North Carolina Prisons

I have been a reader of your publication going on a couple years now, and I find it the most uplifting and informative I’ve seen yet! Also, the comrades in this movement have been most helpful in demonstrating to us how to file a petition against the grievance process here in North Carolina prisons. I am currently housed at Marion Correctional Institution’s segregation unit in Marion, North Carolina where they keep any prisoner who dares to challenge and question their conduct or actions. However, I have witnessed over the years how our grievance process has become so watered down to the point when you ask for the DC-410 form you’re laughed at by correctional officers and told to spell their names right (ha ha ha). It has become no more than a venting process for us! There is no consideration that this is a constitutionally protected right.

However, I recently have sent copies of my petition to the Justice Department in Atlanta, Georgia and the Inspector General’s office in Virginia, as well as two copies to North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NC DPS) Secretary Jennie Lancaster via certified mail. I haven’t even gotten acknowledgements that they received any of them. So you see, we’re being stifled, even at the highest levels. Therefore, we won’t get anything done on this issue, short of court action. The people who are supposed to protect our rights won’t even do so. So we regroup, and continue this fight for justice, so as to stop this “rubber stamping” game with our rights.

MIM(Prisons) responds: It seems other prisoners in North Carolina have already come to similar conclusions, as comrades recently passed the two week mark on a hunger strike demanding improvements in conditions, including an end to long-term isolation.

On Monday July 16th, prisoners began hunger strikes at Bertie CI in Windsor, Scotland CI in Laurinburg, and Central Prison in Raleigh. Targeting a wide range of conditions related but not exclusive to solitary confinement, the prisoners have vowed not to eat until their demands are met.(1)

Check this link below for the full list of demands, because apparently the list released by the NC DPS had sections redacted for “security issues.”(2) Which might explain why the mainstream media is not reporting the more serious demands, such as “An immediate end to the physical and mental abuse inflicted by officers”, “The end of cell restriction. Sometimes prisoners are locked in their cell for weeks or more than a month, unable to come out for showers and recreation” and “An immediate stop to officers’ tampering or throwing away prisoners’ mail.”(1)

We’ve seen the increased activity in North Carolina over the last couple years, and so has the DPS, who have stepped up a campaign to keep Under Lock & Key and other mail from MIM(Prisons), out of the hands of their prisoners. Below is one image that triggered censorship in the last issue of ULK.

Just as this comrade has been pushing every administrative avenue to get prisoners’ rights respected, MIM(Prisons) has been doing the same to fight this rampant censorship and ignoring of grievances. As this comrade says, we continue to regroup and do everything we can to stop these injustices. We encourage the comrades in North Carolina to keep speaking up, as your rights are not guaranteed; you must stand up and demand them.

We here at Wayne in Goldsboro, NC just received the invite to join the solidarity demonstration, and certain individuals will partake. Not all persons are willingly sacrificial, through lack of guidance and direction. For this reason I am asking for educational material to study and distribute through these dismal crypts.

We as politically conscious soldiers in this great struggle have a large task of making aware the fuckery that the great imperialists are doing through disenfranchisement and psychological warfare known as censorship.

Long live MLM in the United $nakes of Amerikkka!

MIM(Prisons) adds: For more information about the solidarity demonstration read the call from SAMAEL for September 9th.

I received the questions on reformatting the petitions. In my opinion, yes, this should be applied to MIM (Prisons)’s already-written grievance petition. I say this because in my response to the grievance petition I submitted to the NC Director of Division of Prisons, it was mentioned that I had no specific complaint on why I filed the petition - in which I resubmitted the petition and attached my complaint. This helped change the grievance system at Foothills, where I was previously housed at.

Also I noted a problem that would be difficult to resolve. In the response to my petition, which I have sent to MIM(Prisons), they listed all the grievances I had filed while on that unit at Foothills. The grievances which were thrown away or didn’t get turned in to unit managers weren’t listed. So it was difficult to prove I ever turned it in without reviewing the cameras. It was still difficult to prove that the papers I turned in were truly grievances.

This problem we had at Foothills changed how grievances were processed. Now it has to be signed by the receiving officer in front of you and your copy is returned right there. Also this “new” petition only regards appeals and not actual grievance forms - which is the main problem. We wouldn’t have to appeal if the regular grievance process was fixed.

