Federal Prisons

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]

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

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

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

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 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…

Ten years today the towers fell
Since then 150 million children starved to death
Tell us again why the towers fell
Does tragedy count less on child’s breath
We stand around as our nation starves nations
Texting, banging and killing each other
Pigs throw us in prison with brainwashing TV stations
Yet we accept this system unquestioningly
Killing each other
Capitalism created gangsterism, open your eyes
Each time we slang or rob a 7-11
The pigs cheer as our mothers cry
God isn’t waiting on the clouds in heaven
The pigs created God, too, open your eyes
Hell does exist but it’s where the soldiers go
Raping, bombing and Uncle Sam’s favorite, genocide
We the people of the prison industrial complex
Pledge to support the world’s majority
We anti-Amerikkkans and anti-imperialists
Pledge to come together and defeat your authority
We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again
USW comrades grappling line questions
You can pull your triggers on our pseudonyms
But we’ll regroup Hydra-headed again and again
Vanguard party brothers and sisters join up
Maoist study cells and progressive literature
Petty individualism down, the collective up
The captors held captive you have my signature
We create socialism then lock the rich up
Feed the hungry and cure the sick children
Who’s the bad guy? It’s them comrades. Not us.

These tyrants got me feeling so oblique, as this pen leaks.
I keep my Tims strapped tight, so I move swiftly upon this concrete beast.
Oppression from the police is never stopping me.
I fight, for love, life & liberty.
“Freedom!” is what our people scream.
Crazy how something positive can quickly turn into a murder scene.
The capitalist mentality has made my homies murder men down for anything…
Anything to ease the suffering.
Aren’t you tired of struggling?
I am, so why you still slumbering?
No more talking, time for action!
Elevate your mind, broaden your horizons, rise to the occasion!
Revolution! That’s our vision.
To stop all of these divisions.
Death from these corrupt politicians.
Don’t mean to sound like I’m bitchen,
but I’m tired of these crackers shaken the spoon in the kitchen.
Homicide on oppression that’s what I’m really wishin’.
Inmates tell me that I’m trippin, but I don’t even listen.
Because they blind like bats in daylight, still screaming that they thuggin.
So tell me beloved comrades, who the one that’s really buggin?

Peace, comrades in the struggle! First and foremost the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) is a modern day slave plantation. Being political is a crime within itself because once I became aware of the truth then the system considered me a threat. I’m a Black man in solitary confinement due to my passion to stay alive and I strive to use this time to analyze my legal problems and how to continue to educate myself.

I write this so-called law library to request certain law books and other legal material but I’m being denied because the law library is not up to date and lacks current books we need. Not only that, the SCDC has designated a ban on all magazines, newspapers, books, photos, etc. that come from outside sources, whether it be from publishing companies or organizations. In Special Management Unit (SMU), where prisoners are housed 23 hours a day behind a locked door, SCDC mandates all above material must come from its institutional library, where no newspapers or magazines are allowed, period. Only the inadequate out-of-date law books and library books. Because of this ban many people suffer from lack of information and educational material and legal material.

So I reached out to receive The Georgetown Law Journal 2010 Edition from Georgetown Law. I was denied permission to purchase that journal out of my own funds. Then I wrote to Prison Legal News, South Chicago ABC Zine Distro, Justice Watch, Turning the Tide, the Maoist Prison Cell, the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. All these organizations sent me material but I was denied access to have the material and it was sent back because of the so-called policies OP 22.12 and PS 10.08. These policies can be downloaded on the SCDC website.

I have limited information I can use to fight oppression as a whole. I have offered my problems at the hands of my oppressor to hopefully serve as a springboard for further war against oppression. Times do get hectic because recently I was placed in a full restraint chair off the words of another prisoner’s statement! I am aware of some cases that deal with censorship, so I’m doing my research the best way possible even though the law books inside the library don’t have cases past 2001!! And the thing about it is the mailroom staff have a list of names of publications that aren’t allowed to send mail to this institution. She has no education in security besides searching mail for contraband. Of course I’m aware of the Prison Litigation Reform Act; that’s why I am going through the grievance procedures now. I will continue to fight this system and hopefully my voice will be heard outside of these walls.

SCDC has no educational programs so it’s more about self-education, but as you see I’m limited on that also. They have even started feeding prisoners in here two meals on Saturday and Sunday due to so-called budged cuts, but Monday through Friday we receive three meals per day. This is a very hard battle but my will is to survive physically and mentally until there’s no fighting left. I hope you can continue to send me updated info because I can receive up to five pages of material printed out like the Censorship Pack you recently sent. Thanks for your support.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We don’t like to echo the common accusation that U.$. prisons are modern day slavery because it is misleading about who is being put in prison and why. Yet, we can’t deny that the repression of basic education in South Carolina seems to be very similar to the slave days. This is above and beyond what most U.$. prisoners face in 2011, and is straight up doublespeak for an organization that claims in their mission statement that “we will provide rehabilitation and self-improvement opportunities for inmates.”

I have just recently been introduced to Under Lock & Key. I regret that I’ve been ignorant to the existence of such an inspiring movement. I commend you all in exposing the harsh reality that is the Department of Corruption nationwide.

Here in West Virginia the nature of incarceration is mostly mental and emotional torture. Segregation time is handed out in 30- and 60-day increments for infractions of the pettiest kind: borrowing someone else’s CD can get you 30 days. Giving a man a soup because he’s hungry lands you in SHU for 30 days. Multiple class 2 writeups get you 60 as well as any class 1. Tobacco products get you 60 days. Then god forbid you get caught with a weapon… that’s 2 years minimum on the “Quality of Life Program.”

The SHU is sensory deprivation to the fullest. There is no access to reading books from the library, and of course no radio or television. If you get no newspapers or magazines in the mail, you have nothing. Get caught passing reading material and it’s another 30 days. It’s a very stressful game to hold on to your sanity.

Though the atmosphere is not very violent, it is taxing mentally. Behind every face is a potential informant. There are few that can truly be trusted and even fewer who can be depended on. We have no unity. Some try to open the eyes of others to see the true enemy, but often times to no avail. Administration members play us against each other at every turn. They oppress religious freedoms and the mere freedom of thought. Voicing opinions in grievances gets you put in the SHU.

I anxiously await the next issue of Under Lock & Key for advice, direction, and inspiration.

MIM(Prisons) adds: The torture of prison control units, like the SHU described by this prisoner, is widespread in Amerika. It is something we have been fighting against for years, many comrades decades, but with little success in actually stopping the torture. Isolation units are used as a tool of social control for a population that the imperialists have no productive use for. In this system, prisoncrats work hard to set prisoners against one another by rewarding snitching as another method of control. Division and fear are powerful tools for the criminal injustice system. Under Lock & Key is an important tool for prisoners to fight back, organize, and unify. Share this publication with others, form discussion groups to talk about the articles, and get in touch with us to share your stories and struggles. There are many more people like the one above who have plenty of experience with repression, but have had little access to comrades and forums for analyzing and struggling to end it. We are working to change that.