Under Lock & Key

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has historically separated General Population (GP) prisoners from Sensitive/Special Needs Yards (SNY) for safety and security. Traditionally those who were convicted of high notoriety crimes, or who suffered “past victimization” or those who were informants or former Security Threat Group affiliates were housed on SNY. Yet, over time, the SNY population skyrocketed to the point of overcrowding. SNY facilities became increasingly violent, stigmatizing those “sensitive needs” designations.

To address this, CDCR developed Non-Designated Program Facilities (NDPFs) – an inclusive housing model created supposedly to mitigate stigma and allegedly help promote and advance CDCR’s rehabilitative objectives. One brave brother filed a “writ of mandate” with the California Supreme Court for Sacramento County on 30 September 2022 ordering the CDCR to immediately cease and halt reintegrating “sensitive needs” prisoners into general population, and from transferring GP prisoners to Non-Designated Program Facilities.

I am one of many prisoners housed in Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg), solitary confinement and have been written up and now face receiving additional time and will risk being transferred to a higher security level hundreds of miles from my family. My RVR (write up) reads that i am an immediate threat to the safety of self and others and that I “endanger institution security.” Since me refusing to house on a NDPF isn’t sufficient enough to retain me in Ad-Seg lock up, now the officers are claiming that i told them that i would assault their child molesters on NDPF yard.

The court found CDCR Secretary Kathleen Allison’s enforcement of the NDPF policy in violation of the APA (the Administrative Procedures Act). Therefore the policy is an “underground regulation” that is void, entitling Villarreal to relief. The court granted his requested writ and prohibited Allison and CDCR from furthering and implementing the policy until “properly” adopted by the APA. see: Villarreal v. Allison, Cal. Super (City of Sacramento) Case NO. 34-2021-80003779.

So Allison has a non-discretionary duty to refrain from implementing the uncodified NDPF Policy, the APA mandates that “the rulemaking agency must comply with the law’s provisions” or the rule is void.

So here we have a victory. Thank you brother Israel Villarreal! Without struggle and sacrifice there can be no progress nor advancement. Allison is specifically required to examine and study prisoners before classifying them, the court said, but the NDPF Policy is analogous to the classification scheme in Stoneham v. Rushen (1982) 137 Cal. App. 3d pg 729. where prisoners successfully challenged an uncodified classification system as an invalid underground regulation.

Revolutionary Greeting comrades,

Many young soldiers have heard of comrade George, a Black Panther leader, revolutionary prison writer, and organizer who was assassinated in August 1971 in a California Penitentiary in San Quentin.

It’s time! Wake up comrades! The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is a tool of racist repression for Black & Brown people in the U.$. prison system. CDCR has made serious mistakes in splitting the prisoner populations (50/50 yards/EOP/GPline/SNY/GP) political and social prisoners. CDCR has realized their mistake and in the process of trying to correct it at whose expense? you and I. So CDCR will once again go back to their reactionary tactics oppressing the masses.

Comrade George gave us a strategy to combat CDCR false ideology: “When I am denied or corrected, I always understand, but rage on, all on the principle that the ideal must be flung about, that the oppressed mentality must first escape the myth, the hoax, that repression is the natural reaction to a collective consciousness of the commune.” And just know that ideals cannot be killed with violence, racism has always been employed as a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness evinced by a people historically processed to fear.

The revolutionary is outlawed!

You can’t understand my pain but me. I’ve used every tool in the kit to stay sane over these last 11 years in prison. I am alive and learning for real. The only way CDCR can maintain its power is to create differences on these yards and cause a diseased mind and feed it drugs. Comrade wake-up. What’s the problem? If you not a disruptor or agent provocateur, show proof and let’s start building this collective unity. That’s the only way we can combat CDCR tactics of repression.

AFW on the move.

A California comrade provides more background info: California has been phasing out its protective custody (P.C.) yards for the last few years. CA prisons started eliminating the P.C. yards on the lower levels and due to the high rate of violence this caused, it is taking longer than expected to phase out the higher levels (lifers).

CDCR is well aware of the common practice of separating sex offenders from general population prisoners. The cruelty sex offenders face in prison is the very reason CA opened the P.C. yards 2 decades ago. Sex offenders are regularly beaten, murdered, and as hypocritical as it is, raped in prison.

