Federal Prisons

We here in High Security (cool-bed housing) wrote about 40 or 50 letters to Warden Smith asking to be allowed 30 prisoners in the day room and also to be tested for COVID-19 antibodies. We made several copies and spread them around to have them signed, then we collected them and sent them to Warden J. Smith and he actually wrote back and said that he was assessing our request. So we then filled out close to 20 step 1’s [grievance forms] and passed them around. It is not known how many actually sent them in?

All we are requesting is to be tested for antibodies because we believe that the way COVID moved through this building, there is almost no way we did not all contract the virus and obtain “herd immunity”. That may have been their plan all along at this unit, but they should at least admit it to the families of those who died. Two prisoners died on this wing and 4 went to the hospital in 30 days. This pod only holds 62 prisoners so that’s a substantial amount! Most of us had symptoms but didn’t report them for fear of being locked in our windowless cells longer. My Celly had it and they took him out and never told me. I only recently saw him because he has been in the infirmary for almost 2 months. He said he almost died.

We want to be tested for antibodies so that we know who is still at risk and who has obtained resistance to the virus. I also heard that they do not know the long-term effects of this disease and that it has been noticed that it may negatively impact the vascular system. My leg has been swelling up since September, so I’m having vascular issues and it would be good to have good information so that doctors can better be able to treat us.

After submitting our Step 1’s on October 20th, they did random COVID testing unit-wide on November 10. But they did not do antibody testing which they have been advertising on the radio for “free”. I am going to step 2 [appeal] it until they test me for COVID antibodies. They do Hep C and HIV testing, they need to do COVID antibody testing but they don’t want to because it will show how unprotected we are here. And possibly make them liable in some way? Anyway, we are doing what we can. They have lifted some restrictions, we can go to religious services now and I’m in school.

UPDATE: I just got another step 2 back that ignores my complaints and steals my documents. My step 2 was missing it’s 2 pages of attachments. I know I shouldn’t be so long-winded but I was letting them have it! I’m going to do what you suggest in your Texas Pack and grieve the Investigator for not investigating & destroying documents. This is the second time this happened with a “medical emergency” grievance having to do with staff not following safety protocols with regard to COVID.

They never did conduct proper lockdown/quarantine as they took prisoners out of quarantine on a daily basis and took them to the medical dept on the 2nd floor so that medical staff did not have to wear full PPE and they contaminated the medical department by bringing in COVID-exposed patients. Being in High Security, our housing areas are equipped with medical triage rooms on every housing area but they never did use these rooms. They have sinks, paper towel & soap dispensers but medical would never use these things. They spread the virus by touching multiple prisoners with the same gloves or unwashed hands when they dispensed insulin shots twice a day. I’ve filled grievances for 2 years straight and have never gotten anything but outright lies and denials of fact. It frustrates me to no end. Could you please send me your Texas grievance petitions?

MIM(Prisons) adds: While data so far is promising, medical researchers are not yet confident in saying how resilient resistance to COVID-19 will be among those who have been exposed. So it is unlikely that antibody tests will be used to allow for more congregate activities in the near future. However, vaccines should allow for such group activities. It is important that prisoners receive vaccines immediately, not just to return to normal like everyone else, but because they are at a much higher risk for infection and death from COVID-19 than the general population.

This report reiterates the failures of the current system to be accountable for how it treats the vulnerable. As comrades organize for immediate demands during the pandemic, they must also build independent institutions of the oppressed so that we can ensure humyn needs are met in the future.

I’m writing to ask if there is a way to receive the grievance petition for Texas. As for here all grievances are answered the same. The lawsuit that was in federal court due to COVID-19 was thrown out for not exhausting administrative remedies. Also here at this unit we are not allowed to wear N95 masks. We do not have any rights here.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is commenting on the fact that grievances are constantly denied in Texas, like so many prison systems in this country. Yet, without the proper paper trail of going through all levels of the grievance process, your lawsuits are deemed invalid thanks to the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act(PLRA) of Bill Clinton. Before the PLRA there was actually a semblance of checks and balances applied to conditions in U.$. prisons. Since then that has not been the case, and abuse and humyn rights violations occur daily, unchecked. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped bring that to the attention of the general public.

This is why USW comrades have written grievance petitions in over a dozen states to appeal to various state overseers to restore a semblance of justice to these prison systems. While the victories have been isolated, it has led to concrete organizing around concrete conditions faced by prisoners as a class. These injustices demonstrate the bad faith of the current system that offers no real solutions for the oppressed.

