Federal Prisons

Comrades, I received the copies of letters that were sent to Director Gary Boyd and McCormick Correctional Institution Warden L. Cartledge concerning censoring of mail from MIM Distributors. I sent Warden Cartledge a detailed request form concerning that issue also.

I think I’ll wait until I receive mail from CRC and then file a grievance claiming discrimination and harassment against this mailroom. From my understanding two prisoners here have filed lawsuits against the mailroom already.

South Carolina Department of Corections (SCDC) officials are quick to tell you that they don’t care about lawsuits. All SCDC officials have qualified immunity. If a lawsuit is successful the state has to pay a monetary settlement.

What makes these matters worse is higher institutional officials tell staff that as prisoners, we don’t have any rights. And that the harder they make it on us the less likely we’ll be to return to prison.

To them our being sent to prison was not punishment. The punishment is to come from them once we get to prison. Imbeciles masquerading as psychologists. To become a warden in SCDC all you’ve got to do is take a prison management class, which is provided by SCDC.

Due to a staffing shortage they’re hiring new recruits who’re in their 50s and 60s. They’re the worst pigs to have as guards, they think they have everything about life figured out and they’re really doing society a favor by working here.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We need our comrades behind bars to follow this prisoner’s example and fight censorship of mail. We have to follow the legal procedures even when we know the officials are not worried about lawsuits if we want to win these battles. If you learn about censorship of mail from MIM(Prisons), let us know and work with us to fight back.

The recent strike has unleashed a new round of censorship here in Pelican Bay. It’s crazy that the very issue that CDCR claims to be “working on changing,” that is ‘Group Punishment,’ is the very thing they are still doing by punishing everyone for the strike. Administrators from Sacramento came in their suits to beg prisoners they label falsely as ‘worst of the worst’ to stop striking and told them that if they stop there will be no retaliation, and yet here we are getting our political literature censored because of participation in the strike!

The state is so sick that it is not enough to keep prisoners locked in solitary confinement for years. It shows the cruelty, the depravity of what we are up against, and so when I think of so called ‘constitutional rights’ I know in my heart that these so called rights don’t apply to me or any other prisoner in Amerika. When I’m denied even the ability to think, this is when I know the intention is to destroy me mentally and psychologically.

This is what the Security Housing Units (SHU) is used for - destruction cut and dried, there is no other reason for the modern day control unit, it’s used to break you down by all means necessary. Whatever it is you enjoy is taken. If you like the fresh air we will have lock down, loss of yard privileges, etc. If you like to watch TV the power will go out throughout the week or COs can simply take your TV for 90 days. If you like to read, your books and newspapers will be denied and censored. If you like to write certain people they will stop your mail, return to sender and claim this address is a mail drop, etc. The list goes on and on. This is all done to get people to collaborate with the state in order to get out of SHU.

So as people go about living their life, or even for people incarcerated who have no idea of the active repression many face, I say it’s real and be ready for the same repression. I have gone years having my literature from MIM and ULK censored and I have learned not to rely solely on ULK or MIM Distributors but to study on my own or with others. And when I do receive some political science literature, some revolutionary history, I read it over and over and discuss it with others so that I remember it and expand my understanding of it.

What we are experiencing now in the SHU with the new censorship will become common as prisoners in Amerika become more progressive and revolutionary. It is for this reason that people should prepare for this repression just as urgently as one would prepare for a hurricane or earthquake or any other disaster. To disregard this will leave one with nothing, no lifeline to truth, no theoretical nourishment, and most of all no guidance.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This comrade raises an important point about the value of political literature and the need to prepare for censorship. We face censorship across the country in so many prisons it is hard to keep track. But it is never sustained forever, sometimes we can get past the censors after a few months of appeals, sometimes it takes years and a court case, sometimes there is nothing obvious that changes but suddenly literature is allowed back into a prison. Regardless of the reasons for the censorship or the victories against it, it’s clear that we need to get as many people as possible on the ULK mailing list to maximize the distribution, and those receiving it and other literature need to share it, create study groups, discuss what they are reading, and spread the word.

With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows indefinite detention without charges or trial, the U.$. population is becoming more aware of the emptiness of “constitutional rights.” There are no rights, only power struggles, as this comrade explains.

