Federal Prisons

As the vanguard of the countless oppressed people struggling from behind the walls of Babylon, I feel personally accountable to voice my opinion in terms of the revolution. Revolution deals with revolving, or a turning over, of your mental concept. In other words, it begins in the mind. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire says, “almost always,” during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub-oppressors. Their ideal is to be men, but for them, “to be men is to be oppressors.”

Imperialism is violence in its natural state. The lumpen being conquered and mentally colonized has adopted a psyche of Western individualism and shuns Afrikan collectivism. So when we speak of “gangster”, it is all actually nauseating mimicry and pseudo-gangsterism at best, it is still a Greco-Roman phenomenon.

Mafia is an acronym developed around 1859 about an Italian criminal society referred to as “Camorra.” Guiseppe Mazzini was an Italian revolutionary and director of the Illuminati, whose last name “Mazzini” gives us the first letter of the acronym MAFIA. One may be compelled to learn how did the New Afrikan become so proficient in a culture so foreign to our historical traditions? The answer can be identified as a result of intense psychological operations. Mao said “when the revolution fails, its the fault of the vanguard party.” “True revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love” according to Che Guevara. The true definition of love is doing the right thing to and for one another.

The New Afrikan community suffers from spiritual penury and prostrates at the altar of the oppressor, expecting some form of remedy for our malady. There is a statement in the Twi language of Ghana “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Fellow comrades we must realize the depths of our untapped potentials.

Then on a personal note, i’m from the Southside of Chicago and I watched last night on A&E a documentary about a young sister from the very neighborhood I reside in, and it was truly disturbing. This is not to cast any aspersions on anyone, because I was at one point lost to myself, which personally to me is an even graver fate than being locked up. Even though innocent of said charge, I am still responsible for the deplorable and wretched conditions pervading the New Afrikan community all across the United Snakes. A willing participant in a self-destructive lifestyle, with selfish ambitions motivated by the illusion of capitalist gain, while helping annihilate my own people through chemical warfare.

The revolution fails because people always talk yet never do that of which they speak, because they suffer from cognitive dissonance. I’ve learned to say little and do much. Most of the comrades focus on outer factors, but yet never take stock of their own internal mind state. We are in a war and we are fighting for our very lives and all the lives who will move forward in our righteous struggle. We are trying to out “man” “the man” because cultural imperialism doesn’t simply state the existence of tribes, it reinforces and divides them. All the serious comrades need to ask themselves a question “Are you helping to win or are you contributing to a loss?” There are only two positions. It’s time to shit or get off the pot!

MIM(Prisons) adds: Building on what this comrade writes, we ask our readers, what can we do to build this revolution that begins in the mind? We offer educational materials, study groups through the mail, and support for prison-based study groups. But that’s just support work. The real education work is happening behind bars. By building a grievance campaign and spreading the word about that work, comrades are educating while also offering an example of organizing work. That’s just one example. Our work ranges from cultural (art, poetry, theater, music) to direct organizing (building peace between lumpen organizations, leading campaigns, fighting abuse), and always with an element of educating. We need creative minds coming up with new ways to build this revolution.

Is it possible to defeat gangster mentality in ourselves? The short answer is: Yes. There is plenty of solid individuals who have turned their back on the thug life and criminal thinking. But, is that what is needed when building a revolutionary cadre organization? Instead, perhaps we should attempt to harness and direct our vision of revolutionary social force into a hammer to first shatter the old imperialist system. And then from the ashes and rubble shape a new and better society that will serve the masses free of exploitation.

As members of the revolutionary cadre organization, each of us has to be a leader, a teacher, an activist, a soldier and represent the future by our conduct. Individual members must take the initiative to bring together various organizations for a united front. For this to happen our members have to think beyond their neighborhood, set or clique. All of us are already soldiers of battles that take place right under the nose of pigs. The system does not care if we kill each other. Actually they encourage warfare between lumpen organizations. When we fight each other we do their job for them.

Fight the imperialist system by making peace in prison and on the street. Educate the young, think on an international level, and lead by example. Evolve from a gangster into a hardcore communist revolutionary. Consider your time fighting for your neighborhoods as basic training for the real battle yet to come.