I was transferred to Lansboro CI on May 27. Lansboro is said to be the “most dangerous prison in North Carolina” and next on the list is Scotland. Recently, on June 6, the Prison Emergency Rescue Team (PERT) raided the prison 200-300 deep and ripped it apart. Their main purpose was to find drugs, weapons and most of all cell phones. They really wanted the cell phones to shut off any chances of communication from prison to prison. Their goal was to eliminate any chance of a future mass movement and current communication from top rank “gang” leaders.

In all, there were about 70-100 people who were nabbed. The PERT team brought with them a sensor detector (an enhanced metal detector used at airports) that they forced everyone to walk through. This detects drugs, weapons or cell phones. The people who set the detector off were then taken to “dry cell”, in which the prisoner had nothing in their cells but their boxers, shower shoes and mattress. They were made to stay there for 48 hours until they used the bathroom - in which the officers would search the feces for contraband.

In their search for cell phones (which prisoners had hidden in their rectum), they also put the entire prison on lockdown until all contraband was confiscated. In the midst of the confusion, the PERT team confiscated some of our hygiene, threw prisoners religious items on the floor, personal pictures in the toilet and trash and even assaulted a couple of my brothers - all just as harassment.

These 70-100 prisoners have been sitting in an empty cell with feces in their toilets for 2-5 days; most of them have no contraband on them. After they have defecated, they will be forced to go through an x-ray machine, which the prison needs the prisoners’ signed permission for, and they do not have it.

Our human rights have been violated by these oppressive prison officials and it must be resolved by the prisoners first. We must take a stand against this bullshit they think they can pull on us. Out of all 70-100 people they nabbed, they have only reported to have found 10-20 cell phones and modicum amounts of drugs and weapons. Their lack of effort to resolve the situation and get on with confiscating instead of leaving prisoners in their cells with feces is not only inhumane, but a prolonging of having the prison on lockdown. We have been on lockdown since June 6.

Segregation pods are already overcrowded to the point where they have prisoners on dry cell in the receiving area. They have to transfer prisoners due to so many receiving long-term isolation sentences (between 6 months and 1.5 years.) Prisoners here must turn our frustration and anger against our oppressors instead of each other. But I can say it is very difficult to do when you always have to watch your back because someone may stab you or your brothers at any moment - which is rampant here. It is possible, but it will take a hellava push by tribe members, who control this prison! Let’s get to work!!!

MIM(Prisons) responds: We echo this prisoner’s call for unity among the Lumpen Organizations (LOs) in prison. Many individuals and organizations have signed on to the United Front for Peace in Prisons to move the struggle against the criminal injustice system forward. The first principal of the UFPP is Peace: “We organize to end the needless conflicts and violence within the U.$. prison environment. The oppressors use divide and conquer strategies so that we fight each other instead of them. We will stand together and defend ourselves from oppression.”

Greetings from NC, I am writing to you to request that you send my daughter your newsletter. She is confined in a Virginia prison in Troy, VA. From what I hear there are men guards who regularly bully and physically abuse women there. My daughter has communicated to me that on one recent occasion, a male officer broke a female prisoner’s arm.

In one of my letters I tried to send her information and addresses for resources in VA that could help them fight their oppression but due to their overbearing censorship of mail, she never received that information. Those women are on the verge of rioting to get justice for all of the persecutions and afflictions that are being perpetuated upon them by guards. All they need is a little push of inspiration to help them along. They need to know that there are thousands of us similarly situated who support them and who are comrades with shared agendas.

Please send her some literature to share with others and if possible to let her know her father and his friends (you) are behind her en masse.

The last newsletter received from you was Under Lock and Key, March 2012. We are finally off of lockdown here at Lanesboro prison and Captain Covington has been fired as well as our superintendent for destroying video footage of guards beating inmates.

If we all worked together and against the prison industrial complex as a team, we could accomplish and acquire so many rewards.

We appreciate your newsletter here at Lanesboro.

Imagine being in the body of an animal who lives the zoo-life everyday for long periods of time. Waking up in the wee hours of the morning I see the same wall, same toilet and sink 8 feet from me; I feel the same back ache from last week after another night of “sleep” on a metal bunk with a 2 inch thick pissy mat. The food trap has been popped open with a loud thud - time for breakfast. As I arise from that bunk, I notice the darkness through the mesh metal covering my small window. As I stretch I jam yet another finger because I can’t stretch my arms fully out.

