun Tower. The state (San Quentin Prison officials) deliberately murdered/assassinated Comrade George. Upon investigation, George would’ve beat his case had he went to trial and very well may have got out of prison. Check out Under Lock and Key No. 79 Winter 2022 article “History (and Myth) of a Comrade Should Inspire Us” Written by USW51 for more on Comrade George. It’s a very well written and detailed article.

How does this relate back to our Comrade Stanley “Big Tookie” Williams Sr.? Well there are a lot of apparent correlations connecting these two comrades beginning with the criminal “injustice” system and the systematic oppression and “judicial lynching” of both these wonderful Black Brothers (and of Black and Brown males in this U.$. imperialist country in general).

George Jackson entered the California Penitentiary System in 1960 with an indeterminate sentence of “one (1) year to life” for the conviction of a gas station robbery that resulted in the theft of $60.00. Even though evidence was in Jackson’s favor and Jackson adamantly professed his innocence of the crime, his court appointed attorney convinced Jackson that if he would only plead guilty to a lesser offense that he would receive some light county jail time, instead the racist court judge sentenced Jackson to prison for one year to life.

“CRIP” co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. up until the day of his assassination/execution proclaimed his innocence of the murder charges that he had been wrongly convicted of, yet the racist criminal injustice system with no real tangible evidence put Big Tookie Williams on trial and concocted lies in order to assassinate, execute and “judicially lynch” Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. because he was a threat to the upper status quo and had been amassing power (revolutionary potential and Black leadership skill/charisma) and was “leader” of a fast growing “C.R.I.P” - (Community Revolutionary International Party) which possessed major revolutionary potential. The U.$. government had to “contain” him since he could become a potential “Black messiah.” So just like Comrade Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt the U.$. government framed Stanley Tookie Williams Sr.

Comrade George Jackson while incarcerated became autodidactic (self taught); he studied Marx, Lenin, Mao, political science and political economy, Engels, Stalin, Huey. Jackson was made Black Panther Party ‘General/Field Marshall’ by Huey Newton while he was incarcerated he become “politically conscious,” reshaped and transformed his Black criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality. Comrade George redeemed himself and achieved redemption through his willingness, determination, self discipline, self-taught education through books. Comrade George changed and reformed his criminal thinking, Jackson refused to participate in all “non-political” violence (gang mentality), George Jackson practiced a very special bastardized style of martial arts as well as Kung Fu called “Iron Palm” and worked out 6 to 8 hours a day doing “1000” fingertip pushups a day. Comrade George also authored two classic political treatises of Black revolutionary literature “Soledad Brother” and “Blood in my Eye” and one underground book titled “Communist Manifesto.” Jackson typed laboriously on his typewriter in his small prison cell, he wrote position papers that dealt with various political-socio issues such as prison life, economics, and the corrosion of Amerika’s military-prison industrial-corporate capitalist culture and circulated these papers throughout and outside prison walls.

For his political/revolutionary activities he was rewarded with isolation and segregation in Soledad’s “O”-wing administrative segregation unit and San Quentin’s A/C Lockup where often times his cell was “welded” with a lock shut. Once that proved not to be enough, he was set up to be killed.

Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. had undergone a very drastic revolutionary change after his imprisonment as well, a quite remarkable one. Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. was autodidactic, self-taught through reading and politically conscious. He also studied political science, economics, socio-behavior and psychology to better understand himself and his negative subconscious programming and “learned” behavior. Big Tookie Williams studied about the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Comrade George Jackson, Nelson Mandela, and Steve Biko. When Williams Sr. read the infamous “Willie Lynch Document” he was angered and shocked at how this white slave master from the Caribbean islands in the early 1700’s had managed to create such a nefarious, diabolical, cruel and methodical “self-hate” system (which would become known as the “plantation psychosis”) which would sink seeds of mistrust, and self hatred, and self-sabotage within our subconscious, unconscious minds that some 400 years later it is encoded in our (Black folk) culture and is the primary root of “Unkle Tom-ism” disunity, hatred, violence, mistrust and cowardice amongst our people, we were “programmed” negatively to behave this way with one another. The slaves were taught, whipped, beat, tamed, feathered, set on fire, lynched, pregnant Black women had their precious unborn fetuses cut out of their stomachs and stomped on in front of their faces by the white slave masters, and Big Tookie Williams, Comrade Raymond Washington and their peers and “rival” Black teens were just lashing out against one another out of fear, and “self-hate,” the “plantation psychosis” of Willie Lynch indoctrination. This was the source, the generations of negative subconscious programming fostering and festering within Black communities… This was the primary cause of his “Blue Rage.”

[Editor’s Note: While a powerful story that motivated Tookie and others, Willie Lynch is a myth. Uncle Toms are the natural outcome of the dialectic of oppression observed across cultures and time.]

While on San Quentin’s death row Big Tookie decided with utter conviction he would transform and change. Williams Sr. now being politically-socially revolutionary conscious sought “redemption” (“Black redemption”). Mr. Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. started writing several children’s books that taught peace, and strongly advocated and promoted diversion from joining gangs and drug abuse, peer pressure to help in steering children in a “positive”, productive, peaceful life in today’s society. Mr. Williams even took on a Kiswahili name (Ajamu Ajani) that reflected his cultural, mental, spiritual transformation. Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. was even allowed to conduct and operate a podcast from San Quentin’s State Prison’s death row to educate the public and youths across Amerika of the failures and downfalls of “gangbanging.” Big Tookie Williams used his own three hour phone calls on the tier to call and speak to youth in middle and high schools and interacting and most importantly patiently and sincerely answering any and all questions these students may have had (on his own time; even though he knew that his time was very limited).

Mr. Williams Sr. tried to teach peace and had helped organize the peace truces between the Bloods and Crips in the early 90’s. Mr. Williams published a sincere and very self critiquing, deeply introspective memoir before his assassination by the $tate called Blue Rage, Black Redemption. In fact, Jamie Foxx had played the part of Williams in a television movie, “Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story.” Williams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Bianca Jagger, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Judge Greg Mathis, Daz Dillinger and Jamie Foxx tried to gain a stay on his execution, but on 2005 December 13th, the U.$. government dealt a huge blow to gang peace truce leaders, and had California prison authorities at San Quentin State Prison execute/assassinate long-time ‘reformed’ death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. (Ajamu Ajani).

