Under Lock & Key

This question is not a matter of ancillary importance. Why? Because it seems as if after George Floyd was sadistically and undoubtedly murdered on camera for all to see by a person who was employed as a police officer supposedly standing under the motto of serve and protect (let them tell it), all of a sudden white America was finally awakened after 400 years of conveniently sleeping under the blanket of “better them than me.” (For the record of course “we know all white people are not racist”. Yeah, we know that to be a statement of gospel.)

I myself predicted seriously, when Rodney King (R.I.P) was beaten by obvious racist cops like a pair of weathered drums in Tommy Lee’s garage, that change would somehow slip through the cracks of injustice in the early nineties. However, that was daycare in comparison with what occurred on the unfortunate day of 21 June 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a Black shoe shiner was arrested for assaulting a white girl in an elevator. The Publisher of the local paper, eager to win a circulation war published a front page headline screaming, “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”

It was indeed a familiar occurrence for a Black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman in the Deep South era. Rewind and fast forward to 21 June 1921 after the paper hit the streets an angry white mob began to gather outside of the courthouse where the Black shoe shiner (Dick Rowland) was being held (Rowland would be later released after the women refused to press charges). That alone reeks of rel-a-tion-ship. Some Blacks from the Tulsa neighborhoods of Greenwood – some were recently discharged war vets – began to descend upon the courthouse with the objective of saving Rowland from being lynched. Long story short, shots were fired and total chaos broke out. As a result over 12,000 whites were fully backed by the white police force. In all, 300 black lives were taken in vain, 1,200 homes burned to the ground and not a single (white) person arrested or ever held accountable for these untimely deaths of Black men, women and kids. To sugar coat the incident it was labeled a riot but in realty is was no less than ethnic cleansing genocide carried out on American soil. So do Black Lives Really Matter in the eyes of white America?

A couple of more Black lives in question, two of the greatest leaders to ever walk the earth, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Malcolm X. At the time of their tragic assassination FBI agents were indeed on the scene under the orders of racist FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as if they where known terrorists. J. Edgar Hoover was said to express paranoid thinking that Martin Luther King would one day turn radical and his followers would no longer turn the other cheek to the nasty side of injustice and racism. Even though up until his fatal demise he showed not the slightest hint of radicalism. Malcolm X had continuously complained to law enforcement that his life was in danger and he often requested a gun permit, which was apparently never granted.

Now the very thing that initiated this question/article in my head as I sit behind enemy lines in a cell for allegedly selling crack cocaine that conveniently was found behind a pay phone on the South Side of Dallas, Texas: Here I’ve remained for the last 20 years as if I murdered the President. Make no mistake I am not miserable nor bitter as I continue to seek justice in my case. Yeah, I was found not guilty of the exact same indictment and found guilty of the exact same offense. This is overtly obvious Double Jeopardy under the 5th Amendment. It does take 20 years for the courts to grasp this simple and clear vital error which was made purposely to get a conviction due to the fact that I refused to cop-out to a charge I was totally innocent of.

So I have educated myself since I have been incarcerated and there is no way of avoidance on behalf of the courts. Every so called law enforcement affiliate that I have relayed this information to has turned a blind eye to my situation so as of now I am in a lawless environment and failure is not an option as the system attempts to sweep me under the rug so to speak to cover their criminal activity. Now tell me, do Black Lives Really Matter?

MIM(Prisons) adds: Studying Black history like Tulsa, and current events in Palestine, the connections are clear. While the imperialists haven’t dropped any bombs on New Afrika in a few decades now, the low intensity warfare and genocide continues here in the United $tates. It is fueled by white Amerikans’ paranoid delusions, which make them fear that the oppressed might treat them as bad as they have treated the oppressed. The fact is that the Amerikan project is further along than the I$raeli project, and pacification is in full effect. But the contradictions remain, and cannot be resolved without ending imperialism. The oppressed will not see justice until then.