However, over the years a lot of general population(G.P.) prisoners have requested protective custody and once on the P.C. yards, these G.P. prisoners continue their abuse of sex offenders. The result is that according to CDCR, P.C. yards are more violent than G.P. yards (if anyone believes that) and so CDCR is now requiring sex offenders to house with the gang members that everyone knows, especially CDCR knows, sex offenders need protection from.

I think CDCR is intentionally creating a violent environment for whatever reason. CDCR is not ignorant that this new policy will and already has resulted in the murder of a lot of sex offenders. Since the policy began 3 years ago, the gangs have murdered sex offenders on every yard the prison has forced them to house on and yet CDCR continues to push for the complete elimination of protective custody. This is obviously a deliberate action to increase violence.

Dozens of lawsuits have already been filed, but few if any will bear fruit due to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which basically is legislation designed to erase a prisoners constitutional right to sue the prison. Furthermore, most prisoners have no legal skills whatsoever and are forced to litigate against professional lawyers. So the chance of any of the lawsuits asking the court for a right to safe housing of winning that right is very small.

I will eventually litigate the issue and I will win.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We’ve printed a number of articles in the last couple years about this integration plan creating violence. It’s not just about sex offenders, many have gone to Special Needs Yards in recent years for a number of reasons, including political ones.

While most seem to agree that the CDCR is creating more violence, injuries and deaths among prisoners, few have tried to explain why. One thing that has been happening on the SNY, and now the integrated yards, is the creation of new prison gangs, many of which have been fostered by CDCR police gangs and work hand-in-hand. This seems to be part of a larger strategy to displace the big four lumpen orgs that have historically dominated the G.P. yards and at least some of which have been staunch in their refusal to work with the pigs. These four lumpen orgs were behind the largest prison hunger strikes in history to protest the torture happening in CDCR’s Security Housing Units.

As we’ve always said, “We Want Peace, They Want Security.” And most often the two are at odds, where the state uses violence and chaos as a form of social control and securing it’s power over the prison masses. That said, the integration offers an opportunity for the prison population in CA to unite along once deep divisions, and we call on comrades to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons based on the 5 principles.

On the subject of non-designated yards, the fact that the state’s actors have sanctioned this social experiment where the labels that the state themselves created are now being altered by their creators means that the G.P./SNY dual system has run its course and failed miserably.

It also means that prisoners have to be re-educated on the history of prison labels in California, understanding that at one time all prisoners went to any yard where there was space and they fit the classification points criteria. The only prisoners who got sent to special yards at that time were the wealthy, the law enforcement convicted prisoners, and those media vilified infamous. These yards held low numbers of prisoners and weren’t easy to get to, or gain reliable information about. However, once the state actors came up with 50/50 yards, SNY yard, it created new problems that would not only affect prisoner sub-culture in prison but an even huger problem on the streets due to the criminals’ new option not to play by the old rules of the GAME that is not a game.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all on the who’s who level, on the G.P. nor SNY lines – there are snitches on both sides, rapists on both sides, hustlers on both sides, politicians on both sides, killers on both sides, thinkers on both sides, lumpen orgs on both sides. What needs to be analyzed is why are we still judging one another based solely on convictions when we have seen 13, White Like Me, we’ve read The New Jim Crow, Blacked Out Through White Wash, The Black Panthers Speak, Locked Up But Not Locked Down, A Taste of Power, and Dark Alliance, etc.

WE know that all the courts care about is convictions and not truth or facts. We know that many people who go to trial get railroaded and made an example of. We know that many of us were forced to make deals based on the public defender’s inability to provide adequate defense and we know many prisoners are wrongfully convicted and sentenced to decades behind these walls. Yet we keep judging our fellow prisoners based upon convictions from a corrupt system that works to justify its high percentage of convictions and deals, plea bargains, bails, etc. As one of the GODS that’s locked inside of this INJUSTICE system I refuse to take our open enemy’s word about another oppressed prisoner, nor will I act on behalf of the STATE and harm another prisoner based on what happened as a result of the United Snakes Criminal Injustice system. Where I judge is based on the individual’s personal conduct and willingness to act when the time demands action or when I see them deal with difficult situations – if they’re rational, measured, and are they using reason-based decision making or not.

