MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
This letter is in response to the Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) hunger
strike. First I’d like to say thank you for not only your ongoing
support for us prisoners but also your truthfulness of viewing the facts
of the matter. I have passed on the info you mailed me. I have spread
the word of actions being taken by prisoners at PBSP-SHU. I can not say
for sure how many will join this protest. However I can speak for myself
and I find one must be willing to lead and/or follow with common sense
to ensure change. For only by us prisoners making a stand - not allowing
this injustice to pass - can we stop it.
Below is an excerpt of a letter that was sent along with a resource
packet to the Pelican Bay Warden and Pelican Bay Institutional Gang
Investigations.
Greetings from The Yard. I am a prisoner that is providing a
service to my incarcerated peers. I provide resources for self-help
programs, rehab, housing and career info. It is my understanding that
inmates in the SHU corridor are going to strike due to certain demands
that they are asking for.
One demand that interested me was the opportunity to receive self-help
and religious materials. I feel that The Yard can meet that
demand. I have put together a self-help and religious resource packet
that can be given to an inmate requesting self-help, religious or parole
resources. All of these programs can be utilized by an inmate through
the mail without any type of facilitator or supervision… The resource
packet includes an application for parole resources. SHU inmates most
likely do not have access to these resources. They can send these
applications to The Yard and dedicated peers involved
themselves in self-help programs will fill them out and send them back.
The Yard has an ever-growing data bank of up to date resources
for all of California…
Attention: beginning July 1, 2011, several inmates housed indefinitely
in PBSP-SHU D-Facility, Corridor Isolation, will begin an indefinite
hunger strike in order to draw attention to, and to peacefully protest,
25 years of torture via CDCR’s arbitrary, illegal, and progressively
more punitive policies and practices, as summarized in the accompanying
Formal
Complaint. PBSP-SHU, D-Facility Corridor inmates’ hunger strike
protest is to continue indefinitely until the following changes are
made:
OUR FIVE CORE DEMANDS:
Individual Accountability - This is in response to PBSP’s application of
“group punishment” as a means to address individual inmates rule
violations. This includes the administration’s abusive, pretextual use
of “safety and concern” to justify what are unnecessary punitive acts.
This policy has been applied in the context of justifying indefinite SHU
status, and progressively restricting our programming and
privileges.
Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status
Criteria - the debriefing policy is illegal and redundant, as pointed
out in the Formal Complaint [IV-A, p. 7]. The Active/Inactive gang
status criteria must be modified in order to comply with state law and
applicable CDCR rule and regulations [eg, see Formal Complaint, p. 7,
IV-B] as follows:
Cease the use of innocuous association to deny inactive status,
Cease the use of informant/debriefer allegations of illegal gang
activity to deny inactive status, unless such allegations are also
supported by factual corroborating evidence, in which case CDCR-PBSP
staff shall and must follow the regulations by issuing a rule violation
report and affording the inmate his due process required by law.
Comply with US Commission 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to
Long-Term Solitary Confinement - CDCR shall implement the findings and
recommendations of the US commission on safety and abuse in America’s
prisons final 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as follows:
End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14) Ensure that prisoners in SHU and
Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and
freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause
lasting harm. (pp. 52-57)
Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14). Create a more productive form of
confinement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg
[Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful
self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive
activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the
community.
End Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Release inmates to general prison
population who have been warehoused indefinitely in SHU for the last 10
to 40 years (and counting). Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful
Access to:
Adequate natural sunlight
Quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring
all PBSP-SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom
Medical SHU facility.
Provide Adequate Food - cease the practice of denying adequate food, and
provide wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals, and
allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements.
PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU
inmates.
Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of
each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on
it.
Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are
separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for SHU meals.
Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for
Indefinite SHU Status Inmates. Examples include:
Expand visiting regarding amount of time and adding one day per
week.
Allow one photo per year.
Allow a weekly phone call.
Allow Two (2) annual packages per year. A 30 lb. package based on “item”
weight and not packaging and box weight.
Expand canteen and package items allowed. Allow us to have the items in
their original packaging [the cost for cosmetics, stationary, envelopes,
should not count towards the max draw limit]
More TV channels.
Allow TV/Radio combinations, or TV and small battery operated radio
Allow Hobby Craft Items - art paper, colored pens, small pieces of
colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc.
Allow sweat suits and watch caps.
Allow wall calendars.
Install pull-up/dip bars on SHU yards.
Allow correspondence courses that require proctored exams.
This is a call for all prisoners in Security Housing Units (SHUs),
Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg), and General Populations (GP), as
well as the free oppressed and non-oppressed people to support the
indefinite July 1st 2011 peaceful Hunger Strike in protest of the
violation of our civil/human rights, here at Pelican Bay State Prison
Security Housing Unit (PBSP-SHU), short corridor D1 through D4 and its
overflow D5 through D10. It should be clear to everyone that none of
the hunger strike participants want to die, but due to our
circumstances, whereas that state of California has sentenced all of us
on Indeterminate SHU program to a “civil death” merely on the word of a
prison informer (snitch).
