Under Lock & Key

First a correction. In Under Lock & Key 78 the article Understanding George Jackson repeatedly referred to Hugo “Yogi” Pinell as being Puerto Rican when ey was actually of Nicaraguan descent.

In this issue we tried to tackle some questions of strategy for change. Most of our readers each issue are new to our work. And while everyone we hear from loves ULK, not everyone understands how we’re different, or agrees with our different approach to change. In this issue we distinguish our strategy from those of reformists, those organizing the labor aristocracy into unions, and right and left errors around identity politics and idealism. We also feature the ongoing work around targeted campaigns around strategic issues of censorship, solitary confinement and building a united front within the prison movement in general, with revolutionary leadership.

Since last issue we, have a number of accomplishments to report. We published, printed and distributed the new zine Power to New Afrika! in Black August 2022. We have continued our training program for the Revolutionary 12 Step Program we began earlier this year with comrades inside and outside. We are caught up in mailing out responses to the intro study course, and should be mailing those on a weekly basis moving forward. This means you can expect to get a response in less than 2 months. Hundreds if not thousands of comrades inside mailed petitions to the Department of Justice as part of the Juneteenth Freedom Initiative. And we continue to mail out copies of the petition. Dozens if not hundreds of postcards demanding an end to politically targeted censorship were mailed to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Departmental Review Board. With this, the distribution of Under Lock & Key outside prisons has increased. Comrades inside also continue to sustain our postage stamp needs with their donations.

While the above accomplishments were achieved with the support of some newer comrades, we also lost some support on the outside during this period. This has meant we have struggled to stay up to date on processing and responding to our growing influx of mail. It also has caused us to change how we mail out ULK, which will more than double our postage costs. As printing costs also increase, the annual cost of a subscription will be going up and we will update our readers in our next issue, so that you can donate enough to cover your own ULKs or more.

Related to donations, a comrade in California wrote:

“I’m writing to inform all comrades that I wrote the Khufu Foundation, sent them the requested stamps and within two weeks I received a copy of the lawsuit. I know MIM said that you were unable to vouch for the Khufu Foundation, but I can and I would like to inform all the captive comrades that Khufu Foundation is legit, you will not be disappointed.

“Also in Under Lock & Key 78, I read the MIM(Prisons) update that talks about contributions/donations are needed, especially from the many comrades who are in prison. I’m taking the step to do my part as I enclosed a book of 20 stamps to cover my subscription coast as well as other comrades who are unable to provide the support with stamps. I would like to ask all of the comrades who are able and willing to donate a book of stamps because with a book of stamps we are able to cover our cost but also cover other comrades who are unable to give stamps. I also would like to ask the comrades who are able to try and donate one book of stamps every quarter (that’s 4 books of stamps a year). Let’s try to step up our contributions.”

Requests for Texas Packs and the TDCJ’s Grievance Operations Manual (which is regularly being censored these days) continue to increase. New comrades should read about our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program on p.2 and understand that you must send payments for these 2 items.

As discussed in this issue, many prisons have begun digitizing mail. Our newspaper cannot be processed by these services. So if you don’t tell us what prison you are in when you write us we cannot send you a subscription.

When we first met, it was truly love at first sight. i was a young, wild, Gangster Disciple… and unfortunately i was a parasite. You walked into the room, and… you began to speak. i will never forget your first words: “Dare To Struggle! Dare To Be Free!”

Our eyes were fixated on each others. It was like you were talking directly to me. i was captivated by the things you had to say. i was overwhelmed by your Divine Inner-G! You sent chills throughout my body, but the message i still didn’t quite understand. So you walked over and put your arms around me… and whispered in my ear: “Free The Land.”

The way you walked, and the way you moved, intrigued me. Your pride in being Black was intoxicating for sure. From that moment on i knew that i had to have you… because you were just too much for me to ignore.