This goes on to prove without a doubt that the U.$. government and global white imperialist truly “fear” gangbangers and criminals becoming “revolutionary indoctrinated” and converting into “revolutionary political soldiers” fighting for the liberation of our oppressed New Afrikan people’s and all oppressed people’s throughout all colonies of North Amerikkka and globally. Those who are victims of “plantation psychosis,” imperialism, capitalistic avarice, racism, police brutality, and systematic oppression!

So it’s right now, right here that I give honor and tribute of remembrance to both of these redeemed political giants Comrade George Lester Jackson and our beloved Blue Dragon Comrade Stanley Tookie Williams Sr. as his “return to the essence” date approaches this 13 December 2022 (17 years) after his state/government sanctioned assassination.

Rest in Power Big Tookie

MIM(Prisons) adds: Tookie Williams dedicated one of his books to a list of mostly revolutionary figures, including George Jackson. This was one reason given by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to deny clemency for Tookie. Schwarzenegger said it indicated that he saw violence as a means to address societal problems, and then proceeded to use violence to kill Williams. Meanwhile, everything coming out of Tookie was about promoting peace, and gang truces, and getting kids out of gangs. As MIM Notes pointed out at the time of Tookie’s murder, it is hard to know where his ideology was at the time because the state literally had a gun to his head every time he spoke.(1)

Whether pacifist or revolutionary, there is no doubt that Tookie had abandoned the negative aspects of his past in order to serve his community and oppressed people around the world. As demonstrated so vividly in the book Prisoners of Liberation, this was the goal of prisons in socialist China, true reform.(2) And with true reform came redemption and reintegration into society. But not for Amerika, there is no redemption for the oppressed.

Tookie happened to be born into a neighborhood where the U.$. government was importing drugs and weapons to create chaos in response to the organizing of the Black Panther Party in cities like Los Angeles. Oliver North, who oversaw the Iran-Contra Scandal that brought cocaine to the streets of the United $tates while serving on the National Security Council, now serves as high-paid political commentator and appears on mainstream news shows these days, while Tookie was killed by the state.

<sup>Notes:
1. HC93, 14 December 2005, Tookie, Another Casualty of War, MIM Notes No. 329, January 2006.
2. Allyn Rickett and Adele Rickett, 1973, Prisoners of Liberation, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. $8 from MIM Distributors.</sup>

[UPDATE: In late December we got confirmation that the fees for the suit were paid by a comrade in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support. We no longer need people to contact the judge, but are still collecting postcard signatures and can use your help.]

[NOTE: At the end of this article the author asks you, the reader, to contact the Judge about the TDCJ blocking court fees for a prisoner’s lawsuit to fight censorship. This is part of an ongoing campaign. We are also asking people to print and gather signatures on postcards that you can download from the campaign page along with fliers to use in outreach around this campaign to oppose political censorship in Texas.]

When i initiated the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative (JFI), and the fliers for that action began to find their way into every prison in Texas, Allred Unit’s Warden Jimmy Smith commanded the unit mailroom supervisor to place me on a ‘watchlist’ – purportedly to provide a greater level of scrutiny to my outgoing mail.

This measure first began to disrupt communication between cadres and myself throughout the state. The state has policies and courts have upheld bans on such communications under the cloak of a fear of gang organizing.

The watchlist measure intensified and all reading materials were made to go through a months long process of scrutiny. Texas has a part of its Mailroom Operations policy that they need not announce to a prisoner when a publication has arrived at the unit, even when it is subject to further review. This results in reading material being sent and one not knowing of its existence until it is officially denied. At the point of denial, We’re supposed to be allowed to appeal through the grievance procedure. What i’ve experienced , however, is that the unit grievance investigators don’t allow me to grieve a Director’s Review Committee decision. My battle with the UGI subsequently slows up the exhaustion of administrative remedies.

Eventually, the watchlist measure intensified to the point that ANY material from MIM(Prisons) was purportedly denied at the command of the DRC in Huntsville. This political police tactic is what led to the state-wide censorship of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program. The 12 steps is an anti-drug abuse and anti-reactionary program that is definitely needed in the Texas prison system. The state has upheld this censorship with the vague statement, ‘may incite inmate disruption’.

In recent times Texas has made national headlines due to the governor’s reactionary policies that repress social and political narratives that counter dominant narratives and positions. This trend, which tarnishes the First Amendment so-called rights, has made its way into the Texas prison system.

To understand how this has occurred one must have knowledge of connection, the family tree of repression if you will, that connects Jimmy Smith(Allred Warden), Brenda Kelley(Allred mailroom supervisor), Tammy Shelby(Mailroom system coordinator’s panel-chair), and the DRC, to Texas’ highest levels of government.

When a governor is elected in Texas they appoint people to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice. The TBCJ is charged with making Board policies, revising them, and thus make the overreaching rules and regulation that determine the day-to-day lives of over a hundred thousand captives.

The Governor also appoints the Director’s Review Committee (DRC), which is charged with, among other things, determining the content that can/cannot enter or leave prisons. The DRC is the ultimate authority on matters regarding denials of mail, publication, visitation.

We should be asking the questions: where is the transparency, and democratic decision making in the selection of TBCJ and DRC officials? These positions are handed down to careerist politicians who’ve made their living on the backs and misery of the prisoner class and Our families. In the future comrades must organize an outside force to force Texas to remove the veil between these backdoor chambers of power and the common public. We need readily accessible information on these so called public officials and representatives of the people.

So We have a clearly reactionary governor who’s appointed a clearly reactionary Board and review committee. In Texas the only way to overturn a DRC decision is through litigation, and therefore most censorship bans last indefinitely.

While Jimmy Smith and the other prison careerists play prison politics, in an effort to quell dissenters and self-determination of the prisoners, there is a fatal drug wave crushing Allred Unit. As i write this in late October 2022, 7 prisoners have died this month due to overdose.

The Revolutionary 12 Step Program is currently at the point of training cadres to be able to facilitate the program at their locale. The censorship of this program, in conjunction with the indefinite solitary confinement of many cadres, act to circumvent what could otherwise be a highly effective and influential peoples’ initiative. And therein lays the problem, at least from the administrator’s perspective, they seek to circumvent the rise of any influence among the prison population. Instead of differentiating between types of influence, their practices put a blanket on ALL influence and influential people or initiatives among the prisoners, and seeks to disrupt them.