Peace to all the Gods that’s stuck in these chains. I would like to speak power to the truth. I’m a young God in prison, but I feel there is a need for U$ Afrikans on these prison yards to focus more on building up a school than to focus on these prison politrix. What will the curriculum be in this school??? Knowledge of Self (KOS)! Why?? Well my son, that’s a question asked most by the 85 and less by the 5ive%. It’s a necessity for U$ to gain this truth about ourselves and all of our stolen greatness, to remind ourselves who you really are: “Original Man.”

Because the majority of U$ are living in a bunch of lies, believing the blood suckas and what we’ve been taught by them; the trick-knowledge, weak wisdom, slick-understanding enslaved our mind frames believing since I was born and came from the trenches I have to depend on the United $nakes government for GR, Section 8, SSI, EBT, etc. to live and function as a citizen.

Wake up, that’s wrong G. See this issue we focus on the topic at hand, which is “Independence.” That’s 1 of our 5 principles in the United Front for Peace in Prisons. Correct and Exact. So we don’t need no government assistance in building up a school, we just need brothers who are dedicated to show up to cipher, getting these lessons Father Allah gave U$ Gods. It’s all about chain of command with the system. If custody sees brothers coming to cipher they should have no problem getting our cell doors unlocked for school. Word is Bond.

There’s this old reggae song that says “They always use one of us to bring us down.” That totally fits the assbackward movement that is going on in the New Afrikan community at California Department of Corrections and “rehabilitation” (CDCr).

It’s completely redundant and pitiful for these watered-down O.G.s and paperback shotcallers to be instructing their own kind to be attacking each other in 2019, following the politrix [of powerful L.O.s outside the nation]. New Afrikans have enough trouble expressing their Uhuru (freedom) from being oppressed by this racist system.

We have come too far to start going assbackward to start helping the pigs with ridiculous rules and regulations out of fear. The same exact shit Afrikans have been fighting against for the past 40 years is now taking effect to control the entire New Afrikan Community.

The New Afrikan man/woman has the right to go wherever they please. This ain’t no sugar-coated dictatorship. Unity and Peace starts with all of us respecting each others’ manhood and personal decisions. This is no reality check that the Latino and the Caucasian is the enemy. No! The oppressor is the enemy and anybody working with him.

It’s funny because most of these smacks got life telling young Afrikans they gotta do this they gotta do that. How bout you got 90 days to take off on the pigs since you trying to politik, coward?

All it is is a way for us to start going backwards all over again. I smell bacon! These cats are scary and they’ll do anything for some zoom zoom and wham whams (AKA cellphones and dope). Going nowhere hella fast whatever faction you represent; Blood, Crip, etc, etc. All of them started as positive, constructive organizations to better the New Afrikan community.

We’re New Afrikans because We were stolen from Afrika and brought to a new land. We broke from slavery with a new perspective to be free and to manifest our own destiny. G.P. wanna tell SNY what to do or how to live but ain’t none of them politikin against the pigs. Ain’t none of them taking off on them either. They’re still using one of us to bring us down in Kalifornia.

Hotep! Umoja

In 2018, North Carolina prisoners answered South Carolina prisoners’ call out coordinating amongst each other in multiple states alongside outside supporters, agitators and Anarchist Black Cross by organizing their POW movement (prisoners of the world).

Three prisoners [names removed] staged a peaceful protest with the support of over 300 prisoners and outside public supporters. They even hung signs on the prison fence made out of sheets. Meanwhile nearly 100 public protesters piled out of dozens of cars, vans, and SUVs, armed with bullhorns, signs, and drums in solidarity with the prisoners while perimeter guards trained loaded firearms at the prisoners and the supporters. Then prisoners submitted a list of demands:

1. Establish parole for lifers who demonstrate rehabilitation
2. End life sentences
3. End all 85% mandatory minimum sentences
4. End long-term solitary confinement
5. Abolish article 1, section 17 of the constitution of NC which permits slavery to those convicted of crime through the 13th amendment of the U.$. constitution
6. End $10 administrative fees for the guilty disposition of a write up or rule violation
7. Better food with real beef
8. Better health and dental care
9. Allow prisoners to purchase JP4 players/notebooks
10. End security threat group policies that restrict contact visits with their wives, children and fiances
11. Fair wages for our slave labor
12. End exaggerated censorship policies
13. More meaningful rehabilitation and educational opportunities

The following day, on 21 August 2018, prisoners at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Raleigh went on strike, refusing to eat our work, followed by prisoners at Craggy Correctional Center. Then reports began flooding mainstream media that thousands of prisoners across the U.$. were joining the international prison strike in solidarity with the POW movement.