So We began to date casually, and… you let me know that if i were really ready to step up and be your man, then i had to let go of my gang-banging mentality. i had to go from Gangster Disciple to Growth and Development. i had to learn what knowledge of the self meant. i had to take time and learn the New Afrikan Creed. i had to learn all about FROLIAN, which you called The Three Phase Theory.

i couldn’t believe how committed to change you were. You told me you had a plan, and i recall smiling at you and asking, so what is this plan? But you had this intense look on your face… the most serious look i had ever seen. Then you took me out west with you to Oakland, and… you introduced me to Comrade Huey P.

I will never forget his words of wisdom. He taught me that to give my life for The People is the greatest honor of all, and that it is better to die on my feet then to live on my knees. He told me that We are at war, and… that the price of freedom ain’t free.

This motivated me, because, all my life i was willing to die over a color or for which way a person wore their hat. i recall asking you why you think i was so willing to do this? And… you replied, “N’dugu, Willy Lynch taught you that.” i was sickened to my stomach, and i couldn’t understand how this could be. So you took me back to The Land–Chicago–and introduced me to The Chairman of the Black Panther Party.

Chairman Fred Hampton was a flame thrower, very charismatic… truly something to behold. i will never forget what he told me: “i am a Revolutionary! i have given my life to The People!”

All the things you were showing me, made me rise in love with you even more. Especially when you taught me about the bravery of 17 year old Comrade Johnathan Jackson, and… when you let me read your personal Prison Letters from Comrade George.

You taught me about Queen-Mother Assata Olugbala Shakur. And… how the Black Liberation Army liberated her from kkkaptivity and got her to Cuba. You taught me about how this racist system tried to murder Comrade Mumia Abu Jamal, even though they KNEW he wasn’t a shooter.

You gave me the lessons of Comrade Geronimo Ji Jaga, who went to prison for 28 years for something he didn’t do. You showed me how this fascist system will do anything to neutralize to the 21st Century Voices Of Total Empowerment… the same way they dropped the bomb on MOVE!

You gave my life purpose and meaning, and for that i will never put anything above you. i honor you on our anniversary, Black August, but every single day i will show you that i love you. i just wanted to write you this letter, my first love: The New Afrikan Liberation Struggle!

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS 21 Gun Salutes to ALL this Black August

Black Lives Matter!!!

I was told that commissary prices went up here in Oregon, but wages for prison jobs have mostly remained the same. At least the administration in Oregon pays prisoners for labor, because back home we don’t get paid shit, as is the case for most southern prisons. I’m curious to see how inflation is effecting other prisons in the United $tates. Is there anything that we (prisoners) can do about inflation? Do we just sit back and let it slide?

On another tip, I’m actually gettin’ ready to file an Americans with Disabilities Act class-action to try and get disabled prisoners, like me, disability checks in prison, because non-disabled prisoners get paid for working, but disabled prisoners, who can’t work, aren’t able to participate in such monetary programs and services. A $50 disability check, per month, would work. Fifty bucks is probably the average amount of money that non-disabled prisoners earn per month in Oregon.

Let Under Lock & Key know how inflation has affected prices in your prison. And what is being done about it by prisoners or the administration? [We’ll be covering this issue in more depth in ULK 81 if we can gather more info from you.]

[Responding to “What did you disagree with?” when studying “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?”]

I disagreed with the basis of idealism not being action. To think is action. Thought can be provoked by stimuli collected by the body’s sensors, which is more reactionary. Or you can create a thought or an idea, but this is action. Mental action nonetheless but action all-in-all. And it must be understood physical action comes from mental action. As I write this I understand the materialist method is physical action. Well I guess I don’t have a disagreement but rather a question, is ideas placed on paper in book format considered materialism?

Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: As comrade Melo X explains, we can have thoughts that are reactions to physical stimuli, or we can create thoughts. But this “creation” of thoughts is also a response to the physical world. What we might call reason, abstracts concepts based on our experience with real phenomena, or physical things we can interact with.