Of course this can’t be done totally, and what results (as what resulted in previous generations of the Prison Movement) is that the mass influence of the prisons and prisoners falls in the hands of the most reactionary prisoner forces. The admin elects to deal with the lesser of two ‘evils’. It has seen that the reactionary forces are easier to contain, to appease, to divide and conquer, in contrast to an awakened, drug free, unified and determined population.

Active political prisoners and prisoners of war are the exemplary prisoners among the masses. They are leaders. Texas’ desire to conserve ideological, and social hegemony over the population has and will continue to cost people their lives.

In the civil case, Owolabi V. TDCJ Allred Unit, et al., 7;22-cv-00094-0, one such political prisoner has challenged political censorship of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program, and other communist, revolutionary nationalist, anarchist, and abolitionist materials.

The sitting Judge, a George W. Bush appointee, for the US District Court of the Northern District of Texas is Reed O’Conner, who has a reputation as a highly conservative Republican reactionary. O’Conner has moved to dismiss the case, not on the basis of the case alone, but due to prison officials withholding and delaying the processing of the check for court fees. Unit prison officials have ignored the plaintiff’s request to have the check processed. The Plaintiff has informed Judge O’Conner of this problem, and filed a motion for extension. The court has yet to respond to the plaintiff’s motion.

We’re asking all those among the public who have an interest in stopping political censorship in Texas, to contact the Court, inform Judge O’Conner and the Clerk of the Court that the Allred Unit is refusing to process the check for court fees.

Contact info for the court is here: https://www.txnd.uscourts.gov/judge/district-judge-reed-oconnor

“(We) MIM Should not excuse behaviors that could have been avoided with asexuality. It must weigh the costs of being non-sexual.” - MIM Theory 2/3

Transforming the criminal mentality into a revolutionary one means also fully confronting bourgeois culture, morality and its justification for the existing society, i.e. bourgeois rule. This bourgeois mentality also includes things that aren’t necessarily “criminal” but definitely constitute crimes against others and from a proletarian perspective and for our aims is at the very least counter-productive if not counter revolutionary. Sadly, as Wiawimawo stated, due to us being products of this decadent society we all enter the Revolution with some amount of sickness. Some suffer from drug addictions, some selfishness and extreme individualism, others idealism, patriarchy or even out right misogyny, e.g. “Fuck a Bitch” or other forms of sexism. Most “criminal” lumpen glorify gangsterism and are quite infatuated with gang culture even when pretending to be about unifying the block…. But regardless, we all enter the revolutionary process with ways of the “old society” especially since it hasn’t gone anywhere.

The above quote is from a Comrade who ultimately died due to a lifetime battle with drugs. Yet this is a quite Revolutionary and apt quote and this comrade’s life is also apt for this discussion as it shows no matter how advanced we become and even how authentic our walk, we will always be confronted not only with the broader bourgeois society and its fucked up music, culture, morals, world out-look etc etc ad nauseam. We still are likely to have to confront and check our own bourgeois demons. But the above quote could be applicable to revolutionary Walkin’ in general if any of our behaviors could be avoided simply by avoiding self-indulgence if our goal is truly revolution then we should practice abstinence in that regard whenever possible.

I personally have never came to jail sober and have done all manner of anti-social behavior “under the influence” since I’ve been in prison I’ve yet to get drunk. For me this was so stark it was no choice at all. Additionally other counter-productive behaviors were also not so difficult for me to conquer or at least consciously struggle against. Yet for all my talk I was quite chauvinistic and I’d say misogynistic in actual practice and this is something I’ve struggled with since I was in elementary.

There was a time when I rationalized my misogynistic behavior – I’ve now come to believe this had a lot to do with my inability to conduct consistent communist practice – however, I’m now quite clear that this is simply lumpen and its kissing cousin petty bourgeois personification and practice and furthermore serves only to strengthen counter revolution.

I am not too hard on myself for this late transformation however – every single day in this decadent society we have to swallow, weigh, witness or consciously wrestle with all manner of bourgeois bullshit. Life may be good but this world is truly a nightmare. In these death camps, in a real concentration camp, in slave quarters, in an immigration caravan, in dark alleys and hallways thrash out this imperialist dominated world what people must go through especially when there’s no real struggle to resist and defeat this oppression (as proven by amerikkka’s nuclear bombs) even shadows get burnt… yes shadows were literally burnt into the ground.

Yet I’m now quite clear on my need to confront this as it is simply another tool the state can use to divide, dismiss or exploit real revolutionary work. This always makes me think of focoism, its attraction is “to go out on a high note”… I understand this quite well. I also think this is why lumpen and petty bourgeois youth in the semi-colonies often have a hard time with revolutionary ideas, party’s and practices as all they know is immediate release, this in addition, is why so many Rev’s succumb to self-obsession or self indulgence’s. But once I accepted this is simply lumpen/petty bourgeois bullshit behavior it was easier for me to confront it as any good homie, friend and especially “comrade” should know s/he is not only a reflection of the community, party, professed ideas etc he/r can also undermine, expose or bring harm to he/r person, community, or just their ideas which for a revolutionary communist must be unacceptable.

I speak in general terms because specific failures, flaws, addictions or internalized petty bourgeois (wanna be big bourgeois) bullshit isn’t new to the movement and once I realized how destructive (counter-revolutionary in fact) my failure to totally transform and practice my all too parroted “self discipline” – something as stated I’m quite adamant about “Walkin my walk”… Yet I gave the enemies a free tool to use against me and against us – again I do know why for some focoism is a “natural release”… working w/ ideas and for “long-term goals” especially in isolation of an active movement has been the death of many good Rads and whole collectives especially where self-discipline requires we police things that we once considered quite natural or even which is common practice for others but the state has made it taboo for us.

I read an article in The Abolitionist (Summer 2022) where a captive was released and days later his parole agent came to place an electronic monitor on his ankle which he knew would be a condition of parole, but still days later after she placed the “E.M.” on him she called and explained he will be allowed out the house 6:00am-10:00am and this should be plenty of time “For you to handle your business”. I couldn’t help but think how after 10:00 it would be unlawful to walk to the corner store or park, to go to school, work, to date, build community ties etc etc and how his actions will be a reflection of larger class forces and struggles where if he failed it would set back the opportunity for someone else to be released on “E.M.” supervision and to succeed he would need all the self-discipline in the world not to look out the window at 11 see a friend or interesting person come outside to talk and walk with them to the corner…I imagine all the lawful things a Jew in Nazi Germany or slave in amerikkka was forbidden.