Comrades, we’ve got to think about what unity would bring us that is impossible if we continue being separated based upon STATE TITLE and LABELS. The question to all you self-styled revolutionaries is: can people change? Does experience and education reform an otherwise broken individual? Can we inspire the Blind, Deaf and Dumb to wake the fuck up and unite on some active social dynamics that is mutually beneficial to all commonly oppressed prisoners? Will we educate the next Revolutionary that will make change a reality? Or are we just pen and paper revolutionaries?

During the summer of 2018, the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) attempted to initiate a radical new policy to re-integrate General Population (GP) and Sensitive Needs Yards (SNY) prisoners throughout the state. These two populations have been separated for decades, but are now living together in what they are calling Non-Designated Programming Facilities (NDPFs).

SNYs were first created in the late 1990s to provide safe housing for prisoners convicted as sex offenders and other prisoners who had fallen out of favor with prison gangs. This population exploded during the early 2000s, when the CDCR began to ease housing restrictions and criteria on SNYs.

In 2015, the office of the Governor of the state of California, Jerry Brown, authored the document “The Governor’s Plan: The Future of California Prisons” in which they published the rising costs and administrative difficulties related to operating SNYs. It was within this document that the questions of how to stem the growing need for SNY, and possibly re-integrate GP and SNY, was first asked. In 2016, a “SNY Summit” was held by CDCR officials and so it seems that NDPFs developed from both the Governor’s Plan and the SNY Summit.

According to a CDCR memorandum titled “Amended Non-Designated Programming Facilities Expansion for 2018,” additional NDPFs were to be created out of existing GP and SNY. The stated purpose for this expansion was to “…expand positive programming to all inmates who want it.” The NDPF expansion was scheduled to take place as early as September 2018 at two different institutions with more to follow in the months ahead.

The official list of NDPFs is relatively short, and only reflects NDPFs affecting level 1, 2 and 3 prisoners at this time. However, MIM(Prisons) has been receiving a lot of contradictory information on this issue from prisoners, much of which can be attributed to rumors from both pigs and prisoners. Therefore it is difficult for us to assess the situation and sum up matters. Naturally these developments have prisoners on both sides of the fence worked up and full of anxiety.

The forceful integration of GP and SNY prisoners poses obvious concerns for the safety and security of everyone involved. As dialectical materialists, the left-wing of United Struggle from Within (USW) understands that change cannot be forced from the outside to the inside within this particular situation. Rather, unity can only develop from the inside to the out, which is why we are against NDPFs. Re-integration of SNY and GP is something that can only work once prisoners themselves settle the disputes and resolve the contradictions that led to the need for prisoners to de-link from the rest of the prisoner population and seek the protection of the state to begin with.

Contradictions amongst the people must be peacefully resolved amongst the people; there’s no other way around this. Until this happens, the new prison movement will remain divided and unable to unite along true anti-imperialist lines. It is for this very reason that we continue to uphold and promote the correct aspects of the Agreement to End Hostilities (AEH), which was developed by prisoners themselves. In the AEH we see an end to the large scale prisoner violence that racked California prisons for decades. We also see a possibility for the re-emergence of revolutionary nationalism amongst the oppressed nation lumpen of Aztlán, New Afrika and the First Nations.

The AEH is a foundation for the movement, but movements are not built on foundations alone; for this we need brick, mortar and other materials. Likewise the building blocks to the new prison movement will need the contributions and participation of as many of California’s prisoners as possible if the signatories to the AEH really wanna live up to the revolutionary ideals which they profess and which so many claim to be instilled in the AEH, lest the AEH be but a hollow shell.

For more information on re-integration and NDPFs contact Julie Garry Captain Population Management Unit (916) 323-3659.

This report is in response to Programming Facilities in CA to Decrease SNY Population in ULK 63, July/August 2018.

We are receiving a small but steady flow of general population (G.P.) prisoners on our yard. About 10 every week or two. It’s not going well at all. SNY population is now jumping G.P. when able to. First time G.P.s arrived they attacked some SNYs in work out bar course. Four on five and G.P.s got scrapped. Next time SNYs were waiting, so guards had to escort G.P.s from R&R.

Next morning, 300+ prisoners were outside the building waiting for the G.P.s release. So guards decided not to release G.P.s and recalled the yard. Later guards released only 5 G.P.s and they were jumped by 20 SNYs. So this is the pattern. Only a matter of time before someone gets killed.

