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.
Readers of Under Lock & Key, may this kite find you in
the best of health and spirits. In the last issue, Spring 2024, No. 85,
there was a request for prisoners to sign up for a petition and issues
about no
dayroom and yards. I have been down now 18 years in the Illinois
Department of Corrections (I-DOC) and I want to help everyone who is
seeking more out-of-cell time.
I filed a §1983 Civil Action about this topic, Patrick Bakaturski
V. Director et al, 3:23-cv-03609-SPM, which is currently pending
merit review in the Southern District of Illinois.
The basis grounds of the civil suit is that under all of the Covid-19
lockdowns, the endless cell restriction violated my 8th amendment
rights. Wexford Health Care signed an affidavit in Patrick
Bakaturski v. Rob Jeffreys, 21-cv-00014-GCS, which stated that
Wexford Health Care did not approve any of the Covid lock downs. Yet in
every grievance I-DOC said I was on quarantine.
So How Do I Get out of the Cell More? What should be the
Legal Argument?
First Look up Ashoor Rasho et al., v. Director John R. Baldwin,
NO: 1:07-cv-1298-MMM-JEH, Mental Health Settlement agreement. If
you go to page 20 you will see that I-DOC agreed that all prisoners
under segregation statutes should get 20 hours per week of out of cell
time. That means if you are being kept in the cell and not being given
10 hours of Day room and 10 hours of yard this violates your 8th
Amendment rights. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act for general
mental health every prisoner must get 10 hours of yard per week and at
least 10 of day room or programs per week in maximum security prison. I
am not in max anymore, but my prison is being ran as an unclassified max
in violation of state and federal law. So under the same standard of a
basic human right, I requested my 20 hours per week, 10 hours of day
room and 10 of yard.
The legal argument is clear, 23 and 1 is unconstitutional. ALL max
prisoners could fight to make their max a 21 and 3 by invoking the
wording in the Mental Health Settlement. The Federal Government has
already agreed in part that 23 and 1 is unconstitutional. You need to
use page 20 of the settlement to support your grievances and legal
arguments.
If anyone has any questions of how to file the grievance or would
like to see the format on what might work in Federal Court, key cite
Bakaturski in Federal Court. If you can get a copy of the
petitions I have filed pro-se.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We are not lawyers and do not offer
legal advice. When we print tips like this it is up to the reader to
determine how this information applies to your situation. The settlement
above applies to the Illinois DOC, though strategies in those cases may
be relevant elsewhere. We have long worked to shut down long-term
solitary in all its forms. The settlement is one small tool to help
prevent de facto long-term isolation from occurring in
Illinois.
In 2018 the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
investigated the grievance process at Salinas Valley State Prison. This
resulted in a new process in 2020, where any grievances alleging staff
misconduct in the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) would go to an Allegation Inquiry Management
Section (AIMS) in Sacramento, rather than being handled by staff at the
prison.(1) As we report on in almost every issue of Under Lock &
Key, grievances in U.$. prisons are often ignored, denied, or
covered up by staff.
One problem with this small reform is the staff at the prison was
still deciding what grievances would be forwarded to AIMS. Following OIG
recommendations in 2021, the CDCR changed its system for handling
grievances in 2022 so that staff misconduct could be reported directly
to AIMS. In March 2023, AIMS was replaced with the Allegation
Investigation Unit (AIU), within the Office of Internal Affairs.
In 2010, United Struggle from Within (USW) in California initiated
the “We
Demand Our Grievances Are Addressed!” campaign, which has since
spread across the country. We just released a petition for Indiana this
year, see the report on initial
campaign successes in this issue. And we just updated our petition
for Texas. Since 2010, hundreds of prisoners in California have sent
petitions to the California OIG and others outlining the failures of the
existing grievance system and demanding proper handling of grievances.
This campaign contributed, likely greatly, to the recent changes in
California.
It also happens that February 2023 was the last report we have of
staff in CDCR
retaliating against prisoners for filing grievances (in this case
for freezing temperatures).(2) So we are interested to hear from our
readers how the grievance process has been working over the last year.
However, the OIG’s recent report has already exposed staff misconduct
since the new program was implemented.
