Utah Prisons

I would like to share a story with you about a recent experience I had here at Iron County Jail in Utah. I was recently moved, very much against my will, from the housing unit where I have spent most of my time at in Iron County Jail. In that unit, I had a good routine going and good friends who were a positive influence on me. Well the pigs, unable to stand the sight of a happy prisoner, took a wrecking ball to it.

This caused me to have a severe anxiety attack, which then caused me to make statements that got me put on suicide watch. As bad as this place is in general, the suicide watch protocols are absolutely draconian. On suicide watch we are given only a “turtle suit” to wear, are fed special sack meals that fall well short of nutrition and calorie requirements and are left to sleep on the cement floor in a cell almost as cold as a walk-in refrigerator. While I was down there, there was a girl who was brought up on warrants who was so distraught that she was also put on suicide watch. While she was in her cell bawling her eyes out, one of the pigs, a fat punk named Smith, walked up to her window, stood there for about 15 seconds staring at her, then walked away with a smug smirk on his fat face. How can someone enjoy that?

These pigs are truly evil, twisted, sadistic, sick fucks! They belong in here, not us! After she had calmed down some, I explained to her briefly the steps she must go through to file a lawsuit. Boy did that piss the pigs off! :) The next day the mental health therapist came to interview the people on suicide watch to determine if they could be cleared or not. The therapist was permitted to see the girl and another guy who had gone on the watch later. But when he asked about me, the medical pig Mitchell told him, “we’re letting him chill for a while,” and sent the therapist away.

I then told Sgt. McNeil that I was being denied access to mental health care and they were illegally using the suicide watch as a disciplinary tool and that I wanted a grievance form. Sgt. McNeil immediately began lying, saying that the therapist didn’t have time to see me! Horse feathers! The therapist asked to see me! This was not the first time McNeil has lied to me. One time he tried to tell me I’m not entitled to legal calls, another time he tried to tell me there is “tons of case law” that says he can open and read my privileged legal mail! This happened on Friday and the therapist didn’t return to see me until Tuesday. I spent a total of six days on suicide watch when I should have spent less than two.

Six days in the turtle suit in a freezing cold cell with no bed, no hygiene supplies, no shower, and very little food, all because the pigs want to retaliate against me because I stick up for myself and encourage others to do the same. Best believe when I got back to my cell, I filed that grievance with a quickness! I haven’t gotten a response yet, but what I did get was two retaliatory disciplinary write ups! One for “manipulation of housing and threats of self mutilation” for simply saying that I was feeling suicidal during an anxiety attack and another for “refusing or failing to follow a direct order and unauthorized communication with inmates outside your housing unit” because I asked prisoners in booking to tell my wife I love her and telling that girl how to sue these pigs.

I will write you again to let you know how the grievance pans out. These two frivolous and blatantly retaliatory write ups will likely land me on punitive isolation for 30-60 days each, so I’ll have plenty of time to pursue it. Please keep Under Lock & Key coming and I will continue to share it with anyone who is interested. Thank you for all that you do for us!

[This story came to us on 5 postcards because prisoners at Iron County Jail cannot send or receive any envelopes other than privileged legal mail. Letters that don’t qualify as legal mail must be written on plain postcards like this comrade sent us.]

At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis President Trump warned us against price gouging but that never stopped the jail system. The criminal injustice system put people in jail for stealing but then they turn around and steal from the same people they accuse of stealing. County jails are full of homeless people, drug addicts and indigent people who have limited means or no family or friend to help provide those means, yet the canteen prices for commissary are outrageous. These same projects can be bought at the Dollar store.

For example, items such as V05 shampoo, which you can purchase at the dollar store for $1.25, commissary price is $3.99. One ramen noodle can be purchased for $0.25 at the store, will cost you $1.19 in commissary. Also a 10 pack of SweetNLow cost $0.99. For generic denture glue it’s $7 in commissary compared to $1.25 at the Dollar store. The list goes on and on. Is that not price gouging?

Prisoners are forced to accept it. They have no choice they have to pay it or go without. Hygiene and medications they desperately need. My question to you how do we change this? and stop jails from stealing from prisoners.

October 18 - The Utah Supreme Court overturned an injunction that had barred almost 500 people that Weber County claims are members of a lumpen organization known as the Ogden Trece from associating with each other. Members were banned from driving, standing, walking, sitting, gathering or in any way appearing together anywhere in a 25-square-mile area that covered most of the city of Ogden. It also imposed a curfew between 11pm and 5am for these folks. This ban has been in place since 2010.