So now anytime in transit G.P.s and SNYs are in a possible dangerous situation. This SNY yard is super chill, with very few incidents to report. So I can only imagine how serious this issue will be on other more dangerous yards. OR when SNY prisoners are placed on a yard with the majority being G.P. Something needs to be done soon. CDC is basically staging these fights.

MIM(Prisons) adds: While family members on the outside have been petitioning to stop the integration, MIM(Prisons) has been supporting USW leaders who are trying extra hard to push the United Front for Peace in Prisons principles in these difficult situations. California prison staff have a long history of staging fights between prisoners. However, this massive integration is different in terms of the numbers involved. Comrades should search out opportunities to apply the principle of Unity, based on the fact that GP and SNY prisoners are now, more than ever, facing the same conditions.

14 JUNE 2018 – Uhuru! As of today’s mathematics, 14 June 2018, prisoners are being violently pent against one another in a last attempt to interfere with current demands by both the people of California and the federal government to release its ridiculously large prison population.

CDCR, at prisons like the Substance Abuse Tratment Facility (SATF) and Kern Valley State Prison (KVSP), has begun engaging in policy changes that manufacture hostilities between the prison populations. One particular change involves rehousing what is called “mainline” prisoners on yards that are considered Protective Custody (P.C.) yards by force. Now these are not P.C. yards by the standards of the law, Protective Custody. Instead they are Sensitive Needs Yards (SNY). These yards house a combination of offenders/prisoners, including prison gang organization defectors called “drop outs”, prisoners with sexual offenses, prison sex victims, victims of exploitation by other prisoners and a wide range of other types.

There are offenders who were/are members of street gangs/organizations whose particular gang has been targeted by the larger gang alliances like the Mexican Mafia. Then there are those individuals who are members of left wing political organizations who struggle against corruption and blow the whistle against crooked cops and politicians in office. Though it has been promoted that all who are housed at SNY facilities are child molesters, police informants, gang traders, etc., this is a lie spread by the police pigs in order to establish the chaos that is being born across California in prisons, CDCR.

Prisons have begun rehousing small numbers of mainline prisoners who are considered the “actives” on facilities that have been established as SNY facilities amongst those who are often mis-construed as “non-active.” Because these facilities are not what CDCR claim them to be; an environment with no gang activity and very little criminal violence, these facilities are a melting pot for chaos. There are possibly more STGs on the SNY than on the mainline, as the 2012 Pelican Bay SHU Agreement to End Hostilities was designed to cease gang hostilities and stem criminal behavior for all mainliners. (Mainliners are prisoners who were until recently housed at General Population (G.P.) facilities, but now SNY facilities are considered mainline, as there are more SNY facilities than G.P.)

Let the authorities that be take notice: There are those of us who will not participate in wars against ourselves but instead will bare arms against the agents of oppression, where ever they be. And we know all of you. You who see what is happening but do nothing to protect those of us unable to protect ourselves. Trust that justice will be done on the yard as so in the streets. Your time is no more!

[NOTE: The author is among a group of New Afrikan and Chican@ leaders of the United Struggle from Within (USW). Ey was among 40 prisoners transferred to Kern Valley State Prison D-facility after a riot between SNY gangs united against New Afrikans and Chican@s refusing to endorse gang culture and hostilities amongst prisoners, working the police agenda. The author was transferred from a lower level institution less hostile to growth amongst prisoners, and placed into an environment that would definitely invite conflict between them and corrections officers.]

I’m writing to ask for more info on the California prison system putting SNY (Special Needs Yard) and mainline together in order to show that nothing has changed and the prisons are still very dangerous.

What I do know is that it started a few weeks ago here at Centinela State Prison and we are hearing of widespread violence at every yard they are doing this on – the so-called 50/50 yards or Programming Facilities (P.F.S.). We have only heard rumors at this point. Of course the staff would never tell us outright, but they do give hints. Any help in this matter will be appreciated. A lot of us here at Centinela SNY yard are endorsed to San Quentin PFS yard. We would love to help stop the violence, but it’s really mainline shot callers that will decide.

Most of us here on the SNY side want to do our time in peace. That’s why we are put on this side. Anyway, thanks for any help on this matter.

A USW comrade reports: Here at Corcoran they’re integrating yards. Now SNY/GP STG I & II are on the same yards, and being forced to program or be labeled program failures.