The purpose of the Hunger Strike is to combat both the Ad-Seg/SHU
psychological and physical torture, as well as the justifications used
of support treatment of the type that lends to prisoners being subjected
to a civil death. Those subjected to indeterminate SHU programs are
neglected and deprived of the basic human necessities while withering
away in a very isolated and hostile environment.
Prison officials have utilized the assassination of prisoners’ character
to each other as well as the general public in order to justify their
inhumane treatment of prisoners. The “code of silence” used by guards
allows them the freedom to use everything at their disposal in order to
break those prisoners who prison officials and correctional officers
(C/O) believe cannot be broken.
It is this mentality that set in motion the establishing of the short
corridor, D1 through D4 and its D5 though D10 overflow. This mentality
has created the current atmosphere in which C/Os and prison officials
agreed upon plan to break indeterminate SHU prisoners. This protracted
attack on SHU prisoners cuts across every aspect of the prison’s
function: Food, mail, visiting, medical, yard, hot/cold temperatures,
privileges (canteen, packages, property, etc.), isolation, cell
searches, family/friends, and socio-culture, economic, and political
deprivation. This is nothing short of the psychological/physical torture
of SHU/Ad-Seg prisoners. It takes place day in and day out, without a
break or rest.
The prison’s gang intelligence unit was extremely angered at the fact
that prisoners who had been held in SHU under inhuman conditions for
anywhere from ten (10) to forty (40) years had not been broken. So the
gang intelligence unit created the “short corridor” and intensified the
pressure of their attacks on the prisoners housed there. The object was
to use blanket pressure to encourage these particular isolated prisoners
to debrief (i.e. snitch on order to be released from SHU).
The C/Os and administrative officials are all in agreement and all do
their part in depriving short corridor prisoners and its overflow of
their basic civil/human rights. None of the deliberate attacks are a
figment of anyone’s imagination. These continuous attacks are carried
out against prisoners to a science by all of them. They are deliberate
and conscious acts against essentially defenseless prisoners.
It is these ongoing attacks that have led to the short corridor and
overflow SHU prisoners to organize ourselves themselves around an
indefinite Hunger Strike in an effort to combat the dehumanizing
treatment we prisoners of all races are subjected to on a daily basis.
Therefore, on July 1, 2011, we ask that all prisoners throughout the
State of California who have been suffering injustices in General
Population, Administrative Segregation and solitary confinement, etc. to
join in our peaceful strike to put a stop to the blatant violations of
prisoners’ civil/human rights. As you know, prison gang investigators
have used threats of validation and other means to get prisoners to
engage in a protracted war against each other in order to serve their
narrow interests. If you cannot participate in the Hunger Strike then
support it in principle by not eating for the first 24 hours of the
strike.
I say that those of you who carry yourselves as principled human beings,
no matter you’re housing status, must fight to right this and other
egregious wrongs. Although it is “us” today (united New Afrikans,
Whites, Northern and Southern Mexicans, and others) it will be you all
tomorrow. It is in your interests to peacefully support us in this
protest today, and to beware of agitators, provocateurs, and
obstructionists, because they are the ones who put ninety percent of us
back here because they could not remain principled even within
themselves.
The
following
demands are all similar to what is allowed in other super max
prisons (e.g. federal Florence, Colorado, Ohio and Indiana State
Penitentiaries). The claim by CDCR and PBSP that implementing the
practices of the federal prison system or that of other states would be
a threat to safety and security are exaggerations.
The names of representatives of all major races listed as co-signers.
The prisoners say they are “All races Whites; New Afrikans; Southern
Mexs., and Northern Mexs.”
In February I was taken to Captain Schwartz’s office where he confronted
me about writing grievances. I was then locked up, had 5 Disciplinary
Reports (DRs) falsified on me, received 210 days of confinement time and
lost 150 days gain time. After having been placed in the cell with a
prisoner who had written a grievance on the warden for chewing tobacco
in a state building, we were illegally gassed twice, made to sleep on
raw steel for three days and nights with nothing but a pair of boxer
shorts on, and then placed on a loaf diet for 7 days.
This is the second time that I’ve been under attack at this institution
for exercising my first amendment right to write grievances and both
times they started with the same captain and both times the Warden,
Colonel, and Central Office of Appeal have backed him up. I have been
under attack at two other institutions in the past for writing
grievances and both times Central Office knowingly and willfully allowed
me to be illegally sent to Close Management (CM) [Editor: term for
isolation/control units in Florida].
I have high blood pressure and I suffer from asthma and I am not
supposed to be gassed. When he gassed us the first time, I tried to tell
him about my medical condition and when he saw me throwing up blood and
blood running out my nose, he immediately gassed us again. Out of fear
for my life, I have not eaten but two selective meals to stay mentally
alert since February 22, 2011.
