Under Lock & Key

MIM(Prisons) interviewed Reel Soldier, who previewed a new film they are working on at the StopMax conference in Philadelphia in May.

MIM(Prisons): What was the purpose of the conference?

Well, the StopMax campaign mission reads, “Our mission is to promote and support a national movement to end the use of solitary confinement and related forms of torture in US prisons.” And i think it did a very good job of that with the conference. It brought together an impressive group of organizations and people that have been doing work around the issue of isolation and prison torture.

MIMP: So your film fit in well with the theme of the conference. Can you tell us a little about the film?

Yeah, it was really good timing for us. The film is called Unlock the Box, and it is all about the history of and the struggle against the use of long-term isolation in u$ prisons. It is very clear about the emergence of control units (and large-scale incarceration in general) as a form of political repression. If you look at the history of penitentiaries and more severe forms of isolation, it was largely determined to be a failed experiment over a century ago. But with the effective end of Jim Crow and other overt forms of white power, and the national liberation struggles that emerged from that struggle, prisons and isolation become an important tool for controlling the oppressed populations within u$ borders.

So it gets into some history. We also have some factual information on what control units are including new research some comrades have put together on the number and extent of long-term isolation. We think we have the best numbers out there right now, and they’re a lot higher than the usual 25,000 that people have been citing for some years. We’re seeing upwards of 100,000 people in long-term isolation. But this research is ongoing because it is so hard to get complete statistics, and a number of groups at the conference are collaborating to share this information. The plan is to publish the stats on [url=http://www.abolishcontrolunits.org]www.abolishcontrolunits.org soon, where you can also get information on the movie and how to order the DVD.

MIMP: What led you to create this film? What do you hope to accomplish with it?

The film came out of work that some of us were doing with the United Front to Abolish the SHU, which was a collection of organizations in California working together to build the campaign there. After doing a conference in 2005 by the same name, some of our public work died out and some of us changed focus for various reasons. But it seemed like a good time to sum up and document what had been years of work in California, and we knew of others, including MIM, who were carrying out similar campaigns across the country. In addition, we had felt we had put enough energy into petitioning the legislature to shut down the SHU, and that our window of influence there had closed with little success. We did have success in reaching the public and bringing light to an issue that is very hidden from the public eye though. And the movie was an idea to continue public opinion work in another format.

MIMP: What did people at the conference think of the film? Did you get any useful feedback to help shape the final version?

The response was great. I have to give props to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) for bringing together so many people who were so involved in this issue. The audience couldn’t have been more catered to the movie. Unfortunately, we only had a rough draft done at that point, but people still felt it was very moving and on point. I was actually even a little surprised, because the film gives a pretty radical analysis of the international connections with the war on terror, the war on gangs, and the role of the amerikan oppressor nation in supporting this torture. And yet, everyone that responded seemed to really like the message and the content of the movie.

As far as feedback, the main thing was probably the suggestions of things that we should add to the film. And with all the great resources at the conference we were able to gather a lot of material to incorporate some of those suggestions. We don’t claim to have a comprehensive coverage of the struggle everywhere, but we’ve got a lot of good examples, and a lot of information packed in to this movie. We got one suggestion to add more persynal stories to win people over on that level, which we have done. Our preview focused on some of the more theoretical material that we wanted to get across for that forum. And a couple of us that have been involved in the film production itself used the opportunity to look at the technical aspects and overall flow in a little more critical light. Just having an audience in the room with you allows you to say, “man, this part is too long” or “that visual just looks cheesy” when just a day ago you’re sitting in front of the computer and you can’t imagine cutting anything out or changing something.

MIMP: What were the key accomplishments of the conference?

Well, for us it was a huge accomplishment to get a preview of our movie on the screen. If it wasn’t for this conference who knows where this project would be now. It really pushed us to get something on disc. I mean i was literally compressing the movie and burning it to disc for the first time less than 24 hours before our presentation. So we got to expose people to the film and we got lots of pre-orders for the DVD. This is important, because at this point we don’t have a distributor so we’re just going to do one big mass mailing when it comes out in September. So people need to send in their orders now to get one.