The Supreme Court threw out the injunction on a legal technicality, because the county failed to properly serve summons to members of the organization. The county posted notices on a Utah legal notices website and in the Ogden Standard Examiner, a local newspaper. The court found this to be insufficient notice. Members of the organization also challenged the constitutionality of the injunction in denying their right to associate, but the Court did not rule on this challenge.

The Deputy Attorney for Weber County made a case for the injunction: “Case loads on average going from 16 per month on something like graffiti down to four. So we can show a 75 percent drop in criminal street gang activity.” This is an interesting definition of “criminal street gang activity”: acts of graffiti.(1) Clearly the police and courts are determined to go after this lumpen organization, which they call a “public nuisance,” civil liberties and rights be damned.

We see a lot of parallels between validation in prison and identification as a member of a street organization in Ogden. According to the Ogden Gang Detective Anthony Powers, the police keep a “gang database” to document who belongs to a street organization. There are eight possible criteria, and anyone meeting two of them is entered in the database. A musician in a group that includes people believed to be Ogden Trece members was included in the injunction because he has been seen around with these folks.(2)

We only have news of this from the mainstream press, but we regularly see this same repression of oppressed nations both in prisons and on the streets. The trick of labeling someone a member of a lumpen organization is used to lock prisoners in solitary confinement and keep them from having contact with other prisoners. It’s often used to target politically active prisoners. On the streets, whether in Utah or any other state, we are seeing that Amerikans, who are often willing to suspend constitutional rights for prisoners, are similarly unconcerned about this same practice on the streets.

What really worries the state is when lumpen organizations come together for peace and to promote national liberation struggles. This was seen in California during the recent hunger strike, in Florida during the September 9 Day of Solidarity last year, and in the many lumpen organizations and representatives signing on to the United Front for Peace in Prisons.

We know that street organizations, just like prison organizations, are a natural result of imperialist society in the United $tates. The oppressed nations are going to come together in self-defense, and in the absence of revolutionary leadership they will join whatever group meets their needs. While lumpen organizations are fighting one another and targeting their people for street crime they are helping the imperialists. This is why we work so hard to build a United Front and bring these groups together for the betterment of all oppressed people.

Revolutionary greetings to all who stand in opposition to the oppression being inflicted upon the people! I’m writing to you from within the depths of the Utah state prison where it’s business as usual for these oppressive devils. Here in the housing unit known as Uinta One, the vents are pumping out cold air and there’s nothing much that can be done, because if we go off and buck on the cops we will only gain a 48 hour strip cell. The situation is sickening, but only one of many!

I was placed in Uinta One at the beginning of December with no explanation other than that I was “under investigation.” I was already housed in maximum security gang housing under “Severe Threat Group” (STG) classification. I’ve been put under numerous investigations before this one and it usually involves my cell being tossed and all property being searched or seized, along with mail and phone calls being monitored. But now they choose to start the investigation by taking all my stuff and shipping me to the hole where it took over 35 days before I could even order a bar of soap or deodorant from commissary.

This has been done to many other prisoners who are housed in the so-called STG program. Most of the prisoners whose scheduled release from STG maximum security is close, or past due, do not get moved to less restrictive housing, and the ones who are at the forefront of fighting this injustice are often subject to more harassment, or in certain cases moved to “deeper” parts of the hole, aka Uinta One.

Most recently the prisoners of Uinta Two, both STG and non-STG, have been petitioning to change the privilege level system to one that treats all maximum security prisoners equally. They are demanding that we all be allowed to get 3 visits a month, unlimited phone calls while on recreation (out of cell time, which is one hour and 15 minutes every other day) and to be allowed the same spending limit on commissary. These privileges are provided to prisoners who are in maximum security but not classified as STG. What is the difference between a maximum security prisoner who is STG and one who’s not? Nothing other than how the oppressors have decided to classify us. Some members of LOs are considered STG and others are not, yet we live together in the STG unit regardless of a prisoner’s STG status, as long as our LOs are believed to get along with each other.

Prisoners’ first amendment rights are clearly violated by the STG policy and program here. They punish us by locking us in maximum security where we only recreate one cell at a time for an hour and 15 minutes every other day. We are given STG classification for tattoos or suspected gang affiliation without ever even having any write ups (disciplinary convictions) in this prison.

