Under Lock & Key

Welcome to the revolution! This is Alien tappin in with a response to ULK 87 article “How To Get Grievances Heard In Arkansas.”

I actually did many years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. The last six of those years was spent in the max (Brickeys/Cummins), cuz I ‘bucked’ on em repeatedly. I’ve personally been through years of what this Arkansas prisoner is describing. I filed hundreds of grievances and they always responded with a denial of allegations and found the grievance without merit, as this Arkansas prisoner said. I’ve also had similar experiences with the disciplining hearings, with disciplinary hearing officers, like ‘no-socks’, cutting the hearing camera off on me mid hearing and automatically finding me guilty, etc. For the longest time I held yards/showers down, barricaded cells with spears, stabbed people, flooded toilets, busted sprinklers, slipped cuff and attacked pigs to get justice, but I learned several things towards the end of my set that helped a lot.

So when you – this Arkansas prisoner – ask what to do I decided to give you a few answers in the long/short term; it’s inspiring to see fellow Arkansas comrades goin’ down the same path as me, while “fighting and spreading the word” in chains.

Okay, so in the short-term, request the prisoner’s self-help litigation manual (4th edition) from the law library, they usually keep several torn-up copies of them on hand, go to the exhaustion of remedies section and pull up the case law at the bottom of the pages to “shepherdize”. In 2016, while I was at Brickeys, Prison Legal News sent me a free copy of their magazine and it had a case in there from the Supreme Court that says that when a remedy (grievance) is unavailable, then it is a “dead-end” process and doesn’t have to be exhausted.

What I’m getting at is that there are certain circumstances (such as when you’re being retaliated against as a result of exhausting your remedies) that enable you to file the 42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuit, without completing the grievance process. You just gotta explain to the courts in the §1983 complaint package why you had “no available remedy to exhaust”, which sucks, cuz then you gotta survive a “summary judgement motion” – it’s not easy either – once you file the lawsuit. The Arkansas pigs are aware of this, which is why they don’t mind not signing grievances or doin’ anything about your grievances once signed. Plus they’re aware that the chances of them gettin’ sued are low. Successfully sue them a couple times and watch their attitude adjust. I personally went through this and didn’t get to finish the lawsuits cuz the pigs where I am now trashed all my files.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Study into the case law on grievance exhaustion and go from there (there’s no way to cover all the case law inside of one article). If you don’t know how to shepherdize cases, the book I told you about will instruct you on all that. On the bright side it’ll give you something to do in the max. Get in the law library, cuz while grievances don’t work in Arkansas, lawsuits do.

In the long term, I plan on collaborating with MIM(Prisons) to get a campaign going against the PLRA (Prison Litigation Reform Act §1997) – we’ll call it the “PLRA campaign”. The PLRA is what demands that prisoners exhaust all available remedies, prior to filing any Bivens/42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuits (Bivens are filed against the federal government, while §1983 is for the state/local level). According to the 1st Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” And according to the 14th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have a right to equal protection. The PLRA violates both the 1st and 14th Amendments and I intend to organize a class action challenging the constitutionality of the PLRA, through the PLRA campaign.

1. In theory, our ability to “petition the government for redress of grievances” is life-threatening and often injurious, cuz we’re forced to exhaust dangerous grievances, prior to filing §1983’s. The fact is that prisoners can and do get killed and fucked off – injured – for filing grievances nation-wide. Filing grievances is dangerous in an infinite amount of ways. They can’t legally force us to participate in a grievance process that’s going to get us stabbed in the neck or jumped on by fuck-boys, who are often in collaboration with the pigs. We are unable to petition the government if doin’ so is going to get us hurt in any kind of way. We can prove in a trial that it’s common knowledge that guards, nation-wide, are capable of silencing and do silence prisoner litigants’ petitions through retaliation which intimidates many prisoners from initiating grievances or lawsuits. The feds spent decades tryin’ to take down the five Italian mafia families, in part for silencing litigants, so why not help us take down the pigs’ PLRA, which is essentially a technical loophole that they use to evade justice or trials and silence litigants with mafia-like tactics.

The whole “deliberate indifference” standard that applies to 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) lawsuits wouldn’t apply in a 1st Amendment claim. We’d be arguing that the PLRA exhaustion requirement is “abridgement”, which doesn’t necessarily have to be deliberately indifferent.

