Response to ULK issue #1 on "captives" and censorship
Revolutionary greetings! First I want to say I just received your ULK number 1 and I read it front to back and I must commend you comrades on an outstanding job. I really enjoyed it and will continue to enjoy it until my next issue! It has been a while since I last received word from you comrades or received any of your literature so it was very well received.
Here at Tehachapi SHU we are not being given our MIM Theory or MIM Notes. I have 602ed (appealed) this issue on 4 different occasions because a common practice here at Tehachapi SHU is for 602s to get “lost” so what I have done is send my 602 straight to the appeals director in Sacramento, letting him know the issue of appeal and how this prison don’t answer or even return appeals on serious issues. What the director will do is send my 602 back telling me to “exhaust all levels of appeal” before sending it to him, but it often times will come with a “log number’ and this will force this prisons appeal coordinator to act on it. Once I get it back I will send you a copy.
You comrades did an excellent job in getting Under Lock and Key behind the walls but I do miss MIM Notes and Theories. I wanted to comment on the comrade’s letter on wanting to be called “captive”. The word captive conjures up the slave master holding his captives (slaves) so on the one hand, I think captive is a good portrayal of the people chained to this capitalist system. Yet on a higher conscious level I think when we recognize the inner workings of this system and what causes slavery in the first place is capitalism, so we need to get to the heart of the issues, capitalism caused slavery, racism, injustice, patriarchy, control units, prison abuse, police abuse, etc, etc. The list goes on but capitalism is at the heart of the issues, thus our imprisonment becomes political because of the system that imprisons us. So I feel the proper name for us locked up in these modern day plantations is “political prisoners.” With that said, I will await the next ULK issue.