Amerikkka exploits and sanctions the world so its unlawful to aid Cuba, to encourage oppressed people to keep their resources for themselves, to disrupt military supply chains or even expose what the government is doing to the public. On 22 August 2022, KPFA Radio’s “Letters and Politics” had a canadian Marxist scholar on who the host asked “isn’t it an advancement that we have a better life thanks to capitalism?” (this was the gist) The Marxist scholar replied “Yes”(even under the new mode of production we don’t want to lose those “freedoms”) and conceded this as advancement. Yet I contend both the host and this Rad suffered from self-deception. I think Huey’s “intercommunal” line was bullshit – to say nations don’t exist – but capitalism has infact now transferred and transposed the class struggle from core countries to exploited countries largely on the global south so whole countries live the bourgeois life to one degree or another, and the proletariat is now largely confined to their own powerless “nations.”

So for so many others they make do with left over bourgeois scraps. I saw a documentary a while back about how the U.$. was sending its plastic and metal scraps to the Third World as part of its neo-liberal deals with them – just as now Biden can promise less greenhouse gas from U.$ corporations “in amerikkka” but will never say they can’t offset this by reckless disregard for the oppressed nations. Part of the question to the canadian Marxist was also a statement that slavery is no more “thanks to capitalism” to which the Marxist agreed, hence his statement we don’t want to lose those “freedoms” but slavery very much exists outside of the “shiny city on the hill”, outside the gate they root through U.$ trash like pigs looking for mushrooms, women still are very much oppressed and yes slavery, I repeat, still exists. Yet they’re always judged by the standards of the exploiters and defenders of the city gates who gladly lower the drawbridge for the returning army with its war booty.

I stopped drinking because I get drunk and have no inhibitions, no fear and no rationalizations. Likewise I wrestled with self-indulgences “because they were denied” and I too have absolutely no respect for the enemy. Even when drunk I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone I loved, never fought my friends, never stole from loved ones etc, but not so for a perceived enemy, or if I felt I deserved something, or revenge was called for. All this was obviously before I became a revcom. But I know where it all came from and what it represents, its lumpen/petty bourgeois sentiments struggling with social, dictates that “I’m nothing,”“We’re nothing,”“You can’t have,” “You don’t deserve,” etc etc. But I know, because I couldn’t control it, I’d have to leave it alone. So now I’ve arrived rather late, at a similar conclusion of another thing I must deny myself due to how it can never be a resolvable contradiction (for me). I think it was jesus who said (according to grandma’s bible) that if your right eye causes you to sin cast it out. If a revolutionary could paint the mystical soul it would be a macabre creature… stitched and resewn on wings, scars, busted knuckles etc etc.

I am quite clear on a few things and the utter failure of capitalism-imperialism and its rule is one of those things that I have much clarity on. Will I slip up? will it be as easy as alcohol for me? will the enemy be able to conspire against me? will there ever be any normalcy in my life? will it always be ad hoc salvaging? will revcoms ever beat back lumpen/petty bourgeois culture and ideas to be the undisputed voice for the semi-colonies? I may never know these things we may not like all the answers to those things, but I’m quite sure there’s millions of people who like me will never forgive this system for what not only it’s done to the world or ourselves but the choices and contradictions we’ve been forced to wrestle with due to its rule and its utter disregard for our humanity will never be forgiven and whose dogged focus is to bring about a Revolutionary Communist World.

Amerikkkan media feels compelled to state each and every time election talk is brought up that it’s the “Big lie” to claim it was stolen and to be unequivocal about Putin and Russia’s invasion as to the cause of the war in Ukraine and to be clear on the need to support Ukraine’s effort to win the war, it makes sure it always says it was a coup attempt on Jan 6 and that Amerikkka is a democracy. All this because truth is important. One of my favorites is Ben Fletcher who is a petty bourgeois radical who says it’s right to defend Ukraine simply because its unlawful. I wish I could search his writings talks etc but I’d wager dollars to donuts he has never said arms should be shipped to Palestine to defend against or push out Israeli troops, not even New Afrikans should arm themselves to fight back when pigs kill us nor although he says he said it was wrong to invade Iraq etc I’d bet he never said Iraqi’s should be aided to kill U.$. troops or he or any “leftist” in KKKville should support the counter-insurgency I’d bet had he and his ilk done so it would’ve had an effect on secular forces so now only Islamists are given a voice and many even long for the klan to return.

The labor aristocracy and other layers of the bourgeois here are quite in lock step. The only questions are which bourgeois party will win elections or steal them. We are looking at fascist forces, wars, possible world wars, environmental devastation, national oppression and we daily witness the consequences of what having a shining city on a hill entails and what it forces on others to do to survive not being a part of the in crowd, but this is no one’s concern and misleaders like the media or “Labor Leader” Ben Fletcher can only parrot Democratic or anti-Republican talkin’ points and even so called communists or at least “Marxists” can not see beyond bourgeois horizons.

For these reasons we must shore-up our ranks and connect with the broader proletariat movement. As its quite clear we will be in the wilderness for sometime, only practice and work will forge us ahead and conquer our bourgeois and lumpen demons. We can not be idle, not in prison, not school houses, not under capitalism-imperialism. They’re not idle. Steel sharpens steel. Proletariat morals and practice forever taken to a new level. These last paragraphs are not a mis-step; I contend we defeat our demons when we keep bourgeois morality clearly juxtaposed to proletariat morality and ideology. They currently are running laps around us here in amerikkka. Most people can conceive of “the end of the world” but can’t conceive of a New World with new social relations and a new mode of production that they themselves must work for and this is our failure to own.

Yet in this answer we can show a new type of Revcom responsive to the extensive body of work of real Maoism and revolutionary practice. Unbroken macabre spirits on display and in motion will never win over someone like Ben Fletcher the Mis-leader, nor bourgeois media but we can clearly show the dividing line between bourgeois (lumpen included) and revolutionary-proletariat-feminist-nationalists. This could be quite a powerful thing, and because there’s larger forces at work, if nothing else, self-discipline and revolutionary “consistent” practice at the very least may deny the enemy another victory.

In yet another act of terrorism, Shareen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-amerikan journalist, was targeted and killed by the illegitimate state of I$rael and its military. The I$raeli state, its occupation of Palestine, and its armed forces are and have been backed by the united state’s ruling class since 1932. On 11 May 2022, while on the job, covering an I$raeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, she was maliciously assassinated.