Dear UL&K Editor & Staff,

When i originally wrote to you regarding my lawsuit on the digitalized mail, i had NOT yet been assigned a case no. i have one now:

• Prisoners are NOT allowed to correspond with Plaintiff. ALL other INDIVIDUALS may write to Plaintiff using the name, #, and Unit, with:

WARNING Any fellow Texas Prisoner who wants to seek to join this suit as a Defendant WILL be required by the Court to pay applicable fees and court costs – so, don’t put your foot in the pond if you aren’t prepared to swim.

Again – as the Plaintiff – i am extending an open invitation to any Attorneys, Investigators, Paralegals, Researchers, Legal Aid Groups, or Sponsors who would like to offer assistance with this litigation.

• ALL pleadings filed to date should be available for viewing/downloading on the Court’s public website.

With appreciation for ANY assistance extended into my hand – have a great day and Blessed be.

“[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.” (1)

This feature, “The Culture Corner,” is a space designated to highlight and share cultural content that expresses revolutionary ideals and principles. “The Culture Corner” appears in the newsletter Power Moves, an internal newsletter distributed in certain Texas prisons, and is being reprinted here.

In 2024, the hip-hop genre has evolved to be the most influential genre of music in the world. As such, it is incumbent upon revolutionaries to utilize this genre to express revolutionary ideals and to advance revolutionary consciousness and solidarity.

One artist that has done this prolifically, while steadfastly maintaining a revolutionary nationalist and anti-capitalist political line, is Bay Area lyrical comrade The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic.

Just as important as eir content, in my view, is the accessibility of the music to the captive population. In the prison climate today, dominated by tablet devices with their purposely indoctrinating content, Eseibio’s content does its job by providing a revolutionary alternative. Eir content can be accessed on J-pay/Securus tablets on the media store app. Simply search music and type the artist’s name as spelled above. Eseibio has an extensive catalog of music, spanning over a decade worth of material with a wide number of albums and mixtapes.

While all of Eseibio’s material is revolutionary with an underground flavor, there are certain albums and songs that stick out more than others. These include the albums “Black Panther” and “African Revolutionary”. The former’s tracklist reads like a history lesson on the Black Panther Party. Standout tracks like “10 Point Program,” “Hands Off Assata,” “Red Book,” “Letter to Afeni,” “Smile 4 Pac,” “Off the Pigs,” and “George Jackson Day of the Gun” are bangers that also educate the listener. Other standout tracks like “Juche,” “Che Guevara,” “Bust A Cap,” “Kwame Nkrumah,” “Black Boots,” “In Defense of Self-Defense,” “Free The Land,” “Free Em All,” and “C.R.E.A.M-Capitalism Rules Everything Around Me” should be in steady rotation.

Most important of all is that Eseibio, and other artists that shall be featured in “The Culture Corner” in the future, provide a platform for political prisoners to bring brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who were left by the wayside into the revolutionary movement. It is not good enough to complain of the maneuvers of the enemy. We have to be good at improvising on the new realities. This is only one way of mixing up the necessary improvisation.

A clenched fist salute to The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic and all other revolutionary and conscious artists using their talents for the advancement of the class and national struggles.

“The Culture Corner” will put the spotlight on other artists in future issues, We recommend you to go check out the comrade Eseibio.

^{Notes: (1) Mao-Tse-Tung’s Selected Works III p.84, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.”}

My fellow prisoners I am sending out this call for a massive assault upon our living conditions here in TDCJ; a massive RUIZ TYPE Lawsuit that should not only bring a change to our living conditions, but should bring about the release of thousands of us.

ORDER TO REDUCE PRISON POPULATION

On 4 August 2009, this three-judge court issued an Opinion and Order finding, by clear and convincing evidence, that crowding is the primacy cause of the constitutional inadequacies in the delivery of medical and mental health care to California prisoners and that no relief other than a “prison release order”, as that term is broadly defined by the PLRA, 18 USC 3626(g)(4), is capable of remedying these constitutional deficiencies – see COLEMAN v SCHWARZENEGGER, 2010. US.Dist.LEXIS 2711, BROWN v PLATA, 563 U.S. 493 and GRADDICK NEWMAN, 453 U.S. 923.