It’s beautiful that now there’s a better connection with us who are in this new sentence to a slow death due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions of free society. The majority of these in-prison cases are caused by nurses and pigs and other free-world staff who choose not to wear masks, either in here or out there. It’s not our fault we catch COVID-19 when we can’t go no further than the yard gates unless we’re being escorted to the prison medical facilities, an outside hospital, or to other yards or prisons. We’re not the ones who are the cause of the spread of the disease inside these prisons, but we’ll get a Rule Violation Report (RVR), which extends our sentence, for not wearing a mask from a pig who isn’t wearing one themselves.

Also now there’s no programs for us prisoners to even gain any good time kronos like attending CGA, AA, Anger Management, GED classes, or college classes. The chapel isn’t running either but the chaplains still show up to collect their check. Prisoners don’t have a way or avenue to stay out of trouble, unless they are really doing nothing. Myself and other prisoners have been harassed by the pigs for group exercising together even while using social distance procedures. CDCR ain’t working on helping us prisoners rehabilitate, we’re doing it our damn selves.

Medical facilities on the yards won’t even do a check up on individuals like myself, but they will call you up to draw your blood for testing, for COVID or not. On some straight vampire shit but us, who are the vampire slayers, the N.G.E. School of Carthage, slay the vampires by the United Front for Peace in Prisons Statement of Principles, which are:

1. 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.

2. Unity WE strive to unite with those facing the same struggles as us for our common interests. To maintain unity we have to keep an open line of networking and communication, and ensure we address any situation with true facts. This is needed because of how the pigs utilize tactics such as rumors, snitches and fake communications to divide and keep division among the oppressed. The pigs see the end of their control within our unity.

3. Growth WE recognize the importance of education and freedom to grow in order to build real unity. We support members within our organization who leave and embrace other political organizations and concepts that are within the anti-imperialist struggle. Everyone should get in where they fit in. Similarly, we recognize the right of comrades to leave our organization if we fail to live up to the principles and purpose of the United Front for Peace in Prisons.

4. Internationalism WE struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people. While we are often referred to as “minorities” in this country, and we often find those who are in the same boat as us opposing us, our confidence in achieving our mission comes from our unity with all oppressed nations who represent the vast majority globally. We cannot liberate ourselves when participating in the oppression of other nations.

5. Independence WE build our own institutions and programs independent of the United $tates government and all its branches, right down to the local police, because this system does not serve us. By developing independent power through these institutions we do not need to compromise our goals.

As we build and live by these Principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons, we destroy the monster that imperialist/capitalist governments have created with this U.$. prison system.

MOE POWER TO THE KENFOLK NATION!!

Currently I’m in confinement in Florida, pending CM (Close Management) waiting on state classification officer decision. PIGs (Pro-Imperialist Goons) claim I was organizing or encouraging a riot or disturbance. All a ploy to get me behind the door for pushing the pen too effectively. I’ve just successfully appealed 4 disciplinary reports (D.R.s) written against me, including a D.R. written by the Assistant Warden.

In the mean time, I’m reading throw-back ULKs. Stuck in No. 54, learning so much. MIM, you have been so much help in my gaining political awareness, revolutionary transformation and personality. My first ULK was in 2012. I haven’t looked back since. Thank you so much.

I’m reading the article, “Coffee house revolutionaries or real militants?” by an Ohio komrade, who referred to MIM as coffee house revolutionaries, which I see as a constructive complement rather than a dis. And as I expected, in response MIM is not offended. I’m feeling this article because its helping me realize that in the struggle, everybody can’t be infantry guerrilla, the struggle need planners and other part players. The hand is made of 5 fingers, and each finger plays an equally valuable role in doing whatever the hand does.

If it wasn’t for the dialectics of coffee house revolutionaries like MIM, I would not be as effective as I am today. I would still be fighting these pigs with emotions rather than revolutionary intelligence, discipline and creativity. In order for our struggle to be effective, we need the historical analysis of coffee house revolutionaries, just as we need solid boots on the ground. We are all in the same struggle, against the very same enemy oppressor, and we are effective and victorious as long as we never forget this one point in unity for solidarity.