Breakfast meals become predictable: eggs, bread and a 7 oz cup of cereal. After eating my meal I go to brush my teeth and wash my face and notice the 15 to 20 year old dirt ring around the sink and toilet. So much for effective cleaning supplies. Here at Mountain View Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, we never get a fresh change of clothes. Just a wash twice a week with no detergent, soap, or anything of that matter. My white shirt matches the color of my brown pants. They issue s state-ordered Black slip-on shoes despite the fact I have my own shoes, which I’m not allowed to have in isolation. My 1 hour recreation time only 5 times a week is hardly recreation in a 15x15 steel cage with no workout equipment.

The only thing to look forward to is mail (if you’re lucky enough to get it) and showers (which are only 10 minutes), and food trays. Don’t forget looking forward to the hundreds of ants and rodents you will have to kill during the day that are living in your trash bag. As I talk to a friend, I get told by authorities to keep the noise level down. My friend is 5 doors down and everyone’s talking at the same time, which will make this impossible. He closes a steel slider which has been placed over my door window - which they say is for “noise control.” Everyone is still talking at the same time so, again, quieting down is impossible.

Finally mail call comes. They arrive at my door with a notice of publication disapproval, yet again. This is the only mail I have coming in, yet they deny this to me, always for the same reason - “may cause violence or disorder or insurrection which is a threat to institutional security.” Moreover, the department and constitutional rights and policy violations are rampant. I sign away the only thing I depend on for outside contact with the world, being that visitation and telephone privileges have been restricted.

What am I to do? How about reading a book? The two I’m allowed have been read several times. After studying some material for the 5th time today, I sit and stare at the same white wall I wake up to every morning. I look down at the rib cage bones that are showing now due to the excessive weight loss from lack of adequate food. As my day winds down, I go to brush my teeth in the same dirty sink and notice against that I am forced to use state-issued hygiene when I have a tin of my own hygiene I have ordered from canteen. State-issued toothpaste, soap, deodorant that breaks my arm pits out. I see why they say the state is going broke. Even the state-issued paper I write on is a puzzling thing because I have two full 80 sheet notepads that they have denied me from having.

I lay down without brushing my hair nor combing it because I’m denied those things as well. I can expect a ton of lint to be in my head due to me being denied a wave cap to cover my head. I lay! I think! Lay on the same sheets I’ve had for months. The same blanket I’ve had for months. I think of what the morning holds. I can expect the captain to come attempt to pacify me for the grievance I just wrote on foul conditions. On the notification the secretary of divisions of prisons received about these foul conditions. What will be brought up is the numerous food strikes that have occurred. The numerous occasions where the facility’s “swat” team was brought in to “Rodney King” me. The property confiscation, mail stoppage. It’s always been a “reminder.”

I could very well expect to be told to pack my things to be moved to another facility after just being moved from unit to unit to unit. Could it be better anywhere else? Will things change? I guess I’ll see in the morning in this cage. You have no “freedom.” You have no “rights.” There is no “rehabilitation.” No “correction” by the Department of Corrections. Only control, repression, depression, suicide, violence, problems. You do what they tell you to do or resist and face crucial and sometimes deadly consequences. Welcome to the zoo-life - and this is just the isolation unit of more vulnerable zoo-life. Where the morning is unwanted and the night is hell. But when the morning comes, we’ll do it all again.

MIM(Prisons) adds: These conditions, and the punishment prisoners face when fighting for their rights, are pushing forward the campaign to demand our grievances be addressed. In reality much of the horrible conditions faced daily by prisoners is considered legal and so can’t be fought through the grievance system. No surprise in a country where we let mass murderers run the government while locking up Blacks and Latinos at astronomical rates. This is why the grievance battle is part of a larger struggle against imperialism. We won’t be able to reform away this injustice, in the end only revolution will allow us to make real and lasting change in the interests of the people.

In early February we received a report from a family member that Scotland Correctional Institution had been on lockdown for over 2 weeks. All the time prisoners were getting out of their cells was 5 minutes to shower with handcuffs. They were not allowed to use the phone to call family, so mail has been the only form of communication.

On February 21 a North Carolina prisoner reports:

I’m on lock down for something that happened on January 19, 2012 which I had nothing to do with. The prison placed us on an institution-wide lock down for a small gang riot, which was handled and shut down quickly. They still got us locked down, just trying to break our spirits.

They’ve not given any religious service, no school, no visits, no sick calls. I placed a sick call 2 weeks ago and they still haven’t called me in.

Grievances are not being addressed. I’m so tired of being oppressed. I want to overcome this oppression and I know it’s a struggle.