But the conference as a whole really seemed to solidify for the first time, what many of us have been striving for for years, a national campaign to oppose control units. The AFSC has stepped up to play the role of providing infrastructure to promote continued communication and collaboration between different parties working around this campaign.

So, it seems like the campaign has reached a critical mass of a sort. And it may be good timing in regards to how many states are re-evaluating their tough-on-crime laws and prison-building crazes.

MIMP: How will attendees be working to carry the struggle forward?

That’s a good question. People were really enthusiastic about working together. But we will see how that plays out. Sharing information is always good, so that should help all of us if that continues effectively. But, as we learned with the United Front to Abolish the SHU, it is sometimes hard to bring a lot organizations together when politics are very different. We had some experiences where it seemed that sectarianism seemed to prevent groups who were nominally working on the same issues from joining the United Front, or causing them to leave. And it’s clear that some groups have different approaches stemming from their different politics. Which shouldn’t necessarily be a problem, since a United Front has room for many different political lines and strategies.

There is a question of whether some strategies or political interests within the movement are somewhat antagonistic though. For example, there is a strong focus on getting the mentally ill out of SHU, which in our analysis usually plays into the states goal of using the SHU as a tool of political repression. This has become the standard because it works. But by works, i mean that they can get the laws passed, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into less people being in SHU, just different populations - generally populations that are or potentially would pose political challenges to the white power structure. So this could be a net setback.

Some state campaigns have been successful in actually getting the numbers in SHU decreased legislatively. In contrast, court challenges to the SHU as a whole have been ineffective, only having limited successes in regards to specific conditions or to the mentally ill.

New legislative campaigns are well under way in places like Arizona and Illinois, and likely to spread. Others were more focused on the need to organizing prisoners, street organizations and the oppressed nations in general. Hopefully these two major focuses can complement each other as the campaign advances.

MIMP: How can people who are interested in this struggle get involved with the film or the United Front?

Well, this movie has been largely inspired by the work MIM and now MIM(Prisons) has been doing. And our analysis in the film is along those lines. Which puts us more in the camp of focusing on the organizing of prisoners and by extension street organizations. In fact, i’ve been talking to a number of comrades in this process about a second film that focuses on the lumpen on the street. But i think one of the lessons you can take from the movie is that control units are a response to a powerful movement of the oppressed, that included a strong prison movement. By prison movement, i mean prisoners organizing on the inside. We don’t really see anything like that today, though the possibility exists.

So people on the inside need to make that happen. We need strong cadre organizations with a real analysis and political line to back up these more reformist oriented campaigns that some of the outside organizations are focusing on. And since the nature of prisons and control units is to prevent that from happening, we need people on the outside to provide the infrastructure to help make that happen. I’d point to MIM(Prisons) political books to prisoners program and study programs as important to developing cadre level comrades behind bars. As the movie points out in the conclusion, this is what we need to put an end to the pointless violence that is going on in there right now and to create a system that serves the people. And of course, we’ve got to work to keep people out of the SHU.

As far as getting involved with the film, we just need to get it out there at this point. Check out the website to order a DVD. And any indie distributors or online stores out there should email the contact there if they are interested in making this thing generally available in the future. If you’re on the outside and interested in joining this campaign a good first step would be hosting a showing of this film in your area. You can usually get a free space at the library or local college or church. We will probably post some promo materials online at some point for people to use. And if you are gonna do a showing send them an email and they will promote it on the website, we’ve actually already had a few groups host other showings of the preview we put out.

