MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
www.prisoncensorship.info is a media institution run by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. Here we collect and publicize reports of conditions behind the bars in U.$. prisons. Information about these incidents rarely makes it out of the prison, and when it does it is extremely rare that the reports are taken seriously and published. This historical record is important for documenting patterns of abuse, and also for informing people on the streets about what goes on behind the bars.
I want to report another way the system tortures people in the Security
Housing Units(SHU). Corcoran and Mule Creek State Prisons both throw
away your legal mail. They do this in your face and behind your back.
I’ve tried to report this to the Inspector General and other offices. I
filed a 602 grievance, but this don’t work if your 602 arrive at the
Office of the Appeal Coordinator. If you looking for help from the
Office of the Ombudsman, this never happens, because the officer in both
prisons tnrow away your mail in your face or they simply send back your
envelope. The mail room has some yellow stickers that say “returned” and
look just like those of the U.S. Postal Service, but it is easy to tell
the difference if you look closely. They do this even when you have the
correct address.
I lost my habeus corpus case because Mule Creek never sent out
my extension time motion on 19 February 2015. I seen the officer throw
it in the trash. At Mule Creek, officers Winkilend and Rechason do this
a lot. Both officers are the only Black officers in the segregation
building. Rechason likes to write “Refused signature”, when that was
never what happened.
The same thing happens at Corcoran. Here they often use the excuse that
my name is written in a different order than in their database, even
though they have the correct ID number. They don’t deliver mail,
magazines and even legal mail. Over here it is Officers Ponce, Lawrence
and Padstoff who do that regularly.
I write a lot, it’s true, but that is my problem. I’m working on my
case. Officer Ponce and Lawrence told me in my face “fuck you write a
lot” and they said I had a lot of mail and can’t continue like that.
Wow! What?! Like that in my face.
Over a year ago I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a chronic liver
disease. At one time I started treatment for Hepatitis B, something I
didn’t have. I told them I never requested this. Medical responded that
it was for my protection. Medical care here is horrible. I keep
complaining about my treatment, but the medical staff says there are
people sicker than me. They have a new treatment but it costs a lot.
However I am looking for some legal assistance in this matter. I have
found out the pill they bring me is for asthma, an allergic disease. I
don’t have asthma, or no allergies and I know it has caused some liver
damage. I started having some bad abdominal pains. I stopped taking the
pill. And did my own research and found out this pill was not for my
treatment. Can you assist me in finding a lawyer in this matter?
The biggest issue I see and hear about here is the constant racism by
the white officers who are the only Monday thru Friday regulars. We have
only 1 black officer who works on Saturday only. The rest of the week it
is white pigs who work.
For clarification, I am a white man! I am gay! I am Jewish! an I am a
self-educated, revolutionary, prisoner advocate! These facts, and the
fact that I fight and advocate equality for all, makes me a target by
the white racists and the one black officer.
But I refuse to be subdued.
Clothing, linen, grievances, and forms and supplies are some other
issues. Clothing takes months to receive (I’ve been waiting 2.5 months
with only 2 boxers and 2 pairs of socks in my cell). Linen gets
exchanged once every 2 months (if we’re lucky). Grievances unanswered or
denied unjustly. And all CDCR Forms (602s, 22s, etc) and supplies (ajax,
toothbrush, combs, paper, pens, etc.) are rarely, if ever, supplied and
the pigs say they “don’t have any” or they’re out.
I’ve been trying to get a California Code of Regulations, Title 15
without success since 09-23-2015.
Next I would like to inform you on the business I’ve been conducting. I
have been studying with 2 other inmates on the tier and putting together
a resource directly that I wish to distribute to all inmates free of
charge (though I do ask for donations if possible).
I am denied access to proper health treatment and was forced to endure a
yeast infection in my ears and on my rectum for almost seven years. When
I complained the nurses would take my blood pressure and pretend they
could not comprehend my complaint. I was finally able to get neomyc and
polymycin, B. Sulfates and hydrocortison solution for my ears and yeast
infection cream for my rectum. After several years of them neglecting my
complaints as if I was delusional and suffered from a phantom itch.
They totally neglected my medical rights by framing me as mentally
ill. I had a stroke that made the whole left side of my body go numb.
That went untreated and undiagnosed because I went unseen by the doctors
and could not get past the firewall of nurses who would not tell the
doctors my complaints.
I want to join the fight for change because of these capitalist pigs
that are only fair to people they consider worthy. They do not offer
equal treatment to the people. The low people ruled by the big pig of
the government. That have sinister desires towards the people they have
authority over.
I filed a Step 1 grievance about the illegality of the restrictions on
indigent correspondence. I cited Guajardo v. Estelle in my
grievance. Below is the response I received from the Assistant Warden.