Each of these cases were started by prisoners in California and Alabama. We can, and must, do the same! We must do so because the conditions today are back to Pre-RUIZ. Thus, we need a massive lawsuit to bring change. Unfortunately, we must come up with a way to communicate. Since communication is often difficult to impossible I offer the following strategy: During the American slave trade, the top priority of each plantation was to ensure there wasn’t any communication between the slaves from one plantation to another. Shuttering the communication lines was, is and has always been the most effective way to control slaves/prisoners. Doing so is the dominant means of ensuring captives are not planning insurrections, escapes, revolutionary actions, and/or working together to get the very best class action suits filed in federal courts!

Ruiz was the lead plaintiff in the fantastically expensive and bitterly contested lawsuit that laid waste to the original and brutal Texas Department of Corrections (TDC, now known as TDCJ-Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice) control model. Had it not been for the benefit of the mail system the lawsuit probably would not have ever seen the light of day. During the time the lawsuit was being researched, rough drafted and crafted, the incarcerated were permitted to write each other and share notes, ideas and research of what the lawsuit should bring to the court’s attention. Needless to say, we cannot do that today. As a result, besides the recent “excessive heat” lawsuit filings by TDCJ prisoners and then taken over by the ACLU and other civil & human rights groups, there has been no sign of an effective federal suit against TDCJ since the original RUIZ in the 1970s and 1960s. The originality of the lawsuit had started with Ruiz, Fred Cruz and others of “eight hoe-squad.” It eventually fanned out to other writ-writers at several more of the 14 units/plantations in Texas. Every writ-writer in the State was either researching or actually writing up some filings to either send to Ruiz’s eight hoe-squad crew consideration.

From the disciplinary block of the Wynne Plantation, Ruiz’s document traveled first to Judge William Wayne Justice’s court house in Tyler. He sent eight illustrative complaints to the New York offices of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund to solicit representation for the indigent Plaintiffs. The rest is history. Unfortunately, we cannot write to one another, nor can we expect the fair treatment of a William Wayne Justice. We must come with overwhelming clear and convincing evidence for these ultra conservative judges. To make this point clear, I offer the following example, which is a case I personally litigated from here on the Coffield Unit. They put Armour on the Medical Chain, kept him away for about six months and played the chase-mail game with his mail. They handled us real ruff:

“Armour attached in his response a newspaper article, purportedly from a publication called the Texas Tribune, saying that TDCJ Director Bryan Collier testified in a court hearing that TDCJ failed to monitor temperatures on units where the agency houses inmates who are supposed to be protected by a settlement agreement covering the Pack Unit. Armour also attached four pages, 11, 12, 47 and 48, which are purportedly from a document called the Human Rights Report from the University of Texas. These documents recite from interviews with inmates about the heat, claim that TDCJ is aware of”inhumane conditions”, and sets out the conclusions and recommendations of the unnamed authors of the “report.” The Defendants have filed a motion asking that the article from the Texas Tribune and the excerpted pages from the Human Rights Report be stricken as hearsay. The Fifth Circuit has stated that newspaper articles are classic, inadmissible hearsay and cannot be used to defeat summary judgment.”

Please read ARMOUR v DAVIS, 2020 U.S.DIST-LEXIS 94986, and see that in addition to this the Judge claimed that 406-Affidavits of prisoners were not part of the record.

Thus, it is my hope that us jailhouse lawyers across the State of Texas will file lawsuits about our living conditions, and in the future we will attempt to get them consolidated and/or attempt to get the Justice Department to intervene. Also, I urge each of you to contact the National Lawyers Guild. They have four lawsuits that they are attempting to get Affidavits from all the units in TDCJ about the complaints they have filed: BAKER v COLLIER, 1:22-cv-01249, PANUS v O’DANIEL, 1:23-cv-00086, SIRUS v RELIGIOUS PRACTICE COMMITTEE, 1:22-cv-00191 and COX v COLLIER, TBA.