I mean, i assume anyone who’s reading this is gonna be hip to MIM(Prisons), so that’s where i’d look for specific info on campaigns that need your support. And there are a lot of other groups out there working on this issue you might support as well. But i’d encourage people to think seriously about what the best strategy is to actually achieve our goals (and before that you might need to define what your goals are). That is what we are striving for constantly, and i hope this film helps us all consolidate our thoughts around that question.

I am known as the litigating terrorist. I have filed many actions challenging South Carolina Department of Corrections. What they are doing now is totally in violation of the constitution.

Two years ago they implemented a policy that Special Management Unit (SMU) prisoners can not receive newspapers, books or magazines. This is legal and religious. The religious materials can get slid in through the chaplain but legal is dead. In mid 2003 they stopped ordering legal books so we SMU prisoners have no way to obtain up to date law materials, being mindfull that the law is forever changing.

Just May 1st of this year they changed the policy so an indigent prisoner can only write to lawyers, courts, judges, legal aid organizations if they represent you in a pending case or you have a pending case in that court. And prisoners must show proof of the case. They won’t allow us to make copies of their policies because we use it against them too much.

In SMU we get an hour recreation. I am a level one prisoner so I get my rec with leg irons on, belly chain with a crotch chain and a black box. I have so much iron on I can’t sit down without pain. Your rec can easily be taken away. They pass out brooms, dust pans, mops, etc. to clean cells once a week on Saturday or Sunday. This past Thursday an officer took my rec because I had legal work on my floor but he said I needed to sweep my floor. The officer did it because I wrote him up for staling pornographic drawings from me. He took the drawings and claimed he turned them in to the contraband office. The contraband office does not have the original drawings, the officer took them home. He may lose his job.

As they keep moving me from penitentiary to penitentiary I can’t help but realize that the majority of prisoners serving indefinite life and death sentences in control units are Black and Latin brothers who, due to their lack of knowledge, had their rights violated and like myself were railroaded and ambushed by this corrupt injustice system, and eventually thrown into these control units. I consider these human warehouses, where we die a slow agonizing death.

I am one of the very few who has managed to maintain my sanity. And rather than serving this tortured time, I’m having this time serve me by educating myself and as the sun bringing light to all corners of my circumference, waking up all those who have been sleeping in the graveyard of ignorance, to unite and assist in organizing a revolution that will bring an end to the oppression of all groups over other groups, classes, genders and nations.

I agree with those who believe that crime is the bad oppressive things we do to each other. The more people you hurt and oppress, the bigger the criminal you are. So the big criminals in our country are the bourgeoisie – those who are rich while others are poor, those who make profit from other peoples misery, street crime is a very small part of all the crimes committed each day in comparison to unemployment, homelessness, discrimination, bad education and bad health care.

A revolutionary abrazo given and sent to all, from the depths of the gallows of chain link fences and barbed wire that has met the consumption in the harvest of plantation Amerikkka. Deprived of our livelihood and recruited in this Industrial Army. We have removed the yoke of oppression creating a commune that refuses to bow to the dictates of this prison industrial complex. Our single cell of multicultural backgrounds has fought against the system since birth. Victims to the judicial demagogue, comprehending that the blind lady of justice is only weighing our pockets.

Because of our political beliefs (that always get misconstrued) we’ve landed in these deprivation units, for our individual cases as men, we the people, are now prisoners of war. We are labeled and branded from the many scattered sheep entwined in hives of “rehabilitation”. We have been singled or rather targeted by networks of a controlled government that uses force to impose rules against our race from above, suppressing individual initiatives in the interest of maximizing these control units, to meet their economic consumption that exploits our people.

Those of us who do not prostrate before CDCR economic, political, and militant demands, can be branded associates to prison gangs. These aggressive policies will not be the means of our demise. I am a Marxist-Lenninist-Maoist and I will not subside my resistance to this Abu-Grahiization (torture). But, on the contrary, I will attack the social injustices that commonly validate our people. CDCR has openly declared its intention to agress and colonize our people by rapid and violent assimilation.