Shareen Abu Akleh became a thorn in the side of the I$raeli state as a result of her continuous on the spot coverage of daily state repression, human rights violations, and Palestinian genocide. She covered many detentions, home demolitions (which Palestinian homes were targeted in, and demolished to force them to relocate for I$raelis) military raids of schools and universities, and Masjids, and killings of Palestinians. This brave frontline work placed her on I$raeli hit lists.

Shareen Abu Akleh was a journalist for decades and a Palestinian revolutionary-nationalist, who being a trailblazer in her field, inspired many Palestinian and Arab wimmin to serve their people through the work of liberation journalism.

Her funeral brought out tens of thousands of supporters, mostly Palestinian, in Jerusalem. As pallbearers carried sister Shareen, the I$raeli military attacked them, and further disrupted the occasion with malicious zionist violence against Palestinian nationals.

Sadly, the colonization of Palestine, the Apartheid regime of I$rael, and violent and fatal repression of native inhabitants is all apart of the imperialist system. What does imperialism look like? It looks like land theft, it looks like millions of people living without power or plumbing, it looks like bombing and shelling of homes, schools, hospitals and finishing the job by attacking refugee camps. It looks like storming universities, confiscating study materials, it looks like the process of erasing an entire human group, and that’s exactly what’s taking place in Palestine. There will be many who call for justice for Shareen Abu Akleh, but the sad truth is that justice for her and justice for the Palestinian nation can only be achieved with the end of the I$raeli occupation.

FREE THE LAND!!! FREE PALESTINE!!!

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is a grassroots initiative that began in the early 2000’s to gain international support for the occupied Palestinian nation against I$rael’s continued military suppression, genocide and land theft.

In recent years the BDS movement has indeed gained international support, even in the face of reactionary pro-imperialist backlash from the states who support genocide, land theft and military crimes.

The goal of BDS is to isolate I$rael on the international field by upholding the “simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity”.

Students around the world have been pressuring their schools and universities to join the ‘Academic Boycott’, initiated in 2004 by the Palestinian campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of I$rael (PACBI). As student activism again comes to life here in the United $tates, it is important that students engage in internationalist frameworks. Amerikan student activists should support the academic boycott of I$rael, which is part of the overall BDS movement. Students should do this not as a mere moral cause, but the understanding that over 50% of the U.$. states strongly support the I$raeli military-apartheid-colonization, so much so that 35 states have Anti-BDS laws. They support the frequent military raids of Palestinian universities under the pretext of ‘countering terrorist activities’, the imprisonment and murder of student activists peacefully protesting, closure of schools and the recent I$raeli military move to arbitrarily control what is and isn’t taught in universities. A new government procedure allows the military to restrict visiting professors who teach subjects supposedly ‘not relevant to Palestinians’.

In the United $tates, the free flow of ideas has begun to be brought to an end. Book bans, Don’t Say Gay laws, the backlash against Critical Race Theory, what’s next? Will the same reactionaries rally police/ military force to suppress your student demonstration? The book Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán has been banned in prisons in many parts of occupied Aztlán. Will the reactionaries prevent your free thought? NEWSFLASH THEY ALREADY ARE! Students in North America should pressure their institutions to join the Academic boycott and the wider BDS movement. END ALL COLLABORATION WITH THE ILLEGITIMATE STATE, until Palestine is free.

MIM(Prisons) adds: One of the first essays many students of MIM study is On Contradiction by Mao Zedong. In it Mao explains how change must come from within. The liberation of Palestine depends on an effective national liberation struggle from within Palestine, but it can be assisted by resistance to the funding and arming of the I$raeli state by Amerikans whose government is the primary prop of I$rael. A strong anti-imperialist movement in this country would be able to limit the sale of military goods to I$rael, Ukraine and anywhere else where the empire wants to fight wars against its enemies without sending its own troops.

^{Notes:
(1) ‘Palestinian-american journalist assassinated,’ Monical Hill, FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3
(2) ‘Academic fortify boycott of Israel’, Raya Fidel, FreedomSocialist,vol.43,no.3}

Those who sow discord into unity are our enemies. If we ourselves are guilty of pushing the people from the movement then we are our own enemy while we divide and conquer ourselves.

Prior generations fought for change, but today we fight over change: back-biting our brothers, looking down on the misfortunate, and even supporting the police in their corruption and brutality.

We are familiar with the divide and conquer tactics of our opposition; so when our lines of communications are broken, we must have faith in our comrades and remain loyal or the oppressor will create division by placing contempt and distrust in your heart towards your comrades.

We have a prisoner here in “High Risk Security” lock-up who is unable to operate a tablet. Instead of attempting to show him how to use it, they decided not to feed him.

This prisoner is clearly supposed to be in a mental institution. He is too mentally unstable to qualify for recommendation to be released from High Risk Security stats; and even if they did allow this prisoner to be released to regular population, his mental condition will cause altercations with other prisoners or staff. This is a breach of safety in the department that doesn’t care about mental patients although the department is quick to provide sentences to subjects they failed to place in safe environment.

Comrades, we must put our heads together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and put down the K2. If finding a way to do away with drug test for THC is the alternative, then we must try. We must band together to overcome this addiction. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary when you look around and see our fellow comrades in helmets and 4 point restraints losing their sanity. Do we even know the differences between K2 and phenol paper? And molly is meth. That’s worse than crack. Never get high off your own supply, and don’t inject white substances. I’m not telling you what to do, but we can not operate or function against our opps while walking around like crackheads because we’ll be more loyal to the high than to the movement.

Before I go, I just want you to know, AKs got the floor. We want peace not war. Less we all storm the doors. When it rains, it pours.

T.R.U.C.E. - Team of Revolutionaries Uniting to Combat the Enemy.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is one of a handful of leaders engaged in United Struggle from Within’s Revolutionary 12 Steps training program. We are working to build this program inside and outside prisons around the country and we need more leaders to get trained to do so.

Closing August 2022 with actions waged against the state of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR’s) deliberate and intentional acts of sedition, systematic race crime, police gangs, mass insurance fraud, healthcare system abuse, etc. Members of United Struggle from Within (USW), Prisoners Legal Clinic - JLS, Lumpen Organizations Consolidated On 1 (LOCO1 United Front for Peace in Prisons) and ABOSOL7 say, “We Charge Genocide!”