The OIG found that in 2023 the department sent 595 cases back to
prison staff to handle that had originally been sent to the AIU to
investigate as staff misconduct. This was reportedly done to handle a
backlog of grievances. The OIG also stressed the waste of resources in
duplicating work, given that the department had been given $34 million
to restructure the grievance process. In 127 of these cases the statute
of limitations had expired so that staff could no longer be disciplined
for any misconduct. Eight of these could have resulted in dismissal and
12 could have resulted in suspensions or salary reductions. Many other
grievances were close to expiring.
Unsurprisingly, when the OIG looked into grievances that had been
sent back to the prisons, many issues were not addressed, many were
reviewed by untrained staff, investigations were not conducted in a
timely manner (39% taking more than a year), and grievances were
improperly rejected. All of these are common complaints on the grievance
petitions prisoners have filed over the years.
The OIG states in their concluding response to the CDCR claims around
these 595 grievances:
“The purpose of this report was not to provide an assessment of the
department’s overall process for reviewing allegations of staff
misconduct that incarcerated people file; that is an assessment we
provide in our annual staff misconduct monitoring reports. This report
highlighted the department’s poor decision-making when determining how
to address a backlog of grievances that the department believed it was
not adequately staffed to handle.”
Back in September we printed an article from a comrade in Virginia
about PREA audits and why they do not work. This article did not
appear in ULK, but touched on the abuses faced by wimmin in
Federal Correctional Institution - Dublin (FCI-Dublin). On the
ineffectiveness of PREA audits in Virginia, the comrade wrote about how
the audits were pre-announced, communications with the auditors were
done in front of staff, and once the auditors left, staff retaliated
against prisoners who talked. Comrades in Pennsylvania
and Texas
have also reported on retaliation for filing PREA complaints, as is
common for filing any kind of grievance against staff. The failure of
PREA is just a subset of the failure of any accountability of prison
staff across the country for abusing prisoners.
After the incidents at FCI-Dublin that were largely reported in 2022,
nothing changed. This led to over 63 lawsuits being filed. On Monday, 11
March 2024, the FBI raided FCI-Dublin and arrested the acting Warden,
Associate Warden, a Captain and an Executive Assistant who all lost
their jobs. They were all members of the infamous “rape club” at
FCI-Dublin, which continued on after previous firings in recent
years.
“Federal law classifies any sexual contact between staff and
incarcerated people as a felony punishable with up to 15 years in
prison. But, as one incarcerated survivor testified during the trial of
former Warden Ray Garcia, the Prison Rape Elimination Act “really
doesn’t exist at Dublin.”(1)
PREA doesn’t really exist in most of this country, where grievances
are routinely thrown in the trash and retaliation for filing PREA
complaints is the norm. And this is not the first time the FBI has been
involved in investigating and arresting FCI-Dublin staff for rape.
Trans Pride Initiative (TPI) is working to hold PREA auditors
accountable in Texas. However, they report:
“Under PREA § 115.401(o), auditors “shall attempt to communicate with
community-based or victim advocates who may have insight into relevant
conditions in the facility.” TPI has seldom been contacted concerning
information we have about Texas prisons, and the National PREA Resource
Center, which oversees the audit process, has failed to hold auditors
accountable to this requirement. TPI has developed a simple auditor tool
for auditors to see current information about any unit that we have in
our system, so they do not have to even contact us. They are required to
list if they tried to contact others about prison information and who
they contacted. We are seeing many auditors list no contacts, or
contacts that are perfunctory and likely provided no
information.”(3)
TPI has an impressive database of incidents of violence and
retaliation against prisoners on their website. They want the details of
dates, who did what, what happened, what was said, where it happened,
witnesses, etc., which you can send to:
TPI
PO Box 3982
Dallas, TX
75208
Before publishing this article, an investigation into suits filed
under the Adult Survivors Act in New York City’s state supreme courts
revealed that 719 of 1,256 cases came from Riker’s Island Jail.(2) That
is, more than half of the suits filed in the whole city of New York for
sexual assaults that had occurred in the past were filed against city
correctional officers. Almost all of them came from the wimmin’s jail.
Like the rest of the country, wimmin make up a small minority of
prisoners at Rikers. While male-bodied
prisoners face very high rates of sexual assault compared to the general
U.$. population, it is clear that being in a wimmin’s prison puts
you in one of the highest-risk groups to be sexually assaulted.(4) And
within men’s prisons, being trans, gay, queer, intersex, smaller or
weaker will all put you at greater risk as the reports below
suggest.
Gender oppression is built in to the U.$. prison system. Despite
laws, lawsuits and FBI raids, it is not going away on its own. It is
only by organizing the oppressed to stand together that we can put an
end to these abuses.