2. The PLRA violates the 14th Amendment cuz the prison class can’t seek redress for mental injuries without there being a physical injury, and the non-prisoner class can seek redress for mental injuries even if there isn’t any physical injuries involved, which is unequal protection. Shutting the doors of the courts in prisoners’ faces so that we can’t seek redress for mental injuries doesn’t allow us equal access to the courts, which also violates the 1st Amendment. An injury is an injury. Take it from me, a severely mentally ill prisoner, when I say that many mental injuries are just as bad, if not worse than, physical injuries. Suffering from mental injuries is also a “grievance” that we should be able to “petition the government for redress” for, under the 1st Amendment. We have to ask ourselves what the aim of the PLRA is when it comes to barring us from the courts for redress of mental or psychological grievances? I think that the answer to the question is obvious and speaks volumes.

How would the prison system look without the PLRA? The PLRA is an obstacle standing in our way of combating the number one form of psychological torture of the Amerikan nation’s prison system – control units. And this is due to the fact that we can’t sue anyone for the mental injuries involved with doing hole time if it doesn’t cause physical injuries, and doing hole time, by itself, doesn’t cause physical injuries. If we can successfully take down the PLRA, then we can sue to receive compensation when we suffer mental injuries as a result of doing long-term hole or max time, without there being any physical injuries. If they have to compensate prisoners every time somebody suffers a mental injury as a result of living long-term in control units, they may lean more towards changing living conditions in the hole (such as giving one access to books, radios, phones, jobs, fixing temperature issues, etc.), flat out abolishing the control units, or reducing length of control unit sentences.

Anything mentally injurious going on inside of the prison that is simply for revenge-based punishments and not for security purposes could then lead to mass amounts of compensation. The compensation will deter psychological torture and amplify mental-health treatments.

The last aspect of taking down the PLRA is that prisoners would no longer have to exhaust remedies in order to file Bivens/§1983s. If we can end the PLRA in the long term, then this would end the grievance campaign altogether.

With that I’ll close. I hope my response was helpful.

The methods of oppression are ever evolving to suppress the masses. The people must realize that revolution and resistance is a science, not rooted in emotion. Being a prisoner of war, enslaved by the state of Illinois, I have learned that resistance to my oppression must be calculated and strategic.

To all comrades held by the beast, learn the law! Stop allowing the State to offer you meaningless distractions that prevent you from fighting against this system. We must learn to use the weapons we got. Understand, comrades, the pigs are trained and equipped to handle any form of physical resistance, but they lack any true method to handle a revolutionary mind.

Resist by challenging all conditions of your enslavement, use their laws against them. Utilize every tool available to you. All peer advocates/jailhouse lawyers must unite to teach all that they know. Don’t let false titles keep us from uniting. Don’t let organizational ties, race, ideological stance, or religion stop us from coming together to fight against this system.

We must be organized and disciplined in our approach. Educate yourselves, train your mind & bodies, read every day! Write every day! Fuck that TV or tablet, get in the law library! All corporate media is a lie! Unburden yourself from that illusion. A pig’s nature is to consume uncontrollably, don’t be a pig or a pig sympathizer by allowing their oppression of you to go unchecked! Master everything you commit yourself to studying, revolutionize your mind. If the system doesn’t fear your physicality, it fears your mind, or should I say, the potential of what your mind can become!

“The heart of a soldier with the brain to teach a whole nation…” 2pac/No More Pain

In Solidarity

Recently, in my heathen circle, we experienced some religious backlash. An offender was caught/told on for passing a kite/note. The note had nothing in it damaging, but it’s classified as trafficking here. Noted. But the heathen caught was punished with threats to demote his legal proceeding; a sentence modification, and threatened. Denounce your faith, cut your hair, and join a more “realistic” faith, or face serious punishment including solitary confinement for “investigation”. Personally I was outraged. We should be “free” from religious prosecution, even in prison. Just punish the man normally, leave his faith off the table, and allow the punishment to fit the crime. Heathenism carries with it heavy undertones in prison, and we do not preach hate or separatism. We follow and pray to Gods and give thanks, nothing more. Brothers, keep your head up and avoid feeding into the hype. Hailsa! And thank the ULK for giving us a voice!

I recently received my first Under Lock and Key (Winter 2023, No. 80) newsletter. I really wish I’d been receiving it years ago, cuz it’s a good read, and very informative.