In response to CDCr appeal #000000243827 (Deliberately denied access to CDCR 602 form (Rev. 03/20) in housing facility), the Department grants the claims set forth that corruptions officers employed at California State Prison - Los Angeles County (CSP-LAC) are involved in a concerted scheme of withholding revised models of CDCr grievance forms from the inmate population.

After being ignored at the institutional level where administrative executives maintain a strict code of silence to officer misconduct, an Associate Warden made a computer entry on a record affiliated with the log number that the claims would be remanded for decision to an unknown entity on an unknown date. Though the appeal on its face, if found true would most definitely qualify under employee misconduct, that is a candidate for a staff/citizens’ complaint.

As citizens’ complaints are reportable on direct appeal to any federal county police agencies for public-civil prosecution, the issue of intentional mis-handling of an appeal process was exhausted to the state capitol by means of the Chief of Inmate Appeals, and favor has been found for the freedom fighters.

Now we call on the struggle to burn strong.

We shall demand Senate hearing and investigations be held on the subject of police gangs within the department promoting “don’t ask, don’t tell” climates amongst the population, by way of withholding access to the forms designed for speaking up and challenging abuse.

This is made known as a public service to the prison population to wean itself off of depending on the court system as it is conditioned into them to be. In order to not only relieve the stress on the local courts but to increase the volume on the traffic between the cities and their capitols. The Senate hearings are called hearing for a reason.

MIM(Prisons) adds: A comrade at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility(RJDCF) recently wrote Governor Gavin Newsom regarding the infamous gang structure that is running operations there and denying prisoners the services the CDCR promises to offer them. The comrade introduces the letter:

“While the Armstrong v. Newsom, 475 F. Supp. 3d 1038 (N.D. Cal. 2020) injunction requiring body cameras be worn by officers may have subsided the wanton violent attacks on prisoners, nothing has been done to address or rectify the criminally orientated structure which dictates the overall daily operations of RJDCF. Such a failure renders RJDCF incapable of providing adequate rehabilitative programs and services to its prisoners.”

Offering more evidence for what we’ve been reporting about drugs in prisons almost every issue, the comrade goes on to write,

“Long before in-person visits returned to prisoners, RJDCF has been, and continues to be, peppered with the paper chemical substance known as spice, and methamphetamine, both of which are eas[ily] accessible and openly used outside of cell on surveillance cameras by various prisoners in common public areas. In fact, it is easier to access any one of these drugs here any day of the week than it is to establish or participate in a self-help program or access rehabilitative services.”

Comrades in North Kern State Prison have also been struggling to get their grievances heard:

“31 July 2022 – For the past month or two, us captives have been getting fucked out of our recreation (dayroom, yard) even though the orientation manual and Department Operational Manual acknowledges that we are entitled to 1 hour of recreation (outside/outdoor recreation) every day. These guards have been taking our yard and dayroom for the most blandest of reasons, a supposed”shortage" of building staff, or for a “one-on-one” or “two-on-one” fight amongst prisoners (fist fight), fights that these guards are well-aware of before the incident even happens. But still these guards shut down our whole program for any small infraction just to have an excuse to not run yard. I have done a “group” 602 grievance where 40 or so other prisoners have signed on to add weight to our issues, the institution has denied this grievance due to some trickery they employed. …These guards are lazy, they don’t want to let us out of our cells for nothing."

The RBGG Law Firm reports the following outcome of Armstrong v. Newsom, 475 F. Supp. 3d 1038 (N.D. Cal. 2020):

“As part of the remedial plans, CDCR must overhaul its staff misconduct investigation and discipline process to better hold staff accountable for violating the rights of incarcerated people with disabilities. Those reforms will begin to be implemented at the six prisons [including RJDCF, CSP-LAC, CSP-Corcoran, KVSP, CSATF, and CIW] in June 2022 and will be implemented at all CDCR prisons by mid-2023. CDCR must also produce to us and to the Court Expert staff misconduct investigation files so that we can monitor if CDCR is complying with the remedial plans and if the changes to the system will result in increased transparency and accountability.”

We commend the comrades who are pushing for accountability around these court-ordered reforms in the systematic abuse within the CDCR. But as they both point out, criminal gangs are running these prisons, making the attempts at reform superficial. So much more needs to be done. It takes a lot of bravery to stand up to these gangs, and this type of bravery is what is needed to mobilize the masses of prisoners to rally to the cause for independent power.

Revolutionary Greeting comrades,

Many young soldiers have heard of comrade George, a Black Panther leader, revolutionary prison writer, and organizer who was assassinated in August 1971 in a California Penitentiary in San Quentin.

It’s time! Wake up comrades! The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is a tool of racist repression for Black & Brown people in the U.$. prison system. CDCR has made serious mistakes in splitting the prisoner populations (50/50 yards/EOP/GPline/SNY/GP) political and social prisoners. CDCR has realized their mistake and in the process of trying to correct it at whose expense? you and I. So CDCR will once again go back to their reactionary tactics oppressing the masses.

Comrade George gave us a strategy to combat CDCR false ideology: “When I am denied or corrected, I always understand, but rage on, all on the principle that the ideal must be flung about, that the oppressed mentality must first escape the myth, the hoax, that repression is the natural reaction to a collective consciousness of the commune.” And just know that ideals cannot be killed with violence, racism has always been employed as a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness evinced by a people historically processed to fear.

The revolutionary is outlawed!

You can’t understand my pain but me. I’ve used every tool in the kit to stay sane over these last 11 years in prison. I am alive and learning for real. The only way CDCR can maintain its power is to create differences on these yards and cause a diseased mind and feed it drugs. Comrade wake-up. What’s the problem? If you not a disruptor or agent provocateur, show proof and let’s start building this collective unity. That’s the only way we can combat CDCR tactics of repression.

AFW on the move.

A California comrade provides more background info: California has been phasing out its protective custody (P.C.) yards for the last few years. CA prisons started eliminating the P.C. yards on the lower levels and due to the high rate of violence this caused, it is taking longer than expected to phase out the higher levels (lifers).

CDCR is well aware of the common practice of separating sex offenders from general population prisoners. The cruelty sex offenders face in prison is the very reason CA opened the P.C. yards 2 decades ago. Sex offenders are regularly beaten, murdered, and as hypocritical as it is, raped in prison.