Ideologically, CDCR validates [as gang members] groups cast as enemies by the states hegemonic myth or by the need to isolate people who can be portrayed as the embodiment of absolute evil. CDCR has also campaigned to control the mindset of our people to impose a solution to tough on crime legislation by forcing gang validation as a means to deliberately destroy our culture, which systematically liquidates all of our characteristics of our national society.

In closing, the battle has only begun. The proletariat will mobilize in mass demonstration in words with a singe of revolutionary fervor. Our social being has led to our consciousness, we serve as the vanguard for and of the oppressed. So, it is our obligation to help awaken the nucleus of all our peoples, in seeing that we’ve all been validated in classes and singled out by this fascist plutocracy.

In Florida these units are called Close Management (CM). There are around 5 of these units throughout the states. They are similar to most control units in the other states. I have never been there but numbers are certainly in the thousands. Prisoners who file grievances or lawsuits are prime targets for CM The Florida DOC had to close a lot of its CM units a few years ago because of a successful inmate’s lawsuit.

Right now I’m in IMU (Intensive Management Unit). I’m in my cell for 23 1/2 hours a day, some days I don’t even get yard. IMU is for people that are violent or have to be segregated cuz they can’t be in general population.

Here in IMU there is A pod, C pod and D pod. Each pod holds 48 people. Mostly the whites are here in IMU for race riots and the like. DOC usually targets white power inmates. This IMU is here at Snake River. There is another at OSP and I’ve heard a rumor about one being at the new prison at Madres.

B pod here at Snake is the SHU program, which stands for Special Housing Unit, which is people doing forever in a cell 23 1/2 hours a day. I personally know 2 people in the SHU that are doing the rest of their lives in there. They are NEVER gonna see mainline again. NEVER see the stars.

There’s not many blacks in here. Like I said, the whites make up most of the population here in IMU. There are a good number of Latinos though.

I don’t agree with all this. And I’m not just saying that cuz I’m in here, I understand fully that I’m to be disciplined if I act up. However, doing this long stretch of solitary confinement is torture and affects one’s mind mentally. There are people who knew me before all the lockdown time and after. More than one person on the street told me that I came out of prison worse than when I went in. Why? Because of all this segregation. I’m more high strung. More violent. I write more sadistic poetry. For some reason all this isolation messes with the brain.

Innocence is put in segregation, and that innocence comes out being a killer.

I’ve been in CU [Control Unit]. We’re allowed to go to the yard, but we have to go to the concrete yard. The concrete yard is about two times the size of the cell we’re living in. Nobody to talk to or work out with.

The most humiliating thing taking place here in the department of corrections Pelican Bay State Prison is this: the institution shows what are called institutional movies for the prisoners - the movies are purchased with funds from institutional welfare. But the kinds of movies we’re allowed to watch are rated PG. It’s like they are trying to put the prisoners in a child’s state of mind. The whole prison is considered a control institution, but it is an insult to a grown man to have to watch children’s movies. We’re talked to like children, and when we speak up as men we’re written up.

The institutional program is supposed to be racially balanced, but I’ll demonstrate just how racist it is in here. A while back I filed a grievance about them taking my walkman. They told me that I couldn’t possess a walkman and a typewriter. They denied my petition arguing that I could have both. But another prisoner who is white filed the same argument and they gave him his typewriter. Now they let everyone get typewriters, but only after a petition was filed by a white prisoner.

There isn’t any program for a lifer in here. I can’t even take care of myself. I have a job in which I make 13 cents an hour, and I get paid for just two hours a day.

MCC. There are multiple control units at the Monroe Correctional Complex. However, I have never been to any of them.

WSP. There is one at the Washington State Penitentiary that opened over 20 years ago. I have been in this unit and it houses approximately 100 prisoners. The racial make up is approximately 1/3 white, 1/3 Latino and 1/3 Black. The majority of the prisoners are placed in this unit for no reason except dislike by some administrator or guard. This unit has been expanded recenetly but I am not sure to what extent.