It’s only best that we learn from each other, constructive criticism plays a major role in self-criticism. I did a drawing once of Obama, with an obelisk in the background. MIM wrote back sending me a list of historical reasons illustrating why Obama and obelisk should not be in the same piece. The picture was contradicting itself more than doing what it was intended to do; show Obama as a black face for capitalist imperialist white supremacy. I missed my mark, and MIM made me see that via the show of Obama’s repeated drone assassinations, mass deportations, granting impunity to PIGs lynching us in the streets and court rooms, he did nothing about mass incarceration, knowing that Blacks and poors are being targeted. MIM showed me the truth, and being a good revolutionary has a lot to do with gaining truth and putting that truth into practice, and learning from the result of that practice.

MIM has been with me from my beginning stages, responding to all my letters and requests for study materials, and guidance when no one else cared or was able to care. I learned that i had to establish myself in the struggle, and MIM made it easier for me to do so. The books, the study materials, the jailhouse lawyer’s manuals and the plain old camaraderie needed as a lone operative. MIM inspired a creativity in me that the PIGs came to know and fear. PIGs are afraid of pen pushers, but when you go to reaching out and over the heads of their impunity granting bosses, they pay attention. There is nothing like a warden receiving a phone call from someone, or several people on the outside about some brutality that was not supposed to leak out from behind the Amerikkkan iron curtain. I kept reporting to MIM and anyone I thought cared, MIM would publish my reports, someone would read it and call the institution. All it takes is one phone call. And you know when they get phone calls, their body language tell it all, they speak without words.

The bigger their show, the bigger their fear. One time in 2014 they woke me up, sliding my cell door open with a bang at 1:00 in the morning, cuffed me up and took me to the security building just to ask me, “Who is MIM?” My only response was, “We want egalitarianism.” They didn’t even know what egalitarianism was. These PIGs are terrified of revolutionary civility. They expect us to behave like the animals they’ve been conditioned to believe we are, and when we show the opposite, we disarm them. They know we can go from zero to 100 in a split second, but our self-control, organizing, discipline and solidarity makes them unable to sleep at night.

Do your historic research, the revolutionary has never been the one to initiate violence, violence has always been initiated by the government. The revolutionary has only responded with self-defense. Self-defense is a must. The first thing every revolutionary must learn is that the capitalist-imperialist white supremacist is not just going to peacefully pack up and go home. They’re not just gonna give up the means of production and subsistence and power.

We need coffee house revolutionaries in the towers, at the computer screens, in the libraries, etc etc. to let us know what we are dealing with or what’s coming and the most effective scientific means of engagement. Just as importantly, we need mechanics, technicians, carpenters, plumbers, cooks, teachers. We all have to play our individual part in this struggle as a collective, in theory and in practice. MIM has taken on the practice of teaching theory and practice and that’s what revolution is, theory in practice.

With MIM’s help, I have learned and I have grown to the point where I am in solidarity with myself and others on the inside and outside, and I am still learning and growing, making a difference by being different. Sentenced to life for the gun, and being buried alive for the pent. Thanks to MIM, who gave me precious time and undivided academic attention, I’m giving these PIGs hell, with just an ink pen. Just imagine me holding a gun again, this time genuinely rehabilitated. And I am a state(enemy)-labelled sex offender. I believe in rehabilitation, I don’t care who you are, you can be rehabilitated. You can be a revolutionary, practice self-criticism, and let your action do the talking. I’ve been in and out of prison more than half my life, and I have never seen the state genuinely rehabilitate anyone. Genuine rehabilitation is like freedom, you have to give it to yourself.

All Power to the Proletarians.

Get Involved

For every male prisoner locked up in the state of Pennsylvania, I pose some questions:

1. Do a prison have the right to deprive you of food?
2. Do a prison have the right to deprive you of a shower?
3. Do a prison have the right to deprive you yard?
4. To determine when you can see your children and how long you can hold your children?
5. Every prison in the state of Pennsylvania allow gay prisoners inside of each prison to hold hands/hold each other, have make-out sessions and have intercourse. The Department of Corrections in the state of Pennsylvania even sell bras/panties, makeup, provide hormone injections and sex changes.

1. Why can’t we hug/hold/kiss our girlfriends and wives for more than three minutes on a visit?
2. Why don’t we fight for conjugal visits?

6. Do the prisons have the right to talk however they want?

Brothers, they don’t respect us nor treat us like human beings because under the 13th Amendment, we are slaves. Under Dred Scot v. Sanford, no black man has “rights that a white man is bound to respect” and blacks shall never have rights under the Constitution. Under Plessy v. Ferguson, we are cattle.

