Federal Prisons

In this issue of Under Lock & Key MIM(Prisons) set out to report on revolutionary organizing in wimmin’s prisons in the United $tates.(1) Self-determination for the internal semi-colonies won’t be won by males alone, and yet our subscriber list is overwhelmingly male. As a prison organizing group, we wanted to look at what is our role in resolving contradictions along gender lines, in our struggle toward national liberation and an end to Amerikkkan imperialism. The lumpen class has a strong training in male chauvinism, and prisons are an even more extremely masculine environment. If we are going to contribute to the resolution of gender contradictions, we need to consciously put effort into it.

We solicited articles from many current and former prisoners on this topic, but in the end we received very little response. This coincides with our overall reach into wimmin’s prisons: while about 7% of the population in prison is locked up in wimmin’s prisons, we do not have close to 7% of our subscribers located in these institutions. In this article we will explore the current state of imprisonment of females and some potential reasons for our limited reach and lower political involvement in institutions for wimmin.

MIM(Prisons) has long talked about gender oppression faced by prisoners in the United $tates. Gender is distinct from class and nation, and located within leisure time activities. Usually gender oppression is something suffered by biological females. But in prison, where the vast majority of the population is male, we still see significant gender oppression. When male prisoners are sexually assaulted by guards this is obviously gender oppression because it’s based in “leisure” time. But there are other aspects of this gender oppression, including the Amerikan legacy of lynching New Afrikan men for supposedly raping white wimmin, which is an example of white females having gender power over New Afrikan males. So it’s not so straightforward as just looking at biology to determine who is gender oppressed. And as on the streets, gender interacts with nation to complicate the situation in prisons.

Females make up 18.4% of all people under supervision of the adult correctional system (prison, jail and probation).(2) They are 6.7% of federal prisoners(3) and 7.2% of state prisoners.(2) The higher percentage of females in jails and on probation reflects the lesser severity and shorter sentences compared to males. Because our reach is mainly in prisons, that is what we will focus on here.

Many have commented on the dramatically increasing female prison population in the United $tates, especially as the recent growth rate was so much higher than the rate for males. Between 1995 and 2005 the number of male prisoners grew 34% while the number of female prisoners grew 57%.(4) Overall, females went from 11% of all arrests in 1970 to 26% in 2014.(5) However, the U.$. prison population peaked in 2009 and has been dropping slowly since then. The total change between 2004 and 2014 was a 1% drop in prison population. Over that same period the male prison population dropped 1.2% while the female prison population increased 1.4%. Since 2004 the number of females in prison has bounced up and down every few years with a peak in 2008, a drop from 2008-2012 and then an increase in 2013 and 2014. The dramatic increases in incarcerated females prior to 2004 seem to have leveled off, and there are no clear trends since 2004.(2)

What we can conclude from the numbers above is that the imprisonment rate for females is growing faster than the rate for males, but the growth is relatively slow in recent years and the overall number of females in prison is so much smaller than the number of males that it would take many many years of significant growth to get close to equal incarceration rates between males and females. It is still true that when we talk about prisons in the United $tates we are overwhelmingly talking about prisons for men.

New Afrikans and Chicanas are disproportionately locked up compared to white females (twice the rate for New Afrikans and 1.2 times for Chicanas). But these statistics mean that a much larger proportion of people in female prisons are white than in the male prisons which locks up New Afrikans at almost 6 times the rate of white males and Chicanos at more than twice the rate of whites.(6) And in female prisons the disparity has been decreasing in recent years with incarceration of white females increasing at a faster pace than other nationalities.

Below we examine two possible explanations for MIM(Prisons)’s limited reach into facilities for wimmin. 1. We are not doing a good job addressing issues that are important to this population and so they’re just not interested in working with us. 2. Females in prison are less political than males in prison. If the former is true, we hope that this ULK will inspire readers to write to us and tell us what we’re missing. We do, however, see some solid evidence that the explanation is the lack of political interest among female prisoners.

We need to consider what might cause female prisoners to be less interested in our work than their male counterparts. Those who do write to us often comment on the complete lack of interest among their fellow prisoners. And while we hear this plenty from men’s institutions, we also hear many more stories from the men’s prisons about activism and interest. In addition, some of the wimmin who write to us are transgender and held in male institutions, with this experience contributing greatly to their political awareness.

