Under Lock & Key

I agree 100% with what the soldier said about SCI-Huntingdon in the May/June issue of ULK. The population in this prison does not stand up for shit except count time. I’ve been trying to get these motherfuckers in here to boycott since 2005, but these dudes only worry about BET, sports, 40 cent ice cream tickets and who’s sucking whose dick.

As far as boycotting the kitchen, I understand dudes don’t want to lose their jobs but if the kitchen shuts down we shut the prison down! The prisoners do not realize how much power we actually have here, but one or two people can’t stand alone. We, the population as a whole, would have to stand together even if it’s something as simple as not going to the store for 2 weeks straight, or nobody goes to eat for one or two days. That’s enough to get the administration’s attention that we are not satisfied with the administration’s operation. Shit, the female prisoners have more balls than the males do. Muncy and Cambridge Springs shut down as soon as something goes down that they don’t agree on, but we males, what?

Yes, I’m talking to the gangsters, killers and so-called big time drug dealers across the state of Pennsylvania, because it’s not only here at Huntingdon, it’s the entire male population of PA. Stand up for yours! I’m not talking about a riot or cross burning or any kind of assaultive behavior. Just simply don’t go to the chow line for a day or two, don’t turn in that slip for the store for 2 weeks, or don’t pay that $16.50 they are charging for cable every month. Better yet, stop talking to the pigs as if they are your homies or OGs. That shit makes me sick every time I see one of these pussies “hee-hawing” with the same pig that slammed them in the Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU) and fucked up their parole.

Wake up and realize where you are people. Cuz, Blood, Latin King, G.Ds, Muslims, Christians, forget colors and religions, stand up as human beings. These redneck hillbilly pigs don’t even see us as humans, they see us as dollar signs. So since that is how they see us why not hit them where it hurts: their pocketbooks? Fuck that kitchen. Fuck that CI-shop job. Fuck the store and fuck the cable system! We pay $200 for a tube, then pay an additional $16.50 a month just to watch it, what kind of shit is that?

We need to stop spending our dough and make them waste theirs. They do it to us, it’s their turn!

Stand up! Wake Up!

I agree that control units are not productive means of rehabilitating prisoners for productive living in society, but do the exact opposite of their original purpose. Control units starve life mentally and physically, creating an insensible life. These control units create this insensible life by: 23 hour lock down (sometimes more), no religious programs, no school of any type of educational purpose. Maximum $10 store (no food products), one roll of toilet paper every two weeks and anything else punishable and inhumane the system can get away with such as excessive temperatures, followed by abuse of authority.

By no means is this program of life in control units to help a person be better than when they entered. I know this ala because I am a victim.

I condemn these control units and demand the united states to eliminate these unconstitutional disciplinary control units.

MIM(Prisons) adds: See our web page on prison control units for more information on this campaign.

Here in Arkansas we don’t have the types of problems they do in other states. They did years ago. Now it is subtle psychological conditioning (that neither the guards/staff/inmates realize they are a part of).

Most of the units in Arkansas were built by inmates - they received a slightly better living environment for their efforts - only because the inmates on construction created less problems for one another, not even realizing that their efforts were creating problems for many more in the future. Had we not built these warehouses for the state to store us, Arkansas would only be able to house half this many people.

After reading the most recent ULK, I must say that I have been telling these Arkansas inmates we need to quit working for the longest, they do not want to lose Good Time (we don’t get paid to work in Arkansas). I’ve tried to explain that if staff billed inmate jobs we would cause a strain in resources and would cause many non-violent offenders to be released early. It also appears that many are not grasping that the officers also are part of the oppressed peoples. In Arkansas, prisoners are racially balanced and most officers are colored.

I filed suit against the county for not feeding us properly. I have now been transferred to a facility with minimal law resources.

MIM responds: We do not agree that the prison officers are part of the oppressed people. While they may be from the oppressed nations, they are not a part of the oppressed peoples. They have been bought off and are working for the oppressors. They are in one of the professions most overtly working for the imperialist system. This means their interests are no longer aligned with their oppressed nation.

I am writing to let you know about what’s happening up in Salinas Valley State Penitentiary here in sunny Cali.

As you all know, we have a budget problem here. All the police are half staffed and close to minimum wage. And pissed. I have recently had a few run ins with the investigation squad (ISU) and always manage to piss em off.

Since then I have been put on a nothing coming status. I cannot seem to get any mail at all. My house gets tossed on a regular basis and they leave everything such a mess it’s hard to tell just what they took. Sometimes it takes days to figure out that little things are really gone.

I have recently filed a grievance regarding incoming publications and was reimbursed for two magazine issues. I also wrote the company about the missing issues with the response that four would be resent. This was three months ago. How the hell do they lose four magazines twice?

We have some serious issues with the appeal process here. Sometimes they just don’t return our shit so we can’t file a repeat appeal to exhaust the grievance process. I recently filed a medical appeal about Hep C and the lady that did the first level interview told me “hey they have it written here on the informal that you were referred to the clinic but I checked your file and there is no record of it.” I made sure this lady put that down as her findings. I never received the disposition (the 602). I later tried to file a subsequent appeal. They said “it had already been exhausted.” what bullshit!