“The Unit Law Library operates in accordance with applicable policy. No
action is warranted.” - J. Alvarez, Asst. Warden
by a Pennsylvania prisoner December 2015 permalink
We, captives in the dungeon of the United Snakes of Amerikkka, have to
realize that imperialism and religion were some of the main reasons many
oppressed nations stay oppressed. I say this because religion instills
false hope and cannot be trusted to bring an individual truth. Truth is
within us. It’s not some dogma that’s external. A lot of us look for
happiness in goods, money, fame, etc. But those things are illusions.
What’s real is our consciousness and attaining a higher realm of
consciousness.
Imperialists use religions as a way to divide and conquer. Religion is
also used to create racism and slavery. I am talking about mental
enslavement. Militaries are built to protect the imperialist religions
so that they can keep you in a daze and exploit you and control you.
When the Europeans sailed to Africa they used religion as a tool to
pacify. And in turn the Africans were turned into consumer goods used to
work the lands taken from the First Nations. So we can see how religion
is good and bad. But man must know thyself. And all superstitions should
be thrown away.
Revolution will defeat imperialism before religion does. And not because
of turning the other cheek. But realizing that this school of thought
does nothing but enslave minds to support a corrupt system to oppress
nations all over the world. So I conclude to say revolution will bring
heaven here on this earth. But religion will bring hell and divide us
all. Unite and fight imperialism.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We have a lot of unity with this comrade’s
comments on religion as a tool of national oppression. However, we do
not agree that “What’s real is our consciousness and attaining a higher
realm of consciousness.” Lenin wrote the book Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism to refute the ideology of subjective idealism
which remains popular to this day among those who want people to focus
on raising their own consciousness while ignoring the external material
world, as if self-improvement is a revolutionary act in and of itself.
As Lenin explained, “the fundamental premise of materialism is the
recognition of the external world, of the existence of things outside
and independent of our mind…” Ey makes it clear that we must look at
matter and not just consciousness as a part of the materialist method:
“Matter is primary, and thought, consciousness, sensation are products
of a very high development. Such is the materialist theory of knowledge,
to which natural science instinctively subscribes.” This is important
because if we focus only on our own consciousness we will never be
compelled to act to create material change in the world. This is
essentially what religions tells people, but religion focuses the
consciousness-raising on knowing a god or higher power. Both approaches
will leave the suffering in the real world untouched.
I have been unable to respond promptly due to various things happening
here in the SHU. For example, based on the
settlement
agreement a lot of people are going up for committee and getting
kicked back out to the mainline.
Well it seems these pigs aren’t liking the settlement and have
instituted a mass search from block to block. Mines was hit a few weeks
back and to appease their anger/or retribution almost all radios and CD
players were confiscated with the excuse of gluing shut the battery
console or the security tape/seal is in the wrong place or tampered with
therefore rules violation reports (RVRs) were issued out! The same with
certain TVs!
Yeah things took a turn where petty nit-picking was given a new meaning.
My circumstances were just as bad. After my whole pod was pulled out and
placed in visiting rooms to await our pod search for nearly 5 hours. We
were escorted back only for some to find total disarray in our cells,
confiscated radios for similar reasons as explained above and I noticed
my TV was damaged I brought to the supervising sgt attention who was
willing to have my TV repaired until I mention the pig who searched my
cell must of did something foul for which he immediately flipped the
script and attempted to accuse me of damaging my own TV to gain
something from CDCR. This blatant denial of the obvious was in attempts
to have me react negatively to get sprayed out. For which I didn’t, due
to my placement that same day for transfer it didn’t seem like a wise
decision.
This just goes to show how CDCR behaves when pressure is put on them to
change their policies of unconstitutional practices. Recently I have
mentioned that while people have been getting kicked out the SHU their
cells have been left vacant. This still holds true as of me writing
this. The pigs are beginning to fill up empty cells on the lower tier
with prisoners from upper tier whether it’s same pod or not, my pod is
currently full because of people form other pods moving in. We inquired
as to when more people will drive up and we were told until whole tiers
are left vacant. An ambiguous response as there’s at least 3 pods with
up to 5 or less people. 2 pods have no one on upper tier. So I’m not
sure in what direction the SHU is heading or what purpose it will serve
in the near future? While the big search on our block the sergeant
actually told a whole pod that this will become common practice due to
training COs and maintaining their employment for our releases will make
their jobs obsolete in the SHU. The veracity of this pig’s tirade is
plausible yet we’ve heard other rumors for our blocks search/raid the
underlying issue is the pigs are seeking retribution and looking for
anything to write us up for.
I didn’t get hit with a RVR as the pigs raiding my cell damaged my TV
(intentionally or accidentally) is questionable, although I had to file
a 602 and the outcome is yet to come at my new facility.
I’ve been really busy with that lawsuit on the conditions here, and
other complaints and organizing activities related to that. The good
news is that the judge reviewed the law on the case, and ruled that if
the allegations are true the prison officials are violating the law, and
so they must respond. He ordered them to be served with the suit and
gave them 40 days to respond.
