Under Lock & Key

Revolutionary Greeting to you all!

Excuse me if I haven’t tapped in as often as I should or used to… I’ve been on a mission and roller coaster fighting these administrations not only by exposing and being the example as to how not to fear the oppressor when involving yourself and others in direct action politics and hard line… It’s a way of life, it’s a way of existing that comes with much sacrifice. What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to be without? Luxury items? Food? Nice clothes or any clothes at all and have nothing but the fire inside? A loved one or communication with your people? I mean this is what’s at stake when fighting the enemy, this is the truth and all reality specially being a captive in these golden gulags.

I fight for my people and i fight to stay alive every fucking day homie, even when the people I fight for don’t have a spine to stand em straight, no voice to speak fact, no heart to love it’s community nor hand and fire to fight back… But I still do. Doing this guerrilla shit and living as an example ALWAYS send me back to the SHU’s, ASU’s, Solitary Confinement, Control Units of terror. Why? Because I’m a captive warrior of Brown skin, Brown eyes, shaved head and tribal tats smashing the oppressor with my heart, mind, hands, weapons, and pen.

There’s gonna come a time when we stop saying “Enough is Enough” and actually start putting that dialectical theory of knowing and doing into motion homeboy… make these dungeons unlivable, ungovernable, fuck kicking your feet up and being stuck on your tablet all day popping suboxone and snorting bottle… Huh? Sounds familiar Gee? Keep that shit raw and 100% then souljah.

So again to everyone on the streets, yea those street prisoners living lives like robots and that talk about eliminating prison plantations, for that we need a revolution first and foremost… and to all my camaradas/comrades stuck between a hard place and a rock up in them dungeons – what are you willing to sacrifice??

It’s fucked up to say this but I’m living a life where the systems of oppression are actively trying to end my existence for one reason or another… I’m back in the SHU as I explained on the other kite and again the pigs did their games of divide and conquer, smut campaigns, and became the suppliers to the influencers on the yard, in order to be able to execute hits via inmate lap dogs… some of yall know what I’m talking about. How many times does a pig swing off the “Big dawgs” nuts? And simply because of what that pig can do for those whack ass “Big Dawgs” they make those lames set up the real guerrilleros and call a hit on em?? All the fucking time homie… and all of you that talk about stacking your millions while fighting the oppressor behind bars, don’t tell me that you rather have this bitch on fire! Because the only way to stack your millions in prison is by pleasing the cops, do as they say so you can move “freely” and don’t get your “house” hit, and tell rebels to stop bringing heat to the block, stop disrespecting pigs!! So you can continue pushing your dough.

C’mon homie, you talking to a mofo that’s been in prison grounds since he was born!! My entire childhood has been spent in and out of the system and all my adulthood all I’ve known is prison so don’t mess me with that shit… I’m all for moving unseen and that hustle but not at the expense of the People’s fire, nor telling rebels to chill– Fuck that! Get your priorities straight and it’s time we start smashing those “Big Dawgs” on the yards if they on that $ $ign over the homies… Cuz if that’s eir get down then ey ain’t no different than the mofo’s keeping us in these cages.

Next time someone tells you filling 602 Grievances is snitching, or tells you to stop bringing heat to the pad or respect cops– Smash Em! He one of em! It might place you in another box with nothing but yourself and a mattress… But what are you willing to sacrifice? Live by example and turn it up then, cuz it all sounds very pretty on paper and word play but we have to start somewhere sometime… there’s a roll for everyone… are you fulfilling yours and actually building for the end of capitalism?

In Struggle

Push Pull STRIVE !

At the moment, during this pandemic and major outbreak inside prisons, CDCR has decided that it is best to shuffle/transfer prisoners like never before in prison history. There are transfers going on, on a major scale, daily. The administration sent out a memo and order to open up a ‘quarantine’ block in every prison across California designated for people coming in from and going to another prison –- we are being quarantined for fourteen days on our way in and out, at every stop.

Before, if you’d asked any prisoner in California if they ever got transferred out a prison they didn’t wanna be in or got transferred due to their custody points level dropping (therefore belonging to a lower/higher security yard) they would answer ‘fuck no’!!! People would be stuck in a Level 4 yard (high security) while being Level 3 (lower security) eligible for up to years at a time – or at the very least, six months. And now, at this precise moment and time of outbreak and pandemic, CDCR decides to look at each case factor and execute transfers according to their ‘code.’ People are coming in and out of every prison in California to these designated ‘quarantine blocks.’ For the first time ever, Level 1, 2, 3 and 4 are meeting up in these blocks, meeting up from all prisons and transferring out to all prisons. It would be irresponsible to think that this is not an operation by the system with the intent and agenda to exterminate its population.