Below are a couple recent reports from Polunsky Unit in Texas on how
PREA incidents are handled. TPI’s data shows they have received many
more PREA reports from other Texas prisons, including: Allred, Hughes,
Connally, Telford and Stiles Units.(5)
A Trans Prisoner at Polunsky Unit in Texas Reported in March
2024: I put a Step 1 Grievance against one officer and wrote to
the Ombudsman in Huntsville and he denied any allegations and got other
officers to start to do stuff to me. I wrote to the Warden Mr. Anderson
and I was placed around other gang members who keep threatening to harm
me and call me punk, snitch, hoe and all that and use officers against
me. Last month another officer name Suniga started threatening to harm
me and sexually harassed me.
…Later Suniga got mad at me and threatened to take my booty shorts
and other clothes. He told all those other inmates that I’m snitching on
them with the I.G. who coming to investigate me for the incident with
the other officer I mention before. And they took my jail housing manual
charter #30 for the LGBTQ inmates with all the PREA standards, rules and
regulations for jailers and inmates.
He took it and threw it away, so I put a step 1 grievances and sent a
letter to the PREA offices in Huntsville, who are doing an
investigation, and the PREA officer respond back and said they did an
investigation but can’t go forward because Mr. Suniga resigned from his
job. Now no body want to do anything or restore my papers which I don’t
get for free. …even if Suniga quit his job, the TDCJ should be
responsible for what he did while he were employed at the TDCJ.
A female officer who worked with Suniga before and knows that I put a
Step 1 against Suniga, works here named Ms. Smith. When she came to my
cell door she tell me that I got her friend in trouble and she refused
to feed me my lunch. She said that she was going to write me up for not
being dressed appropriately because I was wearing my shorts and she said
that she don’t care if I were punk, transgender, or whatever.
They stop our physical mail claiming that too much drugs are coming
into the TDCJ units. She worry about me wearing booty shorts, but drugs
still get here every day. And not only K2, they get methamphetamine,
ice, weed, all kind. I know because I seen who bring into the C pod. And
I got notes in my cell right now, on 8 March 2024, on people who ask me
if I want to buy K2 and ice, but I can’t say shit because if I do or
report it to the I.G. or STG they going to let these gang members know
that I told on them and more retaliations going to occur.
I am the only transgender or gay at C. Pod. All other inmates here
are gang members or part of some groups. I filed I-60 requests and send
letters to classification in Huntsville asking to move me to a pod or
unit where most LGBTQ prisoners are and never get a reply or get moved.
It is so cruel what they doing to us. About a month ago, someone killed
himself on C. pod. And two others try to cut they self too… Now, one
more time, I ask please help me with legal assistance to put a stop to
all this abuse. Thank you and hope I can hear from y’all or someone who
want to help me.
Another Polunsky Unit prisoner wrote us in March 2024:
I was called out by Captain Cerda concerning a PREA Safe Prison for
sexual harassment and sexual assault…. he began asking me what’s up with
this letter to PREA Ombudsman. I began to explain and he said, “aw hell,
we got to do this whole PREA thing.” He then hands me a statement sheet.
I ask for the dates for the PREA letter and times, but he said “don’t
worry about it, just leave ’em out.” I told him I needed them cause this
inmate was suppose to be out of his assigned work area and in safe
keeping, and I’ve written PREA Ombudsman about this repeatedly. He
stated, “If we weren’t so short handed all this shit wouldn’t be
happening and if TDCJ had housing, safe keeping wouldn’t be on my
fucking unit cause I damn sure don’t want yall here!”
I felt badgered and like I was wrong for filing the complaint with
only half the info. And with Captain Cerda’s demeanor and Lt. Rodriguez
throwing questions in… and her standing over me I felt pressured and I
wrote as little as possible. I just wanted to be away from them.
…TDCJ Executive Directive PD22 #4 Tampering with a witness violation
level 1: states “An employee shall not attempt to hinder or influence in
any manner the testimony or information or any witness or potential
witness in an investigation or administrative proceeding.”
The Digital mail system launched by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice (TDCJ) last year has been disastrous for prisoners and those who
communicate with them.
One comrade from Coffield Unit just wrote to say:
“In response to the TDCJ Digital Mail initiative article from ULK
84. My own postal mail has been averaging 3 months for receipt
since the implementation of the program. Even our Securus e-mail at my
unit has been taking up to 3 or 4 weeks to be received – both incoming
and outgoing.”