So, as the story unfolds, “mail-call” has lost the most important part of its strength when it comes to incarcerated individuals uniting as one band or group of people to fight the injustices of a system that holds them in perpetual bondage, whether that’s physically in prison or by means of supervised release to parole/probation. Let us not allow the lack of the ability to communicate to prevent us from carrying out the next multi-level federal case!

DARE TO STRUGGLE! DARE TO WIN!

MIM(Prisons) responds: We print this article for the information it contains, not necessarily to echo the call of this comrade. This comrade has a proven track record of legal campaigns. Those who operate strictly in the legal realm, whether jailhouse lawyers or organizations like the ACLU, can be comrades in united front with demands of the anti-imperialist movement.

What the comrade doesn’t address here is why we are back to conditions as bad as before the Ruiz case. The short answer is, there are no rights, only power struggles. We live in a system where the minority oppresses the majority. As long as that is true, the majority can never sit idly and have their needs met. They must struggle for them.

As this comrade is calling for a coordinated struggle, we agree. But it cannot be relegated to the courtrooms. That is why we did promote and support the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative in Texas prisons, which had a multi-pronged approach that was based in organizing the prison masses. The state seems to have won that round, but that is the type of strategy we need. Just as the International Criminal Court is not going to stop the genocide in Palestine, nor are peaceful protests in the United $tates, but they provide agitational support for the ongoing liberation struggle being fought on the ground by the masses. All of these forces are part of a united front effort, with different political approaches, supporting a common cause of ending genocide.

Within the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM), when We think of Hinds County Mississippi, We often think of El-Malik, or many of Our movement elders building independence for Our people in the heart of dixie. On December 18th, NBC News published the identities of 215 buried bodies that had been secretly hidden behind the Hinds County Penal Colony in a ‘paupers’ graveyard. These 215 people were all buried there between 2016 and December 2023. In total 672 people were buried at this location. Although each of the 215 graves were marked by a metal pole with a number attached indicating unclaimed or unidentified remains, in truth each one of these 215 people were identified by the Hinds County officials and were only unclaimed because officials did not attempt to notify kin of the deceased.

The Wade Family

Of the hundreds of the affected families one of the most striking stories is that of the Wade family, whose matriarch Bettersten Wade was instrumental in bringing the existence of the secret graveyard, next to the jail, to public attention.

In 2019, Jackson pigs pulled over Bettersten’s brother, pulled em out of eir car and slammed em to the ground in such a way that it caused eir death. Eir sister, Bettersten Wade, became a recognizable figure in the local Jackson community as ey waged a relentless public battle to advocate for prosecution of the pigs who were responsible. One of the pigs was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a mere five years. Subsequently, Bettersten Wade filed a wrongful death suit against the Jackson Police Department, this lawsuit is ongoing and has been highly publicized in the local news.

On 5 March 2023, Bettersten Wade’s 37 year-old son, Dexter Wade, left home with a friend but never returned. Bettersten Wade filed a missing person’s report and continuously contacted Jackson and Hinds County officials for months but never got a reply. Then, five months after the fact, an investigator came to eir home to inform em of Dexter’s death.

The story coming from the pigs is that an hour after leaving home, Dexter was hit by a police vehicle driven by an off-duty pig. The illegitimate authorities claim they’ve been unable to reach Ms. Bettersten Wade for months, despite finding Dexter’s wallet with eir I.D. and Ms. Wade’s address, and with Ms. Wade being a known local figure due to eir struggle against police murder of eir brother. Nevertheless, Dexter’s body was buried behind the jail with the number 672 stuck to the pole. To make matters worse, once Ms. Wade found the burial plot ey was told ey would have to pay $250 to the county to have eir son’s remains retrieved, as eir body was considered property of the state of Mississippi!

Ms. Wade and eir lawyer requested to be present when the body was examined, and ey was denied even that dignity and eir humyn courtesy. Dexter’s remains were not embalmed, nor put in a casket, but were stuck in a bag causing rapid decomposing in a shallow grave. When Ms. Wade and eir lawyer arrived the remains of Dexter had already been dug up, “breaking the chains of custody” necessary to determine Dexter’s actual cause of death.