On paper, the administration is making it look good by conducting and documenting daily medical and temperature checks for the two weeks of quarantine, and doing two COVID-19 swab tests before allowing prisoners on a transportation bus… but what CDCR is not telling the public is that if one refuses to take a temperature check and refuses to take the COVID-19 swab test, you will still be transferred, still get on the bus, still spread whatever you have around, still use the same showers, phone, water fountain, and be allowed to roam around!!! Yes, the ones that refuse do not leave on the 14th day mark, instead they’re documented as not transferring due to their refusal, etc. But CDCR still transfers them after an additional week of being on ‘quarantine.’ In the fifteen years I’ve been captive, never have I ever seen so many transfers myself –- nor seen the prison system shuffled up in this manner where we have about 10-15 prisons in one ‘block.’ We got people from Chino, Folsom, Lancaster, Jamestown, Corcoran, Salinas, Delano, San Quentin, Calipatria, the Bay, Solano, High Desert, all coming in four times a week on a consistent basis, and we are all confined in these newly implemented ‘quarantine blocks.’ How’s this for fighting COVID-19?

One would be ignorant not to see what these suits and ties at the table are putting in motion here. I’ve been doing my research and talking to people as they come from all these prisons they are coming from and it is amazing to hear how correctional officers and wardens are bouncing people around within the prison itself before shipping them out, how the administration gave out orders to correctional officers to do this, do that, try this under the ruse of combating COVID-19 while putting prisoners in harm’s way via reckless transfers. The stories are lengthy and too many to describe, but I will do so in a future piece and with proper equipment. For now, I’ll just use my case and experience as a small window to provide insight to the public about what the system is doing and to expose their agenda.

First off, I am a radikal intellectual, politikal prisoner, activist, abolitionist, revolutionary, Sureno artist, who has been targeted by the system throughout the years and well-documented. I was housed at New Folsom for three years before the pandemic kicked off and I went under quarantine. I had just got out the hole because the administration attempted to blame and charge me for an attempted murder that I had no knowledge of. I was back on the main line after the long battle of the torture and mental stress of being in the hole, then out of nowhere, the administration kidnaps me once again and I’m placed under another ‘investigation.’ They refused me my due process of signing a liability chrono to go back to the yard, and instead stuffed me in the hole again.

Then, as COVID-19 begins to worsen inside the prison, the administration puts me on a bus … I end up in Lancaster … I’m there for two weeks, then they let me run around the prison for one full day just to come back to my living quarters to be informed that I’m gonna be transferred again!!! I’m like, what the fuck is going on here? I’m telling the counselor, captain, committee, that what they are doing is wrong and how they putting me and everyone else at greater risk of getting sick by doing this. They told me that is not them, its the federal courts who ordered this!! I’m trying to tell them about all they’re doing wrong and how I just got to that prison two weeks prior that, etc. … nope, nothing, on another bus!! Now I get to Calipatria and I come to find out that everyone around me is experiencing the same thing! I was already in a yard of my ‘custody level’ so why continue to shuffle people like there’s no tomorrow? It is clear to see what’s happening here. If there’s a way I can file a lawsuit or join one already taking place I would like to do that. If not, well fuck it, its still fuck CDCR on mine!! Nothing about what this system is attempting to do is towards a healthy California – the only ones making sure we maintain a healthy structure is the prisoners ourselves and our loved ones. The agenda of the system is still more boxes and forms of genocide, war, population control.

This is a response to the recent article on Prop. 57 organizing. While I understand how this could be a tool for comrades to organize with, at the same time there are plenty of programs here at Folsom that are doing the whole time reduction program. For example, there are a few of my homies that have gotten 1/4 of their time knocked off after GED/College degree. And they are not white, rich, or snitches as the headline suggests.

Now one thing that we can definitely push is for youth offenders to be able to fit the criteria of Prop. 57. Because that is definitely something us under SB260-261 do not fit into. Not to say that the carrot of reform is something we bit into with high hopes, but it can most definitely be something to put into motion.

I just feel the headline stating that only snitches and privileged are getting good time in New Folsom EOP/GP could be a turn off. It will move/push people in the wrong direction. We can use this, let's just not label solid comrades snitches on paper when organizing.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We thank this comrade for this criticism and correction. While we did print a couple responses from USW comrades in ULK 60 citing instances of good time used to favor certain prisoners, we should not paint with such a broad brush to imply that anyone getting good time is in that boat.

It does seem that access to info on Prop. 57 is also imbalanced. As we are still getting people asking for information, while others say the state is on top of it. Strategically, we seek to build Serve the People programs where we can provide for the needs of the masses better than the state. Prop. 57 is not a place we can do a better job than what the state is doing. Providing books that serve the interests of oppressed nations, for example, is. We agree with this comrade that we cannot hope for reformism to change things, but we can fight for winnable battles that help us move in the direction of revolutionary change.

Addendum: The politics of Prop. 57 also overlap with the focus of this issue of Under Lock & Key. The CDCR tried to exclude anyone convicted of a crime that required being registered as a sex offender from Prop. 57 benefits. But only certain crimes in the sex offender classification are also classified as violent felonies in the California Penal Code. In February, in a suit brought by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, a judge ruled that the CDCR was overstretching the law, and that limits on Prop. 57 must be applied only to those convictions deemed "violent" in the California Code. (16 February 2018, Seth Augenstein, California's Prop 57 Sex Offender Release Regs Are Void, Court Rules)