During this time, I was placed in the cell with another prisoner and he
was threatened to be gassed and have DRs falsified on him because he
refused to take my tray in the cell so it would look as though I was
eating to the camera. Finally, an officer just threw a meal tray in the
cell and wrote down that I ate that meal. I am definitely not going to
let them get away with what they have done to me and are still doing to
me. I would appreciate any help you may be able to give me and I would
also like to start receiving your newsletter. I just received notice
that they are trying to send me back to CM.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Because of the failure of the grievance
process in prisons across the country, we have initiated a
grievance
campaign. If you are in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and California
write to us to get copies of the petition and letter for your state, or
if you are in another state write for a generic petition that you can
modify for use in your state.
Beanies/caps have been provided for all prisoners in Administrative
Segregation D-yard and Z-unit here. Strip searches will be indoors only
(cells and showers) when it’s 50 degrees or lower.
Due to the petitions sent to internal affairs and the ombudsman about
the violations of the 602 appeal process that were taking place here in
High Desert, an investigation was initiated by the main office of CDCR.
All those who sent said petitions were interviewed here in Z-unit by an
investigator for Internal Affairs and if my memory serves me correctly
the secretary of CDCR.
These “suits” asked about the ongoing issues taking place here in Z-unit
particularly, and High Desert in general. Some complaints were the need
for warming wealth gear, the 602 process, TVs, cleaning supplies, access
to the law library, transfers for validated inmates and those going to
SHUs and mainlines, unjustified validations, and more.
The results of these interviews as well as the hard work of MIM(Prisons)
and all comrades involved has bore fruit. Although we are used to these
charlatans giving us better drag than an eloquent speaking pimp the
following was granted: instead of having an “informal level,” the 602
form goes directly to the appeals coordinator making it harder for
him/her to screen us out unjustly. Also a new “Form 22” has been
provided so that our requests may be answered in a timely fashion by
COs, with a receipt. Now we have a clearer paper trail to use should K9s
decide to implement their underground rules. Attached with this letter
are the notices the administration passed out to us here in Z-unit.
Beanies were provided but no gloves. And as I write this, shelves and
necessary wiring are being installed in one of these sections/tiers here
in the zoo. The K9s cleared out one whole section in order to start the
renovation on February 7 2011.
Although some requests were granted we should all reflect on this whole
situation and take from it an important point that a challenge to this
penal system in solidarity should constantly and consistently be pressed
in order to receive our rights, while at the same time keeping our
sights on abolishing this human warehouse that only benefits this
corrupt capitalist system and nothing else.
I am writing to you concerning a lawsuit which my defense team members
are currently preparing on my behalf. It protests my false prison gang
validation as an associate of the Black Guerrilla Family on December 31,
2009.
It is my position that this validation is solely motivated by
retaliation and racial profiling due to my ongoing campaign to stamp out
corruption involving some “Green Wall” correctional staff within the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) who are
currently engaged in organized crime, which is a clear threat to the
safety and security of all CDCR institutions.
I was recently responsible for disciplinary and employee discharges
against three corrupted CDCR prison staff at California State prison -
Sacramento, Salinas Valley State Prison, and High Desert State Prison.
Since my false prison gang process, me and my defense have come across
strong evidence. Some corrupted “Green Wall” staff are very prejudiced
and racist, sanctioning use of the false validation process for some
Black, Brown and white prisoners, to pursue false prison gang
investigations. Many prisoners have strong evidence of being wrongfully
validated for reading materials on their culture. Institutional Gang
Investigators have taken a race-based shortcut and assume anything to do
with African or Mexican culture can be banned under the guise of
controlling gang activities.
Any California prisoners who have relevant information on the false
prison gang process should write to MIM(Prisons), to get involved in
this case.
My purpose of this lawsuit is to shed light on this abuse of power and
human rights violations, including torture tactics through criminal
activities and organized crime.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades in High Desert State
Prison’s Z-Unit (administrative segregation) who are experiencing
brutality and cruel living conditions. Send them extra copies to share!
For more information on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Prison Law Office General Delivery San Quentin, CA 94964
Internal Affairs CDCR 10111 Old Placerville Rd, Ste 200
Sacramento, CA 95872
CDCR Office of Ombudsman 1515 S Street, Room 540 N Sacramento,
CA 95811
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special
Litigation Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC
20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington,
VA 22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones inside who are experiencing issues
with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more
info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Warden (specific to your facility)
Oklahoma State Jail Inspector, Don Garrison 1000 N.E. 10th
St., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73117-1299
ODOC Office of Internal Affairs Oklahoma City Office 3400 Martin
Luther King Avenue Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111-4298
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE P.O. Box 9778 Arlington,
Virginia 22219
United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special
Litigation Section 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB Washington,
D.C. 20530
Oklahoma Citizens United for Rehabilitation of
Errants (OK-CURE) P.O. Box 9741 Tulsa, OK 74157-0741
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure or censorship of music
and literature. Send them extra copies to share! For more info on this
campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Tom Clements, Director of Adult Institutions P.O. Box
236 Jefferson City, MO 65101
Chris Pickering, Inspector General (MO DOC) P.O. Box 236
Jefferson City, MO 65101
U.S. Department of Justice PhB 950 Pennsylvania Ave,
N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530
Marianne Atwell, Director of Offender Rehabilitative Services
(Missouri) P.O. Box 236 Jerrerson City, MO 65101
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