The bad news is that they have gone back to canceling recreation all the
time, for any pretext they can think of. But you know, that’s how it
goes.
Resolutions on Gender Pronouns and Secure Communications
A couple resolutions passed at our 2015 Congress in July. One was
focused on clarifying our policy on securing our communications outside
of prisons. The full policy remains internal, but it reads in part, “Our
policy is that we do not have cell relations over the internet if the
other cell will not use PGP or equivalent encryption.” This clarifies
our existing practice.
The second resolution was proposed to change our use of pronouns to
reflect the non-binary reality of biological sex categories. This
proposal was taken as a task for further research as comrades were not
well enough informed on the topic to put it to a vote at that time.
Below is our final resolution on this question, as a result of further
research and discussion.
Distinguishing Biology from Gender
As revolutionaries committed to fighting gender oppression, we
distinguish between the biology/physiology of sex (male/female), and the
socially constructed categories of gender (men/wimmin).
Our definition of gender places it firmly within leisure-time:
“Historically reproductive status was very important to gender, but
today the dynamics of leisure-time and humyn biological development are
the material basis of gender. For example, children are the oppressed
gender regardless of genitalia, as they face the bulk of sexual
oppression independent of class and national oppression.
“People of biologically superior health-status are better workers, and
that’s a class thing, but if they have leisure-time, they are also
better sexually privileged. We might think of models or prostitutes, but
professional athletes of any kind also walk this fine line. Athletes,
models and well-paid prostitutes are not oppressed as ‘objects,’ but in
fact they hold sexual privilege. Older and disabled people as well as
the very sick are at a disadvantage, not just at work but in
leisure-time. For that matter there are some people with health statuses
perfectly suited for work but not for leisure-time.”(1)
Our definition of gender has not changed. But with our growing
understanding of the artificially binary definition of biological sex,
MIM(Prisons) is changing our use of language to better reflect the
reality of biology.
A Bit of History on Biology
In the past MIM line has treated the biology of sex as basically binary:
males and females. But humyn biology has never been entirely binary with
relation to sex characteristics. There are a range of interactions
between chromosomes, hormone expressions and sexual organ development.
The resulting variation in anatomical and reproductive characteristics
include a lot of people who do not fit the standard binary expectation.
Studies suggest that as many as 1 in 100 births deviate from the
standard physical expectations of sex biology.(2) To this day anything
deviating from the “normal” binary of distinct male or female is seen by
mainstream society as a disorder to be corrected or covered up. Genital
surgeries are conducted on newborn babies causing lifelong pain and
suffering just to “correct” a body part that is seen as too large or
small, or even just because a baby identified by doctors to be a boy
might grow up unable to pee standing up.(3)
People who are born with variations in sex and reproductive organs that
don’t fit the typical binary are termed intersex. This term
encompasses a wide range of biological expressions, including people
entirely indistinguishable from society’s definition of males and
females without a chromosomal test or other invasive physical
examination. There are even instances where someone would be identified
female by a certain set of criteria (such as an external physical
examination) but male by another set (such as a chromosome test).
The Value of Removing Biologically-determined Pronouns
From studying the history of humyn biology we learn that it’s not
possible to easily identify the biological sex of an individual. In
fact, there’s nothing wrong with having a spectrum of biological
characteristics that we don’t have to fit into two neat categories.
Further, we do not generally see value in identifying biological sex
unless it is the specific topic of discussion. We are committed to
fighting gender oppression. And part of this fight involves teaching
people not to be concerned with the biology of others, and instead to
judge them for their work and the correctness of their political ideas.
Many languages are relatively gender neutral compared to english.
Chinese is just one example. These languages do not suffer from
confusion about the identity of people, and they are arguably much
easier to learn and use in this regard. In Spanish, the transition to a
gender neutral language has already begun with the use of @ in place of
o/a in gendered words. While English does not offer us a similar
gender-neutral option, we have a history of modifying the language to
suit our revolutionary purposes. We have changed America to Amerikkka to
identify the domination of national oppression in this country. And we
have changed woman to womyn to remove the implication that a “woman” is
just an appendage to a “man.”
Building on MIM’s Legacy
For most of MIM’s history, it used gender-neutral pronouns of “h”
instead of his, her, him, hers; and “s/he” instead of she or he. Ten
years ago at MIM’s 2005 Congress, a resolution was passed on
gender-neutral pronouns, which read:
“MIM hereby extends its policy on anti-patriarchal language (including
such spellings as ‘womyn,’ ‘wimmin,’ ‘persyn,’ and ‘humyn’) to cover the
use of gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns. Henceforth
feminine pronouns will be used for persyns of unknown sex who are
friends of the international proletariat and masculine pronouns will be
used for enemies of unknown sex.