However, over the years a lot of general population(G.P.) prisoners have requested protective custody and once on the P.C. yards, these G.P. prisoners continue their abuse of sex offenders. The result is that according to CDCR, P.C. yards are more violent than G.P. yards (if anyone believes that) and so CDCR is now requiring sex offenders to house with the gang members that everyone knows, especially CDCR knows, sex offenders need protection from.

I think CDCR is intentionally creating a violent environment for whatever reason. CDCR is not ignorant that this new policy will and already has resulted in the murder of a lot of sex offenders. Since the policy began 3 years ago, the gangs have murdered sex offenders on every yard the prison has forced them to house on and yet CDCR continues to push for the complete elimination of protective custody. This is obviously a deliberate action to increase violence.

Dozens of lawsuits have already been filed, but few if any will bear fruit due to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which basically is legislation designed to erase a prisoners constitutional right to sue the prison. Furthermore, most prisoners have no legal skills whatsoever and are forced to litigate against professional lawyers. So the chance of any of the lawsuits asking the court for a right to safe housing of winning that right is very small.

I will eventually litigate the issue and I will win.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve printed a number of articles in the last couple years about this integration plan creating violence. It’s not just about sex offenders, many have gone to Special Needs Yards in recent years for a number of reasons, including political ones.

While most seem to agree that the CDCR is creating more violence, injuries and deaths among prisoners, few have tried to explain why. One thing that has been happening on the SNY, and now the integrated yards, is the creation of new prison gangs, many of which have been fostered by CDCR police gangs and work hand-in-hand. This seems to be part of a larger strategy to displace the big four lumpen orgs that have historically dominated the G.P. yards and at least some of which have been staunch in their refusal to work with the pigs. These four lumpen orgs were behind the largest prison hunger strikes in history to protest the torture happening in CDCR’s Security Housing Units.

As we’ve always said, “We Want Peace, They Want Security.” And most often the two are at odds, where the state uses violence and chaos as a form of social control and securing it’s power over the prison masses. That said, the integration offers an opportunity for the prison population in CA to unite along once deep divisions, and we call on comrades to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons based on the 5 principles.

Crime is a child of poverty and miseducation, which are both created and perpetuated by Plutocrat Policy(s).

The real criminals are too rich and too big for jail, while the poor are incarcerated for simply living a survivalist existence, for responding and/or reacting to poverty and miseducation in reactionary, economically desperate and miseducated ways.

Prison is mainly based on inflicting punishment and resentment, rather than cultivating genuine healing via essential self-criticism that has historically proven to decrease recidivism. Prisoners’ growth will defeat the purpose of spending or investing 20-plus million dollars building each prison. Genuine rehabilitation is a bad investment to the Plutocrats.

The entire so-called criminal justice system is nothing but a replacement and extension of slavery. A job-generating industry for all government branches and departments between the slave patrollers (street PIGs; Plutocrat Imperialist Goons) and Overseers (D.O.C.; Department of Cruelty) as was the case with post-Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676.

Crime, is all founded upon, and backed up by the exception clause of the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime…”

Thus, to genuinely heal or rehabilitate prisoners is to end the new slavery; meaning, leading to the shutting down of prison, and mass lay-offs within the entire so-called criminal justice industry system, made up of slave patrollers (street PIGs), judges, state and defense attorneys, counselors, doctors, nurses, canteen vendors, civilian food service and maintenance workers and county jail and prison overseers (DOC). Millions of jobs when tallied up nationally, all off so-called crime, the new cotton, tobacco and/or sugar.

Crime, as an industry, can only end by first and foremostly ending poverty and miseducation. Even rape is a result of miseducation, or psychological defects of miseducation by the system of patriarchy. However, poverty and miseducation will not end without first and foremostly ending and replacing the CIPWS (Capitalist Imperialist Patriarchist White Supremacy) with a Proletarian Internationalist Dictatorship.

Whenever and wherever there is poverty and miseducation, material conditions are ripe for the warrant of crime or revolution. For neither takes place without the desire for and/or the aspiration of better days, or a higher standard of living.

History is proof, that revolutions do not automatically occur and succeed with the collapse of the CIPWS elite and their Plutocrat’s superstructure. Revolution can, and will only occur and succeed when and where the revolt which leads to revolution is culture. When and where the masses are revolutionary conscious and active in every aspect of human life. When and where every human embraces the power to determine the egalitarian destiny of his and/or her own community. Revolution is when and where power changes hands, in our case, from CIPWS to PID (Proletarian Internationalist Dictatorship) ensuring egalitarianism meaning All Power To The People. Revolution begins with education like crime ends with education.

In egalitarian solidarity and struggle.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This is great summary of the connection between the system of mass incarceration in the U.$. and the need to end imperialism. We agree that this criminal injustice system is a replacement for slavery in relation to controlling New Afrikan populations, and that it funds millions of jobs for Amerikans. However, this system is very different from cotton or sugar in that no value is being created, rather the potential value that the oppressed nations could be producing to benefit their people is being squandered by locking them up in unproductive conditions for years and decades.

Prisoner(s) housed at FSP (Florida State Prison) on C.M.-I & II (Close Management) status are being used by FDOC/FSP and JPay as means of robbing our family(s) and friend(s), thus inflicting punishment beyond court ordered separation from society as sole and significant punishment for crime.

In 2021, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) installed new private contracted prison mail system services mandating that all routine mail to prisoner(s) be addressed to Tampa, Florida office to be processed, i.e., scanned for verbal contraband and forwarded via JPay email system service to mail room of intended institution, to then be printed out and delivered to intended prisoner(s). However, such service is not being consistently and timely provided, except only when and where convenient to and for FSP administration, STG (Security Threat Group) personnel and mail room, all in punishment for prisoner(s) being on C.M. status.

1. Inconsistency and untimeliness in mail delivery to prisoner(s)

1. Prisoner(s) are not receiving all incoming routing mail and email in timely and consistent manner. Mail is being intentionally delayed, withheld for weeks, in some cases, months after the post mark, constituting violation of mail rule. CH. 33-210.101(6) F.A.C, which clearly states, “Incoming and outgoing routine mail shall be processed within 72 hours, except for inmates in certain housing assignments identified in paragraph (7) below, which pertinently states:”(7) inmates, that as of a result of housing designation or status are not permitted to access kiosk, kiosk services, or tablet services as provided for in Rule. 33-601.900 F.A.C, will have their scanned mail printed and delivered at no cost to the inmate."