Based on our experience and what evidence we can find from studies of prisoners, we believe that wimmin are less likely to be locked up long term, less likely to be put in solitary confinement, more likely to have family waiting for them on the outside, and less likely to have been active members of a lumpen organization prior to or during their term. These are mostly conditions of wimmin in general in the United $tates, and so reasonable assumptions to make. We are by no means suggesting that imprisonment of females in this country is free of abuse or anything other than a product of a system built for social control. But females who are swept up in the net of widespread incarceration are often not the primary targets of the system. The stats on nationality make this clear.

One might argue that gender oppression in wimmin’s facilities is scaring people locked up there into unwillingness to reach out to MIM(Prisons). However, we see that increased repression in men’s prisons generally results in increased political interest. We get many letters describing threats resulting from political activism or even just education leading people to greater interest in men’s facilities. And historically, on a global scale, greater oppression has led to greater resistance, by nation, class and gender.

Overall we think the lower percentage of people in wimmin’s facilities reaching out and getting involved with MIM(Prisons) validates our theory about what leads prisoners to becoming politicized. Significant factors include: solitary confinement, lumpen organization involvement, significant repression, censorship and conditions of abuse. Essentially, repression breeds resistance (as long as the repression isn’t so extreme that prisoners face total censorship, or health conditions so bad that they are unable to function). We regularly hear that widespread access to TV and other privileges really does buy prisoners out of political interest and activism. This is not a surprise in a country of wealth and privilege where the vast majority of the population enjoys petty bourgeois lifestyles.

Further supporting this theory is our anecdotal experience that trans wimmin are interested and active behind bars. We know they face significant repression distinct from the general prison population. So it is not surprising that trans prisoners are driven to political awareness and activism.

Unique Challenges in Wimmin’s Prisons

While material conditions, as analyzed above, play a role in the appeal of proletarian-led communist revolution to any population, we also need to look at our own attempts, or lack of, to organize with this population. MIM(Prisons) has not made a concerted effort to connect the struggle for national self-determination with struggles in wimmin’s prisons. With this ULK we hope to spark that conversation.

With that said, we need to look at what unique challenges are faced by people locked up in facilities for wimmin. This will help determine if we are not addressing the issues that are important to these prisoners.

The battle to maintain or regain custody of children is one issue more prevalent in facilities for female prisoners. In 2006 (and other studies suggest this number is pretty constant in recent years), more than 65% of females in state prisons and 55% of males in state prisons had children under 18 years of age. 64% of these mothers lived with their children before prison, compared to 44% of fathers.(7) While this is a pretty big difference, the overall magnitude of the impact of imprisonment isn’t close: there are so many more fathers in prison than mothers in prison. One possibility is that mothers who fear losing custody will do anything they can to keep clean and get out quickly, and this focuses them more on doing their time quietly than fighting abuse.

Sexual assault is another potential issue that may affect female prisoners more than males. In a PREA survey of former prisoners from 2008, 10.5% of females reported prisoner-on-prisoner sexual assaults compared to 2.7% of males. Staff-on-prisoner sexual assault was also more commonly reported by females (2.5%) compared to males (1.1%).(8) We are skeptical of these numbers, especially since the taboo against reporting sexual assault is even greater for males and so it’s hard to say if these statistics represent a meaningful difference between the experiences in wimmin’s and men’s prisons. Even if it does, we wouldn’t expect this abuse to lead females away from political activism. But it is perhaps an issue we need to expose more often to address the large portion of wimmin who are facing this abuse.

The Path Forward

It is important to connect our political line with our strategy and tactics, and engage in the scientific process of developing that line as we learn from our practice. While in this article we have focused on facilities for wimmin and organizing of females behind bars, this is a bigger question of how we mobilize females on the streets to join our revolutionary struggle. We are fighting against class, nation and gender oppression on a global scale, and this battle requires uniting all who can be united. Around the world we have examples of wimmin joining struggles for national liberation, taking up leadership in communist organizations, and historically in leadership positions in Communist China. While we see the national liberation struggle as principal at this point in history, we can not neglect the gender contradiction, both in the general fight against imperialism and in our own political practice.

Rise up, rise up, it’s time to rise up against the system
One that has many young brothers and sisters missing
Stuck behind walls gated in a warehouse
Amerikkka’s criminal injustice system
full of brothers and sisters they won’t let out
Rise up, rise up, it’s time to rise up against the system
Hurry you must hurry you can easily become the next victim
Another nameless soul thrown into the pen turned into a number
All in the goal of breaking you and making your spirit crumble
Rise up, rise up, it’s time to rise up against the system
Revolution we must demand to overthrow these people’s trippin
Planting evidence, misconduct, lies all for political motivation
We must band together, Revolutionaries for freedom of our nation
Rise up, rise up, it’s time to rise up against the system
Power to the freedom fighters through means of resistance
Rise up, rise up, it’s time to rise up against the system!