Legion of USW comments: June 2018 – As predicted the CDCR is doing away with the SNY/GP mainlines in favor of undesignated program yards. Legion did the math on this problem years ago and was made a mad scientist preaching that Black God stuff.

This provides USW a unique opportunity to be at the vanguard of the battle field building bridges instead of barriers. The prols have an opportunity to become the change they want to see. We have to revise and revisit certain debates about what solid looks like. The future is now and we need to adapt our struggle to the new landscape.

Legion is calling all God Bodies into formation! There’s no such thing as SNY or GP on the streets. You have factors and non-factors. We are factors; socially, politically and mentally. USW is where it’s at. Let’s crash the system!

Power to the People!

MIM(Prisons) adds: Early in 2018, the CDCR began transforming Level I, Level II, and, now, some Level III prisons into “non-designated yards”, eliminating the divide between SNY and General Population. This began with the healthcare facilities and fire camps. According to CDCR, SNY was created 20 years ago, and now accounts for one third of the California state prison population.(1)

In a video message on the subject, CDCR Director Scott Kernan calls on California prisoners to focus on themselves. He calls for them to disregard “prison politics.” While tapping into a real mass sentiment that is sick of some of the “prison politics” that leads to unnecessary beef and violence, this appeal to Amerikan individualism is misleading. The new Programming Facilities require prisoners to participate in the CDCR program. This is not really focusing on self, this is joining a group with strict guidelines. This path is a choice. And CDCR wants to make it the most appealing choice.

All humyns live in society. We cannot focus on self without also being part of a society and playing a role in it. For the oppressed, the support of the group is even more important. So prisoners must ask themselves if the CDCR program is the group that best serves their interests. We await reports from comrades inside as to the full implications of this reorganization. But we can look back to the “Step Down Program” implemented for SHU prisoners in response to the historic hunger strikes in 2012 and 2013, which coerced prisoners into accepting the oppressor’s definitions of criminal.(2) The PFS have a similar focus on “programming,” promising a more productive and quicker release in return.

We do not have the info to fully answer the comrade’s question about what is happening in these non-designated yards right now. But we echo the call from ULK 62 for USW comrades in California, especially those in the 50/50 yards, to work to build unity across different groups in these dynamic conditions.(3) As Legion alludes to above, change is in favor of the oppressed, it is only up to us to seize the opportunities that each change offers. For this September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity, California USW will focus on this issue of the “non-designated yards”, and building peace and unity among these new conglomerates of people. For the next issue of ULK we want to hear about the successes and failures of this organizing, of September 9th, of the 50/50 yards and what it all means for organizing to end oppression on a systemic level.

I’m writing on this topic a bit early because a lot of young brothers and sisters don’t have true or real understanding regarding Black August and Bloody September. But for those of us who are politically aware, both months are rich with our blood, our struggle, and our resistance. As people who fight oppression during these two months as a peoples’ movement we should focus our energies around the discussions and actions of George Jackson, the Black Panthers, Assata Shakur, Che Guevara, and any of the many revolutionaries who have set the stage for us.

We should push political education, progressive action, and the revolutionary history. We should most aggressively focus on the establishment of stronger security, because on 16 April 2018 the Department of Corrections and so-called “Rehabilitation” started a statewide weapons sweep of all California prisons to ensure that no weapons are on the prison yards when the state integrates mainline prisoners with SNY prisoners later this year.

We know first-hand what the power structure is doing – they’re hoping that the yards all blow up. That would show that their jobs still matter and that we need to be in prison. This is their most outrageous move in years, and they’ve been feeding the disconnection of mainline and SNY for years as a tool of divide and conquer. The divide and conquer tactic has never been more effective than it is today.

As they say, a tree without roots is dead, and so is a people who are not rooted. Men such as comrade George, Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X started and enhanced their political line in prison as colonial criminals. Within these concentration camps and deep dark confines of Soledad Prison and San Quentin, the alchemy of human transformation took place. They all began to turn the cells they held into libraries and schools of liberation. As George said, to create a new world we have to be a representation of this new being, “The New Man”, in words and in deeds, thoughts, and actions. This new man will be in his highest revolutionary form. So as they turned their cells into classrooms, so must we. And as they internalized the most advanced ideas about human development, so must we.