The organizers were then each transferred to separate super maximum security prisons and charged for inciting a riot with the exception of [name removed] who was sent to Butner, NC to a prison that is so violent and popular for 5-on-1 fascist beatings that prisoners call it “baby Guantanamo Bay.” After 8 months of cruel and harsh treatment with reports of fascists putting glass in food and feces in another, prisoners [two names removed], with the help of public support, organized their national grievance day calling on all NC prisoners and any similarly situated prisoner in other states who are affected by this oppressive rule to join them and file grievances against their director in their state to end the oppressive rule that prohibits anyone in the public from sending a prisoner money unless that person is an approved visitor on the prisoner’s visit list.

As a result of this new restrictive discriminating policy, many prisoners whose families are poor and of color, who don’t have identification or transportation to visit a particular prisoner to show em support, now cannot send the prisoner any money. This has resulted in a scarcity of funds to go around resulting in an uptick of gang violence and rule violations. For example, prisoners who can’t hustle for money due to no artistic skills or other lacking reasons and whose family can’t send them any money for hygiene, food, stamps or phone time now are forced to have their families send money gram, western union, square cash app or greendots to pay inside drug dealers for K-2, CBD, marijuana, suboxone, heroine, or other drugs that they can easily sell in order just to survive.

So in response to this intrusive rule, on 21 May 2019 both men and women prisoners stood together in solidarity and sent in more than 15,000 administrative grievances against the NC prison director. Then on 1 June 2019 North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) reported receiving more than 100,000 phone calls and emails from angry families and supporters internationally backing up email servers and phone lines nearly causing their site to crash, urging the director to repeal his 5 February 2019 Jpay rule. One outside organizer spoke with the public affairs office and reported that “there was an ongoing investigation and the director will be looking into it.”

Outside activists and supporters are reporting good feedback from the NCDPS, and folks behind bars. Also an art gallery in New York contacted organizers from itsgoingdown.org and is asking for NC-specific art around this extension of our POW movement and wants to get behind NC prisoners to support them.

With the 21 May 2019 national grievance day, in addition, prisoners are beginning to coordinate amongst each other in multiple states, and working with outside supporters; word of the coordinated action has now spread all over the country.

Supreme Court shut down Prisoner Organizing

For nearly 40 years, prisoners in North Carolina have avoided the political arena surrounding prisoner rights ever since the United $tates Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Jones v. NC prisoners labor union, inc. 433 u.s. 119, 129 97 S.ct 2532, 53 L.Ed 26, 629 (1977), preventing NC prisoners from unionizing, meetings and solicitation of membership.

The union formed in late 1974 with a stated goal of “the promotion of charitable labor union purposes” and the formation of a “prisoners labor union at every prison and jail in NC to seek through collective bargaining… to improve… working… conditions…” It also proposed to work towards the alteration or elimination of practices and policies of the Department of Corrections (DOC) which it did not approve of and to serve as a vehicle for the presentation and resolution of prisoner grievances. By early 1975 the union had attracted some 2000 prisoner members in 40 different prison units throughout NC.

The state of NC, unhappy with these developments, set out to prevent prisoners from forming or operating a union. While the state tolerated individual “membership,” or belief, in the union, it sought to prohibit prisoner solicitation of other prisoners, meetings between members or the union, and bulk mailings concerning the union from outside sources. So on 26 March 1975 the DOC (now North Carolina Department of Public Safety - NCDPS) prohibited that activity.