I wake up early in the morning
I look around and ask why
Then I take a few minutes
2 decide if I wanna live or die…

Could da other side be worse
Could it be more drastic
I’m already buried alive
In this concrete casket…

My mind declaring war
My spirit yearning for peace
I got pushed out of the belly
Into the ass of the beast…

Now I’m invisible, like passed gas
Known only by my scent
Digested and turned 2 waste
My captors call me a piece of shit…

They wanna flush me down the toilet
And hope none would be the wiser
’Cause they know if I ever hit the turf
I’m a turn 2 fertilizer…

Revolution is a must
Without it, we will surely die
It’s time for the oppressed to rise
Locked down there’s no trust
Next man will get ya head bust
Maoist movement will get us liberty
We can’t achieve liberty
If we don’t have unity
I’ll fight til the death of me
Til the last breath that’s left in me
Forever screaming “Revolution!”
This is the new world solution
Fuck Uncle Sam and his pollution
Stand with your brothers in struggle
Stand on top of the rubble
Remember Maoist movements
For the struggle

I just wanna address the distress of the oppressed
All flesh who depend on the rest cuz no food is left
Camouflage-dressed in green and black
Warring in Iraq praying that you live to come back
Distraught from Jihad attacks
Can’t sleep and not moving
Sounds of gunfire in ya head even when they not shooting
The truth is as thin as foil
Severed the head of Osama to sign a deal and get oil
Propaganda is spoil, I can see the ballistics
How you think gunz got into the hands of the children
I get it
Thinking with the teaching they feed us, defeated
Cuz we don’t see hood politics come from politics
Say we all free but free as they want us to be
State prison a new fashion of slavery
Make Obama just a racial distraction
Say he fighting for all
Stop it that awkward like a dog wearing draws
Pause, turn off the TV and open a book
Look and know the truth, be down for the cause
Flow strong like a bear paw, sharp like a bear claw
Quick to sever the head of the united law
And brawl for revolution
Speak the truth that they not producing
Until I achieve the conclusion
The Maoist movement

Verse 1] Freedom/ And justice for humanity/ To all my/ Sunburned children of Third World kountries/ All stand together til forever/ Or whenever we receive/ Our given right to human decency/ Cause…

Chorus] There/ No be no other way/ To go about/ It/ If/ We want to better ourselves/ We must confront/ Him. Me’ll/ Be di won in di/ Front from di belly of di beast/ With dem burral of mi/ Pump lying right between him teeth/ Screaming, I/ Will ride for him people/ No matter what/ Then all that dem rightfully deserve/ I/ Will ride for him people/ No matter what/ Comes me way at all

Verse II] This is a special occasion/ For all the strugglin Haitians/ You’ll forever be remembered/ Just like them northern Asians/ Caucasians from Ireland/ And people of Palestine/ Camel riding niggas baring arms for a little/ Land. The struggle to survive/ Is a struggle to survive/ So your vision is my/ Vision, we’ll all struggle to survive/ I grew up in the/ Projects, Third World conscience/ Killin niggas for that mean green mind/ Set. Battle of the rich and poor, I’m posted up with/ The poor, advocating/ For some social justice and the end/ of WAR. On all/ Of my people. Ain’t we all equal? Black/ White, Yellow, Red, Brown, WE all/ Equal! Til we make/ It, catch me at the/ U.S. borders knockin walls/ Down. For my/ Border brotha. Like them northern Brothas, I’m re/ Forming brothas to stop shootin/ Brothas [Chorus]

Verse III] Everyday/ Mi see di struggle/ Of mi poor folks trying to si-vive/ Keeping i’float/ In di sea of destruction/ No progression in site/ Babies killing/ Babies, hostile social attitudes/ Stocking up on/ Human cattle just to get one/ Buck/ Or two. What has/ Our most beautiful world come/ To? Di democratic imperialistic world/ View. Capitalist/ Pile nukes to di stars/ But dey can’t get/ Di equipment to get into di heart/ Of yi hungery/ Citizen cast out by society/ Living in/ Poverty where’s dem democracy [Chorus]