Meanwhile we are receiving mail from comrades in Allred Unit that is
dated from 3 months ago. While there are more delays in mail going in,
they are happening in both directions.
The Warrior In White newsletter has been investigating
delays and received the following responses:
[TDCJ Ombdusman to the nonprofit:] “There are no staff shortages and
all mail is being processed within the 3 day limit as stated in the
policy.”
[Mail System Coordinator in Huntsville:] We are currently
experiencing a staff shortage. We were not expecting the volume of mail
at the Dallas facility. All mail to you has been received at the
facility, but not yet scanned (acknowledging the USPS Informed Delivery
Service evidence showing the mail at the Dallas facility).”
[From Securus:] “There is no staff shortage. All mail is being
processed within 5 days, unless there are pictures or photos, in which
case it may take a little longer.”
Another comrade wrote in response to that suit to suggest:
“To a Texas prisoner who has filed a complaint challenging the
constitutionality of the Agency’s contracting with a private vendor
(i.e.: a for-profit company in Dallas, Texas) to digitalize all Texas
prisoners’ incoming general mail and photographs for computer-generated
posting to a prisoner’s Securus authorized tablets. I believe this Texas
prisoner needs to read Securus Technologies, LLC’s Agreement of Terms
and Conditions when challenging the Agency’s policy-related ban of
senders’ mail piece items off of prisoners physical mail. See Texas
General Arbitration Act.”
For those who cannot commit to participating in the lawsuit, we can
continue to agitate around this issue. And one way is to file
grievances. Below is an example grievance from a comrade that can help
you write your own:
In mid-February on H-pod here in the ECB [Expansion Cell Blocks]
prisoners got together and submitted 30 grievances about lack of dayroom
and outside rec which G-5, G-4 and G-2 are all experiencing here in the
ECB. The response from Warden Smith was that they are “understaffed”. I
may submit my own grievance just to see if I get the same response
though I have to be careful as the guards are using the gangs to police
the prisoners and some of these fucking “Homeboys” do the pigs’ work for
them violently. But I thought I would call your attention to an
interview of Bryan Collier in the Nov-Dec 2023 and Jan. 2024 Echo
Newspaper. In the January edition Collier admits to having
“staffing” problems. So both Collier and Smith are aware of this
understaffing but still it continues and they are not releasing anybody
or hiring enough to quell the problems.
Two weeks ago it is rumored that a prisoner was raped by his celly.
The word is this is the reason one of my classmates has been missing. I
don’t know if a FOIA can be filed and help his family to get these
motherfuckers? But being understaffed is dangerous and cruel for all of
us.
These 30 grievances from G-4’s in H-pod on ECB and the January 2024
interview of Collier show corroborated “Deliberate Indifference.” Maybe
I should also grieve this and send my copies to a supporter who can
coordinate with prisoners, legislators, and the D.O.J. I’m sure Genocide
Joe would love to get a piece of Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton for the bad
press they have given him on the border?? We should take advantage of
these asshole politicians whenever we can!!! Anyway, if you have any
extra ULKs sitting around and can afford to send me another
bulk mailing, please do so, so that I can distribute them here.
Securus advertises package pricing for movies I think that are about
$12 a month but they are not offering these packages. Instead we have to
pay from 6-12 dollars per movie rental! And they blame Hollywood Studios
for this price gouging. I wonder if Hollywood knows about how they are
exploiting us and our families? We should get Netflix for $16/month or
something but 4.99-19.99 before tax is too much to charge “slaves” who
do not get paid for their mandatory work!
MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s ironic that Abbott is
fighting to militarize the border, but can’t find enough people to run
his prisons. Though it’s our understanding that many Texas prisons are
already being staffed by Nigerian immigrants working on visas. Meanwhile
they have gangs working for the state, implementing repression and
keeping the population sedated on drugs, while the staff sit around
doing nothing. Though Biden has no qualms about supporting genocide, he
does like scoring political points on Greg Abbot. This comrade might
have a good idea here.
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.
A comrade in Indiana has drafted the attached petition to address
relevant state officials listed at the end regarding failures in the
grievance system in the Indiana Department of Corrections. Outside
supporters are encouraged to share the petition with contacts inside and
to write the contacts in support of the issues faced by their friends,
comrades and family. Prisoners in Indiana can write us to get copies of
this petition as well as our Federal appeal petition in the case that
the state petition is not effective.