MIM(Prisons) responds: this story of repression and censorship is all too common in Amerikan prisons. This letter underscores the importance of prisoners who are subscribed to ULK writing to us regularly to tell us what mail you received from us. This helps us to track censorship and then take on coordinated legal battles.

From our birth they installed limitations on what we may acquire and achieve,
Diluting our minds and aspirations, making it virtually impossible to succeed.
See 28% of men are dead or imprisoned by age 21
Yet they say there’s equal opportunities for everyone.
20% of the 28% are from neighborhoods like yours and mine
But these #’s don’t seem to equate in my mind.
The urban culture is being oppressed by a politically corrupt society simply and utterly
Because they’re afraid of what we may become if given true equality.
So I implore you do not succumb to temptation,
Stand up and speak out for what you believe in,
let liberty and prosperity be your motivation,
because it’s beyond our time to achieve it.
I drop these simple words of inspiration cause knowledge is power,
As for the urban culture and my entire generation, this is Our Darkest Hour

Welcome to the school of hard knocks,
where it seems the clock has stopped,
trapped in a prison industrial complex,
the size of city blocks,
guns cocked in gun towers,
Ever so slowly passes, years, days, months and hours,
time devours all - tempus edax rerum
And here I live in this correctional slum
I’ve never been dumb, but I’ve done dumb things
and this brings me to:
As long as I’m alive, I strive,
Sometimes striving means simply surviving,
I could have went to Penn state,
but instead I’m in the state pen
Surrounded by 1200 people, but not one friend
I sent a letter to my family, but it seems that they’re mad at me,
Because they only seem to respond semi-annually,
But I still have a strategy
to increase intellectually,
they may have my body, but they don’t have the best of me,
I’m 30 now, I’ll be released at 41,
In the futuristic year of 2021
The sum total of my incarcerated years will be 20,
But the total of the tears of me and my family is too many,
Plenty places, all over the state they have sent me,
tortured occasionally with tear gas and electricity,
they think that they’re breaking me, but they’re only remaking me,
I’m taking a breath while they’re trying to smother,
And brother, in this world, if you break it down statistically
you’ll realize you have to do your own part individually,
and realistically, I can see, if I don’t improvise, educationally,
In FL DOC, I’ll never go further than GED,
So I’m striving and searching, reaching and seeking,
trying to gain more knowledge, give my life more meaning,
in this institutional, “correctional,” demeaning existence,
to improve yourself, takes a lot of persistence,
and one day prove useful to communist resistance

I know you folks are interested in illegal activity that prisons allow against prisoners. Here in Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in the Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) sections that I have been to and others that inmates have spoken to me about we have several things being done against prisoners.

The first is sleep deprivation. Every night, either officers or inmates who work for them will talk to you in all kinds of disrespectful ways, mostly in whispers through the venting system or they may use the PA system. It’s a form of brain washing I have been keeping a log on. It’s way out of control because many officers and inmates are involved.

In cases of baby rapers they force them to have different kinds of sex with other inmates. They will open cell doors to allow this to take place.

Some (most) of the inmates are weak when it comes to being threatened in Ad Seg. I am here for two murders and I am not weak. I backup against their threats. They have been trying their bullshit with me going on 4 years, at two different units. The inmates who illegally work for them help in this with mirrors and cell phone cameras. It is actually a terrorist operation they have set up to make criminals worse instead of better. This makes sure the inmates return, increases the prison population and increasing funding for their jobs.

I have been up for parole six times but due to action taken against me, it created a reaction with me and stopped parole each time. I have had several fist fights and was declared a gang member which I am not. Never have been, except boy scouts! They are threatening to move me to another pod right now for writing this letter, they are reading it as I write with their small high tech cameras that are not supposed to be used by other inmates. They are saying as I write this that no one will believe me because of my mental illness.

Before I could get this letter out, land of the weak, home of the slave day came up, “4th of July” the celebration of the day the Europeans that came to amerikkka who took this land from the Indigenous people had to in turn fight the British to keep it. I wonder where was good ole karma then? Anywow. I’m sitting here troubled because like the comrade who wrote about the hot dogs, they served us half-cooked BBQ chicken. My point in this they were also supposed to put cherry pie on the tray but since I’m in loss of privilege, for not wanting to work for free, and numerous other reasons, myself and others on the “lazy offender program” as the pigs call it, did not receive cherry pie. These grown ass men were crying about no pie, and I was saying you’ll be lucky to eat the chicken with no stomach problems. These morons stress for all the wrong reasons. There is no unity here in the Texas Don’t Care Jailocracy. These inmates have been led to believe that if you work and stay disciplinary free parole’ll let you go. The truth is I stayed case free for 7 years on a non-aggressive 10 year sentence and they tried to give me parole after I pulled 9 years and 3 months, with all kinds of stipulations. So I told the parole board to give it to someone else. The moral of the story is, instead of riding for a cherry pie, why not ride for parole or furloughs to be reinstated in TDCJ asylums?