That is why correctional officers in the state of Pennsylvania do all these things to us and why police officers in society can kill us with little to no consequences.

Brothers, the female prisons in the state of Pennsylvania still have everything and much more, that we allowed the D.O.C. to take from us, men. Two female prisons fought to be treated like human beings and won through pain and sacrifice.

This goes beyond our personal dislikes, gang colors, religious perspectives and individual wants. Ask yourself, if two female prisons can accomplish it, why can’t 3 or more male prisons do the same?

We at SCI-Albion believe we have the power to accomplish it, so on 1 November 2020 we are hunger striking. We are not helping the D.O.C. get rich off of this oppression so we are not spending money on commissary/cable/bake sales. WE will be doing more but can’t go into that here.

We are a group comprised of Muslims from America and the Middle East, Christians, a Pastor, G.D., Loc’s, Damus, Kings, Netas, neutrals old and young. Blacks, Latinos and whites.

Organization Name: Freedom, Love & Prosperity

Statement

Here in Freedom, Love & Prosperity we promote unity and love. With the freedom to be ourselves and stop the oppression of all peoples including those in the LGBT community. We believe we are all one! We believe every one has the potential to prosper and beat oppression. We do not promote violence but awareness through group and social activities. We believe love is the ultimate goal in order to achieve unity of all minds, souls and spirits.

At the moment, during this pandemic and major outbreak inside prisons, CDCR has decided that it is best to shuffle/transfer prisoners like never before in prison history. There are transfers going on, on a major scale, daily. The administration sent out a memo and order to open up a ‘quarantine’ block in every prison across California designated for people coming in from and going to another prison –- we are being quarantined for fourteen days on our way in and out, at every stop.

Before, if you’d asked any prisoner in California if they ever got transferred out a prison they didn’t wanna be in or got transferred due to their custody points level dropping (therefore belonging to a lower/higher security yard) they would answer ‘fuck no’!!! People would be stuck in a Level 4 yard (high security) while being Level 3 (lower security) eligible for up to years at a time – or at the very least, six months. And now, at this precise moment and time of outbreak and pandemic, CDCR decides to look at each case factor and execute transfers according to their ‘code.’ People are coming in and out of every prison in California to these designated ‘quarantine blocks.’ For the first time ever, Level 1, 2, 3 and 4 are meeting up in these blocks, meeting up from all prisons and transferring out to all prisons. It would be irresponsible to think that this is not an operation by the system with the intent and agenda to exterminate its population.

On paper, the administration is making it look good by conducting and documenting daily medical and temperature checks for the two weeks of quarantine, and doing two COVID-19 swab tests before allowing prisoners on a transportation bus… but what CDCR is not telling the public is that if one refuses to take a temperature check and refuses to take the COVID-19 swab test, you will still be transferred, still get on the bus, still spread whatever you have around, still use the same showers, phone, water fountain, and be allowed to roam around!!! Yes, the ones that refuse do not leave on the 14th day mark, instead they’re documented as not transferring due to their refusal, etc. But CDCR still transfers them after an additional week of being on ‘quarantine.’ In the fifteen years I’ve been captive, never have I ever seen so many transfers myself –- nor seen the prison system shuffled up in this manner where we have about 10-15 prisons in one ‘block.’ We got people from Chino, Folsom, Lancaster, Jamestown, Corcoran, Salinas, Delano, San Quentin, Calipatria, the Bay, Solano, High Desert, all coming in four times a week on a consistent basis, and we are all confined in these newly implemented ‘quarantine blocks.’ How’s this for fighting COVID-19?

One would be ignorant not to see what these suits and ties at the table are putting in motion here. I’ve been doing my research and talking to people as they come from all these prisons they are coming from and it is amazing to hear how correctional officers and wardens are bouncing people around within the prison itself before shipping them out, how the administration gave out orders to correctional officers to do this, do that, try this under the ruse of combating COVID-19 while putting prisoners in harm’s way via reckless transfers. The stories are lengthy and too many to describe, but I will do so in a future piece and with proper equipment. For now, I’ll just use my case and experience as a small window to provide insight to the public about what the system is doing and to expose their agenda.

First off, I am a radikal intellectual, politikal prisoner, activist, abolitionist, revolutionary, Sureno artist, who has been targeted by the system throughout the years and well-documented. I was housed at New Folsom for three years before the pandemic kicked off and I went under quarantine. I had just got out the hole because the administration attempted to blame and charge me for an attempted murder that I had no knowledge of. I was back on the main line after the long battle of the torture and mental stress of being in the hole, then out of nowhere, the administration kidnaps me once again and I’m placed under another ‘investigation.’ They refused me my due process of signing a liability chrono to go back to the yard, and instead stuffed me in the hole again.