It’s been 50 years since the most advanced segment of national class consciousness of a people came together in unity nationwide in the inner cites to challenge imperialism. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was capable of leading the lumpen in the struggle for the overthrow of oppressive/exploitative relationships and the building of national independence, self-determination, and socialism. They were equipped with the right ideology of dialectical materialism, which is a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and knew how to apply it to where the principle of “from the people back to the people” was being done successfully with the breakfast for children program. However, they couldn’t combat the oppressor’s COINTELPRO strategy, which destroyed a beautiful movement. We celebrate the sacrifices these beautiful men and women made when they stood up to fascism, and some lost their life to the struggle by death, or state-sanctioned death known as incarceration, and they will not be forgotten.

As I’ve read books by Mumia Abu Jamal, Robert Hillary King, Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, and Eldridge Cleaver (just to name a few), I’m reminded of what it means to be New Afrikan in the United $tates, as well as why being a revolutionary is the most important ideology to have and apply when facing this oppression, and it’s due to the same challenges we face today. COINTELPRO is not over, but has only advanced so that the oppressor does not see another people’s revolution again. The spirit of the Panther lives inside of me, as well as countless others who languish behind enemy lines, and we will continue their legacy through our practice of serving the people.

MIM(Prisons) adds: As we enter the month marking the 50th anniversary of the most advanced Maoist party in the history of this country, we put out a commemorative issue focused on the BPP this summer for our 50th issue of Under Lock & Key. [In October, hundreds of copies were also distributed at BPP commemorative events. That month we also finalzed a new edition of our study pack: Defend the Legacy of the Black Panther Party.] We’d also add to this that the Party’s own internal contradictions played out allowing COINTELPRO to deliver the death blows that it did. There is no all-powerful oppressor that can stop the oppressed, although we are in the minority in this country. So as COINTELPRO continues, we learn from history and push the struggle forward!

I have been submitting Step 1 grievances for months (no replies from the Unit Grievance Office), and talking to the Sargents and Lieutenants and writing to the Captain and Wardens has been useless. I have tried to make them aware of violations of my civil rights by forcing me/us to choose between meals, medical, medications or religious activities and meaningful access to the courts.

The Grievance Office is not answering the grievances. I have submitted one every 40 days over and over since MARCH and I do not even get a reply. I can’t submit Step 2 Grievance until I get a reply to my Step 1 Grievance. It is obvious they are looking the other way to protect other guards. I imagine I can’t file in court until I exhaust local channels. But if they never received or replied to the grievances, that bars me from bringing them to court.

The same goes for them not wearing name badges. I was told by a guard “You can’t write me up if you don’t know my name.” Asking other guards what another guard’s name is proves fruitless. When denied access to the law library or attempting to address the issue they have threatened me with writing me a case for being out of place and sent me back to my section. So all attempts to remedy the situation have failed so far. They have a duty to investigate once I bring a violation to their attention, but no one takes ownership. What do I do? Who on the outside can help with this? How do I proceed?

When we ask for rank (supervisors) we get denied access to them or the Sgt/Lt refuses to come look into the situation. We don’t know if it is the guard that didn’t tell the supervisor and is lying to us (to not get in trouble) or if it is the Sgt/Lt that just doesn’t care. Since we are in the day-room or cell we have no way of knowing whether supervisory staff is really ignoring the issue or whether the officer is just trying to cover up issues related to violations of our rights.

It has been quite frustrating here trying to diligently fight these issues that pose a legal disability.

I really do appreciate your help. But I have another favor to ask you. For a long time I have been trying to get a copy of the TDCJ Policy so that I can better understand how to fight every case that be written up against me. Cause these peoples will write peoples up for no reason at all. You can’t imagine how corrupted this system is. They don’t let us get access to the most important policies that we need to be able to fight for our rights. I am a 12 hour worker in here in this prison a day. And sometimes my supervisor don’t feed me telling me they don’t have to feed me a hot meal. Just a Johnny Sandwich. Which isn’t right at all. So if you can please provide me this policy concerning TDCJ, I will appreciate it very much.