Just read page 7. Drug addiction remains a primary barrier to unity, and I would like more info on United Struggle from Within’s Revolutionary 12 Step training program. And if, and how, I can get involved, cause here in the Illinois prison system, drugs have become a major issue, especially since Covid hit. Prisoners are having their people dip/spray letters, cards, books, magazines, and even obituaries with drugs and other chemicals in order to eat or smoke the paper to get some type of high. Whatever these guys are smoking is causing them to have episodes such as freaking out, seizures, and even O.D.ing. It’s so bad at times you can see a smoke cloud in the air, and C.O.’s, Sgt’s, Lt’s, and even Major’s have been on a wing during this and have done nothing but tell the wing to put that shit out and spray something in order to cover up the odor, and they’ve even said, smoke it at your own risk and don’t call for help if you O.D. There ain’t a unit, wing, or housing that don’t have an issue with this stuff. Seg and even the infirmary are smoking it up. To a point the staff have given up trying to get this under control and these substances have caused multiple issues for all of us in here.

They’ve gotten real strict on the mail and what we receive and how we receive mail such as letters, cards, photos, and books/magazines. They’ve told us that our letters can’t be more than 3 pages, we can’t receive 2-ply cards, and they can’t have any glitter on them. All photos have to go through a company such as Freeprints or Pelipost, can’t come from our family, friends, Walmart, or Walgreens any more. All books and magazines must come from a vendor or company, and even then, a lot is not allowed, no hard cover books, and can’t be over a certain size.

Also, it plays on us prisoners that have health issues and altered immune systems such as myself. I have breathing issues and I’ve even had a sinus surgery in order to open my nose so I could breathe better. And I use a rescue inhaler and have been put in by my surgeon to have a sleep study done due to my breathing and my surgeon has even said that I need a CPAP machine which is what the sleep study is for.

I’ve even gotten into arguments/fights with cellies that I’ve had over them wanting to smoke this stuff.

I have wrote the warden and the placement officer multiple times, the warden has never responded. And it took me three times writing the placement officer before I got a response. I had asked, “which wings exactly are the non-smoking wings?” “This is a smoke-free institution.”, word-for-word the response I was given.

Staff C.O.’s and nurses crack jokes and talk about how bad the smoking is on a unit or on a wing, and I’ve heard/been told by a few C.O.’s and nurses that some staff have lawsuits in due to them coming in contact with said substance and/or smoke.

There is nowhere in this prison that is smoke free, and with them not having a place for those of us that don’t want to be around this stuff, they are putting us in harm’s way and putting our health at risk.

A couple questions: is this a violation of my rights? What should/can I do about it?

Please help me if you can, thank you!

Please send me the Grievance Campaign – petition for Illinois.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is the same story we’ve been hearing across the country, and one of the reasons we launched our Revolutionary 12 Step program when we did. It’s almost as if this drug plague prisoners are facing was intentional. You should have received a copy of our 12 Step program by now. Unfortunately we do not have an active training program. But we are looking for experienced comrades to restart our training program, and for comrades on the ground to implement the program and send in reports on its successes and failures and how to improve it. This is an important challenge that the anti-imperialist prison movement must overcome to be successful.

Is the smoke a violation of the law? Yes, as the staff told you it is a non-smoking facility and you have a legal right to not be exposed to second hand smoke there. The Smoke-Free Illinois Act (SFIA) of 2008 forbids smoking in all buildings (with exceptions like homes and designated hotel rooms), where smoking is defined as:

“Smoke” or “smoking” means the carrying, smoking, burning, inhaling, or exhaling of any kind of lighted pipe, cigar, cigarette, hookah, weed, herbs, or any other lighted smoking equipment. “Smoke” or “smoking” includes the use of an electronic cigarette.

Is the smoke a violation of your rights? Well, we’d say there are no rights, only power struggles. So you can use the SFIA to grieve this issue, but if they don’t listen you’ll have to get organized, find allies inside or outside and apply pressure. We’ve sent you the grievance petition, this is one tool you can use to try to organize people around this issue.

The oppression which prisoners face in this country is one result of the global system of imperialism whose primary victims are the oppressed nations globally, meaning that this system is our primary enemy. We must spread the word that prisoners in this country are suffering because the Amerikan empire’s wealth is based on class and national barriers; the Amerikan nation does not want to share its privileged position with Black and Brown people, so they restrict them from employment, from education, from housing, and force them into a life in the “underground.” The solution for the oppressed is not to fight to get into the club, but to unite with the oppressed in the Third World to destroy the club system as a whole and build a socialist world. A world where peoples’ needs are put first, not the current world where people are constantly struggling for petty basic rights like not to have your life threatened by toxic smoke.