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) over the past 5 years.

It started with the food (menu). In 2006, the GDC made a drastic change in the menu, downsizing the meals and eliminating all salt in the name of health. They even put a memo up saying “this is a healthy change meant to promote health.” This lasted a week, before inmates “bucked” causing them to change it back. So these guys (GDC) went back to the think tank to come up with a better way to get over on us. Well, they succeeded. What they did was, instead of changing the menu all at once, they decided to do it little by little. Take boiled eggs out this month, egg salad 3 months later, tuna goes in June, no more soy milk for vegans in August, less chicken next year. They did this to avoid disruption from us. They took a page out of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Got us acting like the animals walking around saying “didn’t we use to have that”, “I thought the menu said ‘this’ one time.” To me, this “take a little here” strategy has become one of their favorites.

It doesn’t stop there, Georgia inmates, got to be the sorriest group of guys in history. I’m a part of it, sad to say. It’s unbelievable how submissive these guys are. They go for anything.

Back in 2006, according to Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) laundry was ordained to be washed 6 days per week. Then a drought hit Georgia for a month. So they downsized laundry cleaning to 3 days. That was 4 years ago - so tell me why laundry only goes out 3 days a week still? The drought been over. Hell, there was a flood or two since them. Nobody cares.

In 2008, all the wardens in every prison in GA went down to their dorms to inform inmates that everything on Friday will be shut down and will be considered a part of the weekend. I have no idea how they swung that one by without a riot. No mail on Friday, no lunch, no law library, no medical, no counseling, no programs, etc. Rumor is they will soon be giving inmates in GA 2 meals a day everyday. No uprisings.

Because so many prisoners used adapters to charge cell phones, the GDC banned us from buying them in almost every prison. No protests.

There once was a time when medical visits were free. But then they started charging $5 per visit. Earlier this year they took it a step further and started charging us for the visit and medicine. So if I went there for a cold it would cost me $5 to walk in the door, $5 for the medicine, and another $5 for the nasal spray. We just keep taking it in the ass.

In the last 3 years, 5 prisons (1800 inmates each) shut down. So the GDC, instead of releasing folks, chose to add multiple annex (open dorm) buildings to each prison. When overcrowding still persists they started putting triple bunks in all cell houses. The prison I’m at has 3 men per room in all cell houses bottom range. Top ranges have 2 men. But it won’t be long before they triple up every dorm. What this is doing, besides humiliating us, is putting serious strain on the existing facilities, such as medical.

When this prison was built, it had an inmate capacity of 800. Well today you have over 2000. All that has changed has been the amount of inmates. Instead of medical staff having to care for 800 they now have to care for 2000. Same size staff, same size rooms. Nothing was enlarged to compensate for this population boom. The law library has enough computers for 800 men. Today we don’t have time to do legal work on the computer because we have 4 computers for 2000 men. Visitation area was designed for 800 men. Today, because of the population, its regular for an officer to come up to you and your family and say “you have to go so others can come in.” It wouldn’t matter if your folks flew in from France they will force your visitor to leave because they don’t have enough space. No riots.

In GA, it costs taxpayers $1.1 billion a year to support this system. Next year the feds will not give the GDC $85 million that they thought they would get. So it will get ugly in Georgia. There’s no telling what they might do next. Georgia prisoners will continue to submit. Will continue to go to work (prisoners in GA earn $0 in wages) for free, just to have something to do. Next year, these pigs will be understaffed with this 85 million being withheld. They already are scrambling for ways to earn money. We need to sacrifice all our cares for one month and not work, that would break their back. It would be then that they really realize where the power lies. But that day might not come in GA, cause we are the prisoners with no nuts.

The Department of Corruptions, under the guise of safety and security is slowly but surely succeeding in their divide and conquer strategy. They have already been successful at convincing individuals to snitch by offering those who choose to take that road a safe haven. While at the same time they’re inciting conflicts in General Population. Here recently the captain of D-yard told a crip inmate that a blood inmate informed on him. Instead of them seeing this for what it was, these two guys ran around the yard telling anybody who would listen that the person was a snitch. The result was that the blood stabbed the crip in the law library. This resulted in the whole Black population being placed on lockdown for 60 days. The excuse for the lockdown was that they had to investigate the situation.

They released a program status report the day after the incident and passed out copies to everyone. They wanted everyone to know it was a blood and crip that was involved. Under any other circumstances it takes the pigs 30 days to release a program status report. At the same time the pigs were walking around like school kids making comments intended to incite the blood and crip conflict. Normally when something like this occurs they only lockdown the groups involved. But this time they locked down all Blacks, which was strange because this was a one-on-one issue that was provoked by the pigs. But this is the norm here in Kern Valley.

This is a maximum security prison. Guys around here claim to be militant revolutionaries, hardcore gangsters and solid convicts. But all I see is a bunch of fools looking for some type of recognition and popularity, until we all wake up and realize that we have to unite in order to overcome the oppressors then we must accept what we get. United we stand, divided we fall, together we can stand tall. Until that happens the pigs will continue to divide and conquer.