On February 16 ULK correspondent Wolf reported:

Other closed custody facilities went back to regular operation after Prison Emergency Response Teams (PERT) searched and stayed on each unit for about 2 weeks. But the oppressive Karen Stanback and her assistant Capt. Covington has continued the oppressive conditions at Scotland. Details of this oppression include:

On 20 January 2012 we were searched by PERT at 6:30 AM. No shower, recreation, TV, phone calls, religious services, canteen, etc. that day. Taken to the shower on 23 January 2012 in handcuffs and made to shower with handcuffs on. Only had 10 minutes to shower escorted by 2 COs in handcuffs, one inmate at a time in a block of 48 people. PERT searched us again on 25 January 2012.

After grievances and receiving complaints from family members and other outside sources, we received 2 hours in the dayroom, 24 prisoners at a time. During this period we must shower, make phone calls, or try to cook or prepare a meal using 1 hot water sink in the dorm. Prisoners must become bootlickers or snitches or their jobs are being given away to medical custody.

All the guys who participated in the actions that occurred that night are on segregation or were sent to long-term lockup. Still these conditions continue to be enforced on us. Brothers don’t realize they’re used as pawns in a dirty chess game played by this administration to finally have a reason to bury us alive in these cemeteries. However, Resistance Number 1, aka Wolf has entered the fight against the oppressive imperialistic system of justice and joins MIM. We the Resistance Number 1 realized our fight is hard and difficult, but someone must speak out against the laboratory of injustice here at Scotland CI.

I have spent the last 60 days in the hole for writing an administrative remedy on the superintendent. He turns around and has me placed in segregation and charges me with an offense due to my political activism. I am what they call a trouble maker because I teach others with our knowledge. But that’s what I do. I was taught by the old heads to do what I do.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This response to prisoner’s fighting for their legal rights against repression is all too common. It is one of the driving forces behind our expanding campaign demanding grievances be addressed. While we organize and educate for broader anti-imperialist change, we can use this campaign to fight for greater freedom to carry out political organizing behind bars. Write to us for a copy of the grievance petition for your state, or to help expand the campaign to your state by customizing the generic petition to your local conditions.

I would like to notify you all that the comrades and myself (about 10 or 15 of us) are going on an indefinite food strike until our demands are met. It will begin on December 1 and the demands are based on conditions at the institution that are unequal to others, inhumane and macabre. Some of the major demands are:

1. Being able to recreate (on exercise hour) without full restraints
   
2. Removal of the metal covering from all segregation windows
   
3. Placement of desk, chair and hygiene shelf back in the rooms
   
4. Adequate food and full portions on food trays
   
5. End of censorship, bans and/or dis-approvals of reading/study material which do not violate prison rules
   

The information for calling in and letter writing is below.

Superintendent Lance Corponing
Assistant Superintendent Larry Williams
Phone: 828-438-5585
Address: Foothills CI - 3720
5150 Western Ave.
Morganton, NC 28655

This is a cry out for help from the brothers in the struggle at the confinement of Scotland Correctional Institution located in Laurinburg, NC under the ruler and dictatorship of Karen Stanback, Asst. Superintendent of Security. It grieves my heart to know and witness an African American woman, apply rules of oppression to camp populated by 80% minority races. Actions of oppression ordered by K. Stanback are:

1. To ban all Under Lock & Key publications
   
2. No state or local newspapers
   
3. No shirt jackets worn in the dinner hall, school, or any religious programs (no matter what the temp is)
   
4. No showering from 6pm until 9pm (with a population of 1500 prisoners)
   
5. No jobs for close custody prisoners once they lose their assigned job. (All jobs are then referred to medium custody prisoners)
   
6. Confining over 145 prisoners in one unit called Green D,E,F or “Gangland”. This is where all the gangs are housed at, mixed together, and not giving any opportunity for regular programs or employment like the regular population.
   
7. Only 1 hour of recreation. Without proper exercise, fresh air, and movement an individual develops a mentality like a caged in animal.

   She and the admins here have created a very hostile environment and seem to enjoy it.

   Brothers and sisters please! This is our cry for relief the hammer of oppression being applied to us at Scotland CI under the watch of K. Stanback. Please contact the appropriate resources to aid us in our struggle.

   ---

   MIM(Prisons) responds: We support this comrade’s call for prisoners to stand up against oppression. This prisoner and others are leading the struggle at Scotland and they provide an example to prisoners across the the criminal injustice system who are facing similar conditions.