WCC. There has been one at the Washington Correction Center for over 20 years. I have been in this unit and it houses approximately 120 prisoners. The racial make up is approximately 1/2 white and 1/2 Black. The majority of the prisoners placed in these units are for no reason except dislike by some administrators or guards.

CBCC. There is one at the Clallam Bay Correction Center that has been open for about 20 years. I have been in this unit and it houses approximately 220 prisoners. The racial make up is approximately 1/3 white, 1/3 Latino and 1/3 Black. This unit is split into three units (D, E and F) and expands into the general population units as needed. For example, D, E and F units are full, then a portion of B-unit will be appropriated as part of the control unit. As the need diminishes, then B-unit goes back to general population.

It is my belief that the state plans to open more control units and that some are currently under construction.

Control units house mostly mentally ill prisoners that are tormented by the guards. Many gays are forced to live in the control units by the guards and are harassed by the guards. Lots of gang members are in the control units for associations but no rule violations. The control units are used for punishment for prisoners that guard do not like. It is very difficult to watch the guards torment others. It is very difficult to get out of the control unit once assigned there.

I have spent approximately 10-14 years in a control unit in the past 28 years of incarceration. I do not dare make an actual calculation for fear of the mental impact of the reality. I recently spent a year in isolation in a control unit for refusing to have sex with a female guard and complaining about being punished by her for it. It is all a matter of public record if you have interest in the matter.

Recently, as of May 2008, we Arizona prisoners have had another cutback to our food menu. DOC has now started “a heart healthy diet” and has managed to cut back, even further, our calories. This is on top of the cutback we have automatically in lockdown at this control unit. This clever budget cut has been hidden behind platitudinous drivel aimed at protecting our best interest as health issues. As vegetarians, we have been especially hit hard, losing up to half or more of what we had before. The usual procedures allowed us are a waste of time in protesting this recent farce of economy shaving being perpetuated against us prisoners under the pretend guise of our best interests.

A heartfelt thanks for letting the voice of us prisoners be heard and let known generally amongst the publik. From this AZ gulag, up the system, strength in solidarity!

I am currently at Calipatria State Prison however I must say it does not matter what prison you are in because all of them are corrupted the same way. I’m sure you know the things they have already taken from us, which started in 96-97 by taking away weight lifting and family visits for lifers. Then eventually they took pornography, tobacco, the yard privileges were shortened, canned food and personal packages as well, we’re not even allowed personal jeans. Then they even changed our prison state issue clothing to cheaper and more ridiculous uniforms.

The food value is absolutely disgusting and even if it’s an ok meal it has no flavor since they don’t use salt or even offer single salt packets like they used to. The portions are absolutely a minor’s portion that will not fulfill a grown man. Not many of us have people or family members to send us money for store so we rely on state food which leaves us hungry after 5pm. The menus they pass out may sound good but it’s a scheme to show people out there we are eating good. They say certain calories are all we need to survive, however to be hungry: isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment, especially since we are supposed to be living in a civilized country. They say it’s a free country but whether you’re a prisoner or not, there are no rights because every right we have the system seems to have a loophole around it. The latest violation against us now is they are rigging the plumbing system to flush only 2 times every 5 minutes.

Another issue that is really hurting the prisoners is for them to be housed in special housing units which is an all day lockdown with a few hours a week out of your cell. You can be put in the SHU because of a picture or ethnic belief if you are Mexican and have art of your ancestors and forefathers in your cell the prison considers that gang activity. Right now I’m in an administrative housing unit and for us to actually get our yard it has to be less than 108 degrees outside or yard is canceled. We are sent to cages which only give room for you and your cellie, which is basically what the dogs go through when they are put in a pound. Most of us in here always wait much longer than what we were supposed to be here for, it’s just so they can keep these new ASUs open. I’ve been waiting to be put in general population since January, but they say no room.