Since prisoners were on notice of the proscription prior to its enactment, they filed suit in the U.$. Federal District Court for the Eastern District of NC. That was on 18 March 1975, approximately a week before the date upon which the regulation was to take effect. The union claimed that its rights of its members to engage in protected free speech association and assembly activities were being infringed by the no-solicitation and no-meeting rules.

The district court felt that since the defendants countenanced the bare foot of union membership, it had to allow the solicitation activity, whether by prisoners or by outsiders and held “we are unable to perceive why it is necessary or essential to security and order in the prisons to forbid solicitation of membership in a union permitted by the authorities. This is not a case of a riot. There is not one scintilla of evidence to suggest that the union has been utilized to disrupt the operation of the penal institution.” The warden appealed to the fourth circuit who also agreed with prisoners. The warden appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States who reversed the 4th circuit’s decision.

The court deferred to the warden’s conclusions that the presence and objectives of a prisoners’ labor union would be detrimental to order and security in the prisons. The court held those conclusions had not been conclusively shown to be wrong in this view, and that when weighed against the First Amendment rights asserted, these institutional reasons are sufficiently weighty to prevail. In sum, the court’s decision established that the institutional interest of the prison outweighs a prisoner’s constitutional rights. The rulings in Jones, in hindsight, defined prisoners’ status as “prisoners” and eliminated prisoners’ rights to free association and essentially paved the future for correctional czars to place iron curtains between the First Amendment and prisoners with impunity.

Punished for writing a letter to organizers

At this time, this prisoner was scheduled to receive eir first visit in 11 years from eir sister who has no criminal record and who had been unapproved for no reason and was finally approved. Unfortunately, eir sister drove over 8 hours to visit and took vacation time plus a portion of eir husband’s disability money to cover the expenses. What’s worse is that eir son was just accepted at university which puts an even worse financial strain on the family. Meanwhile this prisoner remains in administrative segregation and faces another 8 month long-term lock up. While in lock up ey accused prison guards of putting feces in eir tea and poisoning eir food. Ey reported having diarrhea, vomiting blood, inability to hold down food, weakness, shakes, hallucinations, hot-cold sweats, stomach pain and dry heaving. Ey has since recovered after two weeks on a self-induced diet of milk.

MIM(Prisons) responds: There are some important lessons in this report from North Carolina. First, the restriction on organizing and even just basic free speech of prisoners is pervasive. It takes the format of transferring or charging with crimes prisoners who initiate protests or even complaints against conditions behind bars. But it is also codified by the courts in rulings like the prohibition of union organizing. These laws and actions amount to telling prisoners that they must accept any and all oppressive conditions, that the so-called “rights” of U.$. citizenship do not apply to them.

We can take inspiration from this oppression. While the threats and retaliation will scare some out of taking action, revolutionaries will understand that our actions must be effective if we have frightened the prison and legal system into enacting rules and policies to stop our organizing work. And so we must continue! These organizers in North Carolina are continuing in the face of serious repression, and providing an example of determination and perseverance for others.

Whether your work is focused on educating others, or directly taking on repressive actions by the administration, it can all contribute to building the United Front for Peace in Prisons. This United Front challenges the criminal injustice system through the unity of the oppressed behind bars. We need more stories like this one about the battles being waged. And for those looking to get involved, write to us for resources, educational materials, and support for your struggles.

Inmates at J.S.P. are going hungry as the prison saves money by cutting portions on meals and quality of food. Some of the food is unfit for human consumption. There is no justification for forcing inmates to go hungry. Other inmates are forced to spend more money on food at the commissary. Georgia taxpayers already paid for inmates’ adequate meals. Food is a human right and the prison must provide inmates with adequate amounts of nutritional food to maintain physical and mental health.

Inmates throughout the prison constantly complain about the food portions being cut by Food Service Director Mrs. Granison. Inmates wrote grievances about inadequate meals. Warden Antoine Caldwell continues to ignore the inmates’ complaints. As a Political prisoner, the inmates and I are asking the peoples out there in society: be a voice for us. And complain with us to the GA Senators, State Representatives, Governor, Commissioner and the Warden. Se we can be heard loud in many directions.