[UPDATED August 2024 to include contacts at Wabash Valley CF]
Introduction: Current Existing Ideas Around Snitching
As Marxist-Leninist-Maoists it is important to apply the dialectical materialist method when it comes to handling the contradictions among the masses. In the prison context where most of our organizing revolves around, the contradictions between various prisoner individuals, national groups, and lumpen organizations can become antagonistic and it is our job to transform this antagonistic contradiction into a non-antagonistic one and resolve it from there out.
One example of idealism is around the “stop snitching” slogan and campaign. Is “stop snitching” a correct slogan? Only an idealist could answer this question without more information. The materialist method of finding out what would constitute “snitching” would be to analyze the material conditions of how this “stop snitching” idea came about, the purposes it was for, which classes were promoting it, and going from there. What we must not do is treat it like a general platitude where it can be abused for anti-people purposes and exploited by the pigs to get the masses to fight amongst themselves.
To assume the most righteous origins of the “stop snitching” slogan, we can think of various lumpen organizations, who might be in competition and rivalry with each other at times. Yet these organizations all come to agree that they have a common interest in not sending the oppressor’s cops against each other. Perhaps there is a consciousness as oppressed people uniting these L.O.s to come to this conclusion. But certainly there is a material interest in staying alive and out of prison by reducing the amount of police involvement in their lives.
The “stop snitching” campaign was a success. So much so that today, in many prisons, it has been taken up as an idealistic and dogmatic truth rather than a materialist principle to apply in differing conditions. To many this slogan is true for all times and all places. In fact, it is so absolutely true that they apply it to the police themselves! We’ve received reports from many parts of the country that comrades can’t get others to file grievances against abuse and inhumane conditions against the system because fellow prisoners don’t want to “snitch”.
Now in reality, those fellow prisoners are probably just scared of what prison staff will do to them, so they use the “stop snitching” slogan as an excuse to do nothing and live quietly under the boot of oppression which the stop snitching principle was brought up to fight against in the first place.
However, those who stand up for themselves recognize the role of grievances. We live in a bourgeois democracy. The image of the rule of law is important to the enemy even if things become lawless in the corners of society, like in prisons. There is a grievance system and the bourgeois/imperialist state says they will follow that system. That means this is a tool that can and should be used to improve conditions for comrades organizing within the belly of the beast and fight for the political rights to build independent institutions. To call that snitching is to say that something is true because it’s true; not because of any actual evidence or material basis. To call this snitching is to lack any analysis of class, nation, gender or who are our friends and who are our enemies.
And as we discussed in the last issue of ULK, we must learn to think in percentages to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. Thinking in absolutes, allows the enemy to keep us divided.
Case Scenario: Inmate Collaborators and Pigs Using Anti-Snitching Sentiment to Repress Prisoners in CDCR
In one of many reports like this, a comrade in California recently wrote us:
Dear MIM Distributors,
I am a disabled person under the Armstrong v. Newsom injunction where I continue to be targeted by officers who specialize in pitting prisoners against each other to discourage and deter use of the grievance process at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD), and in retaliation for the same.
On the morning of 25 August 2023, while exiting my cell quarters to be issued my breakfast and lunch Kosher meal, one of the inmate porter workers (infamous for not only disruptions, violence, and fighting other prisoners on the unit; but also carrying out retaliatory terrorism for officers against prisoners who use the RJD grievance process to report misconduct) began to ridicule me without provocation.
Subsequent to returning to my cell and at commencement of A.M. medication, officer G. Sellano supervised pill line near my cell as the same prisoner porter worker came to my cell door and began hostile provocation calling me a “snitch” for pending grievances (Attached as Exhibit A). Both of which involve this very same inmate porter worker and officer G. Sellano.
This inmate porter worker then stood outside my cell door on a rant to provoke me by yelling “snitch, you a bitch, you wrote a buz on me and Sellano.” The whole time officer G. Sellano stood listening, watching as the inmate porter worker then openly blasted how he is able to “do what I want all around here, I can fight anybody I want and nothing will happen. I won’t even get a 115.” Challenging me to fight as officer G. Sellano stood listening and watching while supervising the A.M. medication line next to my assigned cell.
Said inmate porter worker then began yelling to the tower officer to open my cell door in order to attack me while officer G. Sellano continued to fail to intervene, act, or quell the growing disorder.