The oppression is real and thick here at the Utah State Prison, but we are fighting back.

I hope that all of the prisoners who are showing unity can continue to enlighten each other and others to the need for a united struggle! I know we have our differences, but we all are similarly oppressed. Stand tall, stand strong.

MIM(Prisons) adds: “Threat Group” classification is used by prisons across the country to target oppressed nation prisoners, specifically those who are politically active and organizing others to stand up for their rights. The classification system is arbitrary and allows use of things like holiday cards, or legal help, as evidence of association. Further, in many states the evidence is kept secret so prisoners can’t fight false classification. This status often gets prisoners locked in isolation units, where conditions like those described above eat away at physical and mental health. This is part of the systematic oppression of the criminal injustice system, serving imperialism by keeping the lumpen in check. As this prisoner wrote, unity is key to our fight against this system.

The Utah crooked board of pardons and parole has supreme power over how much time a person has to serve in the Utah crooked prison system.

In the state of Utah, the way they sentence you to time is a trap and set up for the crooked board of pardons to be able to discriminate and snake a person in this crooked system.

In the state of Utah, the way this crooked system works in sentencing is called un-determinate sentencing. For example:
1. First degree felony - 5 years to life
2. Second degree felony - 1 year to 15 years
3. Third degree felony - 0 years to 5 years

The board has the power to make you do anything from the beginning of that sentence to the end of that sentence. Not only can the crooked Utah state board of pardons and parole make you do whatever amount of time they want to, but also they can make people convicted of the same crime and the same type of charge do more than others.

You can have two people on the same crime or the same type of charge, and one does 2 years and the other does 5 years, this is the case all the time, which demonstrates the discrimination and bias by the crooked Utah state board of pardons and parole.

Also when you come into the prison the prison does a criminal assessment which gives them a time matrix on how much time you should do. But the Utah crooked state board of pardons does not even follow the time matrix, and more then likely you are gonna do over your time matrix. Further, the judge can sentence your charges to run concurrently, but the board can go against the courts ruling and make that sentence run consecutive at will.

The Utah state board of crookedness as you can see has the power here in Utah to pick and choose who they want to discriminate against. Race, sexuality, religion, or even if they do not like the way you look.

They own you and have the power over your life and death. They have too much power and they need to be stopped.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is just one example of the many ways the criminal injustice system has wide discretion to discriminate against groups of people. This is used to lock up and extend sentences of people from oppressed nations, leading to hugely disproportionate imprisonment of Blacks and Latinos compared to whites in Amerika. Further this discrimination is used against politically active prisoners to punish them for fighting for their legal rights.

Cats and dogs raining down my window
Dust bunnies roaming around my floor
Learned worms crawling around my stomach
Telling me I was taught to want more
These measly maggots at war with science
And what’s before us as real and true
I pump my blood until the skin stretches
Sweat drips onto the concrete like Chinese tea
Searching each repetition the puddle’s reflection
For truth
The same as I do each USW study lesson
For a MC’s guidance into deeper realms
Blood starts to puddle and pool with my sweat
I question from where but continue my pace
Letting the itch of it linger on my face
Three cold meals and denials at mail call
Four cold walls and a solitary cot
One man alone with only one thought
Your punk denials will breed lawsuits
And my stomach turns cold to hot
We, comrades, are part of something larger
More human than “Jesus” dying on a cross
Steering the people through minefields of hate
Aware it’s a privilege we even ate
A species on the sad cusp of extinction
One vanguard, one chance, one reason
As planet Earth spins out the seasons
Survival of the fittest as Amerikkka weakens
One love comrades — Our species

What’s it going to take? How many more of us must die before someone steps in and stops this control units maws from destroying your brothers, sons and fathers? Is there a lack of belief on everybody’s part because I come across as unstable and untrustworthy? Maybe I am nuts, maybe I’m insane, I’ll grant everybody that. But maybe that’s a prerequisite for servicing this….this place. These walls. These words:

“So that I don’t have to drag myself to the door, I stay in front of it. All that I have sits in this hollow with me. I prop my mattress up against the door for a backrest. These officers (Peterson, Randall, Stephens, Sgt. Lund) delight to kick the door, especially so when they know I’m either asleep or writing.

“I’m forced by these officers to be stark naked for more than five years; enduring a triple gum abscess, broken teeth, lost filing for over eleven years, being repeatedly starved and dehydrated, have all of my possessions stole repeatedly.”