George stated that:

“I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao, and they redeemed me. For the first four years, I studied nothing but politics and economics and military ideas. I met Black Guerrillas, George Big Jake Lewis, James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson, and many others. We were attempting to turn the Black criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality.”

George and his comrades became living examples and inspirations of organized resistance for prisoners across the country. But on 21 August 1971, Comrade George Jackson and two others were murdered along with three prison guards in a gun fight inside one of California’s maximum security prisons called San Quentin. For this reason, and many more, we hold bloody August as sacred.

Huey P. Newton was murdered 22 August 1989, in West Oakland on Tenth and Center, by a young drug dealer named Little Blood. He was a product of this system; the young hating the old, the light-skinned hating the dark. That’s the same divide we have here today. I can get into the shit and kick up dust with the rest and the best. But I will not allow anyone to stop my hard work in being an organizer and educator. I’ve given twenty years to this mainline and SNY, so I’m going to push on. As Frantz Fanon stated in Wretched of the Earth, “There is no taking of the offensive – and no redefining of relationships.” We know that the power structure wants us dead or locked up. So in case you didn’t know, the revolution is on.

MIM(Prisons) adds: The California USW Primer explains how the split between SHU/mainline and SNY in California is at the heart of building a united front of prisoners in the state. All California USW comrades should have a copy of the primer as a guide for their work. Long-time readers of ULK will know that we have printed countless articles addressing this issue. Write in if you can use copies of some of these articles to help in your organizing for the September 9 Day of Peace and Solidarity this year. The campaign to build peace and unity between mainline and SNY will be coming to a head this year, and USW must play a leading role in guiding things in a positive direction as this comrade calls for.

SNY has been “represented”, we’ve been building and growing for years. I personally came from the mainline after 15 years of the madness. I’ve been there with the Black Guerrilla Family, Nuestra Familia, Mexican Mafia, and Aryan Brotherhood. I was at Calipatria when the “East Coast Crips” stormed the program office. I’ve also walked the level IV yards with Elmer Geronimo Pratt, Ruchell Magee, as well as the comrade Askari.

The inmates on SNYs are not your enemies. “We know the enemy.” A lot of us made a conscious informed choice to step away from the gangbanging and go home to our families, are we less because we made a choice best for us? Moreover I stand with you, and look for your next essay so we can build together. Check Under Lock & Key No. 40,53,55, just to start, but I’m all over. Revolutionary theory without practice ain’t shit.

Dear sista, you and I know that the mainline is full of people who have no honor or respect, and the class of people are not the same as in the 1980s or 1990s, so I’m not missing the line at all. What I do miss is the respect level. But just like the mainline, SNYs have strong revolutionary comrades, it’s who you have around you, just as on the line, we also know there are child molesters as well as rapists there too. One of the reason I left was because I was a part of the “Damu Car,” Piru in fact, and when someone known to be a rat, and all the homies know, but since he has the drugs and he’s paying rent he has a pass. I was good, not to mention the so-called homie that rob and rape another homie’s wife and we have to let this unknown dude keep walking around us left a fucked up taste in my mouth. So there was only one step I could take in good conscience.

We as Damus we moved in a political motion anyway. So me becoming revolutionary was just the next step in my evolution as a man. When I hit the prison in 1992 I was taught about my history: George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Huey P Newton, Fred Hampton, The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation and all the letters because they were all here FOI-NOI-BGF-KUMI-DAMUs–Kiway’s- all of that, SNYs are the way they are because when you come to this side all of your old homies consider you a rat, even if you never said a word to the pigs.

G.P. is a capitalist community; who ever has the drugs can call the shots, who ever has the phone is the big homie. That’s a very tainted and corrupt political line they’re pushing, I also agree with the comrade in Georgia, that the contagious disease of backbiting needs to stop. I feel the same way. The real is that I’ve been in the mix with a lot of the Damus on the mainline and they know where I stand, and have told that they see the improvements in me and we’ve had serious political talks about the state of the line vs the SNY yards.

When I was at Richard J. Donavon (see Under Lock & Key issue no 40) I created a cadre that consisted of SNY and mainline comrades, Black, white and Hispanic. And what the Georgia comrade said is right, everyone on this backbiting shit should take a long and serious look at themselves and really pay attention to the way Willie Lynch syndrome has been effective. When he instructed the slave masters to always keep them divided, separated, and distrustful of one another, and at odds with one another.