Red-Green Revolution
by Victor Wallis
2018 – Political Animal Press

Red-Green Revolution brings socialist theory into the 21st century. Wallis writes about the ecological crises that we face and very compellingly and comprehensively connects capitalism’s drive to expand and exploit to the degradation of the natural world. In doing so he describes how the only way of saving the planet (and us) is for there to be social control of production as well as consumption (socialism). Merging the politics and economics of socialism with the need to preserve the natural environment shouldn’t be an issue, but obviously it is. For the most part socialist movements don’t always articulate the connection of capitalism to natural destruction, climate change, etc. (this shows in the way “green capitalism” movements seem to dominate the environmental movements, which Wallis discredits.) While environmental movements don’t typically equate socialism with the solution to natural crises.

Wallis does an excellent job in joining the two, which should by now be a no-brainer. But it isn’t, which is why this book is a necessary read. He begins by describing how the earth is used, subsumed under a system which uses it as a market. Market-driven incentives to exploit, expand, and profit make respect for natural limits minimal to non-existent.

“One can not expect people to be able to honor such limits until they are liberated from these drives.” He could’ve ended the book right there on page 23. However, he continues to help us understand the totality and interconnectedness of the various aspects of ecology and socialism, further marrying the two.

This isn’t the typical “appeal to people’s conscience” environmental lit. It’s got a blend of Marxist interpretation and is theoretical in its own right, as well as scientific and dialectical. Resting entirely on a materialist basis for socialist revolution, as it applies to ecology. Ecosocialism is the joining of the two. This is so very important, because it seems that the environmental movement is continuing to grow and even becoming more mainstream. Unfortunately, the more this happens the more it is kept within the framework of the capitalist system. “If a movement of this kind (ecosocial) is to grow, it must have theoretical underpinnings.”(page 72)

Wallis truly does a great job of connecting most everything that has its “single issue” movement to the necessity of socialist revolution. From information/communication/education to agriculture/forests/fisheries to surveillance/repression/military to public health and health care services. Telling of how these things are operated under a capitalist market-oriented format and the subsequent effects allows one to further understand the totality of capitalism’s domination of everything.

Regarding technology, the question of should it be democratically controlled or left in the hands of capital has its answer also in ecological concern, as Wallis articulates. He describes the various side effects and by-products that a lot of technologies (of which need for rests on no natural human need, but merely created by capitalism) produce and how they are detrimental to both the environment and human health. Which gives the answer to the above question: “The protection of human beings, not just as consumers but as involuntary recipients of particles with unknown properties, has become very much a collective responsibility. Hence the need for social control over production.” (page 86)

In my opinion, one of the best points Wallis makes is in regard to the military actions. Rarely is this talked about how this is connected to environmental issues, but he does a nice job of doing so. Seeing how destruction, mass murder, displacement of populations, radiation caused by nuclear war, etc. all constitute environmental degradation, this should be easier to understand and unite against. He then connects these things to capital. “In the military sphere, the concentration of capitalist power has reached a previously unimagined level, where the agenda of global domination has become an article of consensus within the ruling class of the world’s most powerful country” (page 87). Then in tearing down the commonly used pretext of “extending liberty” that capitalist empires (like the u.s.) use to intervene militarily into other nations affairs: “What unites the interventions, rather, is a pair of preoccupations central to the rule of capital, namely, 1) maximizing the sphere of corporate economic operations (now focusing especially on oil) and 2) blocking, punishing, and ultimately, destroying any attempt to chart an independent especially if socialist-development,” (page 87) or what we would call “capitalist-imperialism.”

There is much more in this only 198 page book, so I will close with encouraging all to read this thought provoking book and appreciate Wallis’ contribution to socialist and ecological thought. Bringing the two together is an absolute necessity. Capitalism enjoys (enforces) hegemony in order to continue to exist. Among the people and our movements there must also exist a kind of people’s hegemony if we will ever abolish oppression. I think environmental concerns are a great possible unifying theme that can bring more into the broader movement.