Then, as COVID-19 begins to worsen inside the prison, the administration puts me on a bus … I end up in Lancaster … I’m there for two weeks, then they let me run around the prison for one full day just to come back to my living quarters to be informed that I’m gonna be transferred again!!! I’m like, what the fuck is going on here? I’m telling the counselor, captain, committee, that what they are doing is wrong and how they putting me and everyone else at greater risk of getting sick by doing this. They told me that is not them, its the federal courts who ordered this!! I’m trying to tell them about all they’re doing wrong and how I just got to that prison two weeks prior that, etc. … nope, nothing, on another bus!! Now I get to Calipatria and I come to find out that everyone around me is experiencing the same thing! I was already in a yard of my ‘custody level’ so why continue to shuffle people like there’s no tomorrow? It is clear to see what’s happening here. If there’s a way I can file a lawsuit or join one already taking place I would like to do that. If not, well fuck it, its still fuck CDCR on mine!! Nothing about what this system is attempting to do is towards a healthy California – the only ones making sure we maintain a healthy structure is the prisoners ourselves and our loved ones. The agenda of the system is still more boxes and forms of genocide, war, population control.

Dear ULK,

After reading your ULK No. 71 and going over this with several prisoners in seg, as well as thinking hard about it myself, I’ve decided to write and let you know about the situation concerning N95 masks/PPE at Grimes Unit in Newport, AR, which is currently under the CDC guidelines / Arkansas mandates for prisoner safety but refuses to give these masks/PPE to all prisoners.

First off you got to write/fill out a sick call or request form to medical to see if you qualify, meaning if you have underlying health issues, age etc. Another qualification was if you was in a quarantined barracks while the Covid-19 infection was on the compound. If you do not fit the specified qualifications you don’t get a N95/PPE mask you get a mask fashioned out of our suits with elastic.

In one case I’m sure of, a prisoner tried to get N95/PPE mask, got denied, 3 weeks later caught Covid-19, then they issued him the mask. A little too late, don’t you think? To my understanding these were to be distributed to all prisoners to ensure that the spread was contained. Thank goodness that said prisoner recovered. This is how they do us, but in the media it’s all different. “They” are taking all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of your family and loved ones incarcerated. SMH! BS! There is at almost all times 1,100 prisoners at this unit and still til this date only half are wearing or are “issued” N95/PPE mask. Anyways I though you could write this please and let people know it’s crazy here too.

Your Avid Reader, Cell 211

I tried sending this by email, but staff rejected the message, declaring it a “threat to the institution.” They are obviously trying to keep the truth from getting out.

Jackson Correctional Institution has multiple prisoner cases of Covid-19, and at least one unit is in lockdown. We’ve heard that it started when two staff members came to work despite being symptomatic. At least one infected CO had been wearing vented masks that have been banned from Gunderson Hospital because the unfiltered vent means it only protects the wearer from infection, but not from spreading to others. When officials found out about the exposure, they moved a bunch of prisoners around instead of sheltering them in place, putting healthy people in the contaminated cells without cleaning in between, and leaving the exposed prisoners standing in the middle of the dayroom for hours, exposing everyone else.

Officials aren’t telling us anything, not even the number of positive cases. We have to get our people on the outside to find out from the DOC website. We don’t have access to the law library.

The warden had invoked an emergency regulation way back on July 1st, so staff and officers aren’t bound by any departmental rules, and the DOC Secretary has not investigated that power grab. If we’ve been in an “emergency” for the past 3 months, it’s hard to imagine what this is.

This is a statement of unity issued by Dead Man Incorporated(DMI) to inform all concerned of our alignment to and full co-operation with the United Front for Peace in Prisons.

After discussion we have come to the general consensus that a unity amongst us and other oppressed peoples caught up in the struggle would best suit all involved in the interest of our common goal of ending the tyranny of the imperialist states.

The maintaining of the principles of the UFPP are critical and imperative in our mission. We, as DMI, value Peace, Unity, Growth, Internationalism and Independence. From henceforth each of us promise to uphold those principles; mind, body and spirit.

Furthermore, let it be known that We as DMI stand in alliance with the UNited Struggle from Within.