“the faculty of understanding is not a ‘thing in and of itself,’ because it becomes real only in contact with some object.”(1)

Dietzgen explained how the idealists see the mind as separate from the sense perceptions of the material world. So Melo X is correct to see the unity between them. The comrade also distinguishes creating thoughts from more passive perception. This realization demonstrates the role of reason in developing scientific understanding from our perception of the physical world around us.

We also agree that our thoughts impact our actions. Hence we stress class consciousness as an educational process that is a product of our interactions with the class system.

So, are ideas in a book part of the materialist method? Well, it depends on what ideas. A book can promote contemplative reasoning. Bourgeois books will promote bourgeois thinking that harbors much idealistic reasoning in order to deny the contradictions inherent to the capitalist system. All that said, 99% of our materialist understanding of the world is based in history, and therefore must come from books (or other historical record). If we discarded books in our scientific pursuits we could not continue to build on the knowledge of the past, but would be stuck relearning the same things with each generation.

It is a crass form of materialism that says everything must come from persynal experience and direct interaction with the physical world. Rather we must learn from the actions of the people who came before us, and as we develop new theories they must be tested by us in practice through action and not just tested in our contemplative, subjective minds. Another way to look at this is that books are recorded practice and direct experiences of other people. Frederick Douglas’ writings are from eir practice with chattel slavery, and Lenin’s writings are from eir practice with the first proletarian revolution. When we say that all knowledge is 99% history, we’re not saying we should spend all our time learning using books but to see it as a starting point so we can make new practice in the future.

<sup>Notes:
1. Joseph Dietzgen, The Nature of Human Brain Work: An Introduction to Dialectics, PM Press, 2010, p.58.</sup>

Revolutionary greetings, my fellow comrades!

As a first time writer for MIM(Prisons) I must confess that, it’s absolutely a blessing to have found such a space/medium to expose what’s currently taking place within the Georgia Department of Corrections (G.D.C), hereinafter “Georgia industrial slave complex”. Because honestly, with every issue of Under Lock & Key, I thirst to develop a political cadre, in order to establish a vanguard party among the (lumpen) prisoner class.

Here at Telfair State plantation, there’s no real sense of political consciousness among the masses nor is there any form of unity among the street tribes, whom all proclaim to have been birthed out of Black struggle to combat against oppression from a political perspective to protect their community. To which I ask, isn’t the slave plantation environment currently their community? Then why is it that their claims, tends to seem as though nothing more than “persuasive rhetoric” produced from the tenets of a force with every form of materialistic/imperialist reason to divide the common? and yet, it gets worse.

There’s a massive staff shortage at the root of many Georgia industrial slave sanitation failures and the problems don’t stop there. It’s beyond the crisis point and something needs to change. Because there’s a real humanitarian crisis. In which homicide and suicide rates has already reached “unprecedented levels.” At Least 25 slave prisoners deaths on plantation compounds in 2020 were suspected homicides, 7 at Macon State plantation, according to “G.D.C.” and 19 slave prisoners supposedly killed themselves in 2020, twice the national average.

The “G.D.C.” annual report for fiscal year 2019 (there was a lack of access for 2020 FY report) reveals constant churn. According to the OF, 78% of the department’s new hires are (overseers) “Corrections Officers,” and 71% quit before the year ended. Gov. Brian Kemp, just proposed a 9.1% pay increase for plantation(overseers) guards that would raise their entry level salary from $27,936 to $30,730. The experienced staff are leaving as fast as they can to get out of here. What we’re left with is kids trying to supervise slave prisoners they’re afraid of and that has a domino effect. Without adequate staffing, the maintenance begins to suffer, food service suffers. Because they don’t feel safe, it’s created a circular problem.

Access to healthcare is more limited than ever and mental health counselors are afraid to come in the dorms. Under-staffing has led to more slave prisoners being stationed in temporary holding cages, going extended periods without food, water or even bathroom visits. Often we’re left in those cages to urinate and defecate on ourselves. If the situation persists, lives will continue to be at stake. It’s just a matter of time before we see causalities among the staff and slave prisoners.