This is Saif-Ullah, from USW, checking in from California Correctional Institution. In the last 15 months I’ve witnessed comrades being beat, slapped, set up, and pepper sprayed, without any justification, until about forty of the inmates of all races joined together with a campaign to have our families and friends call and complain about these abuses, until finally last month a new warden was hired and the old one sent away from here.

Since her arrival she has walked off three correctional overseers, and a teacher, who had some real racist acts under her belt as well. The overseer Stewart, and his side kick Miller are the ones here known to plant razors and assault and beat inmates and really act out, but they charge the inmates with attacking staff.

I myself and about thirty other comrades have came to the point that if we are attacked we will meet them with the same amount of force. As Huey stated, the party was born in a particular time and place. It came into being with a call for self-defense against the police who patrolled our communities and brutalized us. They are just an oppressive army occupying our community.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Amerikkka has been oppressing the internal semi-colonies of North America since the earliest settlers came to these shores. This comrade demonstrates how to put forth the correct analysis of conditions, while mobilizing the masses for short-term reforms like the firing of the worst abusers. There is a reason why we find so many “abusive people” in the departments of “corrections” of the imperialist United $tates. There is a reason why despite massive outcry, unarmed New Afrikan people continue to be murdered by the police. It is a system that aims to control other nations that demands this kind of brutality. That system of national oppression, imperialism, must be destroyed.

To whom it may concern:

With all due respect, I have prepared this correspondence in the hopes that I might shine some light on the unjustified, cruel, and unusual treatment/torture that is occurring here in the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) and hopefully find a solution and or remedy to the issues and problems we as prisoners face on a day to day basis here within the Tennessee Department of Corrections prisons.

For the past six years, to this day, I have been confined to solitary confinement, due to no fault of my own, and when I ask “why am I being segregated/isolated?” I am told, “we do not know for sure but it came from higher up” or “it’s for your own good” or “it’s a request from central office in Nashville.” I have written to central office in Nashville multiple times about the matter and have yet to receive any type of reply.

Since I have been in solitary confinement/isolation, I have lost a drastic amount of weight due to the lack of nutrients because of the small portions of food they are providing to inmates in solitary confinement/isolation units and or pods. They claim to give us prisoners the required sufficient adequate amount of calories each meal per day. But in reality, the prisoners are being deprived of basic human rights and or needs, as a punishment, being placed in punitive/isolation units or pods. For example, on the date of November 18th, 2015, for dinner, I received only a small slice of cornbread, two small hash browns, and a half of a Styrofoam cup of chicken broth, (cup size about ½ of a pint.) This was approximately 6:35pm. That was just one of the many nights I’ve went to sleep hungry, knowing I would not receive anything else to eat until 7am or 8am the next morning.

As an inmate here in the state of Tennessee, in the Tennessee Department of Corrections custody, myself and others are subjected to dehumanizing scrutiny on a daily basis and it does us no good to try to do things the right way in most cases as far as going through the proper channels like filing a complaint or grievances, because the people who pick up the grievances are the same officers (correctional officers) you are filing the complaint on, and or their co-workers/friends. Therefore, the grievance or complaint goes into the trash, leaving the inmate no option other than act out which in turn gives the officers validity to violate the inmates further, then it comes down to the inmate’s word against the correctional officer’s word and we all know how that turns out. Being that we are in punitive units or pods, solitary confinement, isolation (locked in a small 8x12 cell, twenty-three hours a day, Monday through Friday, and twenty-four hours a day on weekends and holidays), we are condemned, considered and labeled as trouble makers.

It is a known fact that isolation is a key to solitary confinement, and one cannot exist without the other, but what the TDOC has mastered is that they have orchestrated conditions which identify and then exploit the multiplicity of the tactical mechanics of isolation. Physical isolation is just one form of isolation: you would then discover its multiplicity.

Now allow me to give examples of these: social isolation, racial-cultural isolation, ideological isolation, political isolation, religious isolation, spiritual isolation and geographical isolation just to name a few.

Before I continue, I would like to take this opportunity to illustrate the malevolent and nefarious parasitic nature of the tactics of the TDOC agents and what they use to achieve mental dismantlement and social isolation. During and or within these past six years, I have been in solitary confinement/isolation, I have endured dehumanizing situations such as, I have been made to strip completely nude in front of a group of men and or correctional officers, (five for more), made to spread my butt cheeks and bend over on multiple occasions. I’ve been stripped down to my boxers and thrown into a cell that had no working plumbing, unable to flush the toilet, which was already filled with another person’s defecation and urination for days at a time. I have been put in cells and denied a mat to sleep on, forced to sleep on the cold hard metal or concrete floors, no sheets or blankets, toiletries for at least a week at a time. I have been beaten beyond recognition on more than one occasion and I have been denied food and given empty food trays for days at a time. I have also been given food that has had living bugs crawling in it and small broken pieces of glass in it and this is just to name a few of the torturous things I have experienced while in solitary confinement/isolation while in the custody of the TDOC.