In May of this year, Texas governor greg abbott pardoned a man named daniel perry. Some of you may remember the incident in which daniel was convicted of murder. Recall the summer of 2020. The hope, optimism and liberty many felt as they bum-rushed the streets in protest in cities worldwide decrying anti-blackness.

In the midst of this surge of proactive and progressive human energy after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, was a tag team, husband and wife duo in Austin, Texas. Austin, the state capital, was the most active and longstanding protest site in the state during that summer. In the eye of this storm was Garrett Foster and eir wife, Whitney Mitchell. Mitchell, who was confined to a wheelchair, wanted to be involved in the ground swelling movement of humynity, and would not let being confined to a wheel-chair detour em. Garrett was eir guide and aid.

Garrett and eir wife attended many of the protests that summer, mostly centered around the police headquarters and state capital in downtown Austin. Garrett, a u.$. air force veteran, routinely adorned fatigues and carried a rifle which ey was legally permitted to possess by the laws of the state. In July of 2020, while walking and escorting eir wife Whitney down Congress Avenue, Garrett and daniel got into a verbal altercation. daniel was an Uber driver and was on the job. daniel was also legally armed. daniel, behind the protection of an Uber vehicle, began revving eir engine up in order to intimidate protesters. Mr. Foster addressed this behavior verbally and after doing so, daniel rolled down the window and shot Garrett Foster multiple times, killing em.

During the pre-trial proceedings, this case, along with the case of kyle rittenhouse, received a swarm of media attention on conservative networks. The neo-confederates believed that the two white supremacists’ acts of murder had struck a blow for all of them (them being the white settler amerikans, particularly the neo-confederacy).

At that time in 2020, greg abbott appeared on the tucker carlson show and vowed that in the event of guilt ey would pardon daniel perry. In May, abbott made good on this vow and pardoned daniel perry, stating that ey “stood his ground”.

i hope this news upsets the reader. At the very least i hope this news brings you in on the not so little secret my comrades and i have long known. You wanna know what that secret is? Sure, i’ll tell you. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LAW, ONLY POWER STRUGGLES.

The good, if i can even call it that, is that some will see this and finally realize the illegitimacy of law in Texas and amerikan society. To understand why this was such a thrust and showcase of reactionary power, we have to understand the history of the pardon and commutation in Texas. Briefly, in the 1980’s the legislature passed measures to limit the power of the governor to pardon and commute sentences. What they passed made sure that in the case of pardons, at least 10 of 18 members of the Pardons and Parole Board, all of which are appointed by the governor, would have to recommend a pardon. All 18 members recommended the pardon of daniel perry. A spit in the face of bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois legal process. So now We can see that it’s okay not to play by the rules, this will free us of some of our handicapping hang-ups. Will you step up and commit to wrestling power out of the hands of tyranny? We All Have A Choice To Make; Power to the People! Power to New Afrika!

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.

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.

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.

I have been doing time in Alaska off and on since 2004. I’ve seen all the dirty tricks the crooked C.O.’s use to violate our constitutional rights. I’ve seen one generation of crooked cops hand down their dirty tricks to the next. I see them violate our rights to the point prisoners don’t know their rights are being violated. As Hitler said, “if you tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe it…” It’s time we stand up and take our rights back. The two biggest Due Process violations are the failure to have witnesses physically present at the disciplinary hearing and the failure to permit requested evidence in the accused favor.

It is the law in the 9th circuit that witnesses must appear at a prisoners disciplinary hearing, (Bartholomew v. Watson, 665 F.2d 915, 917-18 (9^th Cir. 1982)). And that they may not use interviews to substitute for live witnesses (Mitchell v. Dupnik, 75 F.3d 517, 525-26 (9^th Cir. 1996). The blanket denial of live witnesses is impermissible, exclusions must be justified individually (Serrano v. Francis, 345 F.3d 1071, 1079-80 (9^th Cir. 2003)).

However, in the past 20 years the Alaska Department of Corrections (AKDOC) has denied all live/physically present witnesses other than the crooked cops themselves! In the face of clearly established Constitutional law the crooked cops only permit written interviews of our witnesses. The answer we get most often is, “that’s just not how we do things.” When or if we appeal, our appeal on this point is denied without reason.

Instead of throwing our hands up in hopeless despair, I encourage you to file your administrative appeal with the court after you exhaust your appeals with the AKDOC. There was an attorney who retired about 7 years ago, Jon Buckholtt, who would do administrative appeals for prisoners, about 100 per year. Cases have been reversed and then expunged on this point alone.

I also would encourage you to contact your local ACLU and/or file a §1983 civil rights claim. Take back your rights!