Urban street tribes have filled the power vacuum. The G.D.C. estimated it housed 15,000 tribe members; nearly a third of it’s total population. In the five previous years, authorities said tribe members were responsible for 1,700 assaults in Georgia industrial slave plantations. The pandemic has only made the situation worse, as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the slave plantations. Recently 24 slave prisoners tested positive for the virus; 3,100 have been infected so far, 88 have died. Another 1,482 staff members have test positive and two died from the virus, according the the G.D.C Those figures are likely 10 times below the actual number of infections, according to a recent study by the Center of Disease Control & Prevention.

I believe (the G.D.C.) is tolerating levels of chaos we have not seen in the last 20 years. The scale of the problem is so great that federal interventions is necessary and warranted. (Side note, the Department of Justice continues investigation into Georgia prisons.)

Please family, friends and those on the inside report on what is happening inside the walls of Georgia Department of Corrections prisons. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in September a state-wide civil investigation into conditions at facilities across the state. The DOJ investigation is focused on determining whether state prisoners are reasonably safe from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners. DOJ is also investigating whether the state offers reasonable protections for LGBTQIA prisoners from sexual abuse by corrections officers and other prisoners. If you or someone you know has information that could raise awareness to this cause, submit tips to:

MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade’s report echoes what is being reported from Alabama from prisoners organizing there. Georgia is one of the five states with a higher incarceration rate than Alabama, and of course both are in the Black Belt south. Prison systems across the country are crumbling and failing. It is our purpose to support those who are trying to organize for change amongst this chaos. These contradictions create opportunity for change.

If you did not receive a copy of the JFI petition to the Department of Justice that we mailed out with Under Lock & Key 78, write us to get copies and use them to organize a collective voice in your prison. It is only by independent, collective organizing that we can stop these unnecessary deaths and abuses.

Have you ever opened the door to a hot oven and felt dizzy and overwhelmed from the intensity of the heat hitting you in the face? That is how it feels for people incarcerated at Augusta, Nottoway, and Buckingham Correctional Centers every summer, but especially during the current heat wave sweeping the country.

But get this: prison staff at these facilities do not experience excessive heat conditions because the areas in which they work and frequent — the control booths, school areas, medical department, education department, administration offices, etc. – are all equipped with air conditioning (AC).

While the U.$. and other parts of the world, like Western Europe, are experiencing unprecedented deadly heat waves, people trapped in prisons, jails, and detention centers not equipped with AC in the areas where they housed are suffering exponentially from these sweltering conditions.

For instance, if it is 100 degrees for those of you on the outside, the temperature is always several degrees higher for those of us confined in prisons not equipped with AC. With the lack of AC, poor ventilation, substandard medical care, unsafe drinking water, big slabs of concrete that trap heat, antiquated sewage systems that regularly back up and spew raw sewage into the cells and housing units, and the persistence of COVID-19 which is still spreading and infecting people at these facilities, all of these conditions on top of record high temperatures create unbearable conditions that are tantamount to the kind of cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the eighth amendment to the U.$. constitution. Sick and elderly people confined under these conditions suffer the most.

So, is there a need for an intersecting movement for prison abolition? The short answer is “Yes,” because when environmentalists talk about how climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and how the impact of this is felt most by people in Third World countries least responsible for climate pollution, the ways in which climate change impacts people in confinement are often left out of conversations about climate justice. This is a blind spot that will cause incarcerated and detained people to suffer and die in silence and invisibility during future heat waves.

Of course, I believe prisons in general should be abolished and demolished, but right now, due to the immediacy of the current situation, we need prison abolitionists and climate justice activists to unite, and once united, collectively raise your voices to bring awareness to this issue and demand change to prevent the needless suffering and death of incarcerated human beings amid record high temperatures due to global warming.

One way you can do this is by signing and sharing this online petition to close Nottoway, Buckingham, and Augusta Correctional Centers.

This petition can be used to raise awareness about this public health crisis and as the foundation for a state-wide campaign to shut these prisons down.