Damn huh! Those WWII holocaust victims had it bad, right? Of course they did. But would you believe me if I said these words were written only three days ago by a fifty-three year old man in Utah’s UINTA One control unit? Only three cells away from myself I’ve sat in witness to this man’s torture and starvation and sleep deprivation and sexual harassments and even religious taunts and oppressions. These words you just read are dated August 9th 2010. These words are why the UT DOC won’t allow any of us media interviews. These words are why this man doesn’t receive PWCC’s letters mailed to him repeatedly. And why letters he mails out do not make their destinations. These words:

“Officers steal it [food] more frequently than I am given it. Dr. Tubbs came around and stated: we don’t care and we don’t have to, I’m glad I’m not in your body.’ Nearly a year passed in very great discomfort and I’m stricken with scurvy. I asked for help again. The doctor looked at me and asked if my bones always stuck out like they do. I confirmed so. I was given a breakfast drink. I can’t count the number of times I’ve eaten it dry. [They turned off his water].”

I don’t hear anyone laughing out there. You guys don’t find this at all funny? That’s fucking strange because these “corrections officers” find this man’s condition and treatment hilarious. Even some of my fellow captives care and prance around for the benefit and show of these officers. It gets to be so slap-ass happy. Everyone seems to forget a crippled man is lying huddled against his cell door. Unshaven and hair uncut for almost fifteen years. Un-showered for easily five years. Unaware that maybe any day another body bag will be popped out and unfurled and untied. Then re-zipped….

Then I suppose it’s only fair and just that we forget all about Sgt Fairbank’s threats to my fellow prisoner. Don’t want to get any of the upstanding CO good guy mormons in hot water do we? (If you notice traces of anger you’re dead correct).

One month shy of today and still nothing has been done to correct these abuses and tortures and inhumanities. On the above day, my fellow prisoner told me that in the past Sgt Lund, Feikert, Fairbanks, Scott, and officers told him that “we’re going to kill you just real slowly so no one gets in trouble.” He came to prison 190 pounds and now is below 100 pounds. He states he only gets one or two meals a week. If that. His exact words: “I’m going to go pray, I will ask god, my heart palpitates and I become dizzy because I’m weak. I black out and I’m unable to stand. These guards will not provide me anything to stand up with. My body and legs hurt. I’ve written many organizations, etc. No response. I don’t believe my mail’s delivered.”

This building houses 97 prisoners each and every one of these captives knows about Mr Chaney’s dire straights. Hundreds of men have come and left over the years; thousands of men know what the UTDOC has buried in its closet. All the guards know about this man’s condition, along with medical staff and administration.

It’s time for the world to see and pass judgment on what’s occurring here in this building. You see, we Utahns are the only Amerikkkans to use the firing squad. We Utahns, and mormons, believe in blood debts where the spilling of guilty’s blood is the only way to pay for your sins. We Utahns have district attorneys who brag about signing death warrants on twitter. And a board of pardons and parole who hands out three more years for obtaining diplomas and completing substance abuse therapy.

We Utahns support the prison policy of placing the ill and legally mentally retarded in the hole for years on end. Decades on end. We Utahns have the upstanding executive directors Gary Deland and Lane McCotter who started and ran, after stepping down in Utah amid scandal, Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib.

I quote Mr. Deland in an April 23, 2010 Desert News article concerning our firing squad executions which the man boasts of writing the book on: “I go down about 30 minutes or so before the execution. I just feel if you claim to believe in capital punishment, and you’re not pulling the trigger(s), you need to be able to look the guy in the eye that’s going down and spend some time talking with him.”

Now this is a call to uphold magnanimous behavior on the part of the Utah Department of Corrections. I ask the modern day directors: Thomas E. Patterson, Robyn Williams, Mike Hadden, Lowell Clark and Mr. Steven Turley to follow in Mr. Deland’s footsteps.

If these men believe in starvation, torture, religious persecution, sleep deprivation, cruelty, sexual harassments, retaliation, intimidation, prejudice for filing grievances, etc., and the keeping of a man, a fifty-three year old man, with scurvy and broken teeth with abscesses, so emotionally scarred and bruised, he’s afraid to even ask for dental screenings or visits, after fifteen years at the hands of cowardly public servants like Sgt’s Feikert, Scott, Lund and Officers Ritter, Faurot, Bartolotti, Randall, Peterson, Nelson and Stephens; and you’re not the ones kicking his door all night as he sleeps, or refusing him water out of his sink, food or even access to a bible, if you’re not these men “killing [him] just slowly so no one gets in trouble,” You need to look the guy in the eye that’s going down and spend some time talking with ‘Him’!!!