Sometimes for days on in, reality itself can seem to vanish from this place, and yet, on other days as I sit, locked in solitary confinement for a minimum of twenty-three hours a day, I sometimes cannot block out the screaming that never stops, the screams of prisoners being beaten, mentally and or physically, screams of grown men retreating from the intolerable pain of reality into madness.

Now I ask what is solitary confinement? Wait I know at first glance and from its most simplistic perspective that question might seem rhetorical, if not insulting to one’s intelligence, but you would be surprised if not incredulous as to know there is so much more than just being separated from others. And even more perplexing is that most prisoners, not being able to formulate their own words in order to truly convey their answers, would probably give the same standard antiquated response which is, “a prisoner in a cell or behind a solid door where he or she is isolated from other prisoners and human contact.” I mean listen, by no means am I implying that is the wrong answer, but what I am implying is, that’s the right answer and yet so much more!

See the answer is more complex than just saying separated from all other inmates, like when physical isolation was the only criteria for defining what solitary confinement is. The science of solitary confinement/isolation has expanded beyond its original tactical application. From the beginning of the twentieth century on back, the answer given was applicable, but at the start of the twenty first century its theoretical concept remained, but its tactical application has transformed. This is directly due to two principal exponential factors, 1) the advancements in technology and 2) a more in depth and functional knowledge of the process, as a direct result of analyzing past applications of solitary confinement/isolation and their desired ramifications.

Please understand that social isolation has a dual nature and function. It is used to facilitate the isolation process as it pertains to the precision targeting of a specific prisoner or prisoners and to serve as a tactical instrument in the service of their (the TDOC agents) torture program. TDOC has taken isolation/solitary confinement to a scientific level. It has become so sophisticated in its execution, it is barely detected on the average prison-rights activist’s radar. In fact, the average prisoners often times are blinded to the deliberate manipulation of conditions that are not required to complete and complement the implementation of the new application of solitary confinement/isolation.

Allow me to employ a civilian example to illustrate the utilization of multiplicity of isolation, before I briefly elaborate on its utility within the TDOC. Okay, let’s say I have an eight-bedroom house and each has a television and I pick eight people to live in the house. There are four rooms upstairs and four rooms downstairs. Upstairs, I have selected the following four people: 1) a Jewish holocaust survivor, 2) a Nazi concentration camp guard, 3) a member of Hamas, and 4) an Israeli soldier. Downstairs, I have selected the following four people: 1) Nat Turner, 2) a slave master who had enslaved Nat Turners family, 3) A Liberal, and 4) Donald Trump.

Now see, I deliberately identified all contradictory bodies of politics. Can you imagine the outcome of such an orchestrated dynamic?

Now even though there are no bars on the bedroom doors, I have induced and orchestrated conditions that are designed to facilitate isolation. Most of these individuals would avoid each other and stay to themselves. I’ve manipulated conditions that produce a solitary state. Though there are eight people in this house, there will be little to no communication. For the most part, they will stay to themselves, reinforcing the isolation/solitary confinement. But it was I who induced these conditions, knowing the inevitable outcome. These individuals will become isolated in a solitary state but completely compelled by me.

Now let’s replace the eight rooms with eight cells in a pod with the same racial, cultural, geographical, political, ideology, religious, and socially diverse contradictions but intensified ten fold. This is the new anatomy of solitary confinement/isolation. Please understand that this new architectural structure of today’s prisons cannot structurally accommodate the old forms of solitary confinement/isolation. Their infrastructural designs have given birth to new forms of solitary confinement/isolation and torture! These modern-day dungeons are more technically sophisticated, intricate, and not to mention elusive to the average person in society.

I believe it is critical and overly necessary that I use every avenue and approach available so that I can expose the tactics that are being used to implement social isolation as it relates to the precision targeting for the sole purpose of increasing the degree of dehumanization and isolation for a specific target or targets.

These tactics are criminal and in direct violation of our constitutionally protected rights. The TDOC agents of oppression have developed these criminal tactics and deploy them at whim. I should know because I have been one of their primary targets for extreme isolation for years now!