From the results of a later independent autopsy, Dexter Wade’s body was in an advance state of decomposition, showed multiple blunt force injuries to the skull, ribs, and pelvis; in addition eir left leg was completely amputated from eir body. Eir body had been completely ran over by a police vehicle. By secretly burying the body without notifying the family, it makes it unlikely that the official findings of “accidental death” could later be questioned. Number 672 was never meant to be uncovered. But ey was. And the hidden horrors connected to Dexter’s death and burial would subsequently lead to many more families coming forward, finding missing loved ones secretly buried in Pauper’s graveyard behind the prison.

The striking similarities between the Emmett Till murder and attempted cover-up among county and state officials, and this contemporary tragedy highlight the ever present need for programs for decolonization in Jackson and the National Territory more generally. Each tragedy and struggle the people experience in which the inadequacy and/or corruption of the U.$. colonial government can be implicated is an issue We can organize around to intensify the class struggle for national unity.

Intensify the class struggle for national unity

Our lives depend on it!

Re-Build to win!

“What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”- SIS Officer at USP Tucson

These were the words that were spoken to me a few years ago, here at United States Penitentiary - Tucson, shortly before I was illegally put in the SHU (Special Housing Unit) for 40 days.

Before this incident, i was the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee here for three consecutive years, and had more experience in the committee than anyone else over the last five years. But on this particular year, as I reflect back on this, the Education Department did absolutely nothing for us in preparing for Black History Month. We were promised the resources, but as we worked from November of the previous year to February of that next year, we found that when it was time to promote Black History Month, there was nothing set aside for us to carry out any of the activities promised.

We had nothing.

I am writing this now, in February 2024, and I am again at the realization that USP Tucson, from the Warden on down, refuses to allow us to celebrate our history. Not one memo, not one event, nothing is scheduled to celebrate our history, and I can’t help but reflect back to that day where a Caucasian SIS officer (Special Investigative Services) had the audacity to tell me, to my face, “What makes you think you DESERVE to celebrate Black History Month”?

What we are seeing is a stripping not only of Black History, but of identity as well. Prisons are mandated to help rehabilitate people, and one way to do that is to reinforce their identity. There is a certain level of pride that each individual gets when he or she knows that they are part of a greater group of people. I speak as an African American, but this also applies to every other nationality, from Native Americans to Mexican Americans to even Caucasians. When prisons strip us of an identity, it makes them similar to how slaves were treated in our American history.

The slaves brought to America came with nothing, and were systematically stripped of everything they once were, and degraded to a level of inhumanity that surely is an abomination to God. Has much changed in 2024, when prisons continue to practice slave tactics?

In that year we didn’t have Black History Month, I was upset at this, and began to do what I always do… write. I wrote essays about how staff deliberately sabotaged Black History Month, and intended to mail them to the outside world.

But a Caucasian staff member in Education read my works, and refused to allow me to have them back, after I had printed them. She called them “inappropriate.” I questioned her as to why I cannot have my works, which actually I have a right to have.

Her first answer was, “Well, I was with (the staff member), and you don’t know what you’re talking about”-

Wait! I am the SECRETARY of the Black History Month Committee!! I keep ALL the notes! How is this Caucasian woman going to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about?? At this point, I was already getting angry at how I am being challenged of my First Amendment right about MY history.

Her second excuse was that I can’t have it back because I made multiple copies. This too, was bogus, because even though the general body of the letter was the same, it was very clear at the top of each copy who I was sending it to. Her argument was based on that you could not make exact, identical copies at the same time – I had every right to make three copies if they are going to three different entities.

Her third argument was, “If you want to write a grievance, you can get a BP”. This also was a lie, and what she now was doing was curbing my right to the First Amendment, shifting me to use a VERY flawed grievance procedure. What she was doing was quite illegal.

So, upset, I went back and wrote a new essay, “Is (staff member) Breaking The Law?”. I used Federal Bureau of Prisons policies, legal cases and other resources to prove, without a doubt, that this Caucasian officer was intentionally blocking me from sending these letters out.