I mean, that is, if you believe in that sort of stuff, and allow it year after year, you kind of owe it to the man to attempt to look him in the eye as he looks up from the ground at you. Quivering and smelling of rot, eye twitching, with swollen jaws and cheeks and “bones sticking out.”

Because this man is right here. Today I requested of him to sing ‘yesterday’ by The Beatles. He barely could! Today I witnessed him not get fed and I heard him being taunted that he doesn’t know the true God and plus he’s a dirty liar. I listened as officers Stephens and Peterson and Randall degraded him in the most disgusting fashion. Again. For the hundreth-thousandth time. They laughed at him as he attempted to defend himself sitting in his hollow, back against the door that they kick and slam the cuffport on.

I’ve got a neighbor with an IQ of 60 who isn’t allowed to move from the hole because he keeps attempting to obtain reading material under his door from his friends.

We’ve got the deaf kept without hearing aids and the crippled without wheelchairs!

We’ve got 75 years old fed bologna for over nine years, constantly guarding his dentures and reading glasses from retaliations.

We’ve got 19 years olds in prison for petty burglary and catching two 1-15 year sentences and 2012 rehearings for defending themselves from constant harassment and abuse.

We’ve got 18 year olds with ADHD, clubfeet, deformed hands, learning disabilities (and again mental retardation) being pepper sprayed and beat then left to freeze on strip cell with officer Peterson opening outside recreation doors in December.

We’ve got Iraqi refugees whose death(s), so the officers say, will be a cause for celebration. Still!

Come one. Come all. We’ve got it all.

I’m just sick of fucking seeing it and documenting it and being called a liar. Even though it’s all on camera and administration has to keep back peddling to avoid admitting it. Administration has to keep moving new guards and Sgts and captains here and there, yet they leave the most sadistic rookies like stains in their coffee mugs. Lingering.

So this is just a call to anyone who may consider themselves a progressive or compassionate soul. I challenge anyone, any organization, to a little one on one face to face with Mr. John Chaney. Let’s see you weigh him and look into his yellow bloodshot eyes. Lets see UTDOC hide this man’s bones sticking out and crumbling abscessed teeth.

I welcome everyone again to Utah’s corrupt (modern day concentration kamp) control unit carnival.

It’s funny because back when I was more of a knucklehead escapist I wanted medications to help me zone out or sleep through this Auschwitz. And they told me I wasn’t crazy enough then for drugs. Now that I’ve discovered reality, and am snapping them in the ass with it daily, they’re crying for me to be medicated and psychologically tested!

Well, they had their chance to turn me into a zombie. Now it’s my turn to show them they’re hypocrites. I do not believe forced medications are in the picture. But I wanted to give everyone a heads up just in case some curve ball comes my way. If you start receiving letters from me, talking about UFOs and my new brand of comfy diapers, writing in a child’s hand, you’ll know something’s up.

They’ll have to wrestle the poison into me each time though. Maybe I shouldn’t be dwelling on this, or even speaking about it, but I’ve spent my fair share of time force medicated, cramped up and yelling/moaning uncontrollably on the cold cement for months at a time, as COs laugh and kick you in the side. Sweating, being spit on and only fed a sandwich bag of dry cereal and an apple a day. Not being even able to chew with your jaw locked up from the Haldol.

The pigs do this sort of torture to break a person. But what they don’t know is a small percentage will always become very still inside after being treated like that. So still they perceive him/her as broken. Silent. And they’ll move on to the next victim.

But this quiet one will wait and learn and watch. He/she’ll smile when they expect a smile. And laugh when they see something as funny and need verification it’s so. But this person’s not… there’s not the same individual “in there” anymore. I mean, how could there be?

There are two roads one can take. One is of poisons and suicide. The other is of sweat and a sort of intelligent number$ where everything petty, insignificant, small, and worthless is what it is and rolls off his/her back.

You continue. But not for you do you do this. Something deep inside understands when nine suited up weightlifters beat a chained soul, your soul, inside you’re turned into this time bomb. Sort of. And of such a magnitude, that if you learn to control it, so it doesn’t detonate and destroy yourself, it works wonders at getting you through. Through anything. You walk and the sea of people part because they feel and see what’s inside you.