Please don’t judge the content of this letter by the man who is writing it, my being incarcerated does not negate my intelligence nor does it take away from my capacity to articulate the complex dynamics of solitary confinement. In fact, my six years of being in solitary confinement, dealing with dehumanizing treatment, torture every day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year for six years, well qualifies me to speak and write on these issues.

I trust that I have provided a comprehensive illustration so that you can and will fully grasp, vividly, the significance of this torturous situation we prisoners, we the people within the TDOC, as human beings are enduring right here in America.

This report was signed by 37 prisoners

MIM(Prisons) has very few comrades who continue work with us once released from prison. Recently one of these comrades offered to ask the wimmin ey organizes with on the outside to write up something for this issue of Under Lock & Key. We sent prompts but didn’t hear anything back. When we checked in on the article submissions, our comrade gave us an update:

“The reason nothing has come out of the shelter is because of a sudden turnover in residents, many of the active wimmin are now gone or just can’t be reached. I have not submitted due to constraints on my time. My fiancée was kicked out of the shelter and due to taking care of her as much as possible and my own parole and other issues, i simply have not had time to put anything to paper. I am sleeping about 3 hrs. a day and on the move the other 21. We are working on an awareness project to get some of the people mobilized. Currently there are only 3 of us working on all of this, a member of Blackstone from Chicago, my fiancée and myself. It is very slow and tiring work. I apologize for my silence, i have just been swamped with stuff every day.”

We empathize with this comrade’s difficulties in finding time to put pen to paper. It’s extremely difficult to juggle the bureaucratic challenges of parole with the lack of resources available for basic survival. We need to build independent institutions so we can meet our basic survival needs, so we can focus on the political struggle for self-determination. There’s a catch 22 where reformist struggles take time and energy to build, and our ultimate goal is liberation from the conditions that make these band-aid programs necessary.

August was a long month on the tier here at Hancock State Prison. Oppression here is a very real thing. Forced to live in a tiny two men cell with another person. We shower 3 times a week which is really the only time we are taken from our cells.

We are denied our right to medical treatment which I have had to experience first hand. I broke my wrist last month and have still yet to receive any kind of treatment and expect to be given some 200mg Ibuprofin with instructions to take 3 whenever there is pain. I’ve filed a grievance waiting to see what good that does.

They say they feed us an adequate diet which is laughable. I came to the Tier progrma 93 days ago at 6’3 weighing 178lbs. I now weigh 154 lbs so I don’t know if I’m getting enough calories why am I losing so much weight. Yeah the PA couldn’t explain it either. He said I was a perfect weight for my size. That the weight I have lost was due to my not eating all the junk they sell on the store.

It’s hard here we can’t pass notes from cell to cell using string lines on Monday - Friday between the hours of 5am until 5pm. We are forced to talk through vents to neighbors on either side of us if we wish to communicate with anyone other than the guy in the cell with us. We’re supposed to be given indigent supplies once a week but it’s more like every other week and if you’re asleep when they come in or in the shower your screwed til the next time they pass them out.

It’s started to cool off here some thankfully. This building has no AC. The only ventilation we get is from the small meshed over window. Altogether conditions here are deplorable. I struggle on from day to day because I refuse to be beaten by this system. I study any and all law work or literature I am able to get my hands on.

I spent 24 out of 34 days with no air circulation inside 8 cell in 11 building (solitary confinement) toward the end of June & most of July. The windows are not designed to open, just to allow the blazing sun in, which we aren’t allowed to block. Normally air is drawn out of the cell and fresh non cooled air from outside is pumped in. Well, it went out 3 times leading to 24 days of breathing stale air. You sweat night and day even with the 8” fan (purchased off commissary) blowing at your face. I developed a rash and jack itch as a result of likely sweating & for wetting down my sheet every hour, night & day & climbing under it to cool down.

I take a diuretic for hypertension, which is known to deplete your body of water. While they don’t seem to care about elevated risk to those that take medicine, one would think given the current lawsuit they would move at risk persons, especially in situations like this where in Warden Carter knew the air system was down. (We have a separate super max solitary confinement which is 12 building and has AC in it. So why wasn’t I placed in there?)

I’ve put in a step 2 grievance on this as well as several other issues. I’m sick of being abused by a broken system that fails to impart fairness. If you have anything, or know of some one else I should write, please send it to me in the S.A.S.E. I’ve enclosed.