Where the book falls short is that Wallis doesn’t commit to a clear political line. He speaks of change but offers no clear line of possible action to achieve it. The book is a good read in that he unifies socialist politics with the environmental movement. This is not always linked within revolutionary theory, and is more important now that climate change is a popular conversation even in mainstream politics. But the book is specific to ecosocialism only, and Wallis doesn’t take a position on important questions like the cultural revolution or the labor aristocracy. His breakdown is useful in bringing environmentalists into the broader movement. His political line though quite cloudy.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We need more communist voices in the environmentalist movement. MIM published a theory journal on the topic of Environment, Society, Revolution back in 1997, in which it put forward a clear political line for Maoism as the path forward to stopping the destruction of the earth by humyns. In this journal MIM argued that “only by putting proletarian politics in command will we be able to address the problems of oppression and the exploitation of the non-human world.” Books like this one from Wallis help get people on the correct path fighting imperialism, but we need to get more literature out there about the practical questions of revolutionary organizing today and the best path forward to ending the imperialist destruction of the earth.

Harris County has killed 6 diabetic prisoners in the last 3 years due to denial of adequate medical care and this must be stopped.

I am recruiting others who are active in civil rights litigation and I am currently working to organize prisoners with hepatitis C who the prison has refused to treat. The Edwards Law Firm in Austin believes this should be of public concern and needs to be litigated as a class action lawsuit against TDCJ/UTMB Correctional Managed Care to get prisoners treated to prevent the further spread of hep. C within the prison system and to the public from improperly treated inmates upon release.

To effectively move toward this goal we are assisting prisoners with hep. C in filing grievances for deliberate indifference to serious medical needs through denial of treatment. After exhausting their administrative remedy (step 1 & 2 grievances) a letter is drafted to “Edwards Law” requesting representation and requesting to become a class member or representative in the proposed litigation.

This litigation could bring about change in the TDCJ/UTMB Correctional Managed Care system (CMC).

We are also organizing prisoners in coordination with Edwards Law to do a class-action lawsuit against TDCJ/UTMB CMC for denial of dentures and partial dentures. An issue raised against Harris County in Baughman v. Garcia, 254F.Supp.3d 848 (S.D.Tex.2017) which resulted in a settlement on the dental portion of the care and the issuance of partial dentures to the plaintiff.

The issue of TDCJ/UTMB CMC was raised in three Houston Chronicle articles which brought forth the need for the class-action lawsuit and the attention of Edwards Law. See: Houston Chronicle “Policy That Bites”, September 26, 2018”; “Prisons to Hire Denture Specialist” October 6, 2018; “Toothless Texas Inmates Denied Dentures in State Prison” September 23, 20187 at www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article

Despite what the articles say TDCJ/UTMB CMC has not changed their policies regarding dentures and Edwards Law agrees it is going to take a class-action lawsuit to achieve this.

I have a First Amendment Rights lawsuit going against Harris County: Baughman v. Harris County, case no. 4i18-CV-960 in the United $nakes District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The case deals with unconstitutional mail-room policies and Freedom of Speech; as well as Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment where proper notice is required and right to appeal adverse decisions to reject incoming or outgoing correspondence and publications.

Here in Missouri we have a dependency problem. Drugs are so frequent and available. We have junkies so-to-say running the yards. Top members and others answer to the drugs. Not to the cause. As recently they tried to organize a strike against them fucking pigs. And again more hit and that’s all anyone really cares for. Especially in here. As this facility has a dark cloud over it. How can you not blame them for trying methods of looking for that utopia and bliss that drugs provide?

Even these people provide drugs, prescriptions to $ profit and experiment. But they provide mood altering drugs to keep us calm and pliable till we gain that true independence from them and that drug. We won’t be able to move on with the cause. And this new drug has got everyone. Even ones who used to have a clear head aren’t anymore. Could it be the man’s way of keeping us docile. Hell the CIA did it, why not the DOC. The old saying: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. So I ask every comrade put it down for month on call. If you can’t you might be a junkie! Be strong comrades, day by day our cause will prevail.

What makes a prison
Is it the walls and bars?
The guns and towers?

No prison is not that
Prison is for me
My mind lay to waste

When I was free
My mind was locked up
And took from me
By the world
That was before me

No you don’t
Have to do a crime
To be locked up

The bad part
Is locking you mind up
That is the real crime