The inmate porter worker in question is allowed to volunteer work for officer G. Sellano where the inmate receives detailed information on pending grievances filed against officer G. Sellano – then uses that personal knowledge of grievance information to confront, intimidate, and provoke some violent incident with the grievant: all while officers on the unit watch.
Facility Captain Lewis has turned a blind eye to not only this particular inmate porter worker’s ongoing propensity for violence and daily disruptions on the housing unit, but also the fact that this particular inmate porter worker is and has been for months now, used as a torpedo for housing officers like G. Sellano to be programmed to target prisoners like me who use the grievance process here at RJD while Warden James Hill has been unable to prevent officers like G. Sellano from using working knowledge of department operations to gather information for the purposes of endangering the safety and the welfare of those confined therein.
Inmates vs Prisoners
Inmates are the categorical definition used by the U.$. law to white wash their crimes. It is no different politically than to call the torture of Iraqi POWs “enhanced interrogation.” Inmate also implies a more collaborative relationship between captive and captor, which is an appropriate term to use for the inmate porter described above. A politically appropriate term for the vast majority of the imprisoned lumpen in this country would be prisoners or captives. We do not live in a time where wars are officially declared or sanctioned by governments through formalized documents. Wars are declared through invasions (such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine), bombings (such as Al-Qaeda’s destruction of the twin towers), etc. The U$A has waged war against the oppressed nations inside their borders through mass imprisonment and police occupation – thinly disguised as “war on crime” or “war on drugs.” During this mass imprisonment and lumpenization of the oppressed nation masses through the criminal inju$tice system, inmates are those who collaborate with the pigs behind bars – a consciousness of a lumpen class in itself. A lumpen class for itself, as Marx used the term, would recognize the political importance of the two distinctions.
As stated earlier, the stop snitching slogan can be utilized as principled solidarity as fellow oppressed nationals within the constant anti-people activities of the lumpen class. Through popular support, such as hip-hop culture, this stop snitching principle would even extend beyond street life into the youth where telling on adults or school teachers would even be considered snitching. The principle of a specific lumpen life now become a general platitude and empty virtue. We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor? What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your folks”? Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the first place?
We hope to move the discussion a step forward for our readers who seek to transform the anti-people gangster mentality to the pro-people revolutionary path. Using the few rights that the oppressed are given against the oppressor to build power among the masses is not snitching. Perhaps this over-emphasis on snitching on fellow criminals (as the government are criminals oftentimes in lawless corners of society such as prisons) shows the class in itself level consciousness that many of our readers might be susceptible to.
If you follow the news, you are well aware of a Virginian named
Officer Edwards, who recently used police training to attempt to groom a
teenage girl for eir pedophilic needs. When it didn’t pay off ey drove
to California, murdered eir family, burned down eir house, and kidnapped
the girl. Ey eventually died in a fire fight with California police.
Around the same time, back at a Virginia Prison, a Virginia Department
of Corrections (VADOC) guard named Owens at Keen Mountain Correctional
Center shot a prison nurse to death. Ey was pregnant with the guard’s
child and was threatening to tell Owens’ wife about eir affair. These
are Virginians, and ey are the type of people who flock to jobs in
corrections and law-enforcement in Virginia. Virginia officials will
tell you they don’t know how people who are so dangerous slipped through
the background checks. Virginia officials are lying to you because these
are the people they look to recruit.
There are more subtle forms of this sociopathic behavior, and the
guards and other staff at the notorious Pocahontas State Corruption
Center exercise these forms of open torture daily. One of the most
common is the deliberate tampering with mail. Two of the most often seen
names are Hagerty and McCall. Aside from delaying outgoing mail,
sometimes for weeks if ey send it out at all, incoming mail is often
denied outright for any number of nonsensical and often false reasons.
An example of this is the denial of a book review/catalog. The reason
cited was “no nude or semi-nude images”. Upon investigation it was
determined that “nude/semi-nude” was a tank top shirt. Absolutely
nothing “nude or semi-nude” by any known standards of decency. Of course
the target of this mail denial was a known political writer and the
review catalog was from a publisher – Fifth Estate – that focuses on
political themes (many of them anti-prison). What these two VA DOC
employees did – mail tampering – is a federal crime.