Verse IV] Shot’s been/ Fired. Out goes yo night/ Lights children of di sun bring the flame to di street/ Life – The world/ Starvin but rich people eatin/ Call me Robin/ Hood cause we about to start eatin/ You seen Amerikkkan Gangsta? I’m Frank Locus – Handin/ Chickens to the FOLKS grassroots/ Movement, seven/ Twenty-six Growth and Development/ Three sixty/ Two times we remain relevant/ Power to the/ Who? – I’ma let the people finish/ It, cause you ain’t really/ Shit if you ain’t got support from none/ Of them. Grindin and/ Bustin, shinin and hussalin/ BPP!/ That’s the end of discussion [Chorus]

My father came to prison and got a tattoo
Heart with an arrow through Mom’s name
Hepatitis he’s sick with swollen liver disease
Mama left him because he drinks to ease the pain
An ex-pig-farmer being farmed now by pigs
An ex-junkie who’s made peace within
All the lingering psychotic delusions
An ex-hillbilly progressed into anti-Amerikkkan
Anti-imperialist in an imperialist’s skin
I am hated by my family for hating them
Hated by my fellow white Nazi prisoners
For understanding the weaknesses inside of them
I live to sweat and sweat to live
With a swollen liver like my father
And ex-girls like my mother
Not letting me see my kids
Losing everything I was once taught to love
Loving everything I was once taught to hate
I’ve lost everyone I once thought I loved
In inciting a reactionary’s hate
I’m dying though I’ve just barely begun to live
Hating a family that chooses not to have me
Being destroyed by a country that swears it’s correcting me
Sanity’s mostly solitary in the land of the crazy
“If what you say is right, you need fear no criticism”(1)
“Democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society”(2)
If what you are is a revolutionary, say “Fuck Amerikkkanism!”
Democracy for everyone, i.e. death to imperialism

Forty years today Attica rose up
Since then 600 million children starved to death
Pelican Bay comrades we’ve had enough
A revolution sparked by refusing pig lunch
Cover this one up, oppressor
We’ve had enough
Supermax solitary choke-holding Attica’s sons
Gray-faced and pale captives dying alone
Bricks and steel sucking the life out of everyone
Clench-fisted against imperialism we die as one
Bring in your army and mow us down
Manufacture a coverup you plutocrat clowns
Each one of our body bags more heavy
And sacred
Than a billion of your cracker small towns
Red flags draped over true soldiers’ coffins
Reminiscent of those buried beneath Kremlin gates
Red darns rising like earth under stampeding buffalo
Another empire crushed poetically
Like the Greek goddess of fates
Forty years today Attica rose up
And for the first time ever today
One captive voice echoed the world over
As one
One lung
We’ve had enough

A solid square where one must breathe only so much
You see
We are given oxygen but only so much
Being fed just enough to feed one’s hunger
Four paces back, four paces forth
Four cinderblock walls and a rusty steel door
If you think too much you will lose your mind
Not think enough and you will lose your mind
If you cry you’ll not be able to stop
Laughing for days
Why
You forgot
Our voices revert to childlike tones
Faces pale as sundried bones
Listening to nothing
Yet hearing everything
Talking to no one
But the faces in the ceiling
Belonging to no one but the struggle against this diseased capitalist state
Silently millions sit sitting
Uneasily, unceasingly – squirming in
Society’s hate

Six by twelve food cell feeling like
A freshly dug six foot hole
It’s the sixth suicide since December
And it’s only six twenty-four
I sit and try to forget
When all that’s possible is remember
To bleed with no trace of blood
It’s like a death with no hug
Dying a death minus the roses
Is like living a life with no one
I called your name at midnight
Took an hour for the echo
I saw your face in my sleep crying
Whispering, whispering alone, whispering to no one
I’ll turn twenty-five in two months
But look sixty in the mirror
I’ll never forget the smell of vanilla
Us stoned sweetly contented together
I can do a whole year in only a month
I’ve eaten the same meal five years
The same bologna for dinner, breakfast and lunch
Same curls, shrugs and decline pushups
I can maintain because I know one thing
My life is tied to something larger
I will survive for only one purpose and that’s to see my people suffer
No longer