It’s dangerous. But it’s so dangerous not because it seeks to hurt. Oh, It’ll hurt, but only if it’s to help another in the same type of the situation where he/she was tempered. Seeing totally outnumbered people being beaten. Whether in groups of ten, or nations of ten million. These numbered captives who were raised as parasites, only to be fed to fellow parasites, are dangerous, are in my opinion the true revolutionary force in this nation of $nake$.

We just gotta get to them before they explode. Before they manipulate themselves some Seroquel or Effexor [psych drugs]. Before they stop caring and actually start becoming entertained by the simple, mundane, petty-pussy-patriotic slogans and shiny bloodstained third world baubles dancing merrily in front of their questioning eyes.

This is coming from one saved by the scruff of my neck because of MIM(Prisons) and comrades’ tireless work ‘out there’ to pull the wool from captives eyes ‘in here.’

I owe my life to the anti-imperialist struggle. I just hope, and train my body and mind, to contribute positively each day, and in the future, to the struggle.

Because I must, or I’d already be dead.

February 21st, 2010: a three car convoy of Afghans were traveling to the market and then to a hospital for medical treatment. U.$. forces saw Afghans traveling together and launched an air to ground attack. Women jumped out waving their scarves to communicate they were civilians. The U.$. helicopter continued firing. 21 killed. 13 wounded.

December 26th, 2009: U.$. forces raided a home, pulled eight young men ages 11 - 18 out of their beds and gunned them down execution style. U.$. forces and distraught villagers later learned all were innocent of any wrongdoing. An apology was issued by the U.$. military.

Apologetic subterfuge?!

You can love me if you want
Feel free to hate me if you need
Just keep away from me your ignorance
Your racism and patriotic greed
Believe in your jesus
Your superiority and programmed ways
If it helps you sleep at night
Keep preaching your ‘end of days’
Seven comes eleven its a crying shame
When the last time you did a pushup
you fucking lames!
Our bodies were built for sweat and love
minds wired for compassion not drugs
Turn off your fucking TV zombie
unplug that phone and those radios
Now listen, you hear it? ‘crunch crunch’
That’s those red white and blue imperialist goblins
eating Afghani wives and children for lunch
and the ticking sound that’s increasing slowly
it’s that capitalist system you love
slowly imploding
I’ll shed no more tears for you Amerikkka
I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done
chewing on pregnant mothers and sons
killing unarmed little girls for fun
I’m an anti-imperialist communist poet
and we’re winning motherfuckers
Fox 13’s just not letting you know it.

February 12th 2010: U.$. forces raided a home and killed five people, including two pregnant mothers and a girl engaged to be married. The New York Times even uncovered Amerikkkan troops engaging in a deliberate cover up in an April 5th 2010 article.

According to a March 3rd 2010 report “The U.$. ignored the deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from treatable/preventable diseases as they focus warring on the second poorest country in the world”

Fuck you Amerikkka!
Straight up.
no apologies.
and no more hiding.
we’re watching,
waiting….
tick tick tick!

I’ve seen them walk in with the bleach
Goose stepping out with the rifles
Bloody fragments and bone in blonde hair
Brand new Casio watch, new shoes, clean underwear
The traces of the dead man’s Prozac
Ulcer medications and ibuprophins
Mingle loosely with the trigger mens viagra
with their cocaine and caffeine grins
Where you off to now Mr. Executioners?
After you’ve lynched in the most disgusting way
you are off to your grandchild’s christening
to her prom night or school play
my sweat drips on to the cold concrete and I chant, i say, “you can’t stop us,
it’s inevitable. Soon all you know will fall.”
Tattered socks scrape and squeak as I motion
I raise my arms and tap my chest, “ten”
counting out the sets and counting down the days
here’s a promise that I believe the people support
we won’t blindfold you, we’ll allow you to watch
you’ll need to see the ones now holding the rifles
are the very same you’ve oppressed, starved and stifled
and we will pull the trigger out of social conscience
not out of your racism, greed or chauvinistic pride
and it will not be a secret, the world can watch
nothing will need to be hidden or secret
because we’ll explain why, to our children we’ll teach it
that the reason we kill you pig isn’t out of hate
it’s that food you stockpiled that the starving masses never ate