“Examples: ‘From each according to her abilities, to each according
to her needs.’ ‘A true comrade devotes her life to serving the
people.’ ‘The enemy will not perish of himself.’ ‘A labor
aristocrat derives much of his income from superprofits.’
“This rule applies only to the otherwise ambiguous cases when sex is not
stated. Accordingly, George Bu$h is still ‘he’ and Madeleine Albright is
‘she,’ although both are enemies. All MCs, HCs, and others close to MIM
are ‘she’ at this time, since their real sex cannot be revealed, for
security reasons.
“Traditional patriarchal grammar maintains that ‘he’ is the only correct
‘gender-neutral’ pronoun in all of the examples above. MIM’s realignment
of the pronouns along the lines of ‘Who are our friends? Who are our
enemies?’ is more egalitarian and corresponds fairly well to the facts
at this point in history.”
While we see great value in the above resolution, in applying it to our
practical work we ran into many problems. Regular readers of
ULK may recognize that MIM(Prisons) has defaulted to the old
MIM practice of using “h” and “s/he” pronouns.
The vast majority of MIM(Prisons)‘s subscribers are cis-males, meaning
they were classified as male at birth and they self-identify as male
today. (Note that these criteria are not material tests of one’s sex.)
Much of our subscribers’ reasons for being imprisoned in the first place
is related to this male classification. And they are held in facilities
that are “male only.” Prison is an environment which heightens all of
society’s contradictions, and this environment tends to be even more
violent in reinforcing social codes of conduct (including “male” and
“female” social markers) than the outside world.
In our practice of running a prisoner support organization with our
organizing resting heavily on the written word, we have seen it as too
confusing to use “she” pronouns for our cis-male comrades. Further, the
2005 resolution is not clear on whether prisoners as a whole, who are of
the lumpen class, should be referred to as “she” or “he.” Historically
the lumpen is a vacillating class, which is in a tug-of-war between
bourgeois and proletarian influence. Determining if the lumpen are
“friends of the international proletariat” is sometimes unclear. Thus
the use of “h” and “s/he” was much more useful in our specific work.
We believe this new writing policy will have a positive impact for our
transgender, transexual, and genderqueer subscribers and contributors as
well. The preferred pronouns of these groups are often individually
self-selected, as is how they present their gender identification. (Note
that preferred pronouns and gender identification are not material
definitions of one’s sex or gender.) Defaulting everyone’s pronouns to a
singular set of gender-neutral pronouns reduces the subjectivism
inherent in this type of identity politics. We hope our new writing
policy will draw this movement into a more materialist and
internationalist direction.
New Writing Policy
When referring to an individual in the third persyn, we will use either
their name or the neutral pronouns of ey, em, and eir to replace s/he
and h. Ey, em, and eir are singularized versions of they, them, and
their and we believe these more accurately reflect the biological sex of
humyns, in that they downplay the inaccurate binary which has developed
over thousands of years of patriarchal history. We also think ey/em/eir
will have the greatest ease of use, from the wide selection of gender
neutral pronoun sets which have been proposed in the past.(5)
We define men and wimmin as those who are oppressors in leisure time and
those who are oppressed in leisure time, respectively, and regardless of
biological genitalia or reproductive capacity.(4) This is the strand of
oppression called gender. When referring to people or individuals when
gender is relevant, we will refer to them as men or wimmin and use he or
she pronouns. (Similarly, we don’t always reference other defining
characteristics of our correspondents, but we do refer to someone as
“New Afrikan” or “clean-shaven” when relevant.)
We are given shoes - and the cement to walk on jacket and pants - and
the gum to chew on unwrap the plastic - open the box Let’s see
just how much money we can blow on socks symbols stitched outward -
seams pink and frilly made in amerikkan sweatshops - made in Vichy
Chile Teresa Marie is nine and has worked here years fifty cents a
day for her blood sweat and tears she lives in a mud hut with her
family’s chickens and old rusty barrel - a couple flat rocks home
sweet home - here’s Teresa’s kitchen her father shot by a U.$.-backed
dictator her mother raped by a drunken U.$. soldier the baby’s
half white and starving to death fifty pennies a day - eight mouths -
no milk left you walk into the store - air conditioned -
complaining she walks in the mud shoeless - sharp rocks -
daily you are proud as apple pie to be an amerikkkan she has
nightmares: “U.$. soldiers are coming to get me” bigger fatter
stitched corporate brand name socks skinnier jumpier malnourished
children walking on rocks you’re depressed - on medication but at
least you don’t stink powdered. deoderized - pampered.
christianized you want Jesus to save you - LOL - ya right behind
her hut in an old tree knot a penny a week out of the several she’s
got a smile lights her face as she turns to cook dinner her
brother needs ammo - revolutionary clandestine U.$. pig killer