This is just one example of a massive assault on the guarantees of
the First Amendment. It is a common event that is meant to not only
prevent communications from exposing the other criminal acts by PSCC
staff, but it’s also a means of isolating the captives. It’s a vicious
form of psychological torture and harm. Ey want the captives to believe
that ey are alone – that ey are forgotten by eir friends and family.
This is solely to make the captives not only more susceptible to further
and more cruel abuses, but also to a force a level of acceptance of the
abuse.
To further this endeavor it is important to prevent grievances and
complaints from being seen by those at regional or Central (Richmond)
administration. Though in all reality, since the Virginia DOC only
recruits and promote from within its own insular institutions, the
administrators at every meaningful level were hand-picked for eir
silence and loyalty to the VA DOC. Without eir allowance of endless
cruelty and torture, it could be stopped. Still, “grievance
coordinators” such as C. Smalling at PSCC, whose unwritten job
description is “grievance disappear-er” answers the grievances erself
instead of routing them to the proper areas for re-dress. Ey makes sure
they are not properly logged so that they disappear as needed. This is
especially important in preventing lawsuits from being filed, something
PSCC is prone to do due to its nationalist majority staff and their
daily human rights abuses. Without an exhausted grievance process any
lawsuit brought by a prisoner is immediately dismissed by the courts. In
Virginia, even the federal court judges are Virginians.
Other more harmful – yet just as subtle – forms of torture and harm
are the 24 hour lights, a gift from 15 years of Assistant Wardens who
should be in prison themselves. Currently the PSCC Assistant Warden,
Mr. Collins, is facing at least six sexual harassment suits at three
different prisons including PSCC. They just move the guy from one prison
to the next and fire the people who lodged the complaints.
Yet another way the staff abuse the captives is through an especially
vicious misuse of the PA system. There are several ways to do this, but
the two most common are as follows:
Three very dangerous guards, Barry, Sargent, and Shelton are
particularly fond of turning the PA system up to full volume and
screaming into the microphone. Since they work on the night shift you
might imagine the problems this might cause for the captives. 9PM, 10PM,
12AM, 3AM, 5AM anytime they feel like scaring the living hell out of the
250 people and also disturbing their sleep. This sort of abuse is
completely illegal yet all complaints are ignored or disappeared. These
acts are a sign of sociopathic behavior and given that 40% of Virginia’s
captives are warehoused mental health cases, it is so very devastating.
The flip side to this is turning the PA system volume down so low that
no one can hear announcements. This causes not only missed classes,
programs, or medical appointments, but it also allows guards to justify
all manner of false charges against captives – most often “disobey a
direct order” or “unauthorized area”. Both are low level charges, but
they cause sanctions and fines. They also make your record appear as if
you are a problem all of the time, and if you get too many you will be
transferred to a higher security prison.
Another regular problem comes from guards such as Craig, Bogle,
Kimble and others like them – most of the guards. They are openly racist
and anti-semitic, go out of their way to verbally (and sometimes
physically) abuse anyone they are able to. On the boulevard, in the
education and library buildings, in the chow hall, any place they are
able to, and they get away with it repeatedly. This has gone on for
years and years without any change or even the least reprimand. To give
you a better idea of just how far it can go on PSCC’s compound, here is
a scenario that happened recently:
A guard named Horton and his wife, also a guard, both work on the
compound. This is a violation of policy for a lot of good sense reasons,
but PSCC itself is a major violations of DOC policy and too many to
count. Mrs. Horton, while married to one guard, is sleeping with several
others on the compound during working hours. It is common knowledge to
everyone. As you might expect, Mr. Horton gets fed up with his wife’s
extramarital affairs and decides to solve the problem. This guy brings a
loaded weapon THROUGH the gates – apparently staff were not checking
guards as they came in – with the intend of making some examples. Those
examples were going to be PRISONERS! Not the other guards who were
involved with the wife, but PRISONERS! Fortunately a few guards stepped
in and put a stop to this before anyone got hurt, but still, Mr. Horton
is only fired and walked off the compound. Not a single criminal charge
was brought even though he broke half a dozen laws. His wife was
recently promoted to “counselor,” and he was just rehired to work at the
same prison on the same shift as his wife.