When she read my essay, she called for backup, and the SIS officer came, took me out to the hallway and threatened to put me in the SHU (Special Housing Unit). He said, “I know how to play this game”, and then, as I tried to make my case, he said the quote I started this essay with.

My answer to this Caucasian man… “I don’t think a white man can tell a Black man, who has been the Secretary of the Black History Month Committee the last three years anything about his history”.

To this man, and to many Caucasian officers here at USP Tucson, we don’t “deserve” to celebrate our history; we don’t “deserve” to have an identity. Yet, they are quick to take vacation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday.

The last several years here at USP Tucson, the Warden has blocked attempts for us to celebrate our history. Even now, as we came off a malicious and retaliatory 36-day lockdown, after refusing to give us stamps to mail our loved ones, after filthy showers, after feeding us spoiled peanut butter, after limiting our phone calls to a single five minute call a day, after at least three deaths due to medical neglect, and as many homicides – staff here at USP Tucson will not relent in their treatment of human beings in this prison.

It’s not just Black History they are stripping from us . . . it’s humanity they are stripping from everyone. When prisons refuse to acknowledge the captives as human beings, when they ignore the simple basics of human kindness, when they condone illegal acts done by staff, and do nothing about it, they have transported the entire environment backwards two hundred years.

It’s funny, that incident with the Caucasian officer in Education and the SIS officer happened, as I write this, about 5 years ago… those officers still work here. They were never punished in any shape or form for their prejudiced views. I however, was put in the SHU for 40 days, then found guilty of a bogus charge. It took me at least six months to appeal to eventually have that charge expunged, based off simple information that, if the Caucasian Disciplinary Officer had read, she would have thrown the charge out. But after my appeal to her during my hearing, she said to me:

“I just don’t believe she would lie to me”.

So, because I’m Black, and a prisoner, I lose the argument simply because my opponent is a Caucasian female that is a staff member. My level of equality as a human being is stripped, because my status as an prisoner is inferior.

We won’t celebrate Black History Month here at USP Tucson, because staff apparently don’t believe we “deserve” it. So, I’ll celebrate it for everyone here, and refuse to let this prison strip me of my humanity. That makes them less of a human than me.

MIM(Prisons) responds:Understanding history is about understanding where we came from and where we are going. This is the real power of history that the oppressor has tried to keep from the oppressed for hundreds of years. The system is happy to promote an identity for prisoners – one of people who are not deserving, of people with less rights, of people who are less intelligent. There are many identities we can take on, positive and negative. We do not promote a “white identity” because that is the identity of an oppressor. As communists we identify with the Third World proletariat – that is the revolutionary class of people under imperialism that offers solutions and a path from oppression.

In ULK 84, we announced the addition of Indiana to our list of states with a campaign and petition to get prisoner grievances heard and addressed. The comrade who wrote the petition immediately put it to work, sending copies of the petition to all the official addresses listed on the bottom.

This comrade had mail confiscated in June 2023 that ey has been trying to get ever since.

“The indorm counselor asked me to sign the paper which said I had to either send it home or have it destroyed and they violated/broke my due process rights as well as my 1st Amendment rights. I told her I ain’t signing shit.”

“Then a day later I.A. here at Putnamville Correctional Facility called me over to give my publication to me after they had them for well over 6 months, which is a victory, and we will see more I believe.”

The comrade sent us a copy of the letter from the Deputy Chief of Investigations granting that the publications sent in early June were permissible – 7 months later!

While we agree there will be more victories, we’ve also seen setbacks following censorship battles in Indiana over the last couple years. MIM(Prisons) believes there are no rights, only power struggles. The grievance campaign being waged in over a dozen states across the country is geared towards getting prisoners organized to advocate for themselves because the system is always there to maintain the status quo.

Today the Deputy Chief of Investigations helped a comrade out, tomorrow ey might not be so generous. Recently the FBI arrested rapists running FCI-Dublin, yet at other times they’ve imprisoned and assassinated those who fight for the liberation of the oppressed. The agents of the state act in the interest of the state. So we cannot rest on our laurels after a couple censorship victories.