2. Lack of notification

1. Prisoner(s) incoming routine mail is being sent back, withheld or thrown away by Tampa private mail contractor office, without issuing notice of any kind to prisoner(s) or sender(s).

3. Effect on prisoner(s)/loved-one(s) relationship structure and rehabilitation process

1. Incoming mail being received by FSP mail room via JPay mail system service is not being consistently and/or timely printed out and delivered to intended prisoner(s).
2. Prisoner(s) have no way of knowing that mail had been sent to them until informed by sender(s), either through argument or worrisome inquiry as to why prisoner(s) are not responding to mail, causing sender(s) to feel ignored.
3. Prisoner(s) are kept unaware of undelivered, deprived mail, while sender(s) are unaware of fact that prisoner(s) are not responding, not because they don’t want to, but because prisoner(s) are not receiving all mail being sent to them, because;
4. FSP mail room, and administration are literally and intentionally playing games (not printing and delivering all prisoner(s) incoming mail) resulting in relationship structure conflicts, leading to prisoner(s)/loved-one(s) alienation and isolation.

4. Objective investigation, review of kiosk of kiosk inbox

1. Objective review of each FSP, C.M.-I & II status prisoners’ Jpay kiosk account inbox will clearly confirm the truth in this matter, by revealing the scores of undelivered emails and photos, sent to prisoner(s), but never printed out and delivered, as is prescribed by Rule. 33-210.101 (7) F.A.C
2. Prisoner(s) or their family(s) and friend(s), due to being ignorant of this denied service (robbery) are not realizing that prisoner(s) are being held semi-incommunicado, as punishment for being on administrative segregation (C.M.) status, which is not D.C. (Disciplinary Confinement) status, in fact prisoner(s) on D.C. status, are allowed more privileges than C.M., i.e., non-D.C. status prisoner(s), and this is all intentional.

5. Conflict in FDOC/FSP Jpay Kios/Tablet Policy

1. Rule. CH. 33-602.900 (4)(C)3 F.A.C and CH.33-602.900(5)(d)3 F.A.C, which governs Jpay kiosk and tablet clearly states that: “Prisoners on C.M. status are allowed access to JPay kiosk, kiosk services, tablet and tablet services,” stands in polar contrast with CH.33-601.800(11)(b)7 F.A.C and CH.33-601.800(11)8.(c)5. F.A.C, which governs C.M., clearly states the opposite, that “C.M.-I & II status” prisoners (respectively) are not allowed access to kiosk, kiosk services, tablet and/or tablet services." (to keep prisoners from becoming aware of the scores of emails, letters, and photos listed in their (prisoner(s) inbox, but are not being printed out and delivered to them) while;
2. C.M.-III status prisoners are allowed access to JPay kiosk, kiosk services, tablets and tablet services, constituting not only administrative disparity in treatment and discrimination against C.M.-I & II status prisoners, but FSP administrative use of JPay email system services as a means of or device of authoritarian intimidation, punishment and control.

6. Robbery: Family(s)/Friend(s) of Prisoner(s) not receiving JPay services they are paying for.

1. Family(s)/friend(s) of prisoner(s) purchase digital postage stamps for a promise that their emails to loved-ones in prison will be delivered without hindrance, a service paid for, which is not being delivered/received, due to their sent emails not being printed out and delivered consistently to their prisoner-loved-ones, being punished solely for being on C.M. status.
2. Hundreds of FSP (all C.M.-I & II status) prisoners are not receiving letters and/or photos sent to them via JPay email system service. Thus, family(s)/friend(s) of prisoner(s) are being bilked, literally robbed for their hard earned money by JPay and FDOC via FSP mail room, STG and administration, constituting the bilking of unknown amounts of money once all prisoners and undelivered emails are tallied up and combined. The results is robbery and false advertising.

7. Nonexistent FDOC/FSP Grievance Process

1. Many grievances regarding all issues mentioned above have been repeatedly submitted at every level in the grievance process and are being biasedly rubber stamped “DENIED” or not returning or responded to, or plain and simple being thrown in the trash. FDOC secretary office is very well aware of this fact, but is refusing to intervene or rectify the situation trashing of prisoner(s) grievances. See formal grievance, log #22-6-27139.

8. Remedy

1. That FDOC Tampa private contracted mail service provide written notice for impounded or withheld incoming routine mail being withheld for STG surveillance or being returned to sender(s).
2. That FDOC/FSP kiosk and tablet policy be rectified to uniformity.
3. That FSP mail room print out and deliver all digital mail, letters/photos entering its system, to intended prisoner(s) in timely and consistent manner, thereby ensuring;
4. That all Jpay email service and routine mail service paid for by family(s) and friend(s) of prisoner(s) be received without hindrance, i.e., end the bilking/robbery of prisoner(s) family(s) and friend(s) via use of prisoner(s), resulting in incalculable amounts of money being stolen.
5. That all money for all undelivered emails, letters and/or photos be reimbursed, given back to family(s) and friend(s) if prisoner(s).

Respectfully submitted

P.S. Concerns regarding this issue can be addressed to the:
Better Business Bureau,
JPay Company headquarters,
FDOC, [email protected]
(830)717-3605

Stop The JPay Bilking

UPDATE:

A few weeks after MIM(Prisons) received a copy of the above complaint we received an update:

“Florida Department of Cruelty has finally rectified ch.33-601.800 (dealing with JPay kiosk and tablets on C.M.: Close Management) to be in uniformity with ch.33-602.900 (which deals with Jpay kiosk and tablet). As of 6 October 2022, every prisoner is allowed access to kiosk and tablets. This was not done out of altruism. However, I believe JPay threw a rod regarding the amount of money their being denied via the thousands of prisoners being denied their service or should I say bilking. I won’t even front with a tablet, I won’t need anyone to transcribe my thoughts and I can get my thoughts out to be published allowing me to raise funds for appealing my criminal case while enlightening others in the bigger cage.”

It remains to be seen how the resolution of this conflict will affect all of the complaint outlined above. But we can say that Under Lock & Key continues to be denied to the majority of prisoners in the Florida DOC, as do publications like our Revolutionary 12 Step Program, which are tools intended to help people rehabilitate and reintegrate into society and to serve their community upon doing so. As the comrade above notes, there is clear bias, both politically and nationally, as far as what communications are allowed in Florida and in most of the prisons across this country.