Posting up essays and articles on the wall is a go0d move, and I will add that to my get down. Anyway, I’m going to end this the same way I entered it by stating that the loss of my heroes Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, and George Jackson represented a most tragic set back not just for the Black Panther Party, but also for the liberation movement in general. These men who were potentially heir apparent to fallen leaders like Malcolm X, and Che Guevara.

The real shit is “SNY and the mainline,” may never be able to get past the emotional hatred that comes from mainline prisoners, but will that stop SNY inmates and political prisoners from being a leading force in building the bridges that can we can cross to make the revolution? No! We are just as focused as you if not more because we have a role to play in this movement, I only live to make the revolution. So I understand my life may be cut short, but I will live and die for the people.

Revolutionary greetings, and salutations my brothers in struggle. I received ULK 58 about 2 weeks ago here in Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU). I also received the CA USW Primer 1st Edition, January 2017. Read it cover to cover, and it had some very good, as well as informative topics and info. I’d like to respond on the article about, “The Biggest Divide - Not Race or Gang”. I am an Special Needs Yard (SNY) prisoner.

I seriously doubt the two sides will ever be able to come together, as far as programming together on the same yards. Personally I have no problem with General Population (G.P.), and there are a lot of things I miss about being there. Things have changed a lot on the G.P. side since they have let validated L.O.s out though. As you say: “Not to fan the flames I’ll leave that alone.” I will say this on a personal level. I do have great respect for every soldier over there who are pushing the MIM theory and line. So I send mine to you comrades. Stay up, stay strong, and keep that “can’t stop, won’t stop attitude.”

MIM, I do understand what our cause is pushing for as far as coming together goes. The only chance I see of that happening is if the G.P. side reverted to the old way of about 2 or 3 decades ago. That is to say letting those of us back on the yard who retired, laid down, stopped reporting, but never debriefed, and our paperwork is clean of sex offenses. Not only that but through the different L.O.s’ contact with guards that are in some of their pockets, letting them know of those of us who have conducted ourselves in a convict’s code of conduct on this side as well. Meaning we haven’t become the C.O.s’ rat bitches. Comrades – if they did allow us back – would only be a small amount of us. Maybe a handful on every yard.

Ultimately I would go as far as to say that I am a real small minority that would be willing to take that chance to unite under the above aforementioned standards. There is definitely a very long way to go on that issue. As you say, it’s also a trust issue. Yes the Agreement to End Hostilities (AEH) is what I want. But if the comrade that wrote that article has ever been in prison, you understand the issues that keep the divide, and there are many of them. Personally I have no issues with my brothers of the past. None. They haven’t given me reason to be hostile, or have any grudge against them, but there are others on SNY that don’t feel the same way for whatever reasons they have.

I have something to say now about the reason I’m in ASU. When I was 6 months to release, I got fed up with the K-9 searching 2-4 times a week, so I refused to come out. I got soaked with O.C. spray. Of course whenever C.O.s either assault us, or spray us, or shoot us with block gun, or bullets, unjustifiably, their go-to “off the books” thing is, “the inmate assaulted or battered me.” I - comrades - did not assault that coward. I’m the one who was assaulted by O.C. spray.

The day this took place, I.S.U. didn’t even go talk to him, or take pictures, because there was nothing to photograph. He lied, and broke protocol by crossing the threshold of my cell, with no supervisor present. What makes me mad is him putting his damned boot on my back. He hit me with his metal baton like a lil girl. Excuse my expression, wimmin comrades, I mean no disrespect. Anyway I filed an excessive force 602 appeal – staff complaint – on him. Some inmate told me, “Oh man you’re asking for it now.” Ha! It’s because of those kind of inmates that are afraid to file on them is why they get away with what they do. I have that right. Brothers died so that we can file paperwork. I remember that, when I feel lazy, ’cause I hate doing paperwork, ’cause it’s frustrating and tedious. Anyway comrades that is my spill. Keep the positive work you do going forward. I’ll sign off with a revolutionary salute to all of you comrades at MIM and USW. One day brothers. One day in the distant future you will see, if not you, yours, and our kids will see our world as we struggle for it, to be under one dictatorship, united. Trust and believe. It’s destined to come to fruition. Believe that!