Virginians and the VA DOC PSCC staff fed captives food that says “not
for human consumption” on the box. Its medical staff is entirely
unqualified in every way. Its psychologists do not have the experience
to handle severe mental health issues and are even falsifying records to
avoid even dealing with mental health because the facility (and the VA
DOC) are simply not capable or designated to handle such issues. Add to
this all the well-known and common place issues with corrupt prison
staff – and put the prison in a well hidden county at the end of some
“wrong turn” road in a state that seems to be growing its right wing
neo-nazi extremist population. You have a real time disaster unfolding
daily: the other 40 prisons in Virginia – a long time slave economy –
are no better. On top of all that, add a 20% rate of innocence/wrongful
conviction (approximately 5,000 people as of this writing). Harsh action
must be taken to stop this madness.
MIM(Prisons) responds: MIM(Prisons) has been questioned
online for our support of the campaign to fight the a recent rewrite of
BP-03.91 in Texas, mostly to increase restrictions on sexually
suggestive, non-nude photos. The example given by the comrade above is
one of many that explain why we support that campaign despite stating
clearly that we oppose pornography. Any increase in the restrictions on
mail are going to be applied to stuff the pigs disagree with
politically, because there is no free speech in this bourgeois
dictatorship, only power struggles.
Of course, most pornography represents patriarchal and bourgeois
morals. Morals that numerous gender-related acts of violence described
by this author. We welcome reports like this, and print many on our
website. But as the author states action must be taken, we really want
your articles on campaigns and struggles against these types of abuses
and organized repression.
I am writing you today in response to an article you published in your Winter 2023 edition of Under Lock & Key No. 80. It’s true grievances don’t work, but it’s not just in Nevada where this is the case – it’s also here in the California Department of Corrections (CDCR). They have become callous and adept in covering up their wrongs; or find some minor significance in order to deny or just throw out our grievance and hold their green line even when they know that it’s a heinous act, which one of their own is committing.
Such is the case here at California Medical Facility (CMF) where C.O. Clark has been subjecting god awful pain and suffering on an aging population by running a gulag with temperatures in the high 30’s and low 40’s throughout the night. Pouring rain and broken windows are in every dorm. C.O. Clark insists on turning off the heater and running the swamp cooler full-blast all night long which has had a detrimental and highly damaging effect on my sciatica. I have spoken to him on numerous occasions but all my talking, explaining, and pleading falls upon deaf ears. What he is in fact doing is operating a gulag here at the California Medical Facility and freezing out the senior/aging population.
This man is a sadomasochist who finds pleasure in inflicting physical and mental pain on the prisoner/patient population simply because he can. I assert that it’s all in retaliation for grievances made last year against Sgt. Perez and Sgt. Huston which I used in support of my thesis of abuse by CDCR under the Color of Law here at CMF in a paper to Solano C.C. in my ENGLISH004 class with Professor Therriault which earned me an A in this course.
All this has resulted in causing me horrific amounts of pain. It’s a tragedy that a man like this should be allowed to wear a badge and be given so much power and authority to torture human beings and unleash such sadistic punishments on a graying population of prisoners/patients such as those of us here at the California Medical Facility. The true guilt and culpability lies with his superiors who are fully aware of his actions and legitimize his narcissism/tyranny. I say this because he has been 602ed for his cruelty of freezing-out the population but staff either cover it up or condone his actions through never acting on said 602 (i.e. Grievance Log #349915/filed 1/9/2023). Both him and his superiors need to be held accountable for their disgraceful actions.
I write this in solidarity with my brothers in Nevada: you are not alone in this struggle. And we also have been dealing with oppression and marginalization by Euro-Amerikan subjugation being subjected to through the so-called self-help groups such as RISE run by LSA (Life Support Alliance). It’s all the same oppressive conditions which are a result of the constitutional based involuntary servitude issue (all which is used with bias) that the legislature and repressive justice system refuses to address. This is negatively effecting the lives of ALL incarcerated people.
MIM(Prisons adds): We received a series of grievances and responses from multiple comrades at CMF regarding this issue of the swamp cooler being used to freeze out prisoners. The response from Reviewing Authority D. Hurley was that this never happened. The comrades then submitted grievance petitions to the department documenting staff “reporting deliberate false information (DOM §31140.6.1).”
The USW campaign to “Demand Our Grievances are Addressed” began in California and continues in California and in many states across the country. The question is can the imperialist United $tates ever provide a functioning grievance system to the people it holds in captivity? The majority of the people being of the oppressed nations occupied by imperialism means the ability to abuse with impunity is part of the ongoing repression of those who have fought for freedom from U.$. imperialism for hundreds of years. The fight for grievances to be heard, as is the fight for national liberation, is